Synopsis: : Only the little, hard-scrabble, weekly The Hill got the story on Renos probe halfway right.
No, The Hill didnt get the Gore story totally right, in this column by Lobbying and the law columnist Ken Gross; but compared to the big, major, national newspapers, The Hill knocked it out of the ballpark. We came to this column after shaking our heads at the conceptual errors in the big major papers, and, as we read through Gross piece, we couldnt help chuckling as the hardscrabble rag put the work of the big kids to rout.
(Paragraph 6) This, however, says nothing about the nature of the money being raised by the vice president. Rather, it is a standard allocation required under federal election law as to how the DNC may spend its money on certain generic party activities, such as for party ads.
To begin with, Gross realized that the numbers seemed to come from the FEC guidelines (only the Post among the majors noted that). Beyond that, he understood the fact (paragraph 6, sentence 1) that even if Gore had been briefed on these guidelines, that wouldnt mean he was raising hard money. Gore could have solicited soft money only, which could have paid for 35% of the ads. The rest of the money would have to come from other accounts--hard money accounts, raised somewhere else.
GROSS (paragraph 8): So even if Gore read this [65/35] note and understood it, he would have no reason to question his belief that he was raising soft money only.
There! Now what was so hard about that?
Gross also noticed that, in the 65/35 notation, Strauss had the numbers from the FEC guidelines transposed. That was the fact about the FEC guidelines that the Post had failed to note.
There is one problem. Although Gross understands the first Strauss notation, he fails to consider the second Strauss note. Like Cloud and Kuntz at the Journal, he doesnt consider this note at all, and fails to see its possible significance.
But hey, lets not get greedy. A little hardscrabble weekly had somehow observed that the first note referred to the FEC rules. It saw that Strauss had the guidelines inverted. It had understood that, if Gore was briefed on the FEC guidelines, that wouldnt mean that he was raising hard money. Essentially, none of the majors figured any of this out. Heres our question in closing: Why not?