Whitewater falls.

• Author: Postrel, Virginia I.
• Position: How the Whitewater scandal reflects Pres. Bill Clinton's economic policies - Editorial

Whitewater is more than a scandal. It's Clintonomics in action.

Our government has lost touch with our values, while our politicians continue to shout about it. I was raised to believe that the American Dream was built on rewarding hard work. But we have seen the folks in Washington turn the American ethic on its head. For too long, those who play by the rules and keep the faith have gotten the shaft, and those who cut corners and cut deals have been rewarded.

Bill Clinton, 1992 Democratic National Convention

THE 1992 DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION was quite a spectacle, filled with Oprah-style personal revelations and infused with the giddy anticipation of power. Again and again, Democrats congratulated themselves on their compassion, their enlightenment, their feminism, their commitment to "change." Self-righteousness flowed like a mighty stream. And the savings-and-loan bailout got nearly as many mentions as abortion.

"The most irresponsible people in all the 1980s were those at the top of the ladder: the inside traders, quick buck artists and S&L kingpins who looked out for themselves and not for the country," read the party's platform.

"In Houston |at the Republican convention~, the supply-siders, the race baiters and the S&L looters will tell us that self-indulgence was self-reliance," prophesied party chairman Ron Brown.

"Remember the savings and loans?... Americans discovered that wealthy bankers--educated in the most exquisite forms of conservative, Republican banking--through their incompetence and thievery, and the government's neglect, had stolen or squandered everything in sight!" said Mario Cuomo.

Such behavior would soon be a thing of the past, promised the party. "In contrast to the Republican policy of leniency toward white collar crime...Democrats will redouble efforts to ferret out and punish those who betray the public trust, rig financial markets, misuse their depositors' money or swindle their customers," vowed the platform.

And, at the convention's climax, Bill Clinton declared, "In the name of all the people who do the work, pay the taxes, raise the kids, and play by the rules, in the name of the hard-working Americans who make up our forgotten middle class, I accept your nomination for President of the United States."

WHAT A DIFFERENCE TWO YEARS MAKE. Now we know where Bill and Hillary Clinton got their ideas about the '80s, about S&Ls, about quick-buck artists, about politicians who shout about values, about "those who cut...