When the Bush administration took over, it had one clear axiom: Anything, foreign or domestic, done by the Clinton administration was, by definition, wrongheaded, deplorable, bad and so on.
But last week top White House folks embarked on a concerted effort to rehabilitate President Bill Clinton and to show how President Bush's policies -- at least the ones under attack these days -- are absolutely nothing more than continuations of Clinton initiatives.
So, for example, when former Treasury secretary Paul H. O'Neill accused the administration of plotting regime change in Iraq long before 9/11, senior administration officials pointed out that the Clinton folks had earlier adopted a goal of ousting Saddam Hussein.
Then, on Wednesday, Vice President Cheney spoke in Los Angeles and addressed criticisms that the Bush administration, reacting to Clinton's deep involvement in Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts, refused to deal with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and left Israeli hard-liner Ariel Sharon to his own devices.
"Serious progress is virtually impossible" with Arafat in control, Cheney said. But, hey, don't just take my word for it, he implied. "I'm always struck by the memory that I'll always carry of January 20, 2001, when President Bush and I were sworn in," he said. "We went . . . over to the White House [to] have coffee with . . . President Clinton, Vice President [Al] Gore and their families. . . . And Bill Clinton talked repeatedly and all day long about his disappointment in Yasser Arafat, and how Arafat had, in effect, torpedoed the peace process.
"Arafat was in the White House and the West Wing more often than any other foreign leader during . . . the Clinton administration," Cheney said, and, "in the final analysis, Arafat refused to say yes."
So Bush, "subsequent to that, . . . made a speech in June of 2002 that laid out our basic principles," Cheney said, especially the need for new Palestinian leadership.
See? All bipartisan, all really Clinton's ideas. Bush is just following his lead.
Contest Deadline Wednesday
Don't forget to enter the first In the Loop contest of 2004. This is to pick either a TV series or a movie -- or both -- of the past three years that best typifies the Bush administration. Send your entries, along with a brief rationale, to loop@washpost.com or In the Loop, The Washington Post, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20071. Don't forget to include home and work telephone numbers -- some of you are forgetting.
As always, congressional and administration staffers may enter on background. Winners will receive a coveted In the Loop mug (movie category) or T-shirt (TV category). Deadline is this Wednesday, Jan. 21.
Island-Hopping in the Pacific
Meanwhile, as we froze last week in single-digit weather, it is comforting to know that Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton, joining House Resources Committee Chairman Richard W. Pombo (R-Calif.), six other committee members, spouses, and more than a dozen congressional staffers and military escorts, was hard at work on a 10-day trip to the South Seas.
The group, which left Jan. 11 and is due back Tuesday, included Reps. Dennis Cardoza (D-Calif.), Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) and Dennis Rehberg (R-Mont.). It was to tour the Northern Marianas, Guam and American Samoa and, according to the Marianas Variety newspaper, "various World War II sites," several "garment factories" -- Loop Fans may recall these are sometimes called sweatshops -- and "participate in the groundbreaking ceremony for the American Memorial Park Visitors Center."
That's why you need all those staffers. Breaking ground can be arduous work, and those snorkels, masks and flippers can get heavy after a while.
Staying on Message
Things were all set for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to hear important testimony Tuesday from nuclear expert Siegfried S. Hecker, a metallurgist who headed Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1985 to 1997 and who was part of a delegation just back from North Korea to inspect the state of its nuclear weapons program.
The committee wanted to ask Hecker to describe what he saw to determine whether North Korea has weapons-grade plutonium. While on the trip, Hecker is said to have talked with a senior North Korean scientist about the use of plutonium in nuclear weapons and determined the scientist was fairly knowledgeable.
The strategy was to have the hearing -- one part open to print and cameras, one part closed -- on Tuesday because all the senators will be back in town that day for the State of the Union address.
This alarmed folks at the White House, who, we hear, quite rightly worried that Hecker might say something most newsworthy and decidedly off-message -- like, the wacky North Koreans do, indeed, have lots of nukes. That would compete with coverage of President Bush's address.
So they let it be known to Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) that this would not be a good idea. So now the closed part of the testimony will be on Tuesday. The open part will be on Wednesday.
Wonder who'll show for that . . .