[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 81 (Thursday, June 23, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: June 23, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                           DR. ELDERS IS SAFE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. (Mr. Tanner). Under the Speakers's announced 
policy of February 11, 1994, and June 10, 1994, the Chair recognizes 
the gentleman from California [Mr. Dornan] for 60 minutes.
  Mr. DORNAN. I thank the Speaker.
   Mr. Speaker, before the last crab is gone down there, let me try to 
be fair to you because you enjoyed this inspirational trip to Normandy 
with me and we got to be good friends. But let me just reemphasize some 
of the points on Dr. Elders, who seems to have a lock on her job 
partly, I guess, because of the dumping of Lani Guanier, another lady 
of African-American descent who had been appointed to something, and 
then Clinton, her friend from law school at Yale, suddenly discovered 
her writings, he said, and jerked her appointment.
  I did a 1-minute speech today that I titled ``In the Minefield, the 
Electoral Minefield'' that Clinton has to go through the next year and 
a half,'' that the most explosive mine under the ground is Dr. Elders. 
She is the one who can blow his lights out.
  I have before me again this Bob Novak column from today, and I want 
to underscore some of the things we missed during the four-way 
discussion.
  Bob Novak writes--and he was terrific on Crossfire tonight, I might 
add--``President Clinton has rejected requests from the Catholic 
Archbishop of Washington to disavow Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders' 
comments about sexuality, signalling that she must be treated with kid 
gloves no matter how embarrassing her statements.'' The reason I want 
to do this, Mr. Speaker, is on the show our distinguished colleague, 
Vic Fazio, said he never heard of these letters, this correspondence 
between the Catholic Cardinal, the Archbishop of Washington, DC, and 
all the surrounding environs that make up a better-than-your-average 
diocese and archdiocese. He said he never heard of it. So he is going 
to hear about it tomorrow with all the dates, because I am going to 
give him this article tomorrow. We are friends. I will give him the 
transcript of this colloquy tonight for some speed readings. ``Senior 
Clinton officials,'' and I continue Novak, ``have to follow suit; 
finessing options that Dr. Elders is apt to offer whenever she 
testifies before Congress. When she recently said that more Federal 
funds should be spent on AIDS than on cancer is that the victims are 
younger. Her superiors rolled their eyes but could not reprimand her.''
  To quote a high-ranking official ``The President feels very strongly 
about Joycelyn Elders.'' Hence the reason he has not disowned what she 
said while he was gone but he backs everything she is saying.
  ``That's a clue to what's wrong with the Clinton presidency,'' Novak 
goes on. ``He named as Surgeon General of the United States somebody 
her own colleagues admit is unqualified and undisciplined. But as an 
African American woman up from poverty and out of Arkansas, Elders need 
not worry about her job. Cardinal James Hickey of Washington found that 
out in a correspondence with Clinton. It began when Hickey learned that 
the Surgeon General, interviewed by a gay publication,'' the Advocate, 
``endorsed homosexual adoptions and called homosexual sex normal and 
healthy.'' Novak left out that she said ``Particularly for young 
people.''
  ``On March 21 the Cardinal wrote to the President to take strong 
exception to Elders' criticism of how religious leaders view human 
sexuality. Hickey accused the Surgeon General of `encouraging life 
style which puts so-called homosexual unions on a partisan with 
marriage and family and condoms homosexual behavior among young 
people.' He then asked the President `publicly to disavow' Elders' 
remarks.'' He goes on, ``That was not an easy letter for Clinton to 
answer. How to balance gays,'' homosexuals, ``and blacks against 
traditional Catholics? On May 6, six weeks later,'' I find that 
insulting as a run-of-the-mill Catholic, ``he replied that he is 
committed to building a society that promotes tolerance and acceptance 
of diversity.'' I guess he still wants to shove homosexuals who are 
active into places in the military.''

