Washingtonpost.com: Bennett Rolls the Dice

Byline: Howard Kurtz

Here's what's not in dispute:

Gambling is legal in places like Vegas.

Bill Bennett makes a ton of money and has plenty to lose.

Bennett has never criticized gambling.

This, too, is not in dispute:

Bennett has firmly established himself as the nation's morality czar, casting stones at other people's conduct. He is the "Book of Virtues" man, ready to pummel liberals on television and in print for all manner of ethical shortcomings.

He is, therefore, a big fat target.

Forget Bush's landing at sea or the Democratic debate. Everyone in Beltway land is buzzing about the high-rolling Bennett.

In the days since Newsweek and the Washington Monthly disclosed that the onetime education secretary and drug czar has a multimillion-dollar gambling habit, plenty of folks are having a fine time kicking Bennett around. It's just a coincidence, we're sure, but most of those trying to run Bennett out of town are liberals, and most of those defending him are conservatives. Wouldn't libs normally be tolerant of minor vices like gambling -- it's his money, as long as it doesn't hurt anyone, etc?

We think this isn't a huge deal, even if Bennett can be a bit grating in his moral pronouncements. It's his bankroll and his life. But since he makes a living swatting Democrats -- he was very rough on Clinton during the Lewinsky affair -- he can hardly cry foul when his political opponents beat him with the club he handed them.

Bennett went for a plea bargain yesterday, saying he had done nothing wrong and promising not to do it again.

The statement: "It is true that I have gambled large sums of money. I have also complied with all laws on reporting wins and losses."

Narrow legal defense.

"Nevertheless, I have done too much gambling, and this is not an example I wish to set. Therefore, my gambling days are over."

Attempt to get back on the high road.

Bennett has claimed that his gambling was no secret, but most people didn't know about his expensive habit, and even fewer knew that he was dropping a half-million bucks or so in a single night. And his no-comment weekend -- leaving it to his wife to defend him in USA Today -- struck a discordant note. If there's nothing wrong with what he did, as he maintains, why hide?

For now, Bennett is the capital's designated pinata, and those who can't stand him are whacking away.

Josh Marshall says Bennett should be held to a higher standard:

"I think the chorus of defenses of Bennett ring rather hollow. . . . I don't really care that much about gambling one way or another. But I think it's entirely appropriate to report that Bennett is such a big-time gambler even if it would be inappropriate or simply irrelevant to report such information about most others. The reason, I think, scarcely requires explanation: Bennett spent the last dozen or more years not only being a big hawker of 'morality,' but also a prime advocate of the proposition that there is an unbroken thread connecting our private habits to our public selves and that we -- the media, the chatterers, everyone -- should happily pull on that thread and see what we find.

"I cannot think of a public figure who has been exposed over some private embarrassment in recent years -- save a few political allies, perhaps -- for whom a self-satisfied Bennett has not happily hopped on to Larry King or Tim Russert or Chris Matthews and droned on with shallow, grandstanding moralism, eagerly wrenching this or that person's private embarrassment into some cheap political point.

"This isn't a matter of payback or two wrongs making a right, just treating Bennett to the standard he's made a living off setting for everyone else. . . .

"We used to have a host of words to describe the likes of Bill Bennett: prig, bluenose, Comstock, stuffed-shirt. Euphonious, and to the point. But Bennett's racket has pretty much driven those words underground. Like I said, gimme that Menckenian conservatism any day."

Andrew Sullivan comes to the man's defense:

"What, I ask myself, has he conceivably done wrong? He has done nothing illegal. He has done nothing hypocritical. Only in the minds of a few religious fanatics, has he done anything immoral. This invasion of his privacy and attempted smearing of his character have been perpetrated for transparently political reasons and are yet another sign of how our culture is making it increasingly difficult for any actual living, breathing, fallible human being to function in public life, without profound personal costs. . . .

"Absent any direct hypocrisy or illegality, Bill Bennett deserves to be left alone. I have two further thoughts, however. Bennett was a critical figure arguing that the 'character' issue be used relentlessly against Bill Clinton. Now some of that was legit -- Bill Clinton's public character, his lying, untrustworthiness and abuse of his office were important things to notice and criticize. But some of the rhetoric went further than that, and Bennett clearly egged it on. I'm thinking not about genuine public issues of abuse of power, sexual harassment and perjury, but private adultery and womanizing, which were linked in Clinton's case but not inseparable. . . .

