August 2000

Los Angeles

Bowling Alone

For fun, I decided to take PolicyMaker for a test drive. I asked the program to tell me how to persuade Harvard University to hand over a small chunk of its mammoth $ 14 billion endowment to the poor communities in nearby Roxbury and South Boston. Miraculously, after I plugged in all the "players"…

Did you wonder why speakers at the Democratic convention were so soft-hitting in their attacks on George W. Bush? It wasn't a sudden conversion to compassionate conservatism. It was the focus groups.

News Item: INS HONORS ELIAN AGENTS

Nearly the whole of his life has been a lie, but on the first night of last week's Democratic convention, Bill Clinton nevertheless bestirred himself and spoke the truth. He identified more directly and completely than anyone else possibly could the central point of reference in the coming…

Los Angeles

Los Angeles

It was with a grim sense of anthropological duty that THE SCRAPBOOK hied itself over to a party at the Playboy Mansion, held the Saturday night before the convention. The party was tossed for newsfolk -- including roughhewn, shoe-leather types like Bryant Gumbel, who said he knows who will win on…

The day before the convention officially opened, the America Israel Public Affairs Committee and some other Jewish organizations sponsored an event at the Sony Studios lot for Joe Lieberman and Bill and Hillary Clinton. It will not go down as a landmark in the history of political advance work. The…

WITH WELL OVER a million American children homeschooled, and the number growing steadily year after year, homeschool advocates are turning their attention to higher education. Some have banded together to found Patrick Henry College, an evangelical Christian school due to open its doors at a brand…

Not all the movie stars were going gaga for Gore last week. The famously frosty show-biz couple Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins appeared at the left-wing "shadow convention" to declare their support of Ralph Nader. Robbins said matter-of-factly that he's defecting from the party. And what does he…

THE ELITE MEDIA BELIEVE that the much-used Texas death penalty may hurt governor George W. Bush in his bid for the White House. They paint the Texas criminal justice system as draconian, cavalier when it comes to due process, unfair to minorities, and excessively swift and unyielding. They take…

As everyone knows, Al Gore's advisers are trying desperately to dream up ways to distinguish their man from his boss. One obvious way to do that, you might think, is to highlight Al Gore's experience in the real world. Bill Clinton seems to have been born a professional politician. According to…

There were two presidents in Los Angeles as the convention was getting underway. One, of course, was Bill Clinton. The other was Taiwan's Chen Shui-bian, who except for a brief wave to well-wishers, stuck to his hotel room Sunday night, trying hard not to be the skunk at Clinton's party.

It Didn't Happen Here

PolicyMaker 2.2 TM is a jazzy new computer program devised by Harvard University professor Michael Reich. Selling for just under $ 100, this Nintendo-style spreadsheet -- which bills itself as the latest in "computer-assisted political analysis" (CAPA) -- has entered the curriculum at schools of…

Earlier this month, we found ourselves sufficiently annoyed by Internet hype to publish a skeptical, not to say unkind, forecast for the Web's coverage of political conventions this summer ("Confessions of a Dot-Com Delegate," by Andrew Ferguson, Aug. 7, 2000). Cyberenthusiasts had been predicting…

Los Angeles

Los Angeles

THE SCRAPBOOK is delighted to learn that it is not going deaf -- or at least that it's not getting any deafer than some other reputable publications. When President Clinton went barreling into his peroration on the convention's first night, we were right there, tightly gripping our ear trumpet, and…

Let it never be said that THE SCRAPBOOK is a Negative Nelly, just carp, carp, carp all day long, with scarcely a kind word for anyone. This week we have a kind word for the New York Times.

We hope President Clinton wasn't offended, but it's pretty clear that some wiseacre from the DNC was trying to send a subliminally subversive message to America last Monday night. For as soon as the president had finished his rip-snorting farewell address, he was followed by a production number…

Los Angeles

Winning Ugly

The elements are (of course) the federal government, journalism in witless mode, and a public sensibility of such softness that it is not far from emotional rot. Specifically: (1) the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; (2) the Washington Post; and (3) that excessive public sensibility, alarmingly…

Throughout this week, you can go to www.weeklystandard.com for daily updates from THE SCRAPBOOK and the crack reporters and editors of THE WEEKLY STANDARD at the Democratic convention in Los Angeles.

I SUGGEST THAT YOU members of "the party of Jefferson" do something that Jefferson would have done -- I don't mean make like Bill Clinton with Sally Hemings -- and stop and think for a minute. Why are you a Democrat? Are you a Democrat because you're poor? Poor people vote for Democrats. Rich…

AL GORE'S choice of Connecticut senator Joseph Lieberman as his running mate was so widely hailed for breaking an ethnic barrier that the seeming strategic illogic of it escaped notice. But as last week began, Gore faced problems beyond the power of logic to solve. On one hand, his left-wing base…

Los Angeles

Contributing editor Charles Krauthammer seeks a research assistant. Send resume to 1225 19th St., NW, Suite 620, Washington, DC 20036 or e-mail CkrauRA@aol.com.

