120 articles
THE DARKLY BRILLIANT Pat Oliphant's post-election cartoon shows a tiny twerp of a cowboy Bush leading a huge, muscle-bound, headless giant off a cliff. The giant is wearing a T-shirt labeled "The Bush Electorate." Above the label is an emblem: an American flag with, in the place of the field of…
THE NEW FAD in American politics in 2004 was data mining. The Republican and Democratic National Committees invested heavily in building large databases that used consumer marketing information to segment voters into groups for highly customized communications.
AT THE HEART of this fall's presidential campaign was a policy debate about the meaning of the "global war on terror." Is it, as George W. Bush came to understand, a struggle for the political future of the greater Middle East--a contest between liberalism and radical Islam to supplant the…
The Plot Against America
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THOUGH PUBLIC REACTION in Europe to President Bush's reelection this month was predictably outraged, grief-stricken, and generally dumbfounded, it wasn't hard to detect behind the mask of uncomprehending disapproval a smug half-smile of self-satisfaction. Deep down, European political and media…
Past Imperfect
PRESIDENT BUSH always believed he would be reelected. So in the weeks before November 2, he repeatedly discussed with White House aides who should replace the departing cabinet members in his second term. And decisions were made, pre-Election Day. Alberto Gonzales, the president's legal counsel,…
WE'RE CHEERFUL. Why not? Bush won. And he won while hanging tough in Iraq. There was no talk of exit strategies, no phony promises that we were soon going to draw down our troop levels, no minimizing of the difficulties of the road that lay ahead. There was only the promise that we would continue…
ON NOVEMBER 14, 60 Minutes aired a segment with Michael Scheuer, who made headlines after resigning from the CIA to pursue his second career as a critic of the war on terror and the war in Iraq. Scheuer was the head of the CIA's bin Laden unit (codenamed "Alec") from 1996 to 1999. With the…
SEARCHLIGHT, NEVADA, is a timeworn desert town of under 600 people about an hour south of Las Vegas. Its heyday was long ago, when the promise of gold attracted hard-rock miners to the area's brown and red hills. But what gold there was is now gone, and with it the miners, gamblers, prostitutes,…
ON FRIDAY, November 5, 2004, Patrick Murray had a blunt warning for a top career official in the CIA's clandestine service: No more leaks. Murray, who has a reputation as a no-nonsense manager, had come to the agency from Capitol Hill as a top aide to Porter Goss, the former chairman of the House…
Arnold vs. Slick Willy?
PROBABLY NO ARTICLE has traveled more miles on the Internet this season than the cri de coeur that the novelist Jane Smiley wrote for Slate 24 hours after the election. Using her supposedly Bush-supporting relatives in Missouri as evidence, Smiley chalked the election results up to the "ignorance…
BY PUTTING INCOME-TAX and Social Security reform atop his second-term domestic agenda, President George W. Bush courageously zeroed in on the two most important fiscal issues facing American families for at least a generation. The basic choice is whether to retain the formula Ronald Reagan…
THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION is not famous for patience with its critics. But for the sake of national security, the new Bush team should listen to constructive criticism of its policies--in particular, its policy for the North Korean nuclear crisis. The current U.S. approach to the North Korea problem…
Books in Brief
The Roads to Modernity
IRAN'S RECENT PUBLIC DECISION to halt its uranium enrichment program could be the first move in a gradual opening of its society and an attempt by Iran's moderate factions to integrate Tehran into the world's economy. Could the pursuit of nuclear weapons be merely a bargaining chip for greater…
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ON THE CUSP of the season of Thanksgiving, Hanukah, and Christmas--the days of generosity--there are two great passages from Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol which deserve rereading, especially by the executives of Target Corporation:
THE SCHEMING in Washington as President Bush prepares for his second term is easily explained. It's the insurgents versus the Washington establishment, and the insurgents are winning.
