May 1996

It hasd an unusual and impressive astringent quality Bob Dole's big announcement last week.

I was astonished to read in Noemie Emery's article on Eleanor Roosevelt that Mrs. Roosevelt disliked "lower class, fat, ostentatiously Catholic [Whittaker] Chambers" ("Mrs. Roosevelt, Liberal Icon," May 13)l. As an ostentatious Catholic myself, I don't doubt Mrs. Roosevelt's distaste, but Chamber's…

Twenty years ago, Jude Wanniski published a book arguing that the stock market astutely gauged the wisdom (or folly) of the policies being pursued in Washington. It's now 1996; the stock market has recorded its best two-year performance since the early 1960s. What does that tell us about the…

When last we reported on Marion Barry, the capital's mayor, he was skipping town for two weeks of"spiritual recovery" time and quoting "To thine own self be true" as Biblical wisdom. Well, he's blown back into D.C., greeting his subjects with a 25-minute effusion of New Age oratory and…

William Tucker's "A Return to the 'Family Wage'" (May 13) is one of the best pieces I have seen on the real reason people are unhappy with the economy in spite of the relatively good economic indicators. When it takes two breadwinners to support a family as well as one breadwinner could a…

Last week, a 72-year-old man decisively took the reins of a party that has lately completed a little-noted but stunning transformation. In our time, the Left has monopolized youth, energy, and beauty -- or at least the world has thought so. That monopoly no longer exists. In fact, in the United…

Michael Deaver is back, helping out with the Dole campaign. In fact, the former Reagan staffer who designed the administration's public "look" will be handling the visuals at the Republican convention in San Diego in August. Not the words, mind you, but the images from the podium. Deaver is telling…

May 15 was one of the most intense days of his political life, but Bob Dole remained remarkably calm throughout. Starting with a morning visit to his campaign headquarters, he kept to his schedule as if the day ahead were like any other.

Brian Atwood announced the shocking news himself: According to preliminary figures, the United States appeared to have fallen to third place among aid- giving governments in terms of total outlays of "official development assistance." Atwood is administrator of the Agency for International…

Our newspapers are so full of gloomy stories about income inequality, downsizing, destitution, and stagnation you'd almost think they're being generated by a buggy software program that somebody has neglected to de- install. After all, the statistics -- on per capita income, unemployment, job…

Your edirotiral decries that under Clinton the federal government's efforts to wage a war on drugs have slowed some ("General Clinton, Losing the Drug War," May 13). You also note that since 1992, drug use -- especially among teens -- is up.

Although Justice John Marshall Harlan's Constitution may have been color- blind, apparently Harlan was not. Before we join Ralph A. Rossum in extolling Harlan's dissent in Plessy v.. Ferguson ("Justice Harlan's Constitution," May 13), it is well to note the ugly personal sentiment expressed by…

Jeffrey Gedmin finds two great faults with the Clinton administration's foreign policy ("Clintoh's Touchy-Feely Foreign Policy," May 13). First, it feverishly seeks to export "politically correct multiculturalism, feminism, relativism, and globalism." Second, its USIA director, Joe Duffey, believes…

Not only is Bill Clinton hijacking Republican rhetoric, he is trying to hijack Ronald Reagan's ineffable style. Staffers in the former president's Los Angeles office report that they are getting requests straight from the Clinton White House for material relating to Reagan's triumphant trips abroad…

even by the low standards of academic squabbling, a recent attack on Princeton University professor John DiIulio stood out as unusually intemperate. In a story published in the February 12 Legal Times, a number of his fellow criminologists described DiIulio as a sloppy, dishonest scholar with…

Why, you may have asked yourself (I did), has Kentucky Fried Chicken changed its name to KFC?

Even the venue Sen. Alfonse D'Amato picked for the opening salvo of an internecine war against the conservatives of his own party was perfect -- Don Imus's shock-jock, politician-larded radio show. D'Amato went off on a tear against the conservative wing of his party, one that he would still be…

After reading Mark Gauvreu Judge's "The Hoya! The Hoya!" (May 6), I predict this misdirected young man has a promising future not as a journalist but as a fiction writer. Rarely are readers treated to such a caricature of the facts as in Judge's description of the changes in requirements for…

Bob Dole can keep a secret. Until the day before he announced his resignation from the Senate on May 15, only five people knew of his decision- Dole, his wife Elizabeth, campaign manager Scott Reed, Republican national chairman Haley Barbour, and writer Mark Helprin. "In order to keep the secret, "…

Bob Dole's resignation from the Senate was cinematic in its drama, and put us in mind of several movies involving the Senate that are worth a rental.

