(While Roger is on vacation, we are reprinting some of his favorite columns. This interview with George W. Bush came during the dark days of the Bush campaign in early 2000.)

CHARLESTON, S.C. -- Getting clobbered by John McCain in New Hampshire was not the worst thing that ever happened to George W. Bush. The worst thing was telling his parents about it.

"I actually thought I was going to win," he told me. "I did. I didn't know I was going to lose until the exit polls came in. Then it was pretty clear."

He laughed a hard, short laugh and then recalled the moment when he had to pick up the phone and call his father. "We're going to get whipped," the younger Bush told the elder.

Thinking back on it now, George W. said: "I had to assure them I was going to be fine. And I was fine. I didn't like losing, but I knew it was time to regroup and there would be another day."

That other day is almost upon him, and it is called the South Carolina primary. It takes place Feb. 19, and it is a must win for both Bush and McCain.

If McCain beats Bush soundly here, McCain's candidacy may become an irresistible force, a phenomenon that will sweep him to victory.

If Bush wins decisively, however, he could claim that the McCain candidacy is merely a media-driven fad and give renewed confidence to the Republican establishment that backs Bush and to all those people who poured $70 million into his coffers.

While many religious conservatives are backing Bush, the primary is an open one, and that means McCain could take it if he is able to draw sizable numbers of Democrats and independents.

"I have always been underestimated," Bush says. "You can understand why. People say, well, he's Daddy's boy and has never done anything of accomplishment. But that's good. I'd rather be underestimated than overestimated."

As he spoke, Bush lounged on a long couch in the front of his bus as it traveled through a piney swamp in the South Carolina Low Country. His feet were propped across the aisle, he held a can of Diet Coke in his right hand, and when I came into his cabin to interview him, Bush languidly extended a left hand to me for a handshake as he stayed slumped to one side.

This was Bush body language at its worst from the man the Manchester Union-Leader dubbed "Governor Smirk," the man who sometimes gives the impression that he is running for president as a pledge week initiation stunt.

But when I asked him if he wants to be president badly enough to really go after it, Bush straightened up, drained the Coke and began crumpling the can in one hand.

"That's ridiculous!" he said says. "What do you think I'm doing? I'm up at 6:30 every morning, and go to bed at 10:30 at night, and I'm shaking thousands of hands, and I'm speaking from my heart, and I'm putting out policy initiatives that are on the (cutting) edge of reform! I haven't seen any policy initiatives from my opponent! It's an absurd statement."

He stopped for a moment. "But I understand how it works," he said. "They have to say something after I got whipped."

After New Hampshire, the Bush campaign went through a major reconfiguration -- Bush even changed the name of his campaign plane from "Great Expectations" to "Retool One," and now he is portraying himself as a reformer. Bush has also adopted the McCain town-meeting format -- Bush calls them "one on ones" -- where he spends less time on his stump speech and more time answering questions.

This, he believes, will put to rest suspicions that he is not intelligent. "I've retooled the format to show that I know what I'm talking about," he said, "to show that I know how to lead, and to share my passions with the voters. We'll see if it pays off here."

In a political year in which issues have taken second place to personalities, the attack and counter-attack has grown vicious, and Bush tells crowds, "It's important to me to show you I can not only take a punch but win."

Bush has also turned up the volume both literally and figuratively. He often shouts into the microphone, nervously tapping his left foot as he clutches the mike stand.

While McCain is loose and easy on the stump these days -- a 19-point victory will do that for you - - Bush seems as relaxed as an overwound clock. But he has a right: If he loses his fight for the Republican nomination, the humiliation will be enormous and he may never get a second chance.

Bush is rankled by what has widely been called the McCain Swoon, the feeling on the part of some that the media have gone easy on McCain because of all the access he grants them.

"I don't think there is any plot; I hope there isn't," Bush told me. "But it's an amazing phenomenon, I'll tell you that. It's like the flap over the foreign-leader deal. A guy gets up and quizzes me -- it's my fault for trying to answer -- but John McCain says something about the 'ambassador to Czechoslovakia.' Well, I know there is no Czechoslovakia (there's a Czech Republic and a Slovakia), but yet it didn't make the nightly national news. I'm not going to gripe about it, but the media question is starting to pop up."

Accusations that liberal Washington media are backing McCain for their own nefarious purposes fill the radio talk-show airwaves here, and it may have an effect on the outcome of the election.

