THEY slapped handcuffs on one Paul W. Adler last week. Hidden federal microphones had caught him in a candid moment, talking about what politicians sometimes talk about.
Adler is chairman of the Rockland County Democratic committee. He’s also a high-order Friend of Hillary, having been present at the creation of her U.S. Senate candidacy.
You know, it’s true: Birds of feather do flock together.
Adler, according to federal prosecutors, swiped $375,000 via fraud, extortion and bribery. A surreptitiously obtained tape quotes him as saying he had not become Rockland County Democratic Party boss “to lose money.”
“If you can’t help your friends, then why get into some of these positions?” the feds say he said.
It’s hard not to imagine just such a question hanging in the air way back when, as Hillary’s $100,000 cattle-futures jackpot was being arranged.
Just as it is impossible not to notice that Adler isn’t Hillary’s only good friend in New York.
That’s what the “soft-money” debate is all about.
“Soft money” describes special-interest contributions to mostly unregulated groups meant to be spent on behalf of – but technically not by – a given candidate.
At the end of the day, soft money is about friends helping friends – with reciprocity obligations a given.
It is true that both Rick Lazio and Mrs. Clinton have soft money at work for them.
But it’s one thing to spatter a little slop on your shoes as you push up to the hog-trough.
It’s something else to hop right into the sty and wallow in the soft-money muck.
Access to the White House – and not just for sleepovers – has been a salable commodity for two terms now.
Thus it’s no surprise to learn that bedrooms at the White House and Camp David are for sale on behalf of Mrs. Clinton’s ambitions, too.
Just as it’s no surprise that word of this latest scandal comes not from New York’s newspaper of record, which seems to have known all about it – but from Matt Drudge, the Peck’s Bad Boy of Internet journalism. (Hillary has friends everywhere, but Drudge is not one of them.)
Nor is it a shock that the White House won’t release a list of sleepover “guests” – in the sense that gold-card-on-the-barrelhead hotel patrons are “guests” – in anything vaguely resembling useful form.
The press office virtually tied a rock to that photo of Lazio shaking hands with Yassar Arafat and flung it through a window here at The Post – but that same press office is belligerently stonewalling on the sleepovers.
Why? Because to tell the truth would embarass the big-bucks soft-money folks – and the First Hostelers themselves.
More of a mystery is this: Why are Lazio’s folks letting Mrs. Clinton off the hook?
When Hillary’s campaign wanted to embarrass Lazio for not releasing his tax returns, they had an Uncle Sam impersonator at the candidate’s every public appearance.
The gimmick was dead-on for the 6 p.m. local news – and Lazio coughed up the returns.
Maybe Lazio could put an Abraham Lincoln look-alike on the road?
“Who’s been sleeping in my bed – and when?” Honest Abe would demand to know.
He’d have a point.
The White House has turned into a high-rent Motel 6 for the electoral benefit of Hillary Rodham Clinton. This suggests a shockingly miscalibrated moral compass for the woman who would succeed the estimable Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
In a more perfect world, Moynihan would say so himself; maybe he will, presently.
Until then, it could be useful to recall words from an Oct. 25, 1996, Post editorial: “A second Clinton administration would be mired in scandal from Day One. Voters would do well to remember 1972. Despite his landslide victory, Richard Nixon’s second term was a study in government paralysis lasting from his inauguration until Watergate caused [his resignation].”
And that was before the presidential perjury.
It is fair to say that Hillary Rodham Clinton brings a fair amount of her own baggage to this campaign. New York may have dodged a bullet with Paul Adler’s indictment, but who knows how many other “friends” are orbiting Hillary?
Indeed, who knows how many one-time Clintonistas will be talking – candidly, to prosecutors – once Bill’s fingers are off the levers of power?
Tired of all this?
Hey, who isn’t?
E-mail: mcmanus@nypost.com