How significant is President Clintons use of executive privilege?
JIM LEHRER: Okay. Another thing this week has been executive privilege. The president has apparently invoked it prevent some testimony by some of his aides before the Starr grand jury. How important a development is this, Mark? MARK SHIELDS: Well, it’s important, Jim, in the sense that the president has not paid a political price for it, and if you talk about executive privilege around here, it sends off whistles and bells to those of us who have been here too long about Richard Nixon and Watergate and all the rest stonewalling, and I think it is–it’s a dilatory tactic. It’s an attempt to lengthen the process, to stretch it out, to put more pressure on Ken Starr to bring his to an end, to make it more difficult for him, and I don’t think there’s any question about that. The Department of Justice wouldn’t argue the case for the president. They insisted he get a private attorney to do it. So the merits are not with him but politically up to now he’s paid no price for it. JIM LEHRER: Why