ANY FEARS that an expanded Republican majority on Capitol Hill would simply become a larger tool for the Bush administration have already been put to rest in the lame-duck session of the past week. Most notably, Reps. Duncan Hunter, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, and James…
THERE IS INDEED something new in financial markets: overseas followers of the Bush administration's so-called "strong dollar policy" are learning the meaning of the American colloquialism "Snow job." As America's traders know, that means deception, accomplished by burying the listener under a…
ON SUNDAY'S Meet The Press Tim Russert asked his guest, Michael Scheuer, to respond to questions concerning his first book from 2002, Through Our Enemies' Eyes. In it, as I pointed out in an earlier article, Scheuer cites numerous pieces of evidence that substantiate the Bush administration's claim…
MICHAEL SCHEUER doesn't have many friends. Former head of the CIA's bin Laden unit and author, under the pseudonym Anonymous, of Through Our Enemies' Eyes and Imperial Hubris, Scheuer has clashed with the likes of the late John O'Neill (who was the FBI's point man on terrorism in the 1990s, and…
THE DAY AFTER the small Gulf state of Qatar promulgated a new constitution in late September, its ruler addressed the United Nations General Assembly. The emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, made a forceful case for political liberalization in the Middle East, even challenging fellow Arab…
WITH FIDEL CASTRO now sporting double-breasted suits, the uniform-clad Yasser Arafat could rightly claim to be "the world's last revolutionary." In this regard, as in so many others, Arafat has no heir. None of the contenders to "succeed" him--if the verb is appropriate to the situation--wears a…
"PRIME MINISTER BLAIR wants to talk about Iraq, and we want to talk about Iran. Which is why we allocated two days to his meeting with the president," one high-level Bush official told me in advance of the Anglo-American summit last week. So all was not sweetness and light, probably a plus for Tony…
Anti-Semitism at Duke
Jerusalem
AT HIS DEATH, Yasser Arafat was viewed in Europe--always his most important constituency outside the Middle East--as the humble and pitiable leader of the dispossessed Palestinian people. But this image does little justice to the magnitude of his achievements. Arafat was the father of modern…
Rove's Secret Weapon: Stupid People
AS THE UNITED STATES and its allies give Tehran its fifth chance in nearly two years to suspend activities that could bring it within weeks of having enough enriched uranium for a large arsenal, the question arises: Isn't there a better way to prevent states from getting nuclear weapons? The answer…
THE AFTERMATH of the election brought a belated realization that President Bush's victory was based in large part on increased evangelical turnout. Hence, predictably, committed religion is again an incendiary political topic, and again it is mindlessly stereotyped as "fundamentalism" and…
YES, the president must get this decision right. He must take real care with the nomination of a new Supreme Court justice. He must name someone impressive who shares his judicial philosophy. And he must get that nominee confirmed.
THE AFTERNOON of Election Day in Washington, one of the Dutch journalists in town to cover the vote mentioned to me that there had been a spectacular killing in Amsterdam that morning, which would be international news as soon as the dust cleared from the Bush-Kerry contest. True enough. Most of…
KARL ROVE SAID LAST YEAR that the question of realignment--whether Republicans have at last become the majority party--would be decided by the election of 2004. And it has. Even by the cautious reckoning of Rove, President Bush's chief political adviser, Republicans now have both an operational…
I Am Charlotte Simmons
George McGovern
A man after my own heart, Peter Kramer of Hillsborough, North Carolina, recently wrote a letter to the New York Times Book Review questioning the novelist Philip Roth for describing George W. Bush as "a man unfit to run a hardware store." Mr. Kramer's point is that Roth could not have chosen a…
IT'S NOT DIFFICULT TO DETECT a level of demoralization among some Democrats that can't be explained by the loss of a single presidential election by three points. One reason may be the death, on November 2, of a myth that has long nourished the hopes of the American left--the idea that tens of…
Books in Brief
THE HERO of Bill Naughton's 1966 novel Alfie is a cocky fellow, well-dressed and glib, a Cockney playboy who knows what it takes to woo the girls. When he first appears, Alfie is with Siddie, a "married woman of twenty-nine, so she said." She's his "regular Thursday night bint," he explains, and "a…
NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT IT, but Bill Clinton might be this year's biggest political loser. With the opening of his presidential library in Little Rock, Arkansas last week, media attention has focused heavily on the Clinton legacy and what his future role will be in shaping the Democratic party.…
MICHAEL SCHEUER, head of the CIA's bin Laden unit and until recently a senior analyst, said something remarkable last week on Hardball with Chris Matthews.