  Now this is Clinton's words. ``Issues such as homosexual marriage 
`are left to the individual states and are not under the jurisdiction 
of the Federal Government.'''
  ``The Cardinal responded May 16,'' within a few days that ``Contrary 
to the Clinton formulation `Dr. Elders, as a Federal official, 
continues to advocate a redefinition of the family.'''
  Clinton is a little faster this time, 18 days later he responds with 
Clinton's June 3 reply. He ``recited all his administration had done 
for the family starting with the Family Leave Act but left the Cardinal 
unsatisfied. Monsignor William Lori, speaking for Hickey, told this 
column `One can only really conclude from both letters' from Mr. 
Clinton `that Dr. Elders is truly speaking for the administration.''' I 
have a feeling that she is speaking for Hillary Rodham Clinton, but I 
guess it appears she is also speaking for her friend from Arkansas, 
Bill Clinton.
  ``In the midst of this correspondence, Elders before the Senate 
committee May 11 to be asked why the government plans to spend more 
against the number 9 killer, AIDS, than against number 1 cancer and 
number 2 heart disease. Her answer was stunning,'' and I think it is 
distasteful when talk show hosts kind of mock her accent.

                              {time}  2050

  So I will just kind of read this straight. She says:
  ``We know that AIDS is a ravishing disease in our country that is 
destroying our bright young people. I feel that if we do not find a 
vaccine, if we do not find a good drug * * *.'' By the way, thank God 
she is not saying ``cure.'' There never will be a cure, not when that 
little, infinitesimal HIV virus is locked inside those helper T cells. 
No way are we ever going to get that out. That is beyond science for 
millions of years. But she wants that vaccine or to find a good drug. 
How that is going to help Africa, which has no pharmacies, I do not 
know.
  She says, ``If we don't, we are going to lose our entire society.''
  So, there is threat again of heterosexual AIDS transmission whipping 
through the whole of society, and all of that has been disproven.
  Elders continues:
  ``Most of the people who die with heart disease and cancer are our 
elderly population, you know, and we will all probably die with 
something sooner or later.''
  What? Probably? It is an inevitability, Mr. Speaker. What is she 
saying? Sometimes her mind just wonders off. How did she get through 
medical school?

  Now what does the Assistant Secretary, her boss, Assistant Secretary 
for Health, the respected, Bob Novak says, Dr. Philip Lee say? He 
quotes:
  ``A lot of things that Joycelyn says I don't agree with, but I still 
respect her right to say them,'' blah, blah, blah, blah. ``I don't look 
at whether this will affect older people or younger people.'' I myself. 
``I look at whether this is an area where we can make progress in 
dealing with disease,'' unquote Dr. Philip Lee.
  Novak continues:
  ``Elders' high-sounding job is low in the chain of command, 
subordinate to both Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala 
and subordinate to Dr. Philip Lee. But they had no part in selecting 
the Surgeon General and cannot discipline her now. For all of her 
failings Joycelyn Elders is an appealing, compassionate person whom 
administration officials, the President included, would prefer to have 
had concentrate on antismoking and antiteenage pregnancy campaigns. The 
reality is that Dr. Elders is out of control, and nothing will be done 
about it, and this tells us much about the presidency.''
  Mr. Speaker, 50 years ago today our colleague, Bob Michel of 
Illinois, the Republican leader, was with his 9th Division fighting on 
the Cotentine Peninsula, the Cherbourg Peninsula. Up on the outskirts 
of Cherbourg the German defenders were digging in. The U.S. loss of 
life was tremendous. The British still had not gotten into Caen which 
we drove through, Mr. Speaker, several times from Deauville going to 
and from the very moving and thought provoking 50th anniversary 
commemorations along the bleach of Utah, Normandy, Gold, Juneau, 
Seward. The British took St. Honorina; I wonder if that means St. 
Honore, the beautiful little city on the coast where Henry V landed.
  Meanwhile in the Pacific, which I talked about last night, I put in 
some material on Saipan in the Record last night. It is in today's 
Record. The United States Marines, Japanese troops fought viciously on 
the slopes of Saipan's Mt. Tapotchau, T-a-p-o-t-c-h-a-u. We all know 
Omaha Beach, and we all know about Iwo Jima, but a lot of Americans 
died on Mt. Tapotchau.
  Meanwhile, in the Biat caves, an island that most Americans do not 
know about, let alone young people; in the Biat caves the fighting went 
on. We had the upper hand, but meanwhile the Japanese troops on the 
mainland of New Guinea inflicted serious and heavy losses on American 
forces fighting in the Sarmi, S-a-r-m-i, area 50 years ago, and that is 
why, Mr. Speaker, I would like to close by asking to put in the Record 
a column from last Sunday's New York Times, June 19, by Maureen Dowd. I 
never met this reporter. She has called me a couple of times for a 
brief quote.
  She has a column, I guess it is every week, called Dowd, D-o-w-d, 
Maureen Dowd on Washington. This one she simply calls ``Beached,'' and 
it brings back some memories of our trip, Mr. Speaker, to Normandy.

