One senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, complained that coverage of the Balkans is more disturbing than Zippergate.

“When the president meets with his political advisors, people expect that the meeting will be leaked in the next 20 minutes,” the official said. “During the Lewinsky scandal, you’d pick up the paper every morning and there would be a blow-by-blow analysis of meetings inside the White House. But I don’t think people expected that to happen with the military, and with international matters.”

There are actually several similarities between media coverage of the Lewinsky scandal and the Kosovo crisis. Pundits, you’ll recall, declared the president defeated and impeached early in the intern drama. Likewise, in Kosovo, “We’re only in Day Seven and already the press corps wants us to declare defeat before it’s even begun,” the official said.

And a quick scan of cable news shows will find a lot of the same smug faces from the Monicacophony, now passing themselves off as Kosovo experts, spewing Quik’n'easy sound bites on an issue as old and complex as the Balkans. There’s the Wall Street Journal’s John Fund and publisher Mort Zuckerman on MSNBC; their seats must still be warm. It’s not hard to detect relief, even glee, in the hosts: “We’re ba-a-a-a-a-ck!” But this time the topic isn’t semen or cigars — it’s mass displacement, slaughter and genocide, a mini-Holocaust that should be too serious for talking heads who don’t know Kosovo from a casaba. War is not a time to throw out opinions hastily formed.

But then, when it comes to opinions hastily formed, Clinton himself wasn’t helping matters when, on the day the bombing began, he confessed that he’d been “reading up on the history of that area,” like a grad student dilettante. The president’s draft-dodging notwithstanding, it’s tough to argue with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. — a man who knows war all too well — when he described this administration’s foreign policy as “feckless.”

- – - – - – - – - -

It’s not just snipes from the sidelines that are getting under the skin of administration officials trying to bring an end to the terror in Yugoslavia. Some of the Chatty Cathies talking to the media are wearing medals and carrying guns.

Thursday’s story by Washington Post writer John Harris, for instance, indicates that President Clinton’s strategy sessions with State Department, administration and military officials have more leaks than a colander. A New York Times report Thursday cited complaints about the White House and NATO’s “missed signals and suggestions of mismanagement” from anonymous military and civilian officials in Brussels and Washington. It’s got to be tough to stare down a tyrant like Milosevic when the players on your own team are giving off-the-record assessments as to when and how and why you might blink.

The unhappy administration official specifically cited Harris’ story in the Washington Post, which described various unnamed sources from the White House, the military and the State Department all sniping at one another’s arguments. “If I’m president and I pick up the Washington Post and see the entire military meeting recounted, it not only hampers my ability to decide what we’re doing in Kosovo, and how to best explain it to the country, but it also sends signals to the Serbs,” the official said. “Can you imagine if people did this in World War II, came out of meetings and told the press about the strategy debates? It just didn’t happen.”

Of course, presidents are never happy about leaks about military affairs, even when they serve the national interest. President Nixon, for instance, was pretty steamed at Daniel Ellsberg over the Pentagon Papers. And the Clinton administration itself has been using the media to “telegraph” its military strategy, alerting reporters to airstrikes before they began, for instance, and describing the escalation of bombing in “Phase Two.” But the anonymous military criticism also has an ass-covering dimension to it, captured in a Thursday Associated Press headline about the unprecedented military leaking: “Military fears image may be damaged.”

“Some of the stuff being written is undermining the administration’s ability to wage a justifiable action,” the official said. “It hampers the process. If you know that what you’re going to talk about” in the privacy of a closed-door Oval Office meeting “is the next minute going to be on [CNN's] “Inside Politics,” on issues that are not and should not be about politics, it hinders making the policy.”

In the end, the administration’s only recourse is … to talk to the media, too. Clinton went on “60 Minutes II” Wednesday and told the nation, “I understand the frustration of some of our people in the Pentagon,” but “I don’t want a lot of innocent Serbian civilians to die because they have a man running their country that’s doing something atrocious.” Clinton urged Americans to “have a little resolve here … We cannot view this as something that will be instantaneously successful.”

