WASHINGTON, D.C. -- "O bliss was it to be alive in that day," we imagine today's headline writers will tell their grandchildren some day. The Washington Post led off its front page with the following headline a couple of weeks back: "White House Guest Lists Didn't Include Rap Sheets." (And they weren't talking about rap music.) We thought the Bush Administration was fairly hapless by modern standards, but do you think this was much of a problem for those guys? ("Gee, Mr. President, we don't have Georgette Mosbacher's rap sheet-what are we going to do!?")

Kipling's God of the Copybook Headings is having a hard time keeping up with the assorted drug dealers, convicted felons, gun runners, S & L looters, stock manipulators, and embezzlers who have been invited for coffee with President Clinton at the White House. Sunday's Washington Post offered the understated headline: "White House Says Felon Not an Appropriate Guest." (The new motto at the White House, you may have heard, is, "Yeah, that and a thousand bucks will get you a cup of coffee!")

Marx wrote that history repeats itself first as tragedy and then as farce, but the Clinton White House seems intent on skipping the tragedy stage and heading straight for farce. This thought came to mind from last week's headline of the President proclaiming, in the telltale passive voice, that "mistakes were made." ("Either inadvertently or deliberately," the president helpfully clarified.) Gee. . . Are these mistakes similar to the "bureaucratic snafus" of early FBI-gate? Just wondering. One of our loyal readers called to our attention an old Matt Gruening "Life in Hell" cartoon, where Binky, having put black handprints all over the wall and facing the enormous looming shadow of what is undoubtedly his father, explains: "Mistakes were made."

As with the FBI files' scandal that fizzled last summer, this is all great fun for spectators and political junkies. But the chattering classes are missing the point and misleading the public. All the "Deep Dish Thinkers" are on the bandwagon for campaign finance reform because of the deepening DNC scandal. Clinton is happy to head this bandwagon, as he is to head every bandwagon. But hold on a minute: What the DNC is alleged to have done is violate existing campaign laws. No one seems to have noticed that the logic of Clinton's argument is: "We have broken campaign finance laws, therefore let us have more such laws to break."

No one has yet commented on Clinton's other whopper from his press conference: The excuse that the pressure of getting money for expensive campaigns drove the White House to these extremes. Hold on a minute: The President (along with Bob Dole) received over $70 million from the taxpayers for their campaigns-the only candidates in America with such a deal. So what's the White House's problem? Why did they need money so badly that they had to let out the Lincoln bedroom?

Before we let the headiness of this incipient scandal drive us headlong through a new round of political "reform," we might ask a few fundamental questions first. Don't expect it from the headline writers or the media elite.

-By Steven Hayward