ON NOVEMBER 9, ex-CIA counterterrorism officer Michael Scheuer gave an interview to the Washington Post's Dana Priest. Scheuer, who ran the CIA's bin Laden unit from 1996-99, and whose latest book, Imperial Hubris (published under the pseudonym "Anonymous"), criticizes the Bush administration's…
Namath: A Biography
THE ALWAYS PROVOCATIVE Andrew Sullivan blogged on Tuesday about the Time magazine's "Man of the Year" process:
WITH THE NOMINATIONS of Condoleezza Rice as secretary of State and Stephen Hadley to replace her as National Security adviser, the shape of the supreme command of Bush II is pretty clear: Rumsfeld is staying; Bush II will be like Bush I, only more so.
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A YEAR AGO TODAY, Arnold Schwarzenegger was sworn in as California's 38th governor. The rest, as they say, is show biz history.
Coral Gables, Florida
EVER SINCE President Bush limited federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research to existing cell lines, the mainstream media has obsessed about the perpetual political campaign to overturn his policy. But this is a mere dustup, a tempest in a teapot compared to the far more consequential story…
"DOWN AND DOWN I go, . . . loving the spin I'm in" might have been written by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer as an anthem for the dollar. As it spins down, cries of both glee and anguish are heard in the land, and economists scramble to offer explanations.
ON NOVEMBER 5, 2004, a top aide to new CIA Director Porter Goss warned the associate deputy director of counterintelligence about unauthorized leaks to the media. It was an admonition that might be considered unnecessary: secrecy is a hallmark of the agency and, in any case, such leaks are often…
WHY DO PRESIDENTS stumble in their second terms? Four reasons. They try to govern without a real agenda, having exhausted their policy initiatives in the first term. Their wisest and most competent aides and advisers leave and are replaced by less talented people. They suffer from bad relations…
The Artificial White Man
Recline Yourself, Resign Yourself, You're Through
Dark Voyage
"Always give your best, never get discouraged, never be petty; always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself." --Michael Moore WAIT. I'm wrong. Michael Moore didn't say that. (Where's that fact-checker?) No, it was Richard…
Columbus, Ohio
IT HAS HAPPENED AGAIN. Here at home, a great many people who fashion themselves his moral and intellectual superiors turn out once more--as he might put it--to have misunderestimated George W. Bush. And it has happened abroad, as well, where the president's opponents and enemies--which is to say…
Who We Are
Ending the Cold War
IT WAS ONCE BELIEVED that the rise of television would lead to the demise of radio. True, you no longer see families gathered around an oversized wood-paneled box, eagerly awaiting the next episode of Amos 'n' Andy. (And a good thing too.) But radio nevertheless survived, and even thrived, by…
SENATE REPUBLICANS had a banner night on Tuesday, picking up 4 net seats and expanding their majority from 51 to 55, by staging a Sherman-like political march through the South. Big Dixie wins in states previously represented by Democrats--Georgia (where Rep. Johnny Isakson won), South Carolina…
Strasbourg
THE PASSAGE OF PROPOSITION 71 in California (the Stem Cell Research and Cures Act) was an acute case of electoral folly. As Californians plunged headlong into a $6 billion quagmire of debt in a quixotic quest for "miracle cures" from human cloning and embryonic stem cells, they simultaneously…
IT WAS EITHER history's closest landslide or profoundest squeaker. Arriving right on schedule, in the 36th year after the post-New Deal realignment of 1968, and culminating in Ohio, home base of the McKinley realignment dear to the heart of Bush strategist Karl Rove, the 3-percentage point…
"WE'D RATHER be last than wrong." So said Dan Rather anchoring election night coverage for CBS. He was apparently serious. That he could say this with a straight face only weeks after presenting the world with forged documents to bring down the president should cement his reputation as the least…
Books in Brief
ON ELECTION DAY, Establishment big shots were certain that America wanted change and that the suave, sophisticated challenger had to beat the blunt, plain, downright embarrassing incumbent. All day long they were certain. At midnight the famous radio commentator H.V. Kaltenborn summed up the…
Raleigh, NC
The Unmasking of Oscar Wilde
IN 2000, the polls had Bush winning the popular vote. He went on to lose it by more than 3.5 million votes. In 2004, pollsters on election eve said the race was "too close to call." The next day, exit polls predicted a comfortable Kerry victory. Then on election night, the Bush-Kerry national…
MOST PEOPLE, both inside the Saudi kingdom and outside it, would agree that it will be a cold, cold day before the rulers of Riyadh grant rights to women. Nevertheless, on a crisp, cold, and clear Saturday, November 13, a protest materialized in front of the fortress-like Saudi embassy in…
NOTHING QUITE SAYS "piece of crap" to me like a rave review from Peter Travers of Rolling Stone. No other reviewer has done nearly as much to celebrate the whole class of overrated art house nullities.
