September 2000

THE BUSH CAMPAIGN needs a new focus. "Compassionate conservatism" got it through the convention but has failed miserably ever since. What happened? While Republicans were worried about trying to put on a good front to blacks, women, single mothers, and the poor, Al Gore and the Democrats made a…

Turns out Susan Estrich, who describes herself as a good friend of Bill Clinton, was a guest at one of those White House sleepovers last year. And she didn't even have to pay for it. In fact, the president paid her -- in the form of what would seem unusually sensitive confidences about his…

Admirers of legendary Harvard government professor Harvey Mansfield -- which should include every reader of THE SCRAPBOOK -- will be delighted by a new book of essays in his honor. Educating the Prince, edited by Mark Blitz and THE WEEKLY STANDARD's own William Kristol, is just out from the…

WHO DESERVES the credit for balancing the federal budget? Coming after a 30-year string of budget deficits, this seemingly miraculous feat has large political ramifications. For many Americans, it is one of the great public policy accomplishments of recent times. Whichever party can lay claim to it…

Circumcision

For all the luxuries journalists enjoy -- the generous medical and dental, the regular bathroom breaks, the gratis ice water -- there is one perk that's noticeably absent: groupies. Sure, you'll see the occasional fan slip by this magazine's lax security, donning his best starched Dockers, starting…

In January 1989, at a meeting arranged by Connecticut state senator Regina Smith, Joseph Lieberman and several members of his staff had a private conversation with officials of the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC). A few months before, during the closing weeks of his successful campaign…

To my culturally critical mind, the richest show on television these past few years has been an austere program known as Classic Arts Showcase. Consisting of excerpts from decades-old films, videos accompanying classical music, concert performances, and related highbrow stuff, Classic Arts Showcase…

Austin

There's a scene in The Exorcist -- the book, not the movie -- in which a motion-picture director shares a trade secret: "Darling, all you really need is a brilliant cutter." Many readers of William Peter Blatty's novel believe The Exorcist -- the movie, not the book -- suffered from too much…

"We want to introduce you to the folks who are the heart and soul of American politics," CNN's Jeff Greenfield told his audience on the first night of last month's Democratic convention. So he introduced them to one Paul Adler, chairman of New York State's Rockland County Democratic party -- a man,…

By now there isn't a political reporter alive who hasn't written a story about the "serious question" whether Bush campaign media consultant Alex Castellanos deliberately inserted the word "rats" -- as a subliminal message -- into one frame of a television ad criticizing Al Gore's Medicare…

American Poetry:

There are now about two weeks until the first presidential debate. This means that the Bush campaign has just a short time to redefine the nature of the race. For if George W. Bush enters the debates and final frenzied month with the campaign still being fought on Democratic turf, it will be very…

IN HIS PURSUIT of the presidency, Al Gore has acquired something more than a new wardrobe -- he's acquired a new reading list.

Chicago

Let us state the obvious: If Wen Ho Lee's name had been John Witherspoon, counterintelligence officers in the Department of Energy and the Federal Bureau of Investigation would not have highlighted him so prominently as a possible mole for the People's Republic of China. No doubt they still…

Monroe, Michigan

In 1998, Silicon Valley businessman Ron Unz wrote California's Proposition 227 and almost single-handedly planned and financed the campaign that got it passed. Unz's winning initiative effectively abolished the state's bilingual education programs in favor of a cold-turkey "English immersion"…

How did we get to the point where a respected philosopher of science could place Western science on a par with voodoo and argue that truth in science should be determined by democratic vote? Or that a feminist could call Newton's Principia a "rape manual"?

For the last half century, no presidential candidate behind in the polls on Labor Day has gone on to win. George W. Bush was behind on Labor Day, and sliding. Can he turn it around?

WRITING IN THE JULY 31 issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD, William Kristol and Jeffrey Bell argue that conservatives should drop their opposition to banning or severely limiting the political parties' use of "soft money." To compensate for the loss of soft money, Kristol and Bell advocate increasing the…

In the summer of 1998, Julie Hiatt Steele -- remember her? -- filed a federal punitive damages claim against Michael Isikoff, the Newsweek reporter justly honored for his Lewinsky scandal scoops. Steele's logic was truly bizarre. To summarize:

This week the Senate will vote on granting China permanent most-favored-nation trade status. The vote comes a lot later than the Clinton administration and China's friends in the Senate wanted. Too close to the elections, you see, and therefore too likely to be infected by election-year "politics,"…

DEBBIE STABENOW, a Democratic congresswoman who's running to unseat senator Spencer Abraham, stood in a South-field, Michigan, pharmacy a year ago August and previewed the issue that would become the centerpiece of her campaign. "It is absolutely, fundamentally wrong," she charged, "that senior…

AROUND THE TIME of the political conventions in August, voters were asked in a Gallup poll to take another stab at the 1992 election. This time, President George Bush defeated Bill Clinton by 53 percent to 42 percent. Then, assuming Clinton could run for another term, they were asked if they…

When We Were Orphans

THE SCRAPBOOK considers it an appalling invasion of privacy, not to mention an invitation to the worst sort of Tartuffery, that we require our political leaders to disclose their charitable giving in their tax forms. But given that we do, last week's anti-Cheney frenzy in the press was amazingly…

