-
July 24, 2000
The Wall Street Journal Editorial Page
More Outrage From Hillary
By Rachel Donadio, city editor of the Forward.
The phone was ringing when I got back to the office late on Monday, after covering Hillary Clinton's appearance at Ellis Island. Two calls, in close succession, from people with whom I had never before spoken. Both callers expressed their outrage at the allegations that Mrs. Clinton had used an anti-Semitic slur. The callers defended her on the basis of their acquaintance with her or their reading of her character. I actually asked the callers why they had called me and how they knew I was following this story for the Forward, and each gave answers that I remember chiefly for their vagueness.
It turns out that each was specifically asked to call me and a reporter for another Jewish newspaper by the Jewish liaison in Mrs. Clinton's campaign for the Senate. This came out when a memo from that official, Karen Adler, to Mrs. Clinton's Jewish Advisory Group was leaked to various news outlets in the state, including the Associated Press, which was the first to alert me. And it also turns out that the memo specifically asked Mrs. Clinton's advisory group to dissemble about whether they were connected to the campaign. "It is important that you do not say that you are calling because the campaign asked you to, but because you are outraged with what was said about her," Ms. Adler wrote.
Well, call me an old-fashioned sort, but this little episode touches on the issue that I believe, after covering Mrs. Clinton the past few months, is at the heart of the problems with her campaign. It's an issue that bedevils her relations with more than the Jewish community. It is at core a question of honesty and trust. I, as well as the Forward, am in the camp that doesn't really care what kind of things Mrs. Clinton says in private. Unlike many dailies, the Forward was skeptical and wary of the accusations of anti-Semitism, and wrote as much in this week's editorial and in my lead story.
I happened to have sat out the second Clinton administration in Italy, the last half working for the International Herald Tribune. When I came to the Forward in May, I didn't arrive with an ax to grind or with my senses dulled by years of American news coverage. I started covering the Clinton campaign and reporting what I found. And what I've found in the past two weeks is a campaign intent on silencing any coverage that isn't celebratory.
This sentiment was most evident in Ms. Adler's memo to the Jewish Advisory Group, as well as in an earlier memo that was leaked to the New York Post last week. That memo, also from Ms. Adler, complained about Mrs. Clinton's coverage in Jewish newspapers, including the Forward, and suggested that this was why the candidate was polling so poorly among Jewish voters. Blaming Jewish newspapers, as if they had covered Mrs. Clinton any more critically than the mainstream media and as if the media itself were responsible for her poor showing, does not inspire trust in Mrs. Clinton's campaign tactics. Nor does it inspire trust in Mrs. Clinton.
The sentiment I hear expressed more often than any other is that people don't trust the first lady. Hawks don't trust that she will be a vocal enough advocate for a strong Israel. They cite her calling for a Palestinian state in 1998, long before such a proposal ever hit the negotiating table. They don't trust her repudiation of that statement. They don't trust her statement on Jerusalem. They cite the unfortunate photo op in Ramallah last November when Mrs. Clinton embraced Suha Arafat just moments after the first lady of Palestine had accused Israel of using poison gas against Palestinians. They don't trust her explanation that she waited a day to condemn the remarks due to a translation error.
Yet the problem goes far beyond the Middle East. I doubt that suburban centrists, who make up a significant part of the one million Jewish voters in the state, are sitting at home with a map of the West Bank, hinging their votes for Mrs. Clinton on the kind of peace deal her husband helps negotiate. Yet it is these largely Democratic suburban centrists who are the thorn in Mrs. Clinton's side. They are Koch Jews from the outer boroughs, families, parents and senior citizens for whom the real issue isn't health care or gun control or even education, but rather trust.
Many still don't trust Mrs. Clinton's motives in running for Senate in a state she's never called home. Some Jewish women wonder why she didn't up and leave her philandering husband. What I sense is a growing swell of concern from Jewish voters, of all religious denominations and political allegiances, who are simply searching for candid answers from Mrs. Clinton. What is clear is that Jewish voters are certainly willing to give Mrs. Clinton a fair hearing, if only she would start talking on the level.
- "It's difficult to correct what's already been done," Rabbi Joseph Potasnik from Congregation Mt. Sinai, a synagogue in liberal Brooklyn Heights, told me this week, speaking about the blunders that have marred the Clinton campaign from day one. "I think Hillary needs to have serious discussions with the Jewish community to convince those who might vote for her that she does have credibility and can be trusted," Mr. Potasnik said. "It's the credibility question. That's what needs to be discussed. How can we trust you? You tell us how we can."
-
HAPPAQUA, N.Y., Jan. 4 -- The clinton-PR-machine-generated report of the death of Buddy, the impeached ex-president's chocolate Labrador, raises more questions than it answers. The report states: "Buddy playfully took after a contractor leaving the Clinton home about noon and was struck by a sport utility vehicle on Route 117 at the bottom of Old House Lane...Neither Mr. Clinton nor Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton were [sic] home at the time. The only comment they will make on the matter is by way of a statement issued by Mrs. Clinton's office: 'My best memory is that I did not have any involvement in that death.'"
with its theology of contempt? 
roadside ad, 
