CRIME AND POLICE

I WISH I COULD SUPPORT William Stuntz's argument that more police would cut crime ("Law and Disorder," February 23). Unfortunately, he neglects to discuss any of the studies (by William Spelman, Steven Levitt, and others) that show that imprisonment by itself accounts for one-fourth or more of the crime reduction we have experienced. And he does not deal with the studies (mine included) that suggest that it is how police are deployed, and not how many exist, that affects crime rates. This latter fact may explain why the crime rate has fallen sharply in Los Angeles, under Bill Bratton's leadership, even though the number of LAPD officers has grown only slightly. And he does not provide any real reason for thinking that the 100,000 officers hired under President Clinton's plan actually affected crime rates independently of other changes. Stuntz has a serious and commendable interest in crime, but his solution is not well supported.

JAMES Q. WILSON
Pepperdine University Malibu, Calif.

WILLIAM J. STUNTZ RESPONDS: Wilson is a giant in this field; I'm sorry he disagrees with my article. Also a little surprised. Steven Levitt, whose work Wilson mentions and endorses, takes exactly the opposite of the position Wilson's letter takes: Levitt's classic article on the subject concludes that increased police numbers were a major factor in the 1990s crime drop, and that changed police tactics were not. I suspect both numbers and tactics mattered-just as they mattered to the success of the surge in Iraq.

BLESSINGS IN DISGUISE?

FRED BARNES'S ARTICLE on unionization ("Summers Knows Best," March 2) is right on target. If Obama is serious about a post-partisan and pragmatic government, he will abandon union demands altogether and actually help the worker.

But developments such as "card check" are actually blessings in disguise for those of us who have argued for years that labor unions have objectives that are quite different from those they claim to protect. What better way to contrast the interests of the worker and the goals of the union than by offering a plan that forbids workers from secret ballotting? Rather than being able to vote their conscience, workers would (through involuntary paycheck deductions) pay union bosses to harass and intimidate them for unwelcome but honest votes-all with presidential sanction.

It's a sin, really. But it shows that the Obama administration, for all the talk of being for labor, was only for big labor-you know, the kind with all that campaign money-rather than for the little workers, without whom America could not survive.

One hopes that the strangely plain cynicism of the card check law will finally clarify in the minds of voters what it means when a politician claims to be "pro-labor."

PETER G. BYRNES JR.
Millersville, Md.

REV. WRIGHT'S COLLEAGUE

MEGHAN CLYNE WRITES, "With Wright, Obama could at least argue that his affiliation with the pastor was a personal matter of private faith. Yet by appointing Moss, Obama has given him the imprimatur of the White House and a position from which to help shape public policy" ("Remember Rev. Wright?" February 23).

During the campaign, many of us argued that Obama's history with Wright would lead to the mainstreaming of Wright or Wright's ideology. As you explain, the mainstreaming of Wright's ideology is now a fait accompli. This is a great tragedy for America and Christianity.

JOHN MARSHALL
St. Petersburg, Fla.

THE BARD AND LINCOLN

I ENJOYED EDWIN M. YODER JR.'S celebration of Lincoln's rhetorical skills ("Lincoln the Rhetor," February 16). Just as Milton patronized Shakespeare as a rough-and-ready Stratford rube whose splendid rhetoric is "native woodnotes wild," so do many denigrate Lincoln, with his sketchy education, as some untutored genius whose speeches were somehow natural effusions of a great spirit. Yoder knows better: Lincoln's works are products of study, discipline, and skilled adaptation of classical models, as Garry Wills's superb analysis of the Gettysburg Address also demonstrates. One quibble: In his example of idem in alio, Yoder mistakenly attributes the lamentation of guilty blood on the hands to Lady Macbeth, when it is her husband who expresses the hyberbolic remorse.

MITCH SUTTERFIELD
Fairfax, Va.

EDWIN M. YODER JR. RESPONDS: I am grateful for Mr. Sutterfield's approval, and he is right about the idem in alio. I was hearing echoes of Lady Macbeth's "Out damned spot .  .  . What, will these hands ne'er be clean? .  .  . All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand," and confused her lines with Macbeth's.