"It's also true that Bennett hasn't simply made occasional statements about the need for virtuous living, but has made it into a campaign, defined himself by it, made a fortune off it, and has never, so far as I know, criticized the religious far right for its puritanical opposition to gambling. He has nothing to apologize for in this instance, in my opinion, but at some point, I wish he'd turn his attention to some of the extremist moralizing among his allies on the far right. Sometimes it takes being a victim of their tirades to see where they're coming from."

The Weekly Standard 's Jonathan Last pooh-poohs the controversy:

"I don't understand what the big deal is. The news that Bennett gambles big-time isn't new. In 1996 Margaret Carlson reported that Bennett won $60,000 in a single outing in Las Vegas. Of course being old news wouldn't matter if it was a serious charge. But legal gambling is, well, legal.

"One is tempted to argue that Bennett's gambling is a legal, common, private activity. But that shouldn't necessarily protect him. If Bennett was cheating on his wife (which is also legal, common, and private) it would be a serious charge, but that's because it involves the breaking of trust and willingness to hurt others. On the scale of legal, common, private activities, gambling is much closer to smoking than adultery. Would the world shudder if it turned out that Bennett was a two-pack-a-day man?

"So what's going on here? Two reporters came upon an interesting story about a rich guy who gambles a lot. (By the way, unless we know Bennett's worth and income, it's impossible to judge just how big he was gambling. These stories put his total losses at $8 million, but it's unclear as to whether or not those are net losses. For a sense of scale, the Washington Post's Michael Leahy reported that during a typical night out with Michael Jordan, the basketball great went down $500,000 and then finished up $600,000 at the blackjack table. Remember, that's in a single night.)

"But my sense is that the left is going to use Bennett's gambling to try to drive him out of public life. Why? Hypocrisy, of course. Never mind that Bennett seems to have mentioned gambling only in passing here and there. He certainly hasn't made a career out of condemning gambling. And on the other side of the coin, he's never flacked for the gaming industry. And besides all that, in his books on morality and virtue (at least the ones I've read) Bennett doesn't hold himself up as the model of goodness and truth."

Slate 's Michael Kinsley is practically doing a victory dance:

"If there were a Pulitzer Prize for Schadenfreude (joy in the suffering of others), Newsweek's Jonathan Alter and Joshua Green of the Washington Monthly would surely deserve it for bringing us this story. They are shoo-ins for the Public Service category in any event. Schadenfreude is an unvirtuous emotion of which we should be ashamed. Bill Bennett himself was always full of sorrow when forced to point out the moral failings of other public figures. But the flaws of his critics don't absolve Bennett of his own. . . .

"Even as an innocent hobby, playing the slots is about as far as you can get from the image Bennett paints of his notion of the Good Life. Surely even a high-roller can't 'cycle through' $8 million so quickly that family, church, and community don't suffer. There are preachers who can preach an ideal they don't themselves meet and even use their own weaknesses as part of the lesson. Bill Bennett has not been such a preacher. He is smug, disdainful, intolerant. He gambled on bluster, and lost."

Continued from page 1.

Dan Kennedy says he's "unable to get excited about the news that blowhard moralist William Bennett is a high-stakes gambler. This is even less interesting than Bennett's 1980s incarnation, when the then-drug czar turned out to be a chain-smoker. . . .

"This story is going to fade fast. As for Bennett himself fading, not likely. He'll be back on Hannity & Colmes, oozing unctuously, before you can say 'blackjack.'"

Not so fast, says Hunter Baker on American Prowler :

"The reaction of many conservatives will be to downplay the story. They'll repeat Bennett's talking points about how he 'didn't play the "milk money"' and 'never put his family at risk.' Several of the regulars on National Review's weblog 'The Corner' questioned whether Bennett's gambling could even be called a vice as it was in the Newsweek story. The Weekly Standard's Jonathan V. Last posted an article over the weekend referring to the controversy as 'silly.' Their comments reflect the instinctive desire to protect Bennett because he has been the most articulate and successful mass-market spokesman for social conservatism during the past two decades.

"But trying to whitewash the unseemly public vision of Bill Bennett sitting before a slot machine for three hours at a time to unwind after a speech before a family values group earlier in the evening is the wrong thing to do. No matter how you slice it, gambling millions of dollars is a betrayal of Bennett's entire public career."

Let's give InstaPundit Glenn Reynolds the last word:

"I've always regarded Bennett as something of a windbag. Now he's a windbag who gambles a lot, which makes him, in my opinion, an idiot. But, heck, it's his money. It's not like he's putting puppies in blenders or anything. Is he a hypocrite? Maybe. But the people who are jumping on this revelation with unconcealed glee don't come off very well, either."

