War on Clintons continues
For many years the columnist worked for the Tribune-Review. He was there, as a reporter, in the 1990s, during the first and second administrations of Bill Clinton. The paper was owned by an implacable foe of the Clintons, a Pittsburgh billionaire by the name of Richard Scaife.
Scaife, who died in 2014, was responsible for the so-called Arkansas Project, a hydra-headed investigation of the Clintons that looked down many a rabbit hole hoping to find Bill and Hillary guilty of something, anything.
It was bizarre. There was the infamous Whitewater land swindle; Travelgate, which had the Clintons playing fast and loose with the White House travel staff; and so much more, including the supposed murder of Clinton friend and aid Vince Foster.
The First Couple did Foster in (according to one account), managing to lower the corpse out a second-floor window of the White House. Afterward, so the story goes, they transported the body to a public park in the Washington suburbs, where they left it and where it was discovered. (Foster’s death was ruled a suicide.)
For good measure, one supposes, the Clintons rented out the Lincoln Bedroom that very night.
The bogus investigation, spearheaded by Scaife acolyte Chris Ruddy, eventually led to the House Republican impeachment of Bill Clinton in late 1998, which Scaife evidently considered a kind of vindication.
He initially wanted the paper to announce the impeachment with the following words: It’s About Time.
Cooler heads prevailed; the headline was tossed aside.
It was never clear why the newspaper publisher detested the Clintons.
One premise was that Scaife, a Mellon whose great uncle Andrew made millions and eventually served a succession of Republican administrations in the 1920s as secretary of the treasury, considered Clinton, of lower class Arkansas stock, uncouth and thus unworthy of occupying the high office of president of the United States.
In the end, it really doesn’t matter what ticked off Scaife. He pursued a single-minded vendetta against the Clintons that frequently veered into the weird.
Dick Scaife, as the columnist noted one other time, was a strange individual; he combined self-effacing shyness that at times bordered on the sweet with a mean streak that ensnared whole cadres. Those who felt his wrath included his sister, who was regularly skewered in the Tribune-Review; his wives; even apparently, his children.
Working for Scaife posed a risk, especially for those who grew close to him. The nearer one ventured to the throne the greater were the chances of being guillotined: hardly anyone left the Tribune-Review unscathed and of their own accord.
The campaign of vilification against the Clintons engendered an antagonism toward Bill and Hillary that, while not unheard of in American politics, was, at the very least, unusually potent.
There were moments of apprehension at the thought of what it might entail; it crossed the columnist’s mind more than once that if something tragic ever happened to President Clinton, blood would be on the hands of all of us who labored for Scaife. There would have been no escaping the backlash.
Now comes Donald Trump and the fall campaign for president featuring the New York realtor against one Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Trailing in Trump’s wake are some of the same discredited allegations whipped up by one Richard Mellon Scaife, these many years ago.
Trump is a master mudslinger. He slashed and burned his way to the nomination, and there is little reason to expect different tactics as he pursues the ultimate seat of power in the American political system.
He’s already trotted out for a circle of the track the Vince Foster murder fantasy. He’s made a stab at resurrecting the Bill Clinton rape stories. Whitewater, Travelgate, Filegate will almost surely follow. The Republican nominee is nothing if not persistent and, in an odd way, predictable: he uses whatever charges will sully his opponents, regardless of truth.
Aiding and abetting Trump in all of this are the Scaife follow-ons he has hired to direct his campaign: campaign CEO Steve Bannon and David Bossie, an anti-Hillary attack dog whose career stretches back to the 1990s and the Scaife war on the Clintons.
But however much he listens to others, it seems clear that, in the end, Donald Trump says what he thinks voters want to hear, which, within limits, is about par for American politics. The war on Hillary reflects this reality. Clinton animosity, thanks in part to people like Scaife, is part of the permanent political landscape, deeply embedded in the national DNA.
How deeply we shall see.
Trump has millions of adherents. Some are drawn to him because of his position on immigration, a moving target if there ever was one. Or because of what he’s said about trade. Or because of his brash personality.
Many, no doubt, cotton to the Trumpian diatribes against Hillary. Refrains of “Lock her up” are a regular feature of Trump rallies. As crazy as that is, it would be music to Scaife’s ears.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown and is the author of two books “Grand Salute: Stories of the World War II Generation” and “Our People.” He can be reached at grandsalutebook@gmail.com.