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In this week's magazine, Klein expresses some regret--for not leveling with Dan Rather when challenged (CBS is debating whether to keep Klein on as a commentator) and for staking "his credibility as a journalist" on his denials to a Washington Post editor. Yet he has shown few signs of true contrition. In a fax to his Newsweek colleagues, handwritten on Waldorf Astoria stationery, he said he regretted the energy they had expended defending him "against a vicious, witless, disproportionate assault."
It seems, indeed, that somewhere between landing on the best-seller list and clinching a million-dollar movie deal, the political columnist who specializes in exposing the self-indulgent moral relativism of fellow baby boomers badly lost his way. He still insists that some of his critics are driven by envy of his success, that he was following in the tradition of Henry Adams and that he is "damn proud" that the book and the mystery surrounding it brought a lot of pleasure to people. But this is the same person whose Jan. 22 column about the Clintons was headed, "The real character test for baby-boomer pols is owning up to their self-indulgent screw-ups," and lamented the Clintons' "lawyering, fudging, misdirection, obfuscation and generally slouchy behavior" in the face of tough questions. "The intensity of their denials is fascinating..." he wrote. "They defend their virtue against all reason; they never inhale."
Klein wrote those words just before his book came out, and it would be too simple to say that he was projecting. But there's still time to take a deep breath and inhale some of his own advice.