50 articles
Is there anything the Clinton White House won't spin? On Sunday, Nov. 8, the president's chocolate Labrador retriever Buddy sent Marine Corps helicopter pilot John "Ken" Faircloth to the infirmary for a couple of stitches in his hand. But this was no ordinary dog-man encounter, at least not after…
TOM DELAY, THE HOUSE REPUBLICAN WHIP, is keeping his own job and affecting everybody else's. The morning after Christopher Cox of California announced he was running for speaker of the House, DeLay endorsed Cox's chief opponent, Bob Livingston of Louisiana. Within 48 hours, Cox was out of the race,…
"THE DIFFERENCES ARE MUCH DEEPER in the Republican party than in our party," says House minority leader Richard Gephardt. From the other side of the Democratic party, Al From's Democratic Leadership Council, comes the view that divided Republicans "have moved steadily out of the mainstream on a…
When British authorities arrested the former dictator of Chile, General Augusto Pinochet, in London last month, the story made front-page news around the world. The episode deserved the attention, but its real significance escaped the notice of editorial writers. What is at stake in this drama is…
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At last week's impeachment hearings, liberal constitutional law expert Laurence Tribe of Harvard was one of the star witnesses called by the Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee. But he wasn't treated as a star witness. At least not by his lights. And he let the committee's…
Shortly after Bob Livingston started campaigning for speaker eight months ago, he was asked to explain the differences between him and his likely opponent, Dick Armey. He replied by telling a story about their approaches to fishing. "Dick likes to catch and release," said Livingston, "and I like to…
You wouldn't know it from the media, but on Election Day following the lead two years ago of California, voters in Washington approved the elimination of race and sex preferences by their state government. Initiative 200 was modeled on California's Prop. 209 and passed with 58 percent of the vote,…
I must've been 12 when I first heard Leontyne Price. I didn't like vocal music much -- young people seldom do. But she was on the concert series, sandwiched between the likes of Horowitz and Milstein, so I went.
THERE WAS A TIME, NOT LONG AGO -- before Bill Clinton became our first black president -- when the Democratic party was a domicile for racist demagogues like George Corley Wallace. In Wallace's 1970 race for governor of Alabama, his supporters circulated thousands of leaflets cautioning, "Wake Up,…
Administrations and politicians can avoid reality for only so long. Eventually, reality intrudes on artful spinning and wishful thinking. Since last January, we have been arguing that the United States faces only two choices in dealing with Saddam Hussein: either remove him from power or learn to…
When you are on the "winning" side of some soon to be resolved issue, you are naturally disinclined to invite detailed argument about the merits of your position. Congressional Democrats believe they have this Clinton-Lewinsky matter locked down tight. So last Monday, at the House Constitution…
Yellow is the cruelest color. Seemingly extroverted and gay, it expects to be treated like a prima donna, or it will go to pieces. It is too easily corrupted. The barest touch of black or graphite turns it dirty, grudging green. The eye can distinguish a million bright reds, greens, and purples,…
Back in the middle years of the Cold War, when Georgetown was the center of the universe, there was a woman named Mary Meyer who always seemed to be in the thick of things.
The title, A Man in Full, is the first of many brilliant strokes in Tom Wolfe's rich, crazy, flawed, and deeply moving new novel. A Man in Full is, first and last, a meditation about manhood -- about what it means to live in a nation that worships boys and their games rather than men and their…
On April 11, 1819, John Keats, on his way to meet his publisher, ran into one of his former medical-school teachers, Joseph Green, who introduced him to his companion, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, one of the famous talkers of his day. Sad to report, one of the means to becoming a famous talker is being…
It now seems fairly certain that some time in the next few weeks the Clinton administration will have to strike Iraq. There really are no acceptable alternatives. Saddam's recent demand for the expulsion of the U.N. weapons inspectors and for the removal of Richard Butler as head of the inspections…
In 1936, Eugene Fodor published On the Continent, the first book-length travel guide to bear his name. Subtitled "the entertaining travel annual," On the Continent covered Europe from Portugal to Turkey, offering neither pictures nor maps, just relaxed advice and lively prose.
