SCANDAL WATCH: Monk-y Business - Al Gore and campaign-finance reform - Brief Article

THE succession of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe in the White House is known as the Virginia Dynasty. If Al Gore follows Bill Clinton it will be the Crook Dynasty. Gore is a Clintonian sleazebag without charm or sex appeal.

In the last election cycle, the vice president made 45 money-raising phone calls from his office. Gore claimed that there was "no controlling legal authority" that prohibited his hustling, although the statute that bans solicitations in federal offices, the Pendleton Act, had been on the books since 1883. Members of Congress routinely pop across the street from their offices to rattle their donors' cash boxes (Gore was first elected to Congress in the 1970s). Did he think the law lapsed once he moved into the West Wing? Janet Reno's Justice Department sided with Gore, on the grounds that all his calls had been made to raise soft money.

But were they? Notes of a 1995 fundraising powwow in the Map Room showed that both hard and soft money was to be raised; that Gore volunteered to make calls; and that he followed the discussions closely. Gore first denied having been at the meeting, then said he must have missed the sexy parts since he took so many bathroom breaks on account of all the iced tea he drank. Janet Reno once again came to the rescue, deciding there was only "weak circumstantial evidence" that Gore could see what was happening in front of his nose.

Charles G. LaBella, chief of the Justice Department's campaign-finance task force, wrote a 94-page memo in 1998, ripping his colleagues for "gamesmanship," "contortions," and "intellectual dishonesty" in refusing to investigate the matter further, or to appoint an independent counsel to do so. The Justice Department, LaBella charged, had a double standard, rounding up small fry while the president, the vice president, the First Lady, and top aide Harold Ickes got free passes.

An example of the two-tier system in action came with the conviction in March of Maria Hsia, a Taiwanese-born immigration consultant and Democratic fundraiser who steered Gore through his fundraising visit to the Hsi Lai Temple in Hacienda Heights, Calif., in April 1996. The DNC got $65,000 in illegal contributions from that foray, supposedly "donated" by monks and nuns who had taken vows of poverty. Gore didn't conclude, from the robes and statuary, that he might be in a religious establishment that could not legally make campaign contributions. Maybe he drank too much green tea. Hsia could get up to 25 years in prison; Gore's tawdry evasions-he first described the temple visit as "community outreach"-have been allowed to stand.

Although the LaBella memo has been sealed by the Justice Department, excerpts from it appeared in the Los Angeles Times on March 10. When Gore was asked about it, he relied on a defense perfected by George Stephanopoulos in the first Clinton campaign: "That's old news. That was all reviewed years ago." Stonewall, then pretend you've outlasted the statute of limitations.

The Gore record reveals the hollowness of the current crusade, by Sen. McCain and the media, for campaign-finance reform. New laws will not restrain politicians who break the laws we already have. Gore lifts corruption to the level of farce by now saying that the "pain" of his past "mistakes" gives him a "passion" for reform. But at every stage of inquiry, he has denied that he has made mistakes. And he has felt no pain: Janet Reno protects him from investigation, and his character armors him against embarrassment.

Clinton's defense in the great crisis of his presidency was that it was all "about sex." Gore's will be that he, and others, took part in a broken system. No: The vice president, judging from the available evidence, is a uniquely dishonest offender. It's time he was questioned by the press, and by the law.

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