Ruth Wilson, 52, of Summerville, S.C., and an office manager in a glass shop, came out to see Bush speak at a county fairgrounds north of Charleston after she had already heard McCain. "I liked what McCain had to say, but the more I hear about the media pushing him, the more I decided to come over to Bush," she said. "McCain is being made a hero by the media and the Democrats who intend to vote in the Republican primary."

After hearing Bush speak and answer questions on everything from abortion to foreign policy, Wilson said: "I think he was a little canned on some responses, but he's trying to get his message out. He is not the phony that McCain is trying to make him out to be. I'll vote for Bush

(While Roger is on vacation, we are reprinting some of his favorite columns. This was from the 2000 presidential campaign.)

DES MOINES - - Stereotypes are evil and unfair and should be avoided at all costs. Unless they are true. And the stereotypes about Iowa are true.

Quick, what do you think of when you think of Iowa?

I know, I know, you don't usually think about Iowa at all. But if you were a political reporter you would have to not only think about Iowa, but go there…a lot.

And that is because Iowa holds the first presidential contest in the nation and all the candidates go there to be judged like hogs at a county fair.

So what do you think of when you think of Iowa?

No, not hogs. You think of friendly, smiling, helpful people.

I always have anyway. And that is because every time I go to Iowa, I have found that the people there will do things for you that other people won't.

These kind of things:

Once, on deadline and before the invention of cell phones, I knocked on a door in a small town in Iowa and asked the woman who answered where the nearest pay phone was.

What would the answer have been in New York? Or Los Angeles? Or Miami?

How about a hail of gunfire?

OK, OK, a slight exaggeration. But anyway, the woman who opened the door told me she didn't know if the town had a pay phone - - "Maybe the tavern has one, but I've never been in there," she said - - but invited me in to use her phone and wouldn't even let me use a credit card because she "was happy to help."

Want more? I know a foolish reporter who stood on a street corner in a small Iowa town trying to hail a cab. Why was he foolish? Because this town did not have cabs.

Anyway, after a few minutes, a pick-up truck stopped and the driver asked him what he was doing and the reporter explained he had gotten left behind by the motorcade of the candidate he was following and had to get to the next town.

And what happened to this reporter? Was his body found in a shallow irrigation ditch three months later?

No. The guy in the pick up gave him a lift and, of course, refused all renumeration for his troubles.

But these charming tales happened years ago, you say. People in Iowa are just like people anywhere else by now, you say. Which is to say hurried and harried and suspicious of strangers.

So listen to what happened to me a few days ago: I dropped off the Steve Forbes campaign in Knoxville, in south central Iowa, and caught a lift with a reporter to Des Moines.

The reporter was heading to the airport and I was heading to the Des Moines Art Center to meet a friend (and to discover it is one of the country's great art museum, so add that to the stereotype.)

"I'll drop you off at the State Capitol," the reporter said. "You ought to be able to catch a cab from there."

Which, of course, was absolutely untrue. Which meant I was standing on a street corner vainly looking up and down for a cab when the two cops approached me.

Did I mention the temperature was about at the melting point of zinc? It was.

So these two cops approach me and I figure they are going to arrest me for trying to hail a cab on state property, but instead, one of them says: "Do you need something? Can we help you?"

A show of hands here: How many of you have had a cop say that to you lately?

Uh, I need a cab, I say to the cop, who turns out to be a member of the Capitol Police force.

"Oh," he says, "I'll call one for you. But why don't you let my partner take you some place that is air-conditioned and I'll have the cab pick you up there?"

And he did. And the other cop waited with me until the cab came.

OK, big deal, you are saying. And you are also saying: I'll bet you can find lousy people in Iowa, too, if you just look hard enough.

And you can.

In fact, I will admit I once met a bad person in Iowa. It was a few years ago and I was making a turn out of a garage in Des Moines and this motorist must have thought I was going to scoot in front of her, because when she passed me, she stuck her hand out the window and gave me the finger.

I wrote a column about this and I got a flood of mail and a late night phone call from a man who lived in Ottumwa.

"That woman wasn't from Iowa," he said. "She was from Des Moines! She was city folk!"

So I guess those two cops who helped me at the capitol must have been from out of town.

(While Roger is away, we are reprinting some of his favorite columns. This first appeared in January, 2000 as John McCain was on the eve of a huge upset victory over George W. Bush in New Hampshire. Nobody knew that, however, especially McCain.)