IN NOMINATING Alberto Gonzales to succeed John Ashcroft as attorney general, President Bush noted that "this is the fifth time I have asked Judge Gonzales to serve his fellow citizens." The other four? In order: general counsel for Gov. Bush, Texas secretary of state, Texas Supreme Court justice,…
ON WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, November 3, the day after the election, in front of an exhausted crowd of ardent supporters at the Ronald Reagan building, President Bush embraced victory, thanked those who had stood with him, and reaffirmed his commitment to reform the tax code, repair social security,…
SO IT'S COME TO THIS: I'm John Kerry's last defender.
FROM ALMOST THE MOMENT he was appointed to the United States Senate, Georgia Democrat Zell Miller began to warn his party from the floor and via op-ed that it was allowing its ideology to cripple its appeal. Miller warned Terry McAuliffe and he warned Hillary Clinton. Eventually wrote a book that…
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THE NEW YORK TIMES analysis of Attorney General John Ashcroft's resignation, published today, reflects the general press coverage from the left, describing him, somewhat hyperbolically, as "one of the most powerful and divisive figures ever to serve as the nation's top law enforcement official."
MORE THAN EIGHTEEN MONTHS after it began, Operation Iraqi Freedom may be entering its decisive phase. At last, the battle is being joined in the Sunni heartland. The stronghold of Saddam Hussein's rule was left relatively untouched in the initial invasion, was given a death-bed reprieve last…
STUNG BY DEFEAT, puzzled and adrift, Democrats spent much of the past week turning to history, looking back at the great many-colored tapestry of the American past, in order to find where we--the people--find ourselves, now that George W. Bush has been reelected. And after consulting textbooks, and…
SO IT'S TO BE four more years of George W. Bush, to the consternation of most of the chattering classes, but to the apparent glee of investors and traders. If Bush and his fans needed any frosting on the cake it came with soaring share prices last week, and Friday's report that the economy had…
IN THE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE on domestic issues, CBS newsman Bob Schieffer asked one of the best questions of all three forums: Do you think homosexuality is a choice?
TWO CONTRASTING CONCLUSIONS can be drawn by comparing the famous Red-Blue divide on the electoral maps of 2000 and 2004. One is that there has been very little change in electoral patterns, the other that there was change of significant proportions. Thus far, most commentators have favored the…
AS JUDGMENT DAY for the terrorist hotbed of Falluja approaches, anxiety is building over what could be one of the bloodiest battles of America's war on terrorism. Insurgents holed up in the city speak of widespread violence across Iraq should U.S. forces assault and Sunni religious leaders warn…
TUESDAY'S EXIT POLLS showed that voters identified "moral values" ahead of jobs and the economy--and even terrorism--as the matter most on their minds. Some 80 percent of those most concerned about values voted for George W. Bush. Obviously, "value voters" helped President Bush win a second term.…
THE SIXTIES ended on September 11, 2001, but they were interred on the morning of November 3, 2004, when a senator from Massachusetts played the reverse role of another senator from Massachusetts 44 years earlier.
AFTER JOHN KERRY'S come-from-behind win in the Iowa caucus, after Howard Dean flagged in the stretch, and continuing through much of the 2004 campaign, Kerry's fans had the temerity to compare him to Seabiscuit, the great racehorse of the mid-1930's. But one win does not make a champion, and to…
THE 2004 ELECTION may not be over, but it is finished, and Wednesday-morning quarterbacking always makes results look perfectly rational. At every point in the campaign (save the first presidential debate) John Kerry was the candidate who had the embarrassing iconic moments: windsurfing, botox,…
TODAY'S ELECTION is not simply a watershed in American politics, but a punctuation mark in the American war in the greater Middle East. Tomorrow--or whenever the outcome is certain--things will be very different.
Wauwatosa, Wisconsin
LAST NIGHT, Tom Daschle threw his campaign into the shredder. What is it that makes South Dakota politicians do this kind of thing? There must be something in that Missouri River water that makes even the best of political pros tuck their thumbs into their armpits and squawk like demented chickens.
