Well, that's interesting, because in the book and elsewhere, you disparage the notion of a "vast right wing conspiracy." It seems like you're ambivalent about it. Clearly you know there was a right-wing movement to get Clinton, you document it, but it seems like you try to have it both ways, and downplay it, and I want to nail you down on that point.

I'm happy to respond to that, because this is really a crucially important point. I have no dispute about the facts here, about the involvement of Richard Mellon Scaife and all those other folks who acted unpatriotically in the '90s, who were vicious and relentless. I do have a problem with calling it a vast right-wing conspiracy, though, because first of all, it wasn't all that vast. Second of all, terms like that feed the devolution of public discourse, which is the most important thing that happened in the '80s and '90s. The ultimate result of this kind of feeding of extreme rhetoric to the public is dangerous for the future of democracy. It feeds the notion that all politicians are corrupt or phony, and that's manifestly not true. It's also creating an atmosphere that makes no one want to run for office.

So I think that to the extent that the left wing uses extreme rhetoric, too -- the civil rights movement runs their smear campaign calling Clarence Thomas a handkerchief head and other such excrescences -- it only feeds the terrible temper of the time. It's been really interesting, the reaction to this book: People say I'm ambivalent as you just did -- when I present both sides. It seems that you have to come "from the left" or "from the right," in which all political discourse becomes "Crossfire," and "Crossfire" is a burlesque of politics.

No, I'm not saying that at all. I was wondering what you made of the final Ray report on Whitewater, as well as those defensive New York Times and Washington Post editorials about them? They just cannot leave Clinton alone. I thought the Times did a wonderful thing in "clarifying" -- essentially apologizing for -- their Wen Ho Lee coverage, and I never expected them to do anything like that to Clinton. He was the president, he was fair game, in a sense. But the editorial essentially defending their campaign was beyond me.

They were pretty extreme throughout. It's very difficult when you've killed vast forests in the service of a nonstory to say you were wrong. All I can say on the Ray report is that, first of all, it is outrageous that he said he could have indicted Clinton and that he would have been convicted. This was not the report of a special prosecutor, it was the report of a candidate for Senate from New Jersey.

This era will be bounded very neatly by the imposition of the special prosecutor law, and its leaving from the end of Watergate through the end of Clinton. The Dems used it ridiculously in the '80s, the Republicans used it in the '90s. Public faith in government was destroyed. I had this moment with Bob Dornan on an escalator in Iowa when he was running for president. I said, "How's it going, Congressman," and he said, "Can we go off the record for a minute?" I said, "Sure." He said, "Boy, people out there really hate politicians!" And I said, "What have you been saying about politicians for the last 30 years?" So for me, a really radical position for journalism to take is to stop being cynical. Cynicism is what passes for insight among the mediocre.

But just when you want to blame all of Clinton's trouble on the right, he's back in the news, telling Jonathan Alter he regrets the Marc Rich pardon, not because it was wrong, but because of the political fallout.

And I thought that was disgraceful. He really let out a part of himself that is ugly and it's obviously there. Those pardons were disgraceful. Too often he did that. I'm not a shrink, and I can't tell you why, but I do suspect that at the heart of his problems was that neediness that everybody who knows him senses immediately -- the utter need for approval. I once said to him, "I always know when you're going to screw up." And he looked at me and got that glare in his eye he got when he was angry. And he said "How?" And I said, "As long as you keep the American people in your mind as your audience, you do pretty well. But as long as you're trying to please the people who are immediately in front of you (and I don't care if it's democratic leaders in Congress in his first term, or Newt Gingrich, or fundraisers or the Riady family) whenever the audience shifts to your immediate need to win someone over and away from the interests of the American people, you get into trouble." And that case was a totally flagrant example: He allowed Denise Rich and Beth Dozoretz, these fawning courtiers, to get the better of him.

Yes, and in the book you link them with Monica Lewinsky. You get to say things like that, because you're Jewish, but I was thinking about that at the time: What was it about these Jewish women and his being powerless to stay out of trouble around them?

Never, never underestimate the power of the exotic, over all of us. The exotic is different to different people.

So black people aren't exotic to Clinton, but Jews are?

Well. [pause] Don't know. [laughs]

OK, I'll ask him.

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