Meanwhile, Republican fund-raising titan Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has announced a willingness to work with Sen. Christopher Dodd to “find a meeting of the minds” on campaign finance reform, according to a deftly planted piece in the Washington Post. And in his farewell address on Feb. 25, even Flynt-fragged almost-Speaker Bob Livingston instructed his colleagues that “Tolerance is a necessity. ‘Politician’ is not a dirty word. And compromise is the glue that renders democracy possible.”

What the Hill needs now is love, sweet love.

Amid all this hand-holding, it came as a surprise to many around Congress — and no doubt across the country — that one of the first legislative horses out of the gate post-impeachment is the divisive, perennial but usually ill-fated proposal for a constitutional amendment prohibiting the burning of the American flag.

“They introduced it already?” one senior GOP aide asked incredulously, unaware that Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, R-Calif., and John Murtha, D-Pa., not only had officially introduced a flag-burning amendment bill on Feb. 24, but had already secured more than 260 co-sponsors and, reportedly, at least 306 supporters in all. (It needs 290 votes — a two-thirds majority — to pass.) There is no way, the aide said, that congressional leadership wants to see the flag-burning amendment debated at least until some more-important, tangible work had been accomplished. Such as, say, passing a budget. Or restoring the public’s faith that its government cares about issues of importance. Little things like that.

But they might not have much of a choice.

“The right wing is not happy,” observes Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass. “They are Salome without the head of John the Baptist. So the leadership is saying, ‘Let’s find some things we can give them that respond to their emotional demands’ … without alienating the rest of the country.” Frank says he thinks the GOP’s move is a bold miscalculation. “It’s a mistake for them to make this one of their big issues,” he says. “I think even people who, if asked, say they would support it would not want this to be a priority.”

When asked if he’s surprised that the Republicans in Congress would make such a dubious strategic decision, Frank expresses confusion at the question. “Of course not,” he says. “That’s what they are, that’s what they do. Am I surprised that fire burns things? Or that rain makes things wet?”

Historically, the House has voted overwhelmingly in support of the flag-burning amendment — often with the wink-wink knowledge that the more deliberative, statesmanlike Senate would either refuse to vote on the bill or would kill it. In June 1995, the House cranked out 312 votes in support of the amendment, only to see the Senate kill it a few months later. In June 1997, the House shepherded the bill to victory again, this time with 310 votes, only to have the Senate put off voting on it indefinitely. Last July, the Senate Judiciary Committee held some rather low-key hearings on the amendment, with such notable supporters as Tommy Lasorda and “Dukes of Hazard” star John Schneider marshaling the support of what are no doubt dozens of die-hard fans.

Voting to ban flag burning has always been an easy way for House members to look patriotic to their constituents, while secretly trusting the Senate to protect the Constitution — which currently has only 27 amendments, mostly dealing with lofty issues like voting rights, freedom of speech and association, and protection from the excesses of government. (The most recent amendment to pass, ratified in May 1992, put off all congressional pay raises until the next session of Congress. The amendment before that lowered the voting age to 18.) Flag-burning supporters in Congress include “a healthy mix of [genuine believers] and those who say, ‘Hey, they trot this out every year and it’s a good vote for me,’” says the top GOP House aide. Frank says that “if this were voted on in a secret ballot it would not get” the 290 votes.

The House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution has decided to make Cunningham and Murtha’s bill its No. 1 priority for the 106th Congress, Frank reports. The House votes are already there, after all, supported not only by Republicans but a number of craven Democrats such as Al Wynn of Maryland, Jim McGovern of Massachusetts and New Jersey’s Robert Menendez.

- – - – - – - – - -

But there’s one glitch in the traditionally fail-safe plan to let the bill pass the House and die in the Senate: This year the Senate might actually have the votes. In 1995, the measure — which requires at least 67 senators to pass — went down with 63 in favor of the bill, 36 opposed. (Bob Packwood had just resigned and his seat had yet to be filled.) The numbers and players have since changed, and House members who held their noses and voted for the amendment in the past can no longer rely on the Senate to do the “right” thing and flush.

Amid last fall’s Monicacophony, for instance, few outside the Senate Chamber noticed when, on Oct. 7, Trent Lott suddenly rose and out of nowhere attempted to push the flag-burning amendment toward a quickie vote. Amendment opponent Sen. Bob Kerrey, D-Neb. — a Congressional Medal of Honor winner who lost a leg in Vietnam — objected, and the matter was dropped for the time being.