BEDFORD, N.H. -- John McCain walks onto his bus and sits heavily in a red, leather swivel chair. His mouth is a small, grim hyphen in what is normally a sunny face.

He is remembering the good old days. Those days that came a few months ago.

"We started out in a van," he says. "We started out with one reporter. And now ..." He pauses and looks out the window of his bus to where his second bus, the overflow bus, the bus for the reporters who cannot squeeze onto this bus, sits idling in the parking lot of the Bedford Wayfarer hotel, sending clouds of exhaust into the chill air.

He shrugs. Bill Bennett, former drug czar, former secretary of education and currently Mr. Values, maneuvers his bulk down the narrow aisle of the bus and sits in the chair next to McCain.

He has not given his endorsement to John McCain -- he has offered to help all the Republicans -- but he has clearly given his heart to him.

"You look up to him," Bennett says. "He is the anti-Clinton. He's an honorable man. The American people want a president they can look up to again. That idea has captured the American imagination. He has captured the American imagination. You need to bring people back, you need to have them believe in the possibility of politics."

On this day, however, John McCain is worrying about the possibility of John McCain. Insurgents are usually reformers, and the Achilles' heel of the reformer is hypocrisy: A large part of McCain's campaign is based on throwing the money lenders out of the twin temples of politics and government, but newspaper articles have been revealing that McCain has a fondness for riding on the corporate jets of his campaign contributors and has also been writing letters on their behalf to governmental agencies -- letters that have led to some lucrative business deals.

"You've got to expect this sort of stuff," McCain tells the reporters packed together in a tight semi-circle around him. "With increased traction, you get increased visibility."

By which he means the kind of visibility that paints a target on your chest.

Soon, his day will brighten, however. His bus will pull into a church parking lot and he will bound off to address a standing-room-only crowd of 600 -- a big crowd for New Hampshire, especially on a workday morning.

They will give him a rock star welcome, and when he is finished answering their questions, they will mob him, people clutching his best-selling memoir to their bosoms, waiting for an autograph, waiting for a word, waiting for enough proximity to reach out and touch him.

Support for an underdog is a passionate support. It is what they need, it is what they depend on to make up the vast gulf in resources or organization or name-recognition that the front-runners enjoy.

If you are an underdog, you are not the default choice, you are not the automatic answer, you must give people a reason to vote for you.

During McCain's presentation, a fifth-grader stood up and asked McCain how he decided to run for president. "My wife claims it was because I received several sharp blows to the head while in prison," McCain says.

Like always, the audience laughs and, like always, the phrase hangs in the air: While in prison. While in Vietnam. While being tortured. He does not need to say more.

Just as when he climbs back onto his bus and now, in a better mood, he shows off his new black topcoat and tells the reporters without any prompting that a) it comes from Nordstrom, b) he bought it because he had to give a speech on the Mall as part of Washington's millennium celebration and c) "It only took them one day to tailor it for my shortened arms."

Shortened when they were broken. Shortened when he ejected from his plane. Shortened when they were twisted and beaten by his captors. "There is no depths I won't sink to in seeking your support," McCain tells people. Most people think he is joking. Most people should think again.

Bill Bennett, as always, has the answer. "Americans are the most romantic people in the world," he says, "and they've fallen for the guy, they've fallen for McCain. They fell for Clinton. They've fallen for Bradley. Gore doesn't have it. But McCain does."

(While Roger is away, we are reprinting some of his favorite columns. This first appeared as the presidential campaign of 1988 was just gearing up. The phenomenon Roger writes about - - reporters flying hundreds of miles to watch events on TV - - has now become standard practice.)

HOUSTON - - We were invited. It's just that we were not allowed to attend.

The invitation to the press had been straightforward: The first debate among the Democratic presidential contenders would be held in July in Houston.

The format would be a two-hour version of William F. Buckley's "Firing Line," and it would be broadcast live from the fabulous 2,000-seat Brown Theater in the super-fabulous $72 million Gus Wortham Center.

Each candidate was given 130 tickets to hand out to supporters, with the remaining seats going to dignitaries and the corporate underwriters of the show.

There were no seats for the press. The press was invited to Houston. But the reporters could not get into the theater. They could not view the debate in the flesh.

"Reporters will have access to a press area set up at the Wortham in order to cover 'Firing Line', " the invitation said. "Arrangements are being made for TV monitors and access to telephone hook-ups."

