What a strange turn of events for those rightwing voters sporting "Love my country, fear my government" bumper stickers. After eight years of being scandalized by Bill Clinton, they finally have the President they've been waiting for, the avenging Republican who swept aside Al Gore to "return honor and dignity to the White House"--and what is he doing? Reviewing the Posse Comitatus act to see whether it might be OK to send jack-booted government agents into American citizens' homes.

- By Ruth Conniff

What a strange turn of events for those rightwing voters sporting "Love my country, fear my government" bumper stickers. After eight years of being scandalized by Bill Clinton, they finally have the President they've been waiting for, the avenging Republican who swept aside Al Gore to "return honor and dignity to the White House"--and what is he doing? Reviewing the Posse Comitatus act to see whether it might be OK to send jack-booted government agents into American citizens' homes.

If anyone represents the Clinton-hating, government-fearing Republican constituency it is Larry Klayman. This former Justice Department lawyer founded Judicial Watch, his own private, nonprofit Attorney General's office, apparently to pursue the Clintons to their graves. He became famous for cracking the Chinagate campaign finance scandal in 1996, and for subpoenaing virtually everyone in Washington. During the last couple of years of the Administration, he investigated every scandal from Gennifer Flowers to Whitewater to Monica Lewinsky, Kathleen Willey, Juanita Broaddrick, and Hillary's pinching of official White House furniture on her way out the door. His litigiousness was so legendary that The Washington Post ran a funny item about how he took his own mother to court.

By now you'd think Klayman would be investigated out, what with the departure of the Clintons and the return of honor and dignity. But what do you know, Klayman and Judicial Watch have been popping up in the news again. It turns out Klayman's focus is not just a relentless hatred of all things Clinton-related (though that seems to play a hefty role in his psyche, not to mention the fundraising base of his organization). No, Klayman is concerned about government corruption even when it wears a Republican suit. Now he is going after Dick Cheney, and joining forces with the Sierra Club, no less, to try to force the Vice President to divulge the names of the people and corporations he consulted with in developing energy policy. Klayman is also demanding answers on Cheney's decision-making role in the accounting practices of Halliburton when he was CEO. To gauge the seriousness of Klayman's challenge, check out Judicial Watch press releases, which equate Hillary Clinton's stonewalling with Dick Cheney's. Klayman even calls Cheney's energy task force "Hillary Clinton Health Care Task Force, Part II."

Judicial Watch also holds nothing back when it attacks the Bush Administration's civil liberties record and its amateur spy program, Operation TIPS. "In our view, it's similar to what we saw in Nazi Germany," says Klayman. "We're against it, and so are most conservatives."

You have to give the guy credit. He's not a partisan hack after all.

That's not to say Klayman and Judicial Watch are nonideological. "Being conservative, Judicial Watch generally believes in less regulatory environmental policy. Yet this doesn't mean that such policies be developed in a way which violates the law," Judicial Watch explains in a press release.

How can you be against corporate hijacking of environmental policy and oppose regulatory environmental policy at the same time? "Excessive regulation," Klayman explains. "We're against excessive regulation, not all regulation." He adds that he is personally more pro-regulation than some of his colleagues at Judicial Watch. "I think regulation is important. I don't think you want to overregulate," he says. "In the area of business corruption, the most important thing is to enforce the laws. We have laws against securities fraud. We have laws against insider trading. They're not enforced except for a few, and they're generally only enforced against the little guys."

It's the big guys he's after. "All this stuff about CEOs--that it's very difficult to prosecute them--that's nonsense. Where did that come from? They're the head of the company. They're responsible. And in Cheney's case it's clear that he changed the accounting procedures himself. That was admitted by the current CEO at Halliburton. He ordered it. He's obviously responsible. As Harry Truman said, the buck stops here."

Klayman's political philosophy is essentially rightwing populist. Listen to him for long and you hear the resonant grumblings of populist conservatives who are fed up with a corrupt and elitist party leadership. He quotes Howard Phillips, who goes so far as to suggest that the country might have been better off with Gore: "The Republicans in Congress would have prevented Gore from putting in the Patriot Act."