Amendment supporters kept fairly quiet after Kerrey’s objection because the 1998 Senate bill — sponsored by Senators Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Max Cleland, D-Ga. — clearly didn’t have enough votes to pass. The GOP just wanted to force a pre-election stand on the issue, to shake the high wire under Democratic senators thought vulnerable: California’s Barbara Boxer, Washington’s Patty Murray, Wisconsin’s Russ Feingold and Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois. Marty Justice, executive director of the Indianapolis-based Citizens’ Flag Alliance, or CFA, says that his organization dropped about $1 million on “issue” ads targeting amendment opponents last November, though he acknowledges that he “can’t say that they did” have any impact on a race one way or another.

But this year, according to Justice, amendment supporters in the Senate already total 65. That’s only two votes away, and the opening whistle has yet to blow. The narrowing of the already-close vote margin on the amendment came from Moseley-Braun’s loss to Sen. Peter Fitzgerald and the replacements of retiring Sens. Dale Bumpers and John Glenn, who opposed the amendment, with Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., and George Voinovich, R-Ohio, who support it. And now that the votes may be there, Judiciary Chairman Hatch — reportedly under fire from hard-right elements in his party for cooperating with the Democrats during the impeachment hearings — is preparing to shore up some of his conservative street cred. According to a spokesperson for the Senate Judiciary Committee, Hatch is currently signing up co-sponsors and hopes to introduce the bill some time in the next few weeks.

Hatch can rest easy in the knowledge that two more votes isn’t that far to go, especially considering that CFA has yet to lock and load. Justice, a Vietnam veteran on loan to the CFA from the American Legion, says that his members have just begun targeting the 35 senators who have either voted or spoken against the amendment in the past with e-mails, faxes, letters, cards, personal visits, phone calls, “everything we can do.” A spokesman for freshman Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C. — an amendment opponent — says that he hasn’t heard much about the bill as of yet, though he knows that its supporters are “dedicated and well-organized.”

Most leadership Republicans and Democrats would probably love it if they woke up and both CFA and its raison d’être had vanished. Republicans are eager for tranquillity and achievement; the impeachment hearings torpedoed their party’s favorable ratings, and a debate on the flag-burning amendment will do little to heal the wounds or convince the nation that the GOP is all about the people’s business. Democrats, for their part, are in no hurry to be on the wrong side of one hell of a loser of an issue. And if this controversial bill does, in fact, pass, it will go to the states for a vote in 2000 — a rogue and unpredictable element added to an already combustible and high-stakes political landscape.

But the single-issue CFA has spent more than $13 million on this fight ever since the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of flag burning in 1989, and neither the organization nor its resolve are getting any weaker. “CFA is learning from its past mistakes,” says a Hill activist who has worked hard to defeat the amendment in the past.

Oh, the drama! Will pathetically vulnerable Sen. Chuck Robb, D-Va., reverse his anti-amendment position in the face of a tough challenge from his likely opponent for reelection in 2000, the unfailingly popular former Gov. George Allen? If CFA is able to get Robb or another Democrat to shake, will past GOP opponents of the amendment — like Kentucky’s McConnell or Utah’s Robert Bennett — be willing to stand as the one obstacle between war veterans and the flag they so love? And if McConnell or Bennett come through for the Grand Old Party, will coldly calculating, amendment-supporting Democrats like California’s Dianne Feinstein waver? The only safe bet is that such a debate, probably slated for Flag Day, June 14, will get ugly, and fast, and at a time when few on the Hill are up for such a fight.

None of which, obviously, is going to help improve the perception of Congress as ground zero for Sound and Fury Signifying Nothing. One of the CFA’s strongest arguments, after all, is that an overwhelming majority of Americans — up to 80 percent, if you believe polls — support the 17-word amendment to the Constitution. “But the Republicans have just spent the last year ignoring the public, and making a point of doing so,” Frank says. “Usually, there’s a three-month moratorium on blatant hypocrisy.”

