Molly Ivins August 29

CHICAGO — As someone who is seriously considering, for the first time in my life, simply not voting for president (I don't need a line that says, "None of the above" — I need a line that says, "It makes me vomit"), I am still finding sweet consolation in the belated appearance of some intelligent defenders of President Bill Clinton.

I honestly do not know if I will vote for the man — in part because I don't think I need to; he's going to win anyway. But I remain chapped over four years of watching Clinton absorb more unmitigated garbage — both from right-wingers who wanted him to fail before the git-go and from the media — than any human being short of Adolf Hitler should ever have to endure. Garrison Keillor said in The Washington Post, "If Clinton had been president in 1863 and had gone to Gettysburg and given that speech, the press would have written, 'Clinton Seeks to Burnish Image at Cemetery Dedication: Hopes Talk Will Distract Public from Whitewater Rumors.'" (Which reminds me: On the actual occasion of the Gettysburg Address, one newspaper reporter wrote, "President Lincoln also spoke.") To misquote Linda Ellerbee: And so it has gone.

It's awfully hard to pick the lowest moment. Vince Foster's suicide — now, there was a gem. An absolute stampede by paranoid conspiracy-mongers and would-be Woodwards-and-Bernsteins to take a not-unusual tragedy — archetypal gifted perfectionist, unable to bear his failure to meet his own impossible standards, slides into depression and kills self — into whatever seamy tale would most damage Clinton (make that "the Clintons").

Then, there was the froo-fraw over how Clinton was exploiting — yes, milking — Commerce Secretary Ron Brown's death for political mileage. I mean, all that mourning stuff went on for a whole week. Bound to be politically motivated! Right — the whole deal could have been cut down to three days if the folks in Bosnia had just been a little quicker about scraping whatever was left of Brown's body off the side of that mountain. It was definitely Clinton's fault.

Next came the stupendous scoop by the actual Bob Woodward about how Hillary had an imaginary conversation with Eleanor Roosevelt — revealed to an astonished world only months after the first lady wrote all about it in her widely syndicated newspaper column.

Quel daring journalism.

Of course, one could go on for pages with examples of equally fair and balanced coverage by the same Washington press corps that was declaring Rep. Newt Gingrich a political genius just 18 months ago. (If you really want to hear all of it, nestle down and listen to James Carville for a few hours.)

Hey, I'm no wizard; I'm a good little conformist at heart. I probably would have thought Newt "Beach Volleyball" Gingrich was a political genius myself if the Washington press corps had not trespassed beyond the border of sanity by writing admiring profiles of his henchpersons from Texas — Reps. Dick Armey of Irving, Tom DeLay of Sugar Land and Bill Archer of Houston. Nobody (outside the Beltway) is that dumb.

Then, there is the Mother of All Scandals, that teeny-tiny drop in the Old S&L Bucket, Whitewater. Gene Lyons, the Arkansas reporter who is no more gaga about Clinton than I am, has been fighting a valiant rear-guard action on Whitewater for years now. With commendable patience, using textbook methods of journalism, he has relentlessly exposed every nutty conspiracy theory, every exaggeration, every carelessness and every distortion by saying over and over again: "Here are the facts; this is what the record shows." For an example of Lyons at his best, see the Aug. 8 issue of The New York Review of Books, which debunks yet another Clinton-is-a-sleaze bookette. (There's money in them thar bookettes.) This one sounds like the best Clinton bookette since ex-FBI agent Gary Aldrich so brilliantly demonstrated why no one should believe what's in an FBI file. And that, in turn, raises one of those rare Clinton screw-ups where the press did not get excited enough.

I don't have Lyons' patience. I watch the reporters go down to Arkansas, which they all assume is Dogpatch with L'il Abner geeking around at Moonbeam McSwine, from Washington, that stainless bastion of sea-green incorruptible politics. They remind me of the French cop in "Casablanca," who was shocked to find gambling in the back room. I think the word I want is "hypocrites."

Also entering the list of intelligent Clinton defenders is Taylor Branch, chiefly known as the superb biographer of Martin Luther King Jr. ("Parting the Waters"). His piece in the current issue of Esquire is written with the almost painful scrupulosity that marks all his work.

Soon to be out: Martin Walker, the ridiculously smart correspondent for The Guardian of Britain, looks at Clinton's record from an international point of view, which you would never catch anyone in our provincial media corps doing.

So, if Clinton is all this much better than the American media have ever hinted, how come I'm such an unhappy camper? Read the welfare bill.

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Molly Ivins is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

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