THE SKUNK ARRIVES AT DEMOCRATS' PICNIC

ONE OF THE advantages of being a big shot Hollywood producer instead of just your average wealthy Manhattan campaign contributor is that you're more accustomed to dealing with - and recognizing - prevaricators, hustlers and other low life. David Geffen's assessment of the Clintons was mainly astounding in its refreshing accuracy. He told Maureen Dowd: "Everybody in politics lies, but they [the Clintons] do it with such ease, it's troubling." Talk like that is not the way you play the game in New York and Washington.

Geffen also told Dowd, "I don't think that another incredibly polarizing figure, no matter how smart she is and no matter how ambitious she is - and God knows, is there anybody more ambitious than Hillary Clinton? - can bring the country together. Obama is inspirational, and he's not from the Bush royal family or the Clinton royal family."

We're talking about, mind you, a man who once raised $18 million for the Clintons and slept in the Lincoln bedroom.

People in politics and the media don't like this kind of talk. So far, in fact, Chris Matthews is the only mainstream journalists we've seen actually tackling any of the tough stuff about HRC.

Like Geffen, Matthews shares our long held suspicion that the Clinton spin bubble could backfire on the Democrats, which is to say the Republicans are just holding their ammunition until she is nominated. He also pressed Clinton flack Howard Wolfson on the question of whether mentioning the impeachment of Bill Clinton was too personal. Wolfson clearly considers any criticism of HRC below the belt. It's going to be a hard sell.

Geffen's comments were important. The skunk had finally arrived at the picnic and things will never be the same.

MORE PROBLEMS AWAIT Clinton on the west coast. For example, just one fundraising event involved a cast of Clinton-connected criminals including Peter Paul, Aaron Tonkin, Jim Levin, and Raymond Reggie. Add the McDougals, Web Hubbell, Dan Lasater, Jorge Cabrera and the more than 40 other convicted individuals and companies connected to the Clinton machine and you have to start wondering when the Democrats discover this may not be the best they can do.

In August 2000 Hillary Clinton held a huge Hollywood fundraiser for her Senate campaign. It was very successful. The only problem was that, by a long shot, she didn't report all the money contributed: $800K by the US government's ultimate count in a settlement and $2 million according to the key contributor and convicted con Peter Paul. This is, in election law, the moral equivalent of not reporting a similar amount on your income tax. It is a form of fraud. Hillary Clinton's defense is that she didn't know about it. That has so far worked in court but whether it will meet similar approbation in 2008 among the media, opponents and the general public remains to be seen. To some it is what some lawyers call the ostrich defense: I had my head in the sand while everything was going on or, yes, I signed the letter but I never actually read it.

In the Enron case, for example, U.S. District Judge Simeon T. Lake III granted the government's bid for a controversial jury instruction known as 'deliberate indifference' or 'willful blindness.' The language allowed jurors to consider whether Skilling and Lay averted their eyes from fraud within Enron's ranks to deny responsibility for it later.

Whether Hillary Clinton engaged in 'deliberate indifference' or 'willful blindness' remains to be determined by the voters.

THE 2000 FUNDRAISER

AND LET US NOT FORGET THIS EXCHANGE on the Jim Lehrer Show in 1996:

JIM LEHRER: Are you keeping a diary? Are you keeping good notes on what's happened to you?

HILLARY CLINTON: Heavens no! It would get subpoenaed. I can't write anything down. (laughing)

JIM LEHRER: So well, when it comes time to write this book, you're just going to sit down and try to remember all this?

HILLARY CLINTON: I have tons of, you know, schedules and information and all that stuff, but you know, there's been a real crimp put in history by these absurd investigations that have gone on where people, you know, don't even want to, you know, say I had dinner last night with--because if you say that, the person you had dinner with is likely to get called before some committee somewhere.

BUT OBAMA shouldn't be too happy. Wait until the My Space and Face Book crowd he's after gets a load of this from Wikipedia: "Geffen is legendary for being outspoken about several issues, particularly on music copyrights. When interviewed about the licensing deal between UMG and Microsoft Zune, Geffen revealed he feels all owners of portable media players are guilty of copyright infringement. 'Each of these devices is used to store unpaid-for material. This way, on top of the material people do pay for, the record companies are getting paid on the devices storing the copied music.'"

EDITOR & PUBLISHER - Maureen Dowd's column in The New York Times today, in which she quoted former Bill Clinton supporter David Geffen offering a few caustic comments, has incited a strong Hillary Clinton campaign attack on Geffen -- and the candidate he now favors, Sen. Barack Obama. Then Obama's team fired back. . .

Clinton campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson released the following statement this morning: "While Senator Obama was denouncing slash and burn politics yesterday, his campaign's finance chair was viciously and personally attacking Senator Clinton and her husband. "If Senator Obama is indeed sincere about his repeated claims to change the tone of our politics, he should immediately denounce these remarks, remove Mr. Geffen from his campaign and return his money.

"While Democrats should engage in a vigorous debate on the issues, there is no place in our party or our politics for the kind of personal insults made by Senator Obama's principal fundraiser."

Obama's team responded a few hours later. Communications director Robert Gibbs just released the following statement:

"We aren't going to get in the middle of a disagreement between the Clintons and someone who was once one of their biggest supporters. It is ironic that the Clintons had no problem with David Geffen when was raising them $18 million and sleeping at their invitation in the Lincoln bedroom. It is also ironic that Senator Clinton lavished praise on Monday and is fully willing to accept today the support of South Carolina State Sen. Robert Ford, who said if Barack Obama were to win the nomination, he would drag down the rest of the Democratic Party because he's black."

Geffen protested to Arianna Huffington today that he has no role in the Obama campaign beyond co-sponsoring his giant Hollywood fundraising event this week. . .

More from Dowd:

- "I don't think anybody believes that in the last six years, all of a sudden Bill Clinton has become a different person," Mr. Geffen says, adding that if Republicans are digging up dirt, they'll wait until Hillary's the nominee to use it. "I think they believe she's the easiest to defeat."

-- She is overproduced and overscripted. "It's not a very big thing to say, 'I made a mistake' on the war, and typical of Hillary Clinton that she can't," Mr. Geffen says.

-- The Dreamworks co-chairman calls the former president "a reckless guy" who "gave his enemies a lot of ammunition to hurt him and to distract the country."

-- They fell out in 2000, when Mr. Clinton gave a pardon to Marc Rich after rebuffing Mr. Geffen's request for one for Leonard Peltier. "Marc Rich getting pardoned? An oil-profiteer expatriate who left the country rather than pay taxes or face justice?" Mr. Geffen says. "Yet another time when the Clintons were unwilling to stand for the things that they genuinely believe in. Everybody in politics lies, but they do it with such ease, it's troubling."