WHAT IF, BY CHANGING TWO WORDS in a federal law, you could prevent the deaths of hundreds of children each year and also prevent tens or even hundreds of thousands of abused children from being victimized again and again?

After hald a centruy of bloodshed and tears, you'd think that Palestinian authorities and the Clinton administration would be serious about building a new government. Judging from the "expert" they've hired to help write the Palestinian constitution, they aren't. The Palestinians requested, and…

Gary Hart is not a politician; he just played one in the United States Senate. He is, he wants us to know, a patriot -- an enlightened leader of his people who loves the common good (or, as he likes to put it, the "national interest") more than his own interest and who wishes, above all, to effect…

Roscoe Bartlett has a plan to close the gender gap. Bartlett, a second-term Republican representative from Maryland, has offered an amendment to the National Security Authorization bill that would ban the sale of nudie magazines like Playboy, Penthouse, and Hustler on military bases.

Comedian Al Franken, author of the bestselling Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot, made a "joke" about Newt Gingrich, his daughter, and menstruation at the White House Correspondents' Dinner on May 4. The dinner, attended by 2, 800 scribblers, politicians, and assorted celebrity hangers-on, was a…

BOB DOLE HAS, HE SAYS, A PLAN to end the gender gap -- but in his effort to woo the female public, he is behaving like a tired rou whose pick-up lines keep falling flat. "Did I mention my war record?" "Hey, I'm great with kids." "I've got a lot of experience" (wink, wink).

The life of a United States senator was not so long ago thought to be a thrilling thing. Any teenaged visitor to the Capitol could imagine it in the gaudiest terms -- a glamorous adventure played out beneath the vaulted and gilded ceilings of that ancient building, across the blue-and-gold carpet…

IN 1991, NEW YORK TIMES columnist Tom Wicker published a book suggesting that Richard Nixon had, despite everything, been "one of us" -- a liberal after all. Not even Wicker could ever have imagined that the day would come when liberals would attempt to rehabilitate George Wallace. But in a…

Sacramento

Little Rock

"Raising the minimum wage," Bill Clinton said last week, "is very important to a lot of us, and more importantly, it's very important to millions and millions of working Americans." He also described the Team Act a Dole measure that would allow employers to bargain with their employees independent…

THAT UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS and administrators are intimidated by the issue of race is obvious. Why? Is not tenure sufficient protection against retribution? Based on recent experience as a result of publishing an article on the subject, let me offer some clues to the fear that racial questions…

I arrived at the Orioles-Twins game a few Sundays ago just in time for the singing of the "Star-Spangled Banner." A young grungeball named Edwin McCain, with hair all the way down his back, was standing in front of home plate, groaning as if drunk, "Orra ramparts we warrrrrshed . . ." Apparently…

Senate majority leader Bob Dole isn't the only Republican running a campaign from the Senate floor. The race to succeed him as Senate Republican leader won't generate many headlines. The candidates don't admit to running, and the votes won't be tallied till December. Yet the outcome will heavily…

In honor of our cover on Extremely Deep Thinkers, we would like to recommend one novel this week, a great book on how Extremely Deep Thinking can get you crosswise of nature itself. That book is Bouvard and Pecuchet, the last (and uncompleted) novel by Gustave Flaubert, the author of Madame Bovary.…

If Bob Dole does the right thing, sometime in the next few weeks your morning newspaper will report the death of a major "bipartisan" proposal to reform campaign financing -- a proposal killed off by the threat of a Republican filibuster in the United States Senate. The story will also point out…

Meanwhile, back at the Dole campaign, Dole's success in using the gas tax as an issue against Bill Clinton has prompted his advisers to consider something bolder in the tax area -- maybe a Reagan-style, across-the-board reduction in income tax rates, 15 percent over three years. But a 90-minute…

While the rest of the country watched in shock as the bodies of 169 people were carried from the rubble of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City last spring, Morris Dees was busy writing direct mail. Just two weeks after the bombing, Dees, famed director of the Southern Poverty Law Center,…

The farmer aims to make his mark on the land. He in turn is marked by that effort, quite literally. My earliest childhood memories of my father are of the physical toll that farming takes on a body. His thumbnails, for instance, always seemed to be deep purple -- badly aimed swings of a hammer will…

Michael J. Sandel tackles the widely shared dissatisfaction with contemporary America from a "communitarian" perspective in his newly published Democracy's Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy (Harvard University Press, 417 pages, $ 24.95).