EVER IN SEARCH OF HIS PLACE in the history books, Bill Clinton hit a home run during the Republican convention: first sitting president to say people were mean to me; first sitting president to say nyah nyah to rivals; first sitting president to accuse an opponent of being too close to his dad. He…

I had come home twenty years too late, my childhood doctor Barbara Spears declared. It was primarily to see my grandmother that I took my wife and daughter back to South Dakota. But while there I put together a dinner with some of my parents' friends from the years we'd lived in Pierre: two or…

Carthage, Tenn.

American Pharaoh

WHEN AL GORE sought the Democratic nomination for president in 1988, three leading members of his Texas steering committee were Ken Armbrister, Hugo Berlanga, and Mark Stiles. All Democratic state legislators, they helped spread Gore's name across Texas, and served as surrogate speakers for him at…

IN 1994, TERM LIMITS for U.S. senators and congressmen were a prominent item in the Contract With America. Republicans, worried they couldn't get the needed two-thirds of Congress to enact the limits, promised only to bring the issue to a vote. But many were enthusiastic backers of limits that…

If the polls are to be believed, the Gore-Lieberman results shouldn't be much affected by anti-Semitism this fall. Gallup has asked voters for decades whether they would pull the lever for someone nominated by their party to be president who is "generally well qualified" and who also happens to be…

THE SCRAPBOOK's e-mail inbox (scrapbook@weeklystandard.com) was filled to overflowing last week by readers calling attention to Fox Butterfield's New York Times article on incarceration rates in America. As longtime readers of this page know, this has become a regular event, rather like the return…

In the fall of 1998, Senator Joseph Lieberman became that rarest thing in the Democratic party: a belated but loud and therefore noteworthy critic of Bill Clinton's entanglement with Monica Lewinsky. Obviously, then, by adding Lieberman to his ticket last week, Gore was attempting "separation" from…

Seven years ago, New York City under Mayor David Dinkins stood on the edge of social and economic breakdown. Elected in 1989 as a symbol of racial healing, Dinkins conducted a largely symbolic mayoralty. Put in power by liberals whose exhausted policy program had been replaced by identity politics,…

JOHN CONYERS, longtime congress-man from Detroit, has a pet project that most people have never heard of: reparations for slavery. Every legislative session since 1989, he has introduced a bill that would establish a commission to "examine the institution of slavery" and "make recommendations on…

From the time he emerged as a serious presidential aspirant in 1991, Bill Clinton consciously set himself to the task of remaking the Democratic party, cracking it loose from the ossifying ideological liberalism of FDR and LBJ in an effort to broaden its political appeal. Clinton was a New Democrat…

Democratic songbird Carly Simon, fresh from posting $ 250,000 bail on behalf of a backup singer who got nabbed with 17 kg of cocaine, was back in the news last week after raising money for another friend: Hillary Clinton. Simon and several other celebrities gathered in early August at the Martha's…

For our taste, there was rather too much up-with-people gush at last week's Republican National Convention -- and too much pop-culture flash, and too much manipulative hypersentimentality. There were persons with disabilities. There was a Miss America. There was a professional wrestler. There was…

THE World Trade Organization, inaugurated in 1995, has had a much rockier beginning than anything experienced by its less-structured predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. A bitter early leadership struggle between developed-country and less-developed-country members of the WTO…

Besides hosting the spin-prep meetings, Charlie Black found other ways to keep busy. While everybody but the press seemed intent on burying those bad old partisan right-wing ultra-conservative mean-spirited hard-edged days of 1992 and 1996, Black was trying to rewrite one of that era's signal…

Come on, admit it. You enjoyed it and so did just about everybody else. And why not? It was fun while it lasted -- "fun" being a relative term, of course, but one suitably applied to a spontaneous outbreak of malice and rancor, so out-of-step with the enforced cheeriness and good manners of last…

Haute Cuisine

One of those Republicans who defended the presidency at some peril was Henry Hyde, who served as guest of honor at a National Review reception Wednesday. The chance to pay him his due attracted one of the week's best guest lists: William and Pat Buckley, the editors of NR and NR online, Ralph Reed,…

New York Times readers who were unlucky enough to miss Colin Powell's Monday night barnburner got a raw deal the next morning. As is its custom for major events, the Times reprinted excerpts from the speech for its readers. But it's a strange principle that guided the selection of those excerpts.…

When a group billing itself as "Academics for Mumia Abu-Jamal" held a press conference in Philadelphia during the Republican National Convention, it was inevitable that Jonathan Kozol would be a featured speaker. A publicity hound of the first order, Kozol has made a nice career out of writing…

Of course, it was not all fun and games and frivolity for THE SCRAPBOOK in Philadelphia. When we read in Tuesday's Philadelphia Inquirer that porn star Nina Hartley would appear at Scorpio Adult Bookstore, we knew some shoe-leather reporting was in order. What we didn't know was that the Inquirer…

There was a culture war long before the last few decades -- only the combatants weren't liberal elites versus conservative regular Joes. This was a war between New York City and the rest of the United States. New York viewed itself as the only American locale of consequence, the singular place to…