Unconcealed glee is right.

Here's a Washington Times piece that ought to boost those boycotts of freedom fries and wine:

"The French government secretly supplied fleeing Iraqi officials with passports in Syria that allowed them to escape to Europe, The Washington Times has learned.

"An unknown number of Iraqis who worked for Saddam Hussein's government were given passports by French officials in Syria, U.S. intelligence officials said. . . .

"The French support, which was revealed through sensitive intelligence-gathering means, angered Pentagon, State Department and intelligence officials in Washington because it undermined the search for senior aides to Saddam, who fled Iraq in large numbers after the fall of Baghdad on April 9."

And this New York Times story out of Baghdad raises at least the suggestion that some of Saddam's crowd are sipping fine wine in some distant cafe:

"In the hours before American bombs began falling on the Iraqi capital, one of President Saddam Hussein's sons and a close adviser carried off nearly $1 billion in cash from the country's Central Bank, according to American and Iraqi officials here.

"The removal of the money, which would amount to one of the largest bank robberies in history, was performed under the direct orders of Mr. Hussein, according to an Iraqi official with knowledge of the incident. The official, who asked not to be identified, said that no financial rationale had been offered for removing the money from the bank's vaults, and that no one had been told where the money would be taken. 'When you get an order from Saddam Hussein, you do not discuss it,' said the Iraqi official."

The New Yorker's Nick Lemann -- soon to dean of Columbia Journalism School -- has a fascinating Karl Rove profile (not available online). It includes some tragic family history: not only did Rove's mother commit suicide, but earlier, after a divorce, Rove learned that the man he thought was his father actually wasn't. Lemann weaves the personal narrative into Rove's take-no-prisoners political style, which began with a contested election to head the College Republicans that made Bush-Gore look like a game of pattycake.

A classic case of a political smear campaign is revealed in this New Republic piece on Tom Daschle by Michael Crowley:

"In politics, it's hardly shocking to discover an internal strategy memo counseling Machiavellian tactics. But rarely do you find a document so cynical, shameless, and outright duplicitous as one that has recently circulated among Washington conservatives planning the personal destruction of Senate Democratic Minority Leader Tom Daschle.

"'[W]e propose to destroy Daschle's credibility' and 'ultimately help end his public career' declares the memo, which fell into the hands of giddy Daschle operatives (and whose existence was first reported by Roll Call this week). The campaign will require 'a stiletto, not a sledgehammer,' the memo explains, and therefore the slashing will be subtly executed 'through humor.' Soliciting donations of nearly $1 million for TV and billboard ads, the memo previews a campaign featuring two folksy characters, Del and Hurley, who will muse about their simple lives -- and Washington tax policy -- in an archetypal small-town barbershop. The ads will convey a 'low-key, "Hee-Haw"-like rural tone,' continues the document, which describes the men as 'speak[ing] in subdued monotones with a slightly detectable hint of a Scandinavian accent. They show almost no emotion.' Think of Fargo retooled by Karl Rove and you get the idea.

"In one ad, Del frets that the estate tax -- or 'death tax,' as he naturally calls it -- will take 'half of what I got just because I died.' That will make it impossible for him 'to leave my empire to Little Del.' And, dagnabit, 'Tom Daschle won't repeal the [tax] from Washington.' 'Hmm,' says Hurley, perhaps chewing on a cornstalk. '[Y]ou'd think Senator Tom would vote like the rest of us.'

"Never mind the rank dishonesty of the ad. (The estate tax only touches inheritances above $2 million per couple, and Daschle has voted to exempt all estates below $7 million per couple -- a fortune that Del is unlikely to have amassed unless his barbershop is located atop a diamond mine.) Though it's clear from the memo that real South Dakotans will have had almost nothing to do with these ads, the memo advises, 'The effort must be . . . putatively based in South Dakota (to avoid the dismissive 'outsider' label routinely attached to such efforts in the past).' To this end, a front group has been 'designed precisely to meet these criteria'"

The Sid Blumenthal book on Bill Clinton is coming out, and the Salon excerpt includes this striking moment from the ex-president's second inaugural:

"Chief Justice Rehnquist . . . had been chilly and inexpressive toward the president throughout the morning. He was grim while swearing in Clinton to his second term, with Hillary holding the Bible. Now Rehnquist turned to speak to him. 'Good luck,' he said. 'You'll need it.'

"'They're going to screw you on the Paula Jones case,' Hillary said."

Finally, who can resist a business story about an outfit called Naked Air? If you're overly devoted to clothing, don't click here .