Dirty Money

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Dirty Money

Sunday, Sep 16, 2007 - 12:05 AM

The strange story of Norman Hsu -- fugitive from justice and big-money man for Hillary Clinton and other major Democrats -- raises troubling questions and unpleasant specters of fundraising scandals past.

Clinton's campaign announced this week that it is returning $860,000 from 260 contributors that had been "bundled" by Hsu, who pleaded guilty to grand theft in California in the early 1990s before skipping town. The campaign has been reluctant to identify the names of the contributors.

Which prompts several questions: Who, precisely, is Hsu? How -- and from whom -- did he raise money for Clinton and other Democrats? And did the Clinton machine really know nothing about the history and background of a high six-figure fundraiser, even though California Democrats apparently warned top campaign officials about Hsu's shady past -- and present?

Presidential campaigns can't vet every contribution they receive. Embarrassing supporters are bound to emerge from time to time. Still, the candidates should work harder to check the sources of big pots of money.

In the case of the Clinton campaign, one wonders if that kind of hard work would have changed anything. The current scandal is redolent of the extensive campaign-finance cheating that may have helped Bill Clinton bury Bob Dole before the 1996 presidential race even began in earnest.

That shameful chapter -- woefully underplayed and under pursued, at least in real time, by the Beltway press corps -- featured scores of witnesses fleeing the country or pleading the Fifth, nearly two dozen convictions, and revelations about overseas funds pouring into Bill Clinton's committee to re-elect the president. If he'd been a Republican, he'd certainly have been run out of town by a howling pack of journalists and good-government activists.

Instead, he's making plans for a return to the White House with his loyal wife. Do we really want to suffer through this kind of sleaze again? Now's the time to decide.

http://www.timesdispatch.com/cva/ric/opini...09-16-0118.html