       It was cold and rainy as the Normandy invasion started, and 
     nothing was going as planned.
       As we hit the beaches, Helen Thomas was in the lead, 
     charging off the aircraft carrier George Washington with 
     toothbrush and tape recorder. Sam Donaldson provided air 
     cover in a Chinook helicopter hovering over the English 
     Channel. ``General Hillary,'' as a British paper dubbed her, 
     arrived on the field of battle with her hairdresser, Sylvan, 
     one word.
       Never mind destiny. President Clinton has a rendezvous with 
     Wolf Blitzer.
       The boys of Point du Hoc scaled their cliff under German 
     fire in bad weather on June 6, 1994, but the boys on the bus 
     never made it to Pointe du Hoc at all on June 6, 1994. The 
     White House press corps missed the President's speech because 
     their helicopters turned back because of bad weather and the 
     backup buses did not leave in time to get to the coast from 
     the landing at Le Havre.
       The reporters, stranded at Colleville-sur-Mer, were in a 
     panic. The Clinton lieutenants, who pride themselves on their 
     high-tech virtuosity, said calmly that they would play a tape 
     of the Pointe du Hoc speech. But when they put the tape in 
     and Clinton began to speak, no words came out. ``The sound,'' 
     a White House official explained helpfully, ``is coming later 
     by bus.''
       The fog of war had given way to the fog of White House 
     amateurism. As yuppies retraced the steps of heroes, one 
     thing was certain: Midway into the first term, the Clinton 
     White House has not yet gotten the knack of smoothly moving 
     around hundreds of grouchy journalists, who pay handsomely to 
     be ferried by the Government.
       With comic timing worthy of Evelyn Waugh, the White House 
     kept losing people. Tom Brokaw said he was 2 hours late for 
     an interview with the President because Army helicopter 
     pilots delivering him, Sam Donaldson and Harry Smith and CBS 
     to the aircraft carrier, where Clinton was spending the 
     night, got lost and could not find the largest ship in the 
     world. After flying aimlessly over the English channel for 45 
     minutes, the pilots got low on gas and had to return to the 
     airstrip in Deauville, call the ship for coordinates and 
     start again. (The Navy was vastly amused.)
       Another day, the White House marooned 24 reporters and 
     staffers in the misty British countryside for 12 hours, 
     unable to figure out a way to get our group 100 miles from 
     Cambridge to Portsmouth, the next stop on the President's 
     schedule.

  I drove it the day before along with my wife and walked in 
Eisenhower's steps. It is funny that I did not have this problem.

