On the Right - The Demolition Of Linda Chavez.(Brief Article)(Column)

NEW YORK, JANUARY 9

The miasma was there, the coiling blast dispatched by the losers to suck Linda Chavez into oblivion. There would be satisfaction at several levels: 1) They would be saying no to President-elect Bush; 2) they would be rebuking a public servant who outraged civilized thought by opposing the idea of a federal minimum wage, opposing bilingual education, and denying the benefits of affirmative action; 3) they would have demonstrated the evenhandedness of their administration of justice, inasmuch as Clinton nominee Zoe Baird, eight years ago, was ruled out for the post of attorney general because she had a nanny at home who hadn't got working papers.

To be sure, the Senate should inform itself whether a candidate speaks truthfully. Just because President Clinton lies doesn't mean, or shouldn't, that everybody else in government can lie. Ms. Chavez had said she did not learn that Marta Mercado was an illegal alien until 1993, which was after Mercado had left Chavez's room and board. Existing law does not actually prosecute an employer who gives work to illegal aliens. A motion in that direction was attempted by a recent Congress but it transpired that in the event it came to pass, half the restaurants in New York and Washington would close down. The emphasis, in the interrogation of Ms. Chavez, would have focused more closely on whether she has spoken the truth than on whether the truth was damaging. Illegal aliens must not be over-molested. To do so gets in the way of their voting for their Democratic patrons.

So we had the truth-count, and then the ideological-count. Would she have succeeded in persuading the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee that the arrangements were as she described? That she came upon Marta Mercado more or less homeless and, as a good Samaritan, offered her food and shelter, intending no condition of servitude? And that the dollars she gave her weren't compensation, merely an extension of the corporal works of mercy already proffered?

Along came the view expressed by Mr. Clinton's sometime Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich. On television, and in the New York Times, he said that it is precisely the responsibility of a secretary of labor to refine relationships to the benefit of employees. He added that an "employee" is not necessarily someone who works for you 40 hours every ...