Tuesday, September 29, 1998 -- Republicans say that their "character" is better than that of their opponents.

"Character", in the GOP lexicon, is a slippery thing, but it is generally used to mean trustworthiness and sexual restraint. Self-appointed Republican "Morals Czar" Bill Bennett makes his living off of the word "character."

Yet by their own definition, GOP stalwarts have a myriad of character flaws.

The sex issue is the most obvious one, of course: Even as Republicans roast Bill Clinton for having an affair and concealing it, their most vocally conservative members, those supposedly most filled with "character" are being exposed as sex-crazed, duplicitous hypocrites who have had scads of extramarital affairs -- or had affairs with married persons -- and then lied about them to their constituents and the press.

Dan Burton, Helen Chenoweth, Bob Dole, Newt Gingrich, Henry Hyde, Bob Barr, George Will: All conservative GOPers hyping the "character" issue. And all of them are either adulterers or have had sex with people married to others.

But never mind the hype! Sexual hypocrisy is not the worst GOP character flaw.

Their trustworthiness in other, more serious matters, is also lacking.

Case in point: William Safire.

Mr. Safire first became famous as a speechwriter for the Nixon White House; he put the onomatopoetic phrase "nattering nabobs of negativism" in Spiro Agnew's repertoire. His Op-Ed columns for The New York Times uphold the GOP party line: "We've got more character than you."

But Mr. Safire has done many things undemonstrative of "good character."

Case in point: He and The Wall Street Journal's John Fund wrote incredibly vicious tales about Clinton White House aide Vincent Foster. When Foster, a deeply honorable man prone to depression and low self-esteem, shot himself as a result of these attacks, one would expect that persons of "character" would feel shame and remorse at having hounded a man to suicide.

But that wasn't Fund -- or Safire's -- reaction.

Four separate investigations, including Ken Starr's Whitewater OIC, disproved these rumors utterly -- but that doesn't stop the right wing from continuing to flogging them.

For his vileness towards Vince Foster, both before and after Foster's death, Safire has forfeited all right to call himself a man of character. But his breathtaking baseness doesn't end there.

In a recent New York Timescolumn, Safire tried hinting that there was more dirt on the Clintons that Starr had "failed" to uncover, particularly in the area of Whitewater. Of course, Mr. Safire conveniently forgot (or is it blithely overlooked) that two Whitewater probes conducted prior to Starr's Whitewater OIC exonerated the Clintons -- and that probes in the other faux-scandals, "Filegate" and "Travelgate", cleared the Clintons of wrongdoing in those areas as well.

But it was when he repeated the GOP-authored China-technology-transfer smear that he looked truly ridiculous.

Even as Safire's China-missile insinuations hit the street, his ideological brothers in the House were quietly debunking this latest anti-Clinton falsehood! It was announced last week that a special House investigation found absolutely no evidence that President Clinton illegally facilitated the transfer of sensitive missile technology to China. The House Select Committee on China trade found no impeachable offenses and has not referred any of its findings to the House Judiciary Committee. The investigation will continue until the end of the year, but even the Republicans on the committee admit that there is no likelihood of finding any Clintonian wrongdoing in this matter.

Left unspoken was an important admission: the policy of dealing with China on missile matters was started by Ronald Reagan and continued by George Bush. Face it -- wouldn't it look awfully strange for the House GOP to bash Clinton for pursuing Republican policy?

The words of the Gospel ring as true for Republicans as for everyone else: Before you point out a speck in your neighbor's eye, you'd better remove the plank from your own.

-- Tamara Baker

Let's not forget that this slob Safire is on the PULITZER COMMITTEE!! Perhaps you should organize a letter writing campaign to have him thrown off! We'll be the first to sign!

And come to think of it, a real Pulitzer columnist might have mentioned two other aspects of dual-use technology for China in the Clinton era: one, as the result of the explosion of a Chinese "Long March" rocket carrying an American communication satellite, a major American aerospace contractor was able to obtain schematics and specifications for Long March launch vehicles -- a sizable intelligence coup; and two, something certainly indicative of why America attempts to conceal the true intent of many of these transactions as "Commerce," are reports that the American "partnerships" with China involving dual-use technology were a cover for opening a back door on Chinese military communications using their own satellites!