I really thought we had closed this Nannygate and frankly, I hate to reopen the discussion just to let one of the boys through. You know how women are these days. We're so sensitive. Call us sweetie and we call it harassment. Treat Zoe Baird and Bob Inman differently and we're going to notice.
Almost a year ago, Baird became the first mother of a preschool child nominated to the Cabinet. Soon, the airwaves were filled with talk of her illegal nanny and unpaid Social Security.I was among a small minority of people who regarded her offense as minor, rather like smoking without inhaling. But in the eyes of a citizen jury armed with phones and faxes, it was a Capitol crime. Off with her nomination.
Then came Kimba Wood. If Baird was convicted of smoking without inhaling, Judge Wood was guilty of getting a contact high. She and her husband broke no laws when they hired a child caregiver from Trinidad whose papers had expired. But the whiff of Nannygate in her hair was lethal.
In the early months of the Clinton administration, other boys as well as girls were blocked by the Nannygate. When saner heads finally prevailed, candidates paid their back Social Security taxes for domestic help and passed on through.
Which brings us to Bobby Ray Inman, an independent kind of cuss, who stepped to the mike last week to let us know that he never wanted the job of defense secretary, he voted for George Bush and he interviewed Bill Clinton before he said yes. As Bobby Ray put it: "I had to reach a level of comfort that we could work together."
Now it appears that Inman didn't pay Social Security for his domestic help either. Until he took the job.
The differences between Zoe and Bobby are more than biological. Last January, the lawyer had some reason for confusion with the Byzantine laws. Eleven months after her help problems put the issue on Page One, the former admiral knew better.
Inman's excuse is that he was waiting for the law to change. That's like smoking while you're waiting for them to legalize the stuff.
Nevertheless, in defense of a single standard, I am no more willing to disqualify Inman on this small domestic policy than I was to disqualify Baird. Little housekeeping problems, I fear, keep us from worrying about the big domestic picture.
When Inman announced that he would deign to take over at Defense, he asked to be judged on his 10 years in business. This is a bit like Gary Hart asking the press to follow him. Since he last said good riddance to Washington, Inman helped arrange a leveraged buyout that sent one company into bankruptcy and served as a director at another firm that landed him in the middle of a currency speculation scandal.
Most notably - to me - Inman earned almost $1 million from Tracor Inc., in 1989. That was the year the defense contracting firm was heading for Chapter 11.
If there is something unseemly about rich people chintzing on Social Security for their help, isn't there something unseemly about taking a bundle off the carcass of a company?
Inman has a reputation as a straight-talking, principled Pentagon man. But the choices facing us are between cutting social programs or the Pentagon. They're about stretching military dollars and making cuts as painless for the most people as possible. These are questions of values as well as efficiency.
We know that Inman slipped up on his personal housekeeping, but how's he going to keep house at the Pentagon? "I am an operator," he says. A friend of Bush and a friend of the big guys. Well, as Inman might put it, I still need to "reach a level of comfort" with all that.