The only Republican not grinning about the White House fund-raising scandal is Fred Thompson. Only a couple of weeks ago it looked like the Tennessee senator’s hearings investigating the Clinton administration’s fund-raising practices would provide him a priceless platform from which to launch a presidential bid. In very short order, though, Thompson started to alienate his GOP colleagues, who were put off both by his freewheeling style and by signals that he might widen the scope of the hearings to include Republican fund-raising. Then Trent Lott, the Senate majority leader, said, not so off- handedly, that were an independent counsel named, the Thompson committee would be significantly scaled back, if not eliminated. Thompson thinks the committee should be preserved regardless. That’s already become a minority view among Senate Republicans, many of whom now believe that, while they’ll miss the opportunity to publicly embarrass the White House in televised hearings, they will be better served by having an independent counsel whose work will be private — and limited to the Clinton administration.
