As the Daily Howler notes today, too bad Friedman didn't make that blindingly obvious conclusion, y'know, during the 1990's. Instead, at the time Friedman stuck to the preferred NYT script and treated the phony Whitewater story as a big deal.

Here's the passage in question for Friedman's column today [emphasis added]:

Sometimes I wonder whether George H.W. Bush, president “41,” will be remembered as our last “legitimate” president. The right impeached Bill Clinton and hounded him from Day 1 with the bogus Whitewater “scandal.” George W. Bush was elected under a cloud because of the Florida voting mess, and his critics on the left never let him forget it.

Writes the Howler:

Friedman has been a columnist at the Times roughly since the invention of noise. According to the Nexis records, his first reference to “Bill Clinton” occurred in March 1992. But his first reference to “Whitewater” didn't occur for five years after that! And how weird! This is what he wrote at that time, about this bogus non-scandal:

FRIEDMAN (5/19/97): Does Ken Starr do diplomacy?

I ask because it's now clear that NATO expansion is the Whitewater of the Clinton foreign policy. Like Whitewater, NATO expansion began with a poorly financed, poorly conceived real estate deal, sold to Bill Clinton by fast-talking policy hucksters...Like Whitewater, the cover-up is worse than the original deal, and the ultimate costs far greater than if he had just walked away.

Today, Friedman dismisses Whitewater as as a “bogus” “scandal.” But during the Clinton years, when press elites hyped the pointless saga, Friedman played along.