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President Bill Clinton

Even before the 1994 Republican sweep of Congress-and before Bill and Hillary had each "lost a parent" - a memo had circulated through the Dempcrati National Committee to Harold Ickes at the White House proposing the sale of various White House perks to raise campaign cash. The April 1994 memo, written by an unidentified Democratic staffer, was addressed to Martha Phipps, a top DNC aide. The shopping list proposed selling seats on Air Force One and Two, as well as "[b]etter coordination on appointments to boards and commissions" as some of the ways "to reach our very aggressive goal of $40 million this year." Phipps faxed a copy of the memo to Ickes.

This memo might have been written off as the fantastical scribblings of an exuberant (and irrelevant) campaign staffer - if some of the anonymous staffer's ideas had not eventually been implemented with gusto. By the fall of 1995 the DNC had begun assembling complicated budgets for "fund-raising events"at the White House - including the White House coffees. They methodically listed the amount "projected" to be raised from each event, and the cash each eventually took in.

Long before the threat of Newt Gingrich was there to justify any maniacal fund-raising events in the White House, Clinton was hosting breakfasts at the White House for the express purpose of raising money to promote Hillary's health care plan. (Ironically, just the thing that led to the Republican takeover of Congress.) The "friends" invited to the health care breakfasts contributed about $50,000 to $100,000 a piece, raising about $1 million in all.

President's perks to lure large contributions included: Two seats on Air Force One and Air Force Two trips Six seats at private White House dinners Six to eight seats at all White House events, such as jazz Fest, official visits, and ceremonies Places on official delegations abroad Better coordination on appointments to boards and commissions The right to eat in the White House mess Visits to the White House residence and overnight stays Guaranteed Kennedy Center tickets Six spots in the audience for the president's weekly radio address Photo opportunities with "principals" - that is, President and Mrs. Clinton and Vice President and Mrs. Gore

There is no question that the president and vice president were intimately involved in the use of the White House for fund-raising purposes. Clinton, Gore, and senior White House staff were kept personally abreast of each month's fund-raising intake and projected tallies for future events. White House officials met weekly with DNC officials to plan White House fund-raising events. Harold Ickes forwarded status memos to the president and vice president on these strategy sessions. Clinton often handwrote comments and suggestions on the memos.

The Clinton fund-raising coffees were strictly private and were never listed on the president's public itinerary, despite Clinton's afterthe-fact declaration at a March 7, 1997, press conference: "I almost wish that one of you [reporters] had been in all of these coffees...”

The coffees were supposedly scheduled to allow people to talk about things and share their convictions, the president said on March 7, 1997, after the story had come out when a subpoena forced Harold Ickes to hand over documents to House investigators.

The White House press office released a list naming 831 of the overnight guests, thus far, and divided them into various make-believe categories having nothing to do with their status as prospective campaign donors: 370 Arkansas "friends," 155 longtime non-Arkansas "friends," 111 "friends and supporters" the Clintons had met since 1992, 128 "public officials and dignitaries," and 67 representatives from the world of "arts and letters."

This self-released White House list did not mention the large donor, soon-to-be-friends category, whose names were forwarded to the White House by then - DNC Finance Chairman Marvin Rosen. Documents made public months later would reveal, as one fundraiser said, that "Marvin Rosen had the final say over who would stay in the Lincoln Bedroom. The decision was usually based on how much money people had given or were willing to give later on."

When these other internal White House lists appeared, some of Bill and Hillary's "friends" had asterisks by their names-indicating payments were being made in installments. In fact, at least 938 people stayed overnight at the White House during Clinton's first term, according to documents released by the White House in February 1997.

When Clinton's deceased-parents excuse, classic Clinton, for turning the White House into a very pricey bed-and-breakfast (He needed to start selling the Lincoln bedroom because both he and Hillary had "lost a parent" that year.) disintegrated under a mound of White House memos, damage control from the White House was just as frantic as the fund-raising had been. (Maybe it was all that coffee.) White House Deputy Counsel Lanny Davis said, "We don't sell access." In point of fact, Davis elaborated, no one had been actually "required" to write a check in order to attend the coffees.