The press area turned out to be two rooms in the basement. But when I got to Houston, I told the press coordinator that the whole idea struck me as a little odd: Scores of reporters had flown hundreds of miles to watch an event on TV.
What's more, we could have watched exactly the same event at exactly the same time on our TVs at home, or on the TVs that are in every newspaper city room.

And some reporters who flew to Houston decided that as long as they couldn't watch the event live, they might as well watch it from their hotel rooms, which had the advantage of room service.

Why did we come at all? Well, the press is supposed to go out and cover things. And if we watched from our homes, we wouldn't be allowed to put a "Houston" dateline on our stories.

Besides, on every paper there are differing versions of the same story. When I was a cub reporter, I heard the tale of the reporter following Robert Kennedy who turned in early one night and skipped his little victory speech at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. When the frantic call from his city desk awakened him, all he could say was: "Sirhan who?"

So we all flew to Houston. Where it was revealed in whispered tones that a few seats were available for the press, after all. But, as the hour for the debate drew closer, even more press seats became available.

But few reporters bothered. It was easier to take notes and type and file in the press rooms. And, besides, why not see the event the way the rest of America was seeing the event: on television.

By now, we all know that you get different impressions from watching an event in person and watching it on TV.

Reporters who attended the first debate between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy at WBBM-TV studios in Chicago thought Nixon had done rather well. Nixon's deathly pallor and sweaty upper-lip were evident to the audience at home, but not the reporters in the room.

So there were two separate "realities" to the event. The reality of what took place in a small room in front of a handful of reporters. And the reality of what most voters saw. Which reality was more important to 1960 election? Just ask Richard Nixon.

Me, I went into the theater. Were my impressions any different from those who watched it on the tube? Just slightly.

On TV, Bruce Babbitt apparently looks just like Tom Poston. In the flesh, however, he doesn't look much goofier than the rest of the pack.

And at the end of the debate, I saw a floor director motion off-camera to Jesse Jackson that he could not deliver his closing remarks facing the audience from a sitting position as Albert Gore had just done. The camera could not pick him up.

So as Gore finished, the floor director motioned Jackson to stand, which he did. On TV, it looked like a dramatic gesture, pure Jesse, designed to set him apart from the crowd. In fact, he was just following orders.

On this occasion, the differences between seeing it on TV and in person were not huge. But the separation of press and event is growing more popular.

To planners, it is a boon. By keeping the press out, you free up seats for "real" people. Besides, the press just sits there, trading wisecracks and not applauding, anyway.

Reporters used to be watchers of events, and now we are watchers of events on TV. It is becoming an in vitro campaign, a campaign within the glass of the TV tube.

But I wonder: If a tree falls in the forest and I hear it, but it doesn't get on TV, did it really make a sound?

ROGER SIMON COLUMN
JUNE 11, 2003

WASHINGTON - - Bill Clinton’s true distinguishing characteristic was his need to be loved. Even though he made more than his fair share of enemies, he believed that with time enough and half a chance, he could win over just about anybody.

His ability to connect with audiences during his speeches and his deep need, almost an obsession, to work the rope line afterwards were manifestations of this.

Perhaps it is what drove him. Perhaps it drives him still.

Often when presidents leave office, they want to settle old scores. Not Bill Clinton. He not only wants to make new friends, he wants to convert old enemies.

This occurred to me when I read a recent story in the New York Daily News headlined: “Clinton stands up for Times editor.” The story said Clinton had called New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. to plead for the job of Howell Raines.

Raines, the executive editor of the paper and his managing editor, Gerald Boyd, resigned last week in the wake of revelations of journalistic improprieties by two Times reporters.

According to the Daily News, Clinton told Sulzberger that Raines' departure was “too severe” and “unwarranted.” Clinton reportedly also “acknowledged his past differences with Raines’ views.”

Which is putting it mildly. Raines was the editor of the Times editorial page when Clinton was president and wrote editorials so stinging that Mike McCurry, then the White House spokesman, once told me - - on the record and I printed it - - that Raines was “psychotic.”

(Which was the first hint I got that McCurry was planning to leave the White House. Press secretaries who are planning to stay at the White House do not go around calling New York Times editorial page editors psychotic - - even if they are.)

There are scores of examples that demonstrate how tough Raines was on Clinton, but a single editorial, perhaps the most extraordinary the New York Times has ever published about a president, sums it up.

