MediaWatch: October 1994

Newsweek Removes Noted Clinton Sycophant from the White House Beat

Eleanor Clift's Fond Clinton Memories

In August, Newsweek announced Deputy Washington Bureau Chief Eleanor Clift would be moved from her White House beat. Bill and Hillary Clinton will be losing one of their biggest supporters in the White House press corps. Clift's editors have always denied an agenda on her part. Washington Bureau Chief Evan Thomas told Tim Russert on CNBC in April, "I don't think she's an administration apologist...She is probably more liberal than most journalists, but in the pages of Newsweek she plays it straight." But the record speaks for itself.

All Aboard the Bandwagon. Clift first hopped aboard the Clinton bandwagon in 1992: "I think Gore and Clinton could be the all-generational change ticket, and I suppose if they lose, they could do cameo appearances on Studs or something," she said on the July 4 McLaughlin Group, referring to the Dating Game - like Fox show. She may have been attracted to more than just their ideologies. "I must say, I was struck by the expanse of their chests. They may have to put out their stats," she gushed on the July 10, 1992 Inside Politics. "Looking at some of that footage, it looks like the all-beefcake ticket," she remarked on that same week's McLaughlin Group. Post-convention, Clift was still bestowing hosannahs: "They got more positive coverage on this bus tour than the Beatles got on their first tour of America. More reporters were oohing and aahing. It was almost embarrassing. I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to do it until now."

The Clinton Agenda. During the battle over the budget, she saw promise in the "Slick Willie" epithet in the February 8, 1993 Newsweek: "Clinton is much craftier than George Bush in avoiding the kind of 'Read My Lips' vow that allows no maneuvering room. He can rewrite his promises to adjust to reality. That opens him up to 'Slick Willie' catcalls. It also leaves him the option to do the right thing." That week on The McLaughlin Group she pronounced the budget "one for one (tax hikes to spending cuts) and it's gutsier than any Republican President has done in 12 years of feel-goodism. This is going to be politically courageous and you're going to hear a lot of screaming." Three months later, she claimed "It's the first serious attempt to cut the deficit in this country."

All Apologies. A constant in Clift's view of the Whitewater scandal is that the Clintons may be the most well-intentioned, ethical humans to ever inhabit Washington. In a December 1993 McLaughlin Group she challenged the idea that the Clintons may have used their political connections to make money: "It runs counter to the notion about the Clintons, somehow the fact that they are somehow in this for personal or financial gain, doesn't ring true." A few weeks later she returned to this point on the same show: "The beauty of the special counsel law is that he or she has to prove criminal wrongdoing, and not only criminal wrongdoing, but criminal intent, and I think, you know, everyone is certain that doesn't exist with the Clintons."

She reached new heights in creative rationalization when defending the Clintons' ethics. To the contention that Clinton played fast and loose with the truth, on the September 12, 1992 McLaughlin Group she countered: "There is no evidence that Bill Clinton has ever lied. He's done nothing illegal. He has what I would call the politician's disease. He has tailored the truth to adapt to the reality of running in a conservative southern state."

She also tried to turn Hillary's ethical lapses on her still murky commodities deals from negative to positive. In an April 11, 1994 Newsweek story with Mark Miller, Clift wrote: "Bill Clinton evoked sympathy and understanding by acknowledging marital problems on the famous 60 Minutes interview. She could benefit from admitting that she, too, has occasionally yielded to temptation and made the wrong choices. The public might even be tickled to discover that the prim and preachy First Lady has a gambler's streak. Hillary's brief fling in commodities was possibly reckless, but it shows a glimmering of a more credible, if more flawed, human being."

Later, her line of defense changed. Instead of asserting Clinton's innocence, she declared he shouldn't be judged on his personal ethics, but by the good he's trying to do. "Bill Clinton has been in office for a year and a half, and he's got a number of legislative proposals by which we can judge his public character. To go back and measure the man by whether money might have gone into his 1984 gubernatorial campaign through a failed land adventure, to me, even if it turns out to be the case, and there's no evidence that this is even the case, that there are many other ways to measure the character of this man. He is working for us every day in office," she oozed on CNBC's July 26 Rivera Live.

Barney and Wonder Woman. When Clift wrote about the Clintons, the loving prose flowed. In Newsweek's August 9, 1993 issue, she wrote: "Clinton is giving the best evidence yet of his approach to leadership. It's about understanding, not threats; accommodation, not confrontation; about getting people (or at least Democrats) to sing the same song. The style is reminiscent of another patient, nonjudgmental figure given to hugging in public: Barney the Dinosaur."

One Newsweek staffer told The Washington Post her March 21, 1994 Newsweek interview with Hillary was "embarrassing." In the "interview," Clift suggested: "I guess the only thing I see comparable [between Whitewater and Watergate] is that a lot of people want to launch careers based on finding something." Then she asked: "How angry are you about the way this has mushroomed from a little land scandal into an allegation that you and your husband are corrupt?" Clift fed excuses to Hillary: "My theory is that you have a thing about privacy...The attacks against you are really about more than Whitewater. They really go to the role that you're taking on and whether you can be the spouse of a President and a policymaker."

Clift has also shown the different standards she applies to Hillary and others when dealing with rumors. In an April 5, 1993 Newsweek story on Secret Service gossip about the Clintons, Clift wrote: "There is no evidence to support any of these stories...living in the fishbowl is hard enough without worrying about a Secret Service that can't keep mum." But writing in Newsweek two years earlier, Clift had lavishly praised Kitty Kelley's book of gossip about Nancy Reagan. "If privacy ends where hypocrisy begins, Kitty Kelley's steamy exposé is a contribution to contemporary history."

Of course, when The American Spectator ran an article in December 1993 about Hillary's less-than-intimate sexual relationship with her husband, Clift attacked the source on the McLaughlin Group: "The [David] Brock article appears in a publication with very ideological leanings of the conservative persuasion. It is full of innuendo and bias." She should know.

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