THE GORE CAMPAIGN has just launched a blistering $ 5.4 million ad campaign that attacks George W. Bush's record as governor on providing health care to children in Texas. After noting that "George Bush says he has a plan to improve children's health care," the ad rhetorically asks, "Why hasn't he…

IT IS A uniquely humiliating twist to the story of the lost submarine and the 118 sailors now entombed at the bottom of the Barents Sea: Before August, there was no prouder name than "Kursk" in Russian military history. Today, the name evokes tragedy and shame and the steep decline in Russian…

Presidents are an odd lot, sometimes too much so, ranging from the heroic to the reprehensible, and from the ridiculous to the sublime. But most, at least lately, have had one thing in common. In picking a president, voters have chosen the left and the right, the poor and the rich, the pious and…

Myth is central to human existence: History may tell us what we have been, but myths tell us what we could have been and might still be -- as well as what others want us to be. Over the last hundred years, the most influential mythmakers have been moviemakers, reinforcing old stereotypes and…

I don't believe I have attitude, but I do own at least one bow tie that does. Some readers will wonder if that sentence isn't missing an indefinite article. Shouldn't it be "an attitude"? For anyone who feels the want of that indefinite article, I can only say, in the mortal words of Mr. T., from…

The Catholic Church teaches that our moral and intellectual failures may sometimes be excused by something it calls "invincible ignorance" -- an absolute incapacity to understand that what we're doing is wrong. The plea of invincible ignorance seems just about the only hope for Catholic parents in…

WHAT DOES IT MEAN to be a compassionate conservative? George W. Bush sought to answer that question, both in his acceptance speech in Philadelphia and (more extensively) in an address in Indianapolis on July 22, 1999. As a compassionate conservative, he proposes to "speak without apology for the…

THE RECENT BICKERING over the role of religion in presidential politics -- brought on by a sudden and unexpected eruption of Bible-thumping from Sen. Joseph Lieberman -- has of course alarmed the enlightened classes. "I was appalled," read a typical letter last week to the Washington Post. "Mr.…

In Praise of Public Life

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

My wife and I are in Athens, and all we want to eat is the Greek equivalent of a hamburger, a luscious lamb gyro. Without realizing it, we've selected a hopelessly American-themed restaurant, called "Jackson," and when I ask our waitress whether they serve gyros -- carefully pronouncing it the…

Spinning Blues Into Gold

On August 3, President Clinton used -- in fact, abused -- his recess-appointment authority to make Bill Lann Lee the head of the Justice Department's civil rights division. The action was a slap in the face to the Republican-controlled Senate. It will be interesting to see if it is ignored.

Anyone who wants to improve our nation's schools would be wise to ponder a basic fact: that the teachers unions have more influence on the public schools than any other groups in American society.

AS CONGRESSIONAL REPUBLICANS return to Washington this week, preparing for their final budget scrum with Bill Clinton, they're gripped by a familiar emotion: fear. Fear that they will end up capitulating to costly Democratic health care proposals covering HMOs and prescription drugs. Fear that they…

AS OF LAST WEEK, Al Gore had been invited to participate in 45 presidential debates. Gore has "accepted all of them," boasts aide Mark Fabiani, "legitimate and half-way legitimate," including an offer from would-be moderator David Letterman. Gore says he wants to debate as often as possible, and he…

In the May 26 Washington Post, Robert Kaiser trotted out several of the finest minds in the academic business of election forecasting to announce Al Gore's certain victory this fall over George W. Bush. "It's not even going to be close," the University of Iowa's Michael Lewis-Beck was quoted as…

Last Thursday, the Clinton administration released the national drug use survey for 1999 and heralded a decline in teen drug use. Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey called it "extremely encouraging news." HHS secretary Donna Shalala proclaimed: "We've not only turned the corner -- we're heading for home…

When Jane Doe No. 1 decided to place her baby for adoption in 1961, she was promised her decision would be kept confidential. That's what the law said in Oregon, where her baby was born, and that's what her doctor, a nun, and the attorney handling the adoption assured her, too. Jane, 21 and…

Newsflash to politicians: before the economy, environment, even education, come two-parent families. This was the message from a new Wirthlin poll released last week by the Alliance for Marriage, which touts itself as a "non-partisan, multicultural marriage coalition." According to the survey…

Not so long ago, Ben & Jerry's, the famous Vermont-based cult movement, made a very special announcement about the ice cream it manufactures as an offering to the Earth Spirit. "World's Best Vanilla," Ben & Jerry's proclaimed, would henceforth be sold only in containers made from unbleached paper.…

At the end of last week, by general consensus here in the capital, the presidential campaign turned "negative" -- and it was George W. Bush who did the deed. The awkward way Bush crossed this line and the reaction to his move are eloquent testimony to a central weakness of current American…

The nation's liberty, George Washington pointed out more than two hundred years ago, cannot be maintained without morality, and morality, in turn, largely rests on religion. But over the last four decades, the forces of secularism -- with considerable aid from America's judges -- have won…