Davis did allow that it was "[in] appropriate" for the president to be entertaining a two-time convicted criminal, Eric Wynn, just months after his second conviction. DNC spokesperson Amy Weiss Tobe said there "were no price tags for White House coffees" but conceded that "it appears that some may have tried to put a price tag on coffees at the White House." Technically, that's true. The price tag varied.

If you're going to take bribes as president, it helps if you fire all the United States attorneys, replacing them with your own people upon taking office. President Clinton is the first president to have done this, at least in recent memory. Relying on his own appointees not prosecuting him, Clinton lives in the interstices of the law and the proof-beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard. Perhaps there wouldn't have been sufficient evidence to convict him. The difference between a "fund-raising" event and the president having coffee with his new rich "friends" is admittedly tricky to establish under the law. But there is still the little matter of political ethics, involving the wholesale auctioning off of the president's time.

As Clinton lawyer Bob Bennett reminded the Supreme Court in attempting to block Paula Jones from having her day in court, the president's time is extremely valuable. The president's day is parceled out to various duties by a small army of timekeepers and schedulers. The president simply does not have time to absorb every input that might conceivably lead to a better policy decision on a particular matter. For better or worse, he must depend for advice on the advisers he has chosen, and who are known or knowable to the public (and confirmed by the Senate, in the case of higher-ranking executives), and on a paper flow that is tightly regulated by those same advisers.

There are some minor and unavoidable exceptions to this rule. A president may unilaterally override his advisers and take in a source of advice on which he particularly depends. Or he may talk to his personal friends: no posse of advisers and schedulers can keep him from doing that. But these are trivial exceptions to the general rule that the president's time, and his radar screen, are public trusts.

Of course, the term "Gucci Gulch" had to come from someplace. The lobbying business does seem to be a profession precisely designed to circumvent prohibitions on selling access to government officials. But lobbyists are also heavily regulated by law. And whenever there are quids discernably matching up with quos, both the lobbyist and lobbied can be in trouble.

Noticeably, fund-raising letters from both parties purporting to offer special briefings with high-ranking officials in return for high-dollar contributions are like letters from Ed McMahon. Typically, they clarify in the fine print that what is being offered is a "briefing," in which the senator or the cabinet secretary briefs you - not an unstructured shmooze session in which you get to brief him. There is no prohibition on this-provided those letters are written on party stationery and at party expense, no public salaried officials help set up any of the briefings, and the briefings take place at clubs or restaurants and not federal property.

An occasional White House coffee with large donors or Lincoln bedroom sleep-over by a large donor would not implicate any criminal statutes. What sets the Clinton coffees and sleepovers apart is this: the DNC documents referring to them as "fund-raisers"; the DNC charts - reviewed by Clinton - listing anticipated revenue streams from each coffee; Clinton's handwritten note, Ready to start overnights right away; the presence of DNC officials at the coffees; the existence of large contributions from the attendees the day of, or soon after, meetings with the president; and the sheer number coffees and sleep-overs. Clinton has been shown to have used the White House as the command center for his presidential campaign, with DNC Headquarters being used "as little more than a checking account," as former Bush administration White House Counsel C. Boyden Gray has observed.

So what you're left with in the White House coffees is an administration that defends itself by saying, We didn't break the law, we're just sleazy. For columnist William Raspberry, the apparent sale of the Lincoln bedroom was the last straw. He professed himself not all that upset about Paula Jones or about anything that had come out in Whitewater. But, he wrote, "the selling of nights in the White House is so crass a thing, so close to the possibility and appearance if not the actuality of corruption - and such god-awful judgment on Clinton's part - that I cannot imagine any defense for it.”

Ann Coulter. . Regnery Publishing, Washington, D.C. 1998.

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