       A furious A.P. radio reporter was filing reports on a 
     President he could only see on the relly in the Churchill 
     pub, where the press had been dumped. White House aides paced 
     the Tarmac, scanning the skies for a missing helicopter, and 
     screamed into cellular phones with dying batteries.
       I tried to call my boss in Portsmouth to warn him I would 
     miss my deadline, but the instructions on the pay phone were 
     in British. Sipping the Champagne ordered by the Paris March 
     reporter, I fantasized about replacing the corner dart board 
     with the head of one of Clinton's prepubescent press-minders.
       Things were no better in Paris. After the state dinner at 
     the Elysee Palace, the photographers were told that there 
     would be a photo opportunity by a bridge, where the First 
     Couple would stroll ``hand in hand'' and gaze at the Eiffel 
     Tower at midnight. (Take that, Paula Jones.) * * *
       But when the Clintons got out of their limousine near the 
     Pont des Arts, the Bridge of Arts, it was not exactly an 
     intimate moment. They were surrounded by about 40 people--
     Bill staffers, Hillary staffers, the Secret Service and the 
     French police. Security did not allow the American 
     photographers off the bus, thus stymieing the scheme of the 
     White House advance team to bathe the Clintons' bruised 
     partnership in a little Paris moonlight. After a few confused 
     seconds, the Clintons climbed back into the car and motored 
     off for a tour of the Louvre.
       With the exception of the First Lady, a tidy traveler, the 
     Presidential operation has the smell of a dormitory about it, 
     with everyone crashing for exams. Each White House reflects 
     the personality of its leader, and this President, immune to 
     punctuality and discipline, will always have a Pigpen cloud 
     of chaos around him.
       What you see traveling with the Clintons is what you 
     already know: He is learning. She is searching. He is 
     learning to be Commander in Chief. She is searching for a 
     personal style, and for a way to blend old rituals with new 
     power.
       At the end of the day in Normandy, Bill Clinton walked down 
     to the beach with the veterans of Omaha Beach--Joe Dawson, 
     Walt Ehlers and Robert Slaughter. The tableau was appealing: 
     the young President enjoying the company of the aging heroes. 
     But suddenly the President's aides began tugging the veterans 
     away, mid-conversation, so that Clinton could walk off at 
     sunset down the beach in his dress shoes and have a 
     preplanned meditative moment with the bluffs on one side and 
     the sea dotted with warships on the other.

                              {time}  2100

  Mr. Speaker, what Maureen Dowd could not know is that major ship in 
the background, the U.S.S. San Jacinto, an Aegis cruiser, was named 
after George Bush's carrier, the U.S.S. San Jacinto, which 50 years ago 
tonight was launching George Bush, in the morning, Pacific time, 
against the Mariana Islands. We have the 50th anniversary of Bush's 
second loss of his airplane, and he lost all of his crew, his other two 
crew members, coming up, the 50th anniversary, on September 2, a few 
months from now.
  Maureen closes:
  ``Originally, the White House told photographers they were 
considering a `Where have all the flowers gone?' moment, where Clinton 
and children would throw flowers into the sea.'' I may barf, Mr. 
Speaker.
  ``But they settled on a moment of solitude. The President knew he was 
supposed to look reflective,'' as he had done at the Nettuno Cemetery, 
the Sicily-Italy cemetery south of Anzio.
  ``He knew he was supposed to look reflective for the three cameras 
and dozen photographers who joined him,'' this soulful moment.
  ``But after looking soulfully out at the ocean for a moment, he 
seemed at a loss for what to do next, according to a photographer on 
the scene, who was scared that Clinton was about to mouth the words, 
`What do I do now?' Then spying the stones at his feet left by his 
advance staff to show him where his camera marks were, the President 
crouched down and began to arrange the stones into a cross. He gathered 
more stones to finish the cross, and then bent his head as though in 
silent prayer.''
  ``The White House aides were ecstatic.'' These are the prepubescent 
young aides bumping into one another. ``Wasn't it great?'' they asked 
reporters.
  Mr. Speaker, I will bet one of them said, ``Awesome, dude.''

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