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra has announced its 1996-1997 season, and in most respects it is an unremarkable one, offering the usual subscription series dedicated to "Pops," "Celebrity," "Favorites," and so on. But there is also a revolutionary series called "Classically Black." This is a group…

American culture is collapsing, and it is the Right's fault. The Left is out there fighting and we are not; the Left operates the institutions that deliver culture to the public. The New York Times and the Smithsonian take their cases to the people. We talk only to each other. If we had any guts…

I WENT TO ITALY A WEEK BEFORE the April 21 election hoping to observe a politics different from ours. Instead, I was struck again and again by the similarities. Begin with campaign tactics. The leaders of the winning center4eft Ulivo coalition rolled into their final rally April 18 in il pullman --…

Pundits love to say that foreign policy doesn't determine presidential elections, but they have very short memories. Kennedy convinced the country he was a tougher anti-Communist than Nixon. Johnson convinced at least part of the American public that the nation could not allow Goldwater near the…

Democrats and Republicans in Congress are now performing an old ritual dating from the 1930s. The ceremony goes like this: Democrats declare themselves to be kind and generous and ready to "give the nation a pay hike." They raise the minimum wage to X dollars an hour. Republicans cite economic…

BILL CLINTON HAS A PROBLEM. Should he take the advice of his treasury secretary and declare that it is morning in America, 19967 Or should he listen to his labor secretary and offer to share the pain Americans are supposedly feeling from corporate downsizing and global competition?

The Center for Attitudinal Healing "pursues healing and development at a personal, social, and spiritual level." The Center's work "empowers a deeply shared experience from which an enduring sense of community can grow." " Choose peace rather than conflict," starts one mantra -- "and love rather…

After devoting a whole day to electing Bob Dole delegates at my legislative district caucus, I tuned in this morning to Face the Nation to see and hear my candidate.

Bill Clinton is mostly talk. He enjoys daily political combat and negotiates its demands with rare talent. But he has never been much for actual, week-in, week-out government. Over any given administrative term in his long career, the Clinton record is thickly stained with the evidence both of his…

FOR ONCE, SENATE MAJORITY LEADER BOB DOLE'S strategy of running his presidential campaign from the Senate floor may produce a political benefit rather than an embarrassment. By insisting on medical savings accounts as part of health care reform, Dole has put President Clinton and congressional…

The Wall Street Journal published a remarkable story last week under the headline, "AIDS Fight Is Skewed By Federal Campaign Exaggerating Risks." What risks? Well, as reporters Amanda Bennett and Anita Sharpe explain, "for most heterosexuals, the risk from a single act of sex [is] smaller than the…

Last week, David Frost gave us another glimpse into the psychology of Ross Perot. In an interview on PBS, Frost asked Perot, "What do you think are your flaws that you are aware of?"

Remember Hoosiers? If you've seen the 1986 movie, you were probably charmed by the thinly fictionalized David-and-Goliath story about how one of the smallest high schools in the state of Indiana (Milan, enrollment 161) overcomes incredible odds to beat one of the largest (Muncie Central, enrollment…

Fifty years ago, xn 1946, the movies were at their high-water mark of popularity and influence: 90 million Americans went to a picture show every week, a number never duplicated before or since. It was a pretty good year for movies too. Herewith, some of the year's enduringly interesting ones:

Mayor Marion Barry, the capital s longest-running social project, announced he was taking a week off to "work on me" at a farm in rural Maryland -- "a very special place that was established to facilitate holistic, personal renewal for leaders and others who work under extremely stressful…

Nothing like a little objectivity from a press corps scornful of the idea that they lean leftward. On April 19, the Democratic National Committee's Communications Office faxed talking points to "interested parties" with the headline, "Bob Dole's Attacks On President Clinton's Judges: Playing…

I am one Dole supporter who believes illiam Kristol should be commended for speaking out early in the campaign season ("A Dole Defeat and the Conservative Future," April 29). I found his concerns valid and did not find his article mean-spirited, contrary to what the media have reported.