It appeared on Dec. 16, 1998, a few days before the House voted to impeach Clinton. It was a difficult editorial to write because even though the editorial board had been scathing in its view of Clinton, it did not think he should be impeached.

The editorial begins by saying Clinton was a “man blessed with great talent and afflicted with a mysterious passion for lying.” Then it begins talking about “Mr. Clinton's ugly little lies, his abject failure to lead by example and to speak truthfully to the American people, his equally dismal failure to honor the historic residence entrusted to him, and his abandonment of his constitutional duty to defend and uphold the law. He is, in sum, a man you cannot trust whether you have his handshake, his signature or his word on a Bible.”

This is about a sitting president, keep in mind, the Leader of the Free World and all that.

The editorial goes on to talk about Clinton’s “mendacity,” but also warns that the House vote “will be setting precedents by which the nation will be governed when this Presidency is a memory as distant and distasteful as that of Warren G. Harding.”

It also calls Clinton’s term in office the “most disappointing White House tenure since that of Richard Nixon” and describes Clinton as “wrapped in dishonor, his face a mask of depression.…”

But my favorite line, and this shows why Raines was such a wonderful writer (though, admittedly, there was room to disagree with what he was writing,) was the sentence that followed the argument that the transfer of power between presidents in this country has to be orderly and not by a politically charged vote in the House.

“That transfer of power without gunfire or legislative chicanery is the jewel in the crown of American democracy,” the editorial said. “It should not be sacrificed over Bill Clinton's inability to resist looking at thong underwear.”

Pow! Right between the eyes!

Even people who had wanted Clinton to resign, such as Timothy Noah of Slate, wrote that this editorial showed Raines' “pathological hatred” of Bill Clinton.

So what happens? Less than five years later, Clinton is the most beloved figure in the Democratic Party (admittedly the competition is not fierce) and Howell Raines is out of work.

But who comes to Raines’ defense? Bill Clinton!

Why? Because Bill Clinton is still trying to win Raines over, still trying to get some love. And something else. A lesson from yet another president, Abraham Lincoln.

“The best way to destroy an enemy,” Lincoln once said, “is to make him a friend.”

ROGER SIMON COLUMN
JUNE 9, 2003

In the end, it wasn't really about the serial fakery of Jayson Blair or Rick Bragg's drive-by reporting. It was all about Howell.

From beginning to end, the Greek tragedy that has played itself out at the New York Times over the past five weeks was really about the brilliant, autocratic, passionate, arrogant, hard-driving "Martian" who was its executive editor, Howell Raines.

Last Thursday, Raines and his managing editor, Gerald Boyd, resigned from the Times after highly embarrassing revelations that Times reporter Blair had both invented and repeatedly plagiarized stories and that Pulitzer-prize winner Bragg had vividly described events he had never witnessed by relying on uncredited stringers to do his reporting.

Both reporters resigned, but it was not inevitable that Raines and Boyd would follow. After all, when the Washington Post suffered through the Janet Cooke scandal in 1981, nobody demanded that Post editor Ben Bradlee fall on his sword.

But Bradlee was beloved and Raines was not; Bradlee was the Post in a way that Raines was not the Times. And therein lay the seeds of Raines' destruction.

Raines, who had joined the Times in 1978 and had spent much of his career relentlessly driving toward the top, seemed to have adopted the policy that it didn't matter how nice you were to people on the way up the ladder as long as you didn't intend to come back down the ladder.

But even though he achieved his dream in September, 2001 of becoming the leader of the Time's 1,200 editorial employees, Raines found it very lonely at the top and when the ladder began to shake, their was virtually nobody willing to steady it for him.

If there was anything as shocking as the resignations, however, it was the speed with which they came about.

While Raines and Boyd felt they had time to create a new, friendlier atmosphere in the newsroom and were working toward that end, in fact time had run out for them.

The troubles at the Times were being whipped into a crisis by a number of factors: relentless attention by journalism web sites and late night TV comics, widespread rumors that other newspapers were about to break new revelations about mismanagement at the Times, and disquiet within the owning family of the Times, the Sulzbergers, that with new government rules allowing large media corporations to grow even larger this was no time for the Times to be in disarray, even for a few weeks.

There may not have been a single tipping point that sealed the fate of the two men, but a meeting Tuesday between publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and the Times Washington bureau played a critical role in their professional demise.

Though Sulzberger was well aware of both traditional and current tensions between the bureau and New York, some say he was surprised at the depth of the animosity he found.

