Search Salon

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Recently in Salon News

Shays' rebellion takes the House
One determined Republican overcomes his own leadership's opposition to pass a bipartisan campaign finance reform bill -- again.
By Jake Tapper
[09/15/99]

The Amazon.com primary
Was Buchanan trying to seduce readers, not just voters, with his latest TV splash?
By Anthony York
[09/15/99]

The Buchanan triangle
Most analysts think a run by Buchanan under the Reform Party banner would hurt Bush more than Gore. It's time to think again.
By Micah L.Sifry
[09/15/99]

The real Bush drug scandal
Texas Gov. George W. Bush has presided over a crackdown on first-time drug offenders from poor neighborhoods like Houston's Third Ward Bottoms.
By Debra Dickerson
[09/14/99]

Run, Lowell, Run
The Connecticut Yankee could stop Pat Buchanan from hijacking the Reform Party -- and give that Texas preppy in cowboy boots a run for his money in November.
By Bruce Shapiro
[09/14/99]

Complete archives for News

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

And where better to buff one's reputation than here, in the city of high-concept image-making? On Wednesday, Starr took a stab at polishing the history of his tortuous, five-year investigations.

Speaking at a luncheon of about 550 people, including several of the city's corporate lawyers, judges and business executives, Starr said he ought never to have been handed the task of investigating Lewinsky's dalliances in the White House. The country could have been spared much of this agonizing chapter in Washington, he noted, had the now-lapsed Independent Counsel Act never existed.

"The statute simply does not work" and should not be revived, he said. "The Congress was trying in effect to create a separate branch of government."

It was hard to square some of Starr's regrets with history. As his digging into the Whitewater land deal in Arkansas turned up ever-multiplying questions about President Clinton's behavior, it was Starr himself who several times requested wider responsibilities from Attorney General Janet Reno. And when Tripp contacted his office with the Lewinsky tapes, Starr asked Reno to expand his jurisdiction to investigate the matter.

But as Starr lapsed into his most sugar-toned, pedagogic manner, the months of snickering about cigars and thong underwear might as well have been muffled sounds from another galaxy.

"It would have been better for the country for the Lewinsky matter to have been handled by another independent counsel," Starr told the audience, adding with a touch of understatement: "Unfortunately, there was by that time a sense that there was a vendetta under way."

He said he thought Reno had correctly concluded that Clinton's affair with Lewinsky "had to be investigated." Yet "it would have been better, all things considered, for the American people to have viewed a new, fresh face, to avoid that very serious public perception."

Next page | A funny thing happened on the way to Malibu