Itamar Rabinovich has unique credentials for writing about the failed peace talks Syria and Israel held from 1992 to 1996. He is a leading academic specialist on both Syria and Arab-Israeli negotiations, and he served during the 1990s as the Israeli ambassador to the United States and as Israel's…
It's one thing to shake a moralizing finger at the world and say, "Be good." It's quite another to show that virtue is its own reward. You can ask for adherence to traditional values simply because they're traditional, or you can show that virtue is right because it works. As C. S. Lewis once…
The bad news is settling in -- starting to seem real. Some take this as a cue to leave, others to dance. But really: Somebody has to do something about this music. "It's Not Unusual" was bad enough. But now, just as the big-screen TVs announce another Republican defeat, the band cranks up to top…
Twenty-five minutes stuck in an elevator with Alfonse D'Amato and Ed Koch. Let's repeat that: Twenty-five minutes stuck in an elevator with BOTH Alfonse D'Amato and Ed Koch. There are now twelve people in the world who know how that feels. The rest of us can wear little black lapel ribbons: Free…
A receptionist picks up the phone at DNC headquarters, a modern office building in the shadow of an overpass half a mile south of the Capitol. It's a reporter on the line, calling to ask about the poll numbers that have begun leaking out of the networks. It looks like some surprising Democratic…
The party's just started, and it has the deflated feel of a high-school dance an hour before the prom queen and the star quarterback arrive. A 10-piece oldies band is cranking out the Tom Jones hit "It's Not Unusual," but no one's dancing. (Actually, no one's danced to "It's Not Unusual" in 30…
It's still early, but already New York Republicans in the ballroom are filled with foreboding. Exit polls show Sen. Alfonse D'Amato down by as much as 10 points. Immediately the rumor spreads through the ballroom: The exit-polling company has messed up the sample! The results are so unreliable, TV…
John Sweeney swigs Cabernet out of a plastic cup, but don't be misled: The AFL-CIO also serves lunchbucket suds, American-made -- Bud or Bud Light for these horny-handed sons of toil. The only imports here are the waiters, who are quick to point out that they're union and that they're leaving at 10…
Editor's Note: Harvey Mansfield, one of America's leading political scientists and a widely published author, will deliver the 2007 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities at the Warner Theatre in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, May 8, 2007. The annual NEH-sponsored Jefferson Lecture is the most…
It was an election about nothing, an election to determine the outcome of an issue -- impeachment -- about which few candidates had anything to say: That verdict has been voiced repeatedly over the last few weeks. But in fact, like most elections, this one was partly about government. And not so…
American political parties hardly ever concede what's "bad" in a given campaign result. The dark cloud is always a meteorological anomaly; what really matters is the silver lining. Sometimes -- rarely -- this is actually true. It is partly true where official Republican explanations for the 1998…
I'm not an expert in these matters, but here's my guess. Historians of the future will date the demise of conservatism in America to the summer of 1996, when it was revealed that the Clinton White House had obtained the secret FBI files of several hundred Republican politicos.
The 1998 election was about as good as it gets for George W. Bush. He was already the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000, and his landslide reelection as governor of Texas strengthened his lead. Better yet, his brother Jeb was elected governor of Florida, which means…
There's no blinking the truth: Campaign '98 was not only a bad Republican defeat, it was a personal triumph for the president. Some happy-talk Republicans will want of course to deny the magnitude of the president's victory. They will point to the exit polls showing that voters still disapprove of…
On two recent Mondays, October 19 and 26, U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright began to make public the documentary record of Jones v. Clinton, the epic litigation her court has supervised for more than four years. Further such releases are promised. What Judge Wright has unsealed so far --…
I DROPPED BY THE OPTICIAN'S the other day to have my glasses powered up since it seemed the newspaper had begun using a much smaller type to print the boxscores. That fairly routine visit, however, produced a head-on cultural collision that left me shaken. An optician's is not the place, you would…
FREE TRADE IS LOSING ITS GRIP on the conservative movement. In recent years a growing minority of conservatives, led by Patrick Buchanan, has swung to the opposite end of the spectrum and embraced outright protectionism. Less noticeably, others on the right who remain opposed to raising new trade…
Contributing editor David Frum is looking for a research assistant for a four-month stint beginning immediately. Please send a resume, references, and salary requirements to: David Frum, 1101 17th Street, NW, Suite 608, Washington DC 20036.
Detroit
I was at dinner with a tableful of Washington journalists -- eight right-wingers and a leftist. The drunkest of the conservatives, at a cruising altitude of five or six cocktails, asked his colleague how he'd wound up on the left.
The perfidy of the Religious Right apparently knows no bounds. According to a story on the Reuters wire last week, a new report from a pro-choice group in New York known as the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy has uncovered a shocking fact about the National Right to Life Committee:…
THE HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE is likely to hold its first impeachment hearing on November 16. There's just one problem: Not a single committee Democrat believes the president's behavior is impeachable. So what do they do? Carpetbomb Ken Starr, make life miserable for Republicans, and defend the…
One day the fate of Jerusalem, of Palestine, of Israel itself will be decided. Soon.
It has now been eight months since Clinton appointees at the Defense Department leaked confidential information from Linda Tripp's security file in an effort to embarrass her -- and possibly get her fired. It has been eight months, too, since the Pentagon's inspector general promised a report on…
The Young Members Committee of the National Press Club hosted a panel discussion the other week on "Getting and Keeping Your Dream Job." Seth Gitell, national editor of the Forward, wandered in and called up THE SCRAPBOOK to relate the experience. The marquee speaker, it turns out, was none other…
To me, Ronald Reagan always has been, and remains, a mystery. Never -- not from the first occasion on which I met him and spent a few hours in his company before he became president; not after talking to him several more times over the years; not after watching him at a distance but with the…
What an interesting reaction was elicited by the Republican decision last week finally to air some anti-Clinton ads. THE SCRAPBOOK has always hewed to the view -- call it eccentric -- that if you think the president of the United States may be unfit to hold his high office, and if impeachment…
The American Federation of Teachers freaked out last week at the good news that low-income children in New York City who attend private schools under a scholarship program have improved their performance and outpaced their public-school peers in reading and math. "Although voucher advocate Paul…
Books used to be simple paper blocks that you could buy only at bookstores. Sometimes the store had what you wanted. Sometimes you had to wait. Maybe for one day. Maybe for ninety.
The movement for "environmental justice" and against "environmental racism" began in the 1980s. Its premise is that racial minorities, particularly in low-income neighborhoods, suffer disproportionately from pollution.
In an interview with Japanese journalists in 1995, Fidel Castro had harsh words for the conservative American legislators he holds responsible for Cuba's economic misery. But he praised President Clinton for being a "progressive" and a man deeply committed to "social justice."
Welcome to Pleasantville, the town portrayed in the satirical allegory now playing in theaters, the first feature film directed by Gary Ross, who wrote the movies Big and Dave.