JAMES CARVILLE’S CRUSADE

Carville is right about one thing: The chattering class is in an uproar over his behavior, almost unanimous in the belief that he has finally spun out of control. In the days since Carville announced his intention to mount a public-relations campaign against Starr — a man he calls a “right-wing partisan Republican” on an ideological crusade to destroy the president — the sometime Clinton adviser has been assailed from all sides.

“Nonsense,” snorted Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, echoing the opinion of many Democrats in Congress.

“Such an ‘all-out’ assault would be unprecedented in the history of independent counsels,” explained a remarkably unsympathetic news story in the Washington Post.

An even harsher response came from Republicans, including Carville’s own wife, Mary Matalin, who felt so strongly she called at least one conservative journalist and asked him to write an op-ed attacking her husband.

Carville spends most of his waking hours in the happy company of Washington’s chattering class (and is among its most successful members), so the attacks on his anti-Starr efforts most likely are nothing personal. But Carville’s rhetoric has recently gone from ordinary political agitation to potentially destructive demagoguery. Even his friends recognize that he has crossed a boundary, and they are appalled.

So appalled that for a moment late last week, despite his sticks-and-stones tough-guy pose, Carville seemed to pay attention to his critics: The anti- Starr group he has created might not run television commercials against the independent counsel, Carville says, if Starr conducts the Whitewater investigation in a “professional manner.” But Carville does not plan to stop his attacks elsewhere, or the fund-raising needed to sustain them. Indeed, reached at his office only hours after news reports declared his crusade over — “CARVILLE SAYS HE MIGHT DROP PLAN TO CAMPAIGN AGAINST PROSECUTOR,” announced a breathless New York Times headline — the political consultant hardly seemed to have gone back on his original intentions. “I’m going on Brinkley this weekend to talk about it,” he said, chuckling.

Carville’s essential contention is that Ken Starr is not an “independent” counsel at all, but a puppet of the conservative movement who has used “his subpoena power to advance the right-wing agenda.” His evidence? For one thing, Carville says, Starr recently gave a speech at Regent University Law School, which was founded by none other than Pat Robertson, “the biggest political enemy that the president has.” For another, during his time as independent counsel, Starr has represented Philip Morris and Brown & Williamson tobacco companies. “And I have no doubt that the tobacco industry loathes the president,” says Carville. In addition, while investigating Whitewater, Starr has represented the state of Wisconsin in a case concerning education reform. Some of the money that has gone to pay Starr in that case has come, indirectly, from the conservative Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation — yet another group of “people who really loathe the president.” All of this adds up, Carville says, to an investigation that is entirely “politically motivated.” “I find it very, very upsetting,” he says solemnly.

To illustrate just how upsetting, Carville suggests a “mirror image”: “What in the name of God would have happened if the man who was investigating Gingrich [independent counsel James Cole] was representing the AFL-CIO and giving speeches to gay groups and environmental groups? It would be the end of days.”

Carville has a point here — Republicans would go bananas if the roles were reversed. But it’s also something of a non sequitur, since the fact that Starr has had contact with conservatives still proves nothing about his personal motives or about his fitness to investigate the president. Take Carville’s allegation that Starr’s work on behalf of tobacco companies destroys his credibility. As it turns out, Bill Clinton could have much the same problem. Clinton’s personal law firm, Williams and Connolly, also represents Big Tobacco. Indeed, lawyers from Williams and Connolly have been hired by the industry to fight the Clinton administration’s attempts to regulate tobacco.

What does this tangled web of alliances prove? More than anything, that Washington is a small place, where conflicts of appearance — caused by marriage, profession, political affliation — abound but don’t necessarily mean anything. Carville has done a fair job of demonstrating that Starr has conservative sympathies. But Starr’s political leanings have never been a secret; indeed, they are part of the reason a three-judge panel picked him for the job. As Starr himself pointed out in a speech before the Oklahoma Bar Association last month, special prosecutors traditionally have differed politically from those they investigate. Archibald Cox not only investigated Richard Nixon during Watergate, he also helped John E Kennedy beat Nixon in the 1960 presidential race. Cox’s successor, Leon Jaworski, was an active Democrat who once defended Lyndon Johnson in a lawsuit brought by Republicans. In fact, since the days of the Grant administration, most independent counsels have come from the opposing political party. The practice of appointing a “highly partisan” investigator to be independent counsel, in other words, may or may not be a good idea, but it is hardly new.

Nor has Starr turned out to be unduly partisan. A politically motivated independent counsel would have given speeches in the weeks before the election attacking the White House for intransigence. Starr kept relatively quiet until after Clinton won. Starr may even be a moderating force. According to Newsweek, Starr has determined that deputy White House counsel Vincent Foster’s death was indeed a suicide — a finding that should dispel some of the kookier theories on the subject now circulating on the right. Perhaps most significant, the attorney general has the legal right to remove an independent counsel. If she had reason to believe Starr was engaged in a witch hunt, Clinton’s own Janet Reno could fire him. Instead, she has repeatedly expanded the scope of Starr’s investigation by giving him more scandals to look into.

Carville doesn’t say much about Reno’s tacit endorsements of Starr. “I haven’t talked to many people at the Justice Department,” he explains. Then again, he doesn’t have to. According to Carville, he already knows Starr ” is a man who does not like the president,” a “Clinton-hater, to put it bluntly.” How does he know this? Why, Starr told him.