Meanwhile, Republican fund-raising titan Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has announced a willingness to work with Sen. Christopher Dodd to “find a meeting of the minds” on campaign finance reform, according to a deftly planted piece in the Washington Post. And in his farewell address on Feb. 25, even Flynt-fragged almost-Speaker Bob Livingston instructed his colleagues that “Tolerance is a necessity. ‘Politician’ is not a dirty word. And compromise is the glue that renders democracy possible.”

What the Hill needs now is love, sweet love.

Amid all this hand-holding, it came as a surprise to many around Congress — and no doubt across the country — that one of the first legislative horses out of the gate post-impeachment is the divisive, perennial but usually ill-fated proposal for a constitutional amendment prohibiting the burning of the American flag.

“They introduced it already?” one senior GOP aide asked incredulously, unaware that Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, R-Calif., and John Murtha, D-Pa., not only had officially introduced a flag-burning amendment bill on Feb. 24, but had already secured more than 260 co-sponsors and, reportedly, at least 306 supporters in all. (It needs 290 votes — a two-thirds majority — to pass.) There is no way, the aide said, that congressional leadership wants to see the flag-burning amendment debated at least until some more-important, tangible work had been accomplished. Such as, say, passing a budget. Or restoring the public’s faith that its government cares about issues of importance. Little things like that.

But they might not have much of a choice.

“The right wing is not happy,” observes Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass. “They are Salome without the head of John the Baptist. So the leadership is saying, ‘Let’s find some things we can give them that respond to their emotional demands’ … without alienating the rest of the country.” Frank says he thinks the GOP’s move is a bold miscalculation. “It’s a mistake for them to make this one of their big issues,” he says. “I think even people who, if asked, say they would support it would not want this to be a priority.”

When asked if he’s surprised that the Republicans in Congress would make such a dubious strategic decision, Frank expresses confusion at the question. “Of course not,” he says. “That’s what they are, that’s what they do. Am I surprised that fire burns things? Or that rain makes things wet?”

Historically, the House has voted overwhelmingly in support of the flag-burning amendment — often with the wink-wink knowledge that the more deliberative, statesmanlike Senate would either refuse to vote on the bill or would kill it. In June 1995, the House cranked out 312 votes in support of the amendment, only to see the Senate kill it a few months later. In June 1997, the House shepherded the bill to victory again, this time with 310 votes, only to have the Senate put off voting on it indefinitely. Last July, the Senate Judiciary Committee held some rather low-key hearings on the amendment, with such notable supporters as Tommy Lasorda and “Dukes of Hazard” star John Schneider marshaling the support of what are no doubt dozens of die-hard fans.

Voting to ban flag burning has always been an easy way for House members to look patriotic to their constituents, while secretly trusting the Senate to protect the Constitution — which currently has only 27 amendments, mostly dealing with lofty issues like voting rights, freedom of speech and association, and protection from the excesses of government. (The most recent amendment to pass, ratified in May 1992, put off all congressional pay raises until the next session of Congress. The amendment before that lowered the voting age to 18.) Flag-burning supporters in Congress include “a healthy mix of [genuine believers] and those who say, ‘Hey, they trot this out every year and it’s a good vote for me,’” says the top GOP House aide. Frank says that “if this were voted on in a secret ballot it would not get” the 290 votes.

The House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution has decided to make Cunningham and Murtha’s bill its No. 1 priority for the 106th Congress, Frank reports. The House votes are already there, after all, supported not only by Republicans but a number of craven Democrats such as Al Wynn of Maryland, Jim McGovern of Massachusetts and New Jersey’s Robert Menendez.

But there’s one glitch in the traditionally fail-safe plan to let the bill pass the House and die in the Senate: This year the Senate might actually have the votes. In 1995, the measure — which requires at least 67 senators to pass — went down with 63 in favor of the bill, 36 opposed. (Bob Packwood had just resigned and his seat had yet to be filled.) The numbers and players have since changed, and House members who held their noses and voted for the amendment in the past can no longer rely on the Senate to do the “right” thing and flush.