It started on Monday with a Hispanic girl singing the national anthem, a black Baptist minister preaching by video from the pulpit of his church, an Asian-American woman celebrating the virtues of voluntarism, and a black retired general defending affirmative action. It concluded on Thursday with a…

THE BUSH CAMPAIGN can lowball with the best of them. George W. Bush has been leading Al Gore by roughly 6 percentage points (when public polls are averaged) for five months now. And by the time they had the confetti swept away in Philadelphia, his lead had grown to double digits. Yet the Bush…

Elizabeth Dole ran a brief, remarkably tense presidential campaign, dropped out, and almost immediately sank beneath the political waves. She resurfaced in Philadelphia with a much-prized slot in the prime-time schedule. The prize was fitting, if only because so much of the convention descended,…

-- Philadelphia

What do Republican operatives, fund-raisers, talking heads, and consultants do during a GOP convention when there's no drama, no suspense, and almost nothing to spin? Why, they spin anyway. And how do they know what to spin? In Philadelphia, they got their marching orders at a 9 A.M. daily meeting…

IF YOU'RE a Democratic strategist, there are two ways you can look at last week's Republican convention in Philadelphia: You can be irritated. Or you can be dismissive. Al Gore's campaign team in Nashville has chosen the latter.

Tuesday night's video tribute to George Bush and his presidency presented him as a decisive leader whose "tough stand" against Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait "let the world know we had regained our strength" after Vietnam. That much was unsurprising.

Philadelphia

American Rhapsody

Remember when the Oak Ridge Boys were the acme -- the bee's knees, the cat's pajamas -- of Republican entertainment? No longer. This year's convention replaced the grits with salsa: A small army of Latino musicians strode the boards in official capacities, including, significantly, at George W.…

The New York Times greeted delegates with a front-page scoop on the first day of last week's Republican convention in Philadelphia. After conducting an exhaustive, expensive opinion survey, conforming to the very highest standards of scientific rigor, the newspaper of record discovered that the…

-- Philadelphia

Throughout this week, you can go to www.weeklystandard.com for daily updates from THE SCRAPBOOK and the crack reporters and editors of THE WEEKLY STANDARD at the Republican convention in Philadelphia.

This week's Republican convention is going to suggest, repeatedly not to say incessantly, that the GOP of 2000 is a new and different Republican party, led by a different kind of Republican. This isn't an unreasonable point, and we wish George W. Bush well in conveying it. After all, a certain…

The hell with journalistic objectively -- I'm a dot-com delegate to the 2000 Republican National Convention and proud of it. I think you should be too, by the way, but I'll get to that in a moment. Being a dot-com delegate is like being a real delegate but much better. You don't have to spend any…

PERHAPS, midst the enthusiasm of the Republican convention, we stalwart GOP supporters should take a step back from our partisanship and give a moment's thought to the decent, well-meaning, intelligent people who oppose us -- and how there aren't any.

As THE SCRAPBOOK noted last week, Al Gore recently distinguished himself on Meet the Press by giggling when Tim Russert asked whether he supported a 1994 prohibition on the execution of federal prisoners who are pregnant. Gore then stalled, saying he wasn't familiar with the law in question and…

GEORGIA'S EIGHT Republican congressmen huddled for two solid days last week to determine whether any of them was crazy enough to risk his seat to challenge Zell Miller, newly named to the Senate seat of Paul Coverdell, who died of a brain hemorrhage on July 18. What two weeks ago looked like…

Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia will be hanging out at the Republican national convention with no particular plans. Rep. Henry Hyde of Illinois has plans, but they consist of sitting on the convention floor as a delegate. Rep. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas will attend the convention, too, mainly to talk up…

It's My Party

GEORGE W. BUSH knows how to keep a secret. He got the first draft of the acceptance speech he'll deliver this week at the Republican National Convention while vacationing in early June at the Bush family retreat in Kennebunkport, Maine. He's been tinkering with it ever since. He discussed it with…

Politicians are not my dish of tea. I do not long for their company. Of the few I've met, I have admired the salesmanly quality of some among them. I directed the anti-poverty program in Little Rock in the middle 1960s, and after spending fifteen minutes with Wilbur Mills, then chairman of the…

Let Us Talk of Many Things

Poring over Lynne Cheney's long and impressive resume -- which includes an eight-year tenure as chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities -- curiosity seekers may find a reference to The Body Politic, a comic novel that Mrs. Cheney co-wrote in 1988 with Victor Gold, one-time press…

The World According to Gore

States can't ban partial-birth abortions, the Supreme Court has essentially decided. But what about after-birth abortions? What if, in the course of an abortion (or under any other circumstances, for that matter) an infant is fully delivered from its mother's body and exhibits one or more basic…

With the Republican party holding its national convention in Philadelphia this week, civic boosters have been serving up endless testimonials to the city's glorious past and glimmering future. But conveniently absent from these testimonials has been any recognition of Philadelphia's rich political…

Philadelphia

HERE'S HOW NEWS is often put together. Reporters hear things from people. Some of these people, in return for their disclosures, demand and receive a measure of anonymity -- so in the reporter's finished story, their identities are disguised. Not entirely disguised. Newspapers generally demand a…