Sally Quinn is the insider’s insider. She has been a pillar of the Beltway cocktail frankfurter set for over thirty years. She’s married to former Washington Post editor, Ben Bradlee. Her rolodex is nearly as fat as the Library of Congress’ card catalog. She’s predicting that Donald Rumsfeld will quit his post shortly after the midterms and go into humanitarian causes.
it’s improbable that Rumsfeld can last. He may not have an exit strategy for Iraq, but, old Washington hand that he is, he undoubtedly has one for himself.
I suspect that he has already told the president and Cheney that he will leave after the midterm elections, saying that the country needs new leadership to wind down the war. And he will resign to take a job in some sort of humanitarian venture, thereby creating the perception that he is a caring person who left of his own accord to devote the rest of his life to good works.
Okay, if you are done throwing up, I am going to go below the fold and revisit a long forgotten article that Sally Quinn penned the day before the 1998 midterm elections. She called up all the Washington insiders and got them to talk about how they felt about Bill Clinton getting fellatio in the White House. It’s an amazing testiment to the utter hopelessness of the Washington establishment. But I do hope that Sally does the same thing this year on the day before the midterms. I’d love to do a comparison.
“He came in here and he trashed the place, and it’s not his place.” -Washington Post columnist David Broder.
“This is a community in all kinds of ways. The notion that we are some rarefied beings who breathe toxic air is ridiculous. . . . When something happens everybody gathers around. . . . It’s a community of good people involved in a worthwhile pursuit. We think being a worthwhile public servant or journalist matters.” – ABC correspondent Cokie Roberts, whose parents both served in Congress.
“This is our town. We spend our lives involved in talking about, dealing with, working in government. It has reminded everybody what matters to them. You are embarrassed about what Bill Clinton’s behavior says about the White House, the presidency, the government in general”…”His behavior is so over the edge. What is troubling is the deceit, the failure to own up to it. Before this is over the truth must be told.” – Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, the first Democrat to forcefully condemn the president’s behavior.
“This is a demoralized little village. People have come from all over the country to serve a higher calling and look what happened. They’re so disillusioned. The emperor has no clothes. Watergate was pretty scary, but it wasn’t quite as sordid as this.” – Muffie Cabot, who as Muffie Brandon served as social secretary to President and Nancy Reagan.
“People felt a reverent attitude toward 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Now it’s gone, now it’s sleaze and dirt. We all feel terribly let down. It’s very emotional. We want there to be standards. We’re used to standards. When you think back to other presidents, they all had a lot of class. That’s nonexistent now. It’s sad for people in the White House. . . . I’ve never seen such bad morale in my life. They’re not proud of their chief.” – Tish Baldrige, who once worked there as Jacqueline Kennedy’s social secretary and has been a frequent visitor since.
“We have our own set of village rules. Sex did not violate those rules. The deep and searing violation took place when he not only lied to the country, but co-opted his friends and lied to them. That is one on which people choke.
“We all live together, we have a sense of community, there’s a small-town quality here. We all understand we do certain things, we make certain compromises. But when you have gone over the line, you won’t bring others into it. That is a cardinal rule of the village. You don’t foul the nest.” – David Gergen, editor at large at U.S. News & World Report, who worked for both the Reagan and Clinton White House.
“This is a contractual city. There are no factories here. What we make are deals. It’s a city based on bonds made and kept.” The president, he went on, “has broken and shattered contracts publicly and shamefully. He violates the trust at the highest level of politics. There has to be a functional trust by reporters of the person they’re covering. Clinton lies knowing that you know he’s lying. It’s brutal and it subjugates the person who’s being lied to. I resent deeply being constantly lied to.” – Chris Matthews, who once was a top aide to the late Speaker of the House Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill.
How do you think they feel about ‘no one could imagine that they would use planes as missiles’, or about ‘fixing the facts around the policy’, or Abu Ghraib, or Haditha, or Katrina, or the NSA program, or the budget, or the nation’s place in the world? Maybe Sally will ask them. I doubt we’ll hear anything near the level of angst this time. Has Bush ‘fouled the nest’? Has he ‘trashed the place’? If not, that is all you need to know about what is wrong with the Establishment in this country.