Amid last fall’s Monicacophony, for instance, few outside the Senate Chamber noticed when, on Oct. 7, Trent Lott suddenly rose and out of nowhere attempted to push the flag-burning amendment toward a quickie vote. Amendment opponent Sen. Bob Kerrey, D-Neb. — a Congressional Medal of Honor winner who lost a leg in Vietnam — objected, and the matter was dropped for the time being.

Amendment supporters kept fairly quiet after Kerrey’s objection because the 1998 Senate bill — sponsored by Senators Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Max Cleland, D-Ga. — clearly didn’t have enough votes to pass. The GOP just wanted to force a pre-election stand on the issue, to shake the high wire under Democratic senators thought vulnerable: California’s Barbara Boxer, Washington’s Patty Murray, Wisconsin’s Russ Feingold and Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois. Marty Justice, executive director of the Indianapolis-based Citizens’ Flag Alliance, or CFA, says that his organization dropped about $1 million on “issue” ads targeting amendment opponents last November, though he acknowledges that he “can’t say that they did” have any impact on a race one way or another.

But this year, according to Justice, amendment supporters in the Senate already total 65. That’s only two votes away, and the opening whistle has yet to blow. The narrowing of the already-close vote margin on the amendment came from Moseley-Braun’s loss to Sen. Peter Fitzgerald and the replacements of retiring Sens. Dale Bumpers and John Glenn, who opposed the amendment, with Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., and George Voinovich, R-Ohio, who support it. And now that the votes may be there, Judiciary Chairman Hatch — reportedly under fire from hard-right elements in his party for cooperating with the Democrats during the impeachment hearings — is preparing to shore up some of his conservative street cred. According to a spokesperson for the Senate Judiciary Committee, Hatch is currently signing up co-sponsors and hopes to introduce the bill some time in the next few weeks.

Hatch can rest easy in the knowledge that two more votes isn’t that far to go, especially considering that CFA has yet to lock and load. Justice, a Vietnam veteran on loan to the CFA from the American Legion, says that his members have just begun targeting the 35 senators who have either voted or spoken against the amendment in the past with e-mails, faxes, letters, cards, personal visits, phone calls, “everything we can do.” A spokesman for freshman Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C. — an amendment opponent — says that he hasn’t heard much about the bill as of yet, though he knows that its supporters are “dedicated and well-organized.”

Most leadership Republicans and Democrats would probably love it if they woke up and both CFA and its raison d’être had vanished. Republicans are eager for tranquillity and achievement; the impeachment hearings torpedoed their party’s favorable ratings, and a debate on the flag-burning amendment will do little to heal the wounds or convince the nation that the GOP is all about the people’s business. Democrats, for their part, are in no hurry to be on the wrong side of one hell of a loser of an issue. And if this controversial bill does, in fact, pass, it will go to the states for a vote in 2000 — a rogue and unpredictable element added to an already combustible and high-stakes political landscape.

But the single-issue CFA has spent more than $13 million on this fight ever since the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of flag burning in 1989, and neither the organization nor its resolve are getting any weaker. “CFA is learning from its past mistakes,” says a Hill activist who has worked hard to defeat the amendment in the past.

Oh, the drama! Will pathetically vulnerable Sen. Chuck Robb, D-Va., reverse his anti-amendment position in the face of a tough challenge from his likely opponent for reelection in 2000, the unfailingly popular former Gov. George Allen? If CFA is able to get Robb or another Democrat to shake, will past GOP opponents of the amendment — like Kentucky’s McConnell or Utah’s Robert Bennett — be willing to stand as the one obstacle between war veterans and the flag they so love? And if McConnell or Bennett come through for the Grand Old Party, will coldly calculating, amendment-supporting Democrats like California’s Dianne Feinstein waver? The only safe bet is that such a debate, probably slated for Flag Day, June 14, will get ugly, and fast, and at a time when few on the Hill are up for such a fight.

None of which, obviously, is going to help improve the perception of Congress as ground zero for Sound and Fury Signifying Nothing. One of the CFA’s strongest arguments, after all, is that an overwhelming majority of Americans — up to 80 percent, if you believe polls — support the 17-word amendment to the Constitution. “But the Republicans have just spent the last year ignoring the public, and making a point of doing so,” Frank says. “Usually, there’s a three-month moratorium on blatant hypocrisy.”