About 30-40 reporters and editors in the bureau gathered in a conference room a floor below their newsroom about two blocks from the White House at 12:30 p.m., a half hour earlier than the meeting was supposed to begin.

The bureau members were happy that Sulzberger was coming in person to listen to them - - the meeting had been scheduled before the Blair fiasco broke - - but some wondered why Raines had not yet found the time to do the same thing.

After Sulzberger arrived, he informed the bureau that he was giving Raines a second chance and had no plans to ask for his resignation. But as the reporters vented their criticisms - - a top-down management style, a disfunctional star system and an executive editor who ruled through fear and intimidation - - Sulzberger's mood darkened.

And while some reporters told Sulzberger that Raines was improving, Sulzberger appeared shaken when others said "there was almost nothing (Raines) could do to regain the confidence of the newsroom." Says one staff member in attendance: "Sulzberger seemed to back away from the position that Raines was still his man."

As Sulzberger left the bureau, he struggled to open the glass doors that led to the elevator, unaware that he had to push a button to release the lock. One editor joked to the publisher that they were "trying to keep you."

After the meeting, it appeared that nobody was trying to keep Raines, however. And Thursday, Sulzberger stood in the newsroom and announced he was accepting the resignations of Raines and Boyd.

He also made an extraordinary statement about how newspapers should operate. "The morale of the newsroom is critical," Sulzberger said. The ability of the reporters and editors "to perform depends on their feeling they are being treated in a collaborative and collegial fashion."

There is some talk that Raines, who won a Pulitzer for his own reporting and writing, transformed the Times editorial page and presided over the winning of seven Pulitzer prizes last year, may have been forced to pay too high a price for newsroom happiness.

Yet Raines, who loved quoting Paul "Bear" Bryant, the legendary University of Alabama football coach, was probably familiar with what Bryant once said: "If anything goes bad, I did it. If anything goes semi-good we did it. If anything goes really good, then you did it."

Things went bad at the Times under Raines. Which means he did it. And now he is gone.

ROGER SIMON COLUMN
JUNE 4, 2003

WASHINGTON - - If the Secret Service agents guarding President Clinton in 1998 had learned that Hillary Clinton “wanted to wring Bill's neck” for cheating on her, as she says in her new book, what would they have done?

A: Wrestled her to the ground and arrested her for plotting to take the life of the president.

B: Looked the other way.

C: Helped her.

I am betting on C. I covered the Clinton White House during 1998, the “Year of Monica,” and although it was often exhausting, it was never dull.

Today, White House reporters are bored silly. There is tight control over the news and there have been no scandals.

But back in 1998, every day was Anything Can Happen Day.

The President of the United States was down in the Map Room giving 4 milliliters of blood from his right arm so it could be taken to the FBI lab and matched against the evidence on the little blue dress?

Sure, why not? Just another day at the Clinton White House.

The Secret Service got dragged into the whole mess when agents were subpoenaed by Special Counsel Kenneth Starr to testify as to whether Clinton was ever alone with Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office and whether the two were observed engaging in sexual acts.

Today, everybody knows the answer to both those questions (“yes” and “hoo-hah!”) but back then Clinton was denying everything and the Treasury Department, which oversees the Secret Service, fought the subpoenas, claiming that agents couldn’t do their job if they had to worry about ratting out their boss.

“I deal with the Secret Service all the time," a top Clinton aide told me. "They tell me what they need. They tell me what the president can and can't do, and mostly I defer to them. But if I ever have to worry about whether agents are going to be put under oath to repeat what they see and hear, I am going to say, `I don't give a (expletive) about security, I don't want you in the room.' "

The Supreme Court was not impressed with this line of reasoning, however, and upheld Starr’s subpoenas.

Which reinforced Clinton’s belief that he was being victimized.

Not long after he had been sworn in as president, he had opened up a back door at the White House one evening and walked out onto the South Lawn to play with Socks, the cat.

Three Secret Service agents immediately stepped out of the shadows and created a security triangle around them.

“The White House is the crown jewel of the federal penal system," Clinton grumped.

And the Clintons got off to a rocky start with the agents. The Clintons were not only unused to the close presence of the agents, but also wanted to handpick them, fearing that after 12 years of Republicans in the White House, the agents in place might not be loyal to them.

