Molly Ivins January 3

AUSTIN, Texas — I know I say this every year, but in all honesty, how could 1999 be worse? Of course, if we keep going in this direction, by the end of the year, a person will have to get approval from Larry Flynt before he or she can hold public office.

Meanwhile, let us celebrate those who made our public life such a monument to the beauties of democracy during 1998.

We have to start with the incredible cast of characters who have been dragged before us by our president's inability to keep it zipped. As the year began, Kenneth Starr was still sitting there after all these years on Whitewater, a 20-year-old real estate deal in which, he has at long last concluded, Bill Clinton played no referable role. (Harold Bloom, the great lit crit guy, described Starr as "Polonius on the outside and Iago on the inside.") Then, lo, who should come swimming into Starr's ken but Linda Tripp, who is to friendship what the boll weevil is to cotton. Through the charming Ms. Tripp, we met the even more charming Lucianne Goldberg, at which the point the president who couldn't keep it zipped started to look good by comparison.

Later chapters in the endless saga that the media would not leave alone gave us lawyer Bill Ginsburg and Monica Lewinsky's thong underwear and made CNN legal analyst Greta Van Sustern famous. Our long national nightmare was complete the day we listened to the president of the United States for four hours on national television being asked about the intimate details about his sexual activity. What a great nation.

After the whole scandal cost House Speaker Newt Gingrich his job, the situation continued to deteriorate when the new guy, Bob Livingston, resigned in his turn over not keeping it zipped — and he hadn't even lied about it, thus setting a dangerous new precedent for political resignation, one that could easily decimate the political classes. The nation watched in stupefied horror as it all threatened to go on and on and on ...

But there was good news in 1998: In June, "Chainsaw" Al Dunlap, the executive who specialized in firing people and gloating and bragging about it — in all, he fired about 18,000 at one corporation after another — was himself given the ax.

Dunlap said that being fired left him "personally, financially and professionally devastated." He also cried.

January also saw a satisfying resolution to the embarrassing contretemps over Oprah Winfrey dissing cows. As you recall, Winfrey was sued by some Panhandle ranchers under Texas' Veggie Libel law for saying she wouldn't eat hamburgers anymore. She won, and the movement to repeal Veggie Libel continues to grow on the theory that making an ass of yourself once is bad enough, but continuing to do so indicates a degree of stupidity that not even the Texas Lege should aspire to.

And speaking of the Lege, state Rep. Jim Pitts suggested that we lower the age of eligibility for the death penalty to 11.

In the annals of crime, we salute Ronnie Durell Bell of Dallas, who attempted to rob the Federal Reserve Bank there by giving a guard a note that said: "This a bank robbery. Give me all the money. Thank you, Ronnie Durell Bell."

It was a tough year to pick a standout in the hypocrisy division — a really, really tough year — but here's a special salute to Majority Whip Tom DeLay of Sugar Land, who ramrodded impeachment through the House and is now pushing for conviction in the Senate because, he says, we cannot have a president who lies under oath. This is the same DeLay who voted in 1997 not to reprimand or fine Gingrich, who admitted lying under oath.

Another hyper-hypocrite is Rep. Dan Burton, one of Clinton's most self-righteous critics, who turns out not only to have an illegitimate child but also to have raised money from foreign sources for his own re-election.

A pleasant political change in a populist direction came from Minnesota, where Jesse Ventura, a former professional wrestler, stunned all the pundits by winning the governorship.

And New York's Sen. Al D'Amato lost.

Next year, all the pundits agree, Vice President Al Gore will practically cinch the Democratic nomination for president while Texas Gov. George W. Bush will practically cinch the Republican nomination. But what we know and the pundits don't is that they are almost always wrong, so put your money on anyone but those two for the next presidential election. Gore says he stands for "practical idealism," while Bush claims "compassionate conservatism." And I say two oxymorons don't make a political philosophy — look for someone who actually stands for something.

Molly Ivins is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. To find out more about Molly Ivins and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

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