In October 1993, Carville says, he was minding his own business in the USAir Club at Washington’s National Airport when “an intense fellow” approached him and, with no apparent provocation, began to berate the president. “Your boy is getting rolled,” Carville claims the man said of Clinton. “He doesn’t stand for anything.” Before the man left, Carville says, he “identified himself as a former judge or something.” He also gave his name: Ken Starr.

Months passed and Carville says he forgot about the incident. In August 1994, however, when Starr replaced Robert Fiske as independent counsel, Carville claims he “saw his picture on television and I knew this was the guy that I ran into in the airport.” Armed with this special knowledge, Carville immediately offered to leave the White House payroll and pursue a campaign against Starr. But he was dissuaded by Clinton advisers Mark Gearan and George Stephanopoulos, who warned that newly appointed White House counsel Lloyd Cutler would quit if Carville went ahead. (Cutler, who was among those who worked to formulate the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 that created the office of special prosecutor, reportedly was horrified by the unseemliness.) ” I was stupid and weak to be talked out of this at the beginning,” Carville now says.

Carville’s airport tale is the most compelling element of his case against Starr, the smoking gun that ties motive to the special prosecutor’s actions and allows Carville to make such authoritative statements as, “I know for a fact that he really don’t like Bill Clinton; I seen that in his face and in his voice and what he said.” The story has been extraordinarily useful to Carville; it is also extraordinarily weak.

The tale first saw print in a New Yorker piece by Jane Mayer last spring, and as Carville retells it, one almost gets the feeling he is reading from Mayer’s account of his account. Pleading memory lapses, Carville adds precisely no detail to the already vague anecdote: no physical descriptions, no further dialogue, and, most important, no context for Starr’s supposed remarks. Based on what little detail Carville can muster, Starr could have been quoting someone else — if, indeed, he even said these things. Relentless spinner though he is, Carville is not regarded as a liar, so it doesn’t seem likely he created the story whole. Still, almost nothing about it rings true to those who know the courtly, restrained Starr, who has refused to comment publicly on Carville’s recollections. Until Carville can come up with a better story, it’s hard to take the Showdown at the VIP Lounge at face value.

Upon inspection, just about all of Carville’s “evidence” of Starr’s base motives turns out to be vapor. Privately, however, many Republicans do say they are troubled by Starr’s insistence on maintaining private clients during the Whitewater investigation. Congress specifically allows special prosecutors to take outside work, in the belief that the best candidates wouldn’t accept the job otherwise. On the other hand, Starr is conducting the most politically important investigation in the country. Representing clients such as tobacco companies just doesn’t look good — comes off as disconcertingly impolitic, in fact, particularly for somebody who has lived in Washington long enough to know better. “He has a political tin ear,” says someone who has talked to him about the subject.

Another explanation may be money. Starr bills private clients about seven times as much as he receives from the federal government for Whitewater work ($ 390 an hour versus $ 55), and the $ 1 million he makes per year in private practice (give or take) may have been too much to turn down. Either way, Starr has made a tactical blunder by not devoting himself wholly to Whitewater.

But a tactical blunder is all it appears to be. Carville’s charges are striking in that they hardly address how Starr has handled the actual investigation, much less the merits of any case he might be building against the Clintons. Some of Starr’s deputies have been accused of using hardball tactics, though nothing they have done so far seems unusual for a white- collar investigation. (In fact some Republicans have complained that Starr, who had no experience as a prosecutor, has not been tough enough.) Otherwise, Carville does not point to a single misdeed Starr has committed while investigating the president. Instead, he has attacked Starr as a person, much as he assailed Paula Jones as white trash when she accused the president of sexual harassment. (“You drag $ 100 bills through trailer parks, there’s no telling what you’ll find,” Carville said at the time, ignoring the question of whether or not Clinton had done what Jones said he had.)

So far, the administration ostentatiously has refused to “take sides” in the matter, though Clinton has said he does not plan to ask Carville to stop – – a decision that makes sense to Carville. “I can’t imagine why the president would want me to knock it off,” he says. Why, indeed. As it stands, Clinton benefits from the attacks on Starr — attacks that may, as some Whitewater prosecutors believe, affect the investigation’s outcome by influencing potential jurors. Meanwhile, Clinton can remain safely at arm’s length from Carville’s more outrageous outbursts. Politically, it is an almost unbeatable arrangement — the principle of triangulation applied to character assassination.

In the end, however, it is hard to escape the feeling that the attacks on Starr have less to do with defending Clinton than with whatever sort of mid- life crisis affects political consultants. Carville clearly is bored with the lecture-and-book circuit and aches to get back into politics. The anti-Starr crusade has afforded him just such an opportunity, and Carville has turned it into a para-political campaign, complete with a sober-sounding name (the Education and Information Project), a war room in his office, endless rounds of frenzied phone calls, and a group of “well-meaning young people” to help. According to Carville, the fund-raising will start soon — “If my elbow hit the speed-dial on my phone, I could raise $ 200,000,” he says confidently — and he is already thinking of buying the Clinton-Gore campaign-donor list to mount a direct-mail campaign.

Caught up in the excitement of warfare, Carville says he already envisions a permanent organization, ever ready to defend the president on “a number of other issues” beyond Whitewater. What sorts of issues might those be? Whatever “strikes my fantasy,” James Carville says.

By Tucker Carlson