Soon after the Clintons moved in there were leaks to the press, allegedly by Secret Service agents, about fights between the couple, including one in which Hillary reportedly threw a lamp or a vase at her husband's head.

"Or a Bible or a Mercedes-Benz," she jokingly said in a television interview later. "You know, there were many variations. It particularly bothered me that the Secret Service was being used to try to substantiate untrue stories."

But the Clintons knew a thing or two about leaks. And the White House soon kicked off rumors that the Treasury Department was shopping around for another agency to guard the president and his family.

After that, all the leaks stopped and Clinton went out of his way to woo the agents, meet their families and give them gifts when they retired. He came to trust them. Which at least one canny politician told him was a mistake.

"I was with him at a Bears game," Chicago Mayor Richard Daley told me, "and he was surrounded by Secret Service agents. He asks me a private question . . . and I say, `Mr. President, I can't answer you. Why? Those two guys sitting here (the agents), I don't know them. A week from now, if what I say shows up in gossip columns, I've got to blame them. So I'm not talking.' And you know what? After, one of them comes up to me and says: `Thank you.' "

ROGER SIMON COLUMN
JUNE 2, 2003

WASHINGTON - - A professional fundraiser of my acquaintance recently turned down a job with a top-tier Democrat running for president.

He has nothing against the candidate - - he likes him quite a bit, in fact - - he just cannot face what presidential fundraising has become.

“I dreaded being out on the road for 15 months hustling people for $1,000 and $2,000 checks,” he said. “It’s just too grueling.”

Big-time fundraising is a very personal business and takes a lot of human contact. Every time you read about a dinner raising big bucks for a candidate don’t imagine that those dinner tickets sold themselves.

Somebody, usually a fundraiser and/or the candidate himself, got on the phone and made call after call to sell those tickets. (And made thank-you call after thank-you call after the event. Such “donor-maintenance” is critical if you intend to have a future in politics.)

When Dick Gephardt told me a few months ago that he spends seven to eight hours a day, seven days a week making fundraising calls, I was so shocked I had to ask him to repeat it just to make sure I had heard him right.

And keep in mind that in between those fundraising calls, Gephardt has to campaign for president, fly around the country, give speeches, eat, sleep and, oh, yeah, every now and then drop by Congress and do his day job representing the people from the 3rd District of Missouri.

As a sign of how seriously fundraising is taken by those in the political world, however, while some may cluck their tongues over how many votes Gephardt has missed this year (about 85 percent, according to recent reports), the analysts I know take this as a good sign.

“It is a sign he really intends to run for president and really intends to win and everything is secondary to that,” a neutral analyst told me. “Screw the House; most of the votes there aren’t close anyway. Everybody remembers Mike Dukakis. If you’re going to run for president, then run for president.”

(In the summer of 1988, Dukakis squandered a huge lead over George H.W. Bush in the polls by going back to Massachusetts and executing his duties as governor rather than staying on the road and campaigning.)

Yet Gephardt came in only third in fundraising in the first quarter of this year and it wasn’t even a close third. He raised $3.5 million to Sen. John Kerry’s $7 million and Sen. John Edwards’ $7.4 million.

Because the “money primary,” as it is called, is so closely watched by political reporters (as well as the fact that money does actually pay the bills) the candidates are hustling money like crazy this month because the second quarter ends June 30 and the press is certain to make a very big deal of the results.

Yet there are problems with putting too much emphasis on the money that candidates raise. As William Saletan has pointed out in Slate, though Edwards raised the most money, it does not mean he has the most supporters. While Edwards claimed nearly 10,000 donors, Howard Dean claimed 12,000 and Kerry 15,000.

And as many have pointed out, raising large sums of money does not necessarily mean you are actually connecting with voters or ever will get a chance to. John Connolly raised $12 million in the 1980 race and ended up with one delegate and Phil Gramm spent $20 million in the 1996 race and didn’t even make it to New Hampshire.

Still, while the candidates know that money alone will not do it, they also believe that you cannot do it without money.

It was on his announcement tour in February, that I asked Gephardt whether it was the humiliation of losing contest after contest or running out of money that ended a presidential primary campaign.

“Campaigns don’t end - - they run out of money,” he said. “You’ve got to put gas in the car every day; you've got to pay the staff; you’ve got to get planes in the air, you’ve got to drive cars.”

Humiliation doesn’t bother candidates? I asked.

“No,” Gephardt said, “money bothers candidates.”

And the more they have, the less bothered they are.