BY NOW, you have no doubt heard that President Bush is "creating more terrorists" with his neoimperialist wars on terror, Iraq, Arab nationalism, etc. The meme has gotten so out of control that even mostly sensible people such as Mickey Kaus are spouting it. Sayeth Kaus:
WE SHOULD BE THANKFUL (to Providence, and to U.S. counter-terror efforts) that Osama bin Laden's intervention in our election took the form of a videotape, and not an attack, as in Madrid on March 11. But it was an attempted intervention nonetheless.
JOHN KERRY reaches the finish line tomorrow having had to speak more words about religion this year than ever before in his long political career. The point has been to reveal his deepest values, say his aides, and it has been a telling revelation.
THERE JUST WAS an election in Afghanistan. A democratic election, more or less. American, European, and U.N. observers agreed on this, although it will take two weeks to count all the votes in trackless mountain regions. It may take even longer to investigate possible election violations. Turnout…
WHEN IT COMES to economic policy, this is no race between Tweedledee and Tweedledum, although in some ways it is between Dumb and Dumber. Both President Bush and Senator Kerry have promised to halve the budget deficit in four or five years, although neither has a credible budget-balancing plan.…
THE CONTROVERSIAL CONCLUSION to the 2000 presidential race left most Americans hoping that it would be a long time before the courts again became involved in settling a national election. The Supreme Court's conclusive decision in Bush v. Gore was handed down only after the Florida Supreme Court…
IF PRESIDENT BUSH is reelected, it's a good bet that the bloodiest fight of his fifth year in office will have nothing to do with the war or the economy. It will be over the filling of one or more vacancies on the Supreme Court.
HAS IRAQ made America's fight against Islamic extremism more difficult? Has the war further radicalized the Muslim world, making it easier for Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda to find and train suicidal holy warriors? Al Qaeda may remain today, as the always-thoughtful Clinton administration…
Abu Yankee Al-Doodle
"LET'S GO to a new question for you, Senator Kerry," said Bob Schieffer of CBS in the final debate. It was indeed a new question, for the trio of debates as well as for the long campaign. And because you might have missed the answer--the fact-checkers, analysts, and pundits sped right past…
JOHN KERRY SAYS HE IS "PROUD" of his activities in opposition to the Vietnam War. Why, then, have he and his spokesmen consistently misrepresented them? Indeed the Kerry camp has been so effective in obscuring this history that both the New York Times and the Washington Post were forced to run…
"Outing" Mary Cheney
I WAS IN NORDSTROM, buying a black blazer. My salesman was a genial man in his forties, bald and plumpish, carefully turned-out. Good at what he did, not pushing in any way, he smoothly played along with my desire to be taken as a man of the world. Our transaction complete, he gave me his business…
"We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance." --John Kerry, New York Times Magazine, October 10, 2004 "What American would not trade the economy we had in the 1990s, the fact that we were not at war and young Americans were…
AT THE BEGINNING of the presidential campaign last winter, President Bush and his strategists figured he'd wind up leading his Democratic opponent by 2 or 3 points on the eve of the November 2 election. Sure enough, he is. But he got here by a far more circuitous route than anyone in his camp…
The American Catholic Voter
AT THE END of every election cycle, we hope to retire the clichés that have bedeviled us. Yet every four years, they reemerge from dormancy, causing pain, discomfort, and minor inflammation. We hold these clichés to be self-evident: (1) that this campaign season, like all those before it and…
RARELY HAVE THE HOLDERS of any set of political views and policy preferences been so thoroughly caricatured as the "neoconservatives" of the Bush years. To critics, this group of policymakers (preeminently, in the Defense Department and the Office of the Vice President), along with their allies on…
Anthony Hecht, 1923-2004
AMERICANS NOW KNOW EVERYTHING about the economy that they will know by the time they go to the polls to choose between George W. Bush's continued stewardship and John Kerry's plan to return the Clinton economic team to the White House. Late last week the government announced that the economy grew…
THE SCARIEST THING about this election is not the prospect of a contested outcome with no winner declared for weeks, just as in 2000. No, the most scary thing is the sense of entitlement that many Democrats and their allies have about tomorrow's election. It goes like this: Bush stole the…
THE DAILY STANDARD welcomes letters to the editor. Letters will be edited for length and clarity and must include the writer's name, city, and state.