In the 1992 Hollywood satire The Player, a studio bigwig played by Tim Robbins endures a pitch from an auteur wannabe for a prospective work titled Habeas Corpus, about a woman on death row and the district attorney who falls in love with her but is unable to save her. The pitch represents a bid to…

Boston OF ALL THE PLACES WHERE AL GORE could have celebrated Earth Day 1996, he chose a pier in Chariestown, Mass. The vice president came to explain to 200 Massachusetts mayors, hacks, and Americorps volunteers just why Sen. John Kerry is a national treasure. Gore boasted that a Kerry- supported…

May 18, 1996, marks the 100th anniversary of Justice John Marshall Harlan's famous dissenting words in Plessy v. Ferguson that the "Constitution is color-blind." Plessy upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation in general and of the "separate but equal" doctrine in particular. Harlan was…

As Bob Dole's spring slide continues -- he trails Bill linton by 18 points in a recent national poll conducted by the Los Angeles Times -- he's making life a little difficult for the folks at the Republican National Committee. Every Monday, they fax out a nifty summary of polling data showcasing…

House speaker Newt Gingrich boasted to Paul Gigot of the Wall Street Journal that, for all his troubles, he's never lost a vote on the House floor. True, but he did lose a vote in the House Republican leadership on hiking the minimum wage.

In March, Ross Perot gave an extraordinary interview to Dan Balz of the Washington Post. "You're not going to believe this," Perot told Balz, but in 1993 "one of the two parties called up" and "wanted me to give a million dollars for dirty tricks" against the other party. The approach to Perot…

Every year around this time, thousands of college seniors prepare their resumes to send to prospective employers. Cramming a lifetime's worth of experience onto a page or two is apt to be unpleasant for anyone, and for students it is often especially anxietyproducing, a stark reminder that four…

FOR A SHORT TIME LAST YEAR, I was sure I was going to become an English professor. I had landed a job in the English department at Georgetown University, a job that offered free tuition. With the financial barriers to a Ph.D. eliminated, I was free to fulfill a lifelong dream. I would act on 20…

POLITICS OF MEANING" -- it's a movelment whose, time has come. And gone. Shhhh! Dont tell that to the 1,800 or so devotees who recently packed Washington's Omni Shoreham Hotel for the Summit on Ethics and Meaning.

In honor of the current war/peace/electoral hijinks in .the Middle East, the Reading List thought readers puzzled by the elaborate politics of Arab countries might profit from reading some of the great British nonfiction literature about the area:

We welcome (albeit skeptically) Friday's Israel-Lebanon-Syria cease-fire agreement, the latest interruption in the chronic violence that is international politics in the real Middle East.

The editor had triumphed. All through a long New York spring evening, it had been John Updike this and Norman Mailer that. He'd kept his tablemates at the Freedom Forum's annual Free Expression Dinner in a state of conversational bliss, and when the meal was over everybody at his table was in such…

The Clinton administration hopes against all evidence that treating Assad with honor will induce him to moderation.

The problem with a Republican ticket of Bob Dole and Michigan governor John Engler is the image it projects, says a close associate of Ohio governor George Voinovich. "What's the picture? Two thugs." Engler partisans give as good as they get. "The one thing the Republicans who've sniped at Engler…

America's most interesting cultural phenomenon at present is a 49-year-old family therapist with a black belt in hapkido karate and a Ph.D. in physiology from Columbia. Laura Schlessinger hosts a three-hour radio show, five days a week, that originates at KFI in Los Angeles and is heard by 10…

The American theater generally, and the New York theater specifically, do not play much of a role in the cultural life of the nation. It was not ever thus. As recently as 30 years ago, Broadway was still a world unto itself, with its own stars, its own glamor, its own legends and tall tales, its…

It's such a small thing the American novelist Oscar Hijuelos has done: just a little twist in the narrative structure of the novel of recollection, too technical on its face to be of much interest to any but the most determined scholar. But with it, Hijuelos--author of last year's Mr. Ives'…