When It Comes

to criticizing the New York Times and its reporters, there is no better person for the job than Gene Lyons, who takes a look at the recent books trashing Hillary Clinton:

Anybody who can do a Google search can assess the basic fraudulence of “Her Way.” Let’s pass over the diabolical pact that the Clintons supposedly made to succeed each other in a 16-year presidency. Historian Taylor Branch, who supposedly confided this dark secret, calls it “preposterous” and says the authors never interviewed him.

Gerth can’t even summarize his own Whitewater reporting straightforwardly. Possibly constrained by Van Natta’s ability to write comprehensible sentences, the book correctly observes that the Clintons ’ Whitewater investment was financed by bank loans. In his original 1992 scandal-mongering story, he’d limned it as a sweetheart deal: “The Clintons appear to have invested little money, so stood to lose little if the venture failed, but might have cashed in on their 50 percent interest if it had done well.”

No, Jeff, they had to repay the bank, with interest, losing $ 43, 000. It was of such absurdities—did a New York Times reporter really not grasp that investing borrowed money is riskier than investing cash?—that the Whitewater “scandal” consisted all along.