Capital meanness claims a victim

The Boston Herald

BEVERLY BECKHAM

It has been weeks now since Vincent Foster, President Clinton's boyhood friend, put a loaded gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

His death rocked Washington.

Few could believe, or wanted to believe, that every-day life in the nation's capital could be so mean-spirited that it would drive a man to suicide.

And so the news stories were speculative, rife with unanswered questions.

Where did Foster spend the last afternoon of his life? What was his pattern for weeks before? Did he seem distressed? Did he confide in anyone?

Everyone wanted the one missing piece to the puzzle that would reveal a familiar picture.

Everyone wanted to blame some hidden sin for Foster's despondency.

For here was a man who had it all: good marriage, nice family, best buddies with the president, the world at his feet. A little bad press could not have been the reason he killed himself. Everyone knows that's part of the game. Everyone knows that meanness is part of politics.

Everyone except Vince Foster, apparently. Where he was raised, men still believe they are their reputation. And Foster was watching his, and he thought because of him, his best-friend Clinton's, go right down the tube.

Now we are privy to a note Foster wrote about 10 days before his death, so there's no longer any doubt that it was public vilification, not some Achilles' heel, that led to his death. Foster's widow said she urged her husband to write down the things that were bothering him. Apparently he did. He wrote them down and tore them up, perhaps because it was a list of things over which he had no control.

"I made mistakes from ignorance, inexperience and overwork.

"I did not knowingly violate any law or standard of conduct.

"The FBI lied. . .

"The press is covering up. . .

"The GOP lied. . .

"The Ushers Office plotted. . .

"The public will never believe. . .

"The WSJ {Wall Street Journal} editors lie without consequence.

"I was not meant for the job or the spotlight of public life in Washington. Here ruining people is considered sport."

A good man took his life because he hated the game he was required to play, and because he mistakingly believed that the game mattered.

How wrong he was. If only he had talked it out and stuck it out. If only he had seen the whole farce for what it is. Meanness is a business, today. It's show business. It sparks debate, is grist for all the endless talk shows and news shows and side shows. It gives thousands of journalists something to write about.

But the words don't stick. The American public knows better. In the end, the public looks at the whole person, not the just the piece of him ripped apart on today's front page. And whether the people forgive or forget, I don't know.

But there's Richard Nixon, riding a wave of newly-found popularity.

And there's Ted Kennedy, our senior citizen, still holding his head high, with a new bride at his side.

And there's Massachusetts Congressmen Gerry Studds and Barney Frank - men whose personal reputations were shot, still in politics and still getting high marks.

Vince Foster must have thought everyone was pointing at him and talking about his mistakes. He must have felt undermined, powerless and humiliated. No doubt there were some who used Foster's ostensible "failures" to make themselves look better. But outside of Washington, hardly anyone even knew his name.

A colleague says if Foster couldn't stand the heat, he should have stayed out of the kitchen. He's filed the suicide under mental imbalance.

But it was an imbalance from without that killed Foster, the great imbalance of life today. We fixate on the bad - that's all we see, hear, read and talk about - and this diminishes all that is good. It leads people to believe that the world is a lousy place and that life is not worth living.

Time magazine ran a picture a few weeks ago that has haunted me. It's of Vince Foster when he was 5 years old with his best pal Bill Clinton, who was age 4. There they are, two boys from Hope, Arkansas. Hope. Imagine that. The boys grew up together and went to Washington together. Their meteoric rise should have been "It's A Wonderful Life: Part 2."

And it was, in a way. But it was goodness that saved George Bailey, the goodness of ordinary people in an ordinary town.

Foster would have done just fine, if he'd stayed in Arkansas. It was the meanness in Washington that killed him.