From this viewpoint, conservatives look a bit like the left during the Clinton years. And if Klayman himself sounds like he is taking a page from Ralph Nader, it's no accident. He cites Nader as a role model for his public interest work. And like Nader he's busy making his former allies mad.

Klayman's first big disappointment with the Bush Administration came when the President failed to see the need to pursue the Clinton scandals that were Judicial Watch's raison d'être. The Bush Administration made a political decision to give a scandal-weary public a rest from Clinton-bashing. Clinton was a dead horse. Why keep beating him? Klayman and other full-time Clinton pursuers didn't see it that way.

Bush provoked Judicial Watch's outrage when he didn't take a hard line on the furniture theft issue at his swearing-in ceremony. Again and again, Bush pleaded with Clinton-focused questioners to "move on."

Moving on is not Klayman's style. But while Judicial Watch started out claiming that the Administration's worst ethical lapse was not prosecuting the Clinton scandals, the group has since moved on to more fertile ground.

"Now I think the worst ethical lapse of the Bush Administration is to have a dual standard of justice, one for ordinary Americans and one for itself," says Klayman. "And when the President comes out and says, 'I know the Vice President will be exonerated by the SEC,' that's telling the SEC not to investigate, and the Justice Department not to prosecute, talking to the judge and jury and trying to influence them. And that tells you that he considers the Vice Presidency above the law."

Judicial Watch has been chasing down Cheney, trying to serve him papers for his role in the accounting scandal at Halliburton. While I was on the phone with Klayman, he got a call updating him on the lawsuit's progress. "You'll like this," he said. "Cheney has been dodging service of process in this case. We went to serve him at the White House, and the Secret Service is threatening to throw the processor in jail. The response of Mary Matalin is this is a cheap political stunt by Klayman, similar to when he sued his own mother. Which is exactly what Carville said. So it's interesting that the Vice President is now taking advice from Matalin's husband, James Carville."

Matalin, Carville, Democrats, Republicans--they're all alike.

At times, Klayman sounds downright progressive. But if you think he's a born-again liberal, you should hear his catalogue of Bush's sins against his conservative base. Bush, he says, has betrayed Cuban Americans by failing to get tough on Castro (Klayman spoke to me from Miami, where he's pursuing an Elian Gonzalez-related lawsuit against INS agents who, he says, had racist, anti-Cuban, and Nazi propaganda in their offices. He relates to the persecution of Cuban exiles, he says, because he's Jewish). Bush has also sold out conservatives by jacking up steel tariffs, signing a pork-barrel farm bill, and joining forces with Teddy Kennedy on education reform. Add to that the fact that Klayman's favorite Congressman is Bob Barr, the ultraconservative Georgia Republican, and that he's mad at John McCain for making derisive remarks about Christians. It's all part of the peculiar Klayman stew.

Still, what Klayman has to say about the corruption of both political parties makes sense. He brought to light some of the worst abuses of power by the Clinton Administration, as when Ron Brown sold tickets on trade missions to big corporate donors. And he may have his finger on the pulse of the country in a way Washington insiders definitely do not. "I don't think that there's much difference between what we've seen from Republicans and Democrats in Congress," he says. "It didn't take Tom DeLay two weeks to start selling access to Bush Administration officials. And he's doing it with the full approval and participation of the Bush White House."

If the hybrid of conservative and populist ideas sometimes sounds bizarre--as in resisting too much regulation in an era of rampaging deregulated greed--Klayman at least makes a case for his point of view. "When Clinton got in trouble with campaign finance, the mantra was, 'Let's change the laws.' I think that's what Bush is doing. He's saying, 'Let's forget about what's happening now and change the laws.' "

It's interesting to listen to Klayman, if only to understand how vulnerable Bush is to a conservative populist critique. Unlike Clinton, Bush actually embodies a scandal that is affecting the entire nation, as the stock market tumbles, the world wakes up to an appalling corporate crime spree, and ordinary folks see their life savings go down the drain with mutual fund portfolios. Unlike Clinton, who, through sheer luck, rode out the greatest economic expansion in history, philandering, pandering, plundering, and partying all the way, Bush is the wrong man for this particular political and economic time. His scandals may stick in a way that Clinton's never did. Klayman may get his man at last.