BILL CLINTON, CHATTERING ASS Last Wednesday, President Clinton returned to the guest speaker's podium at Georgetown University and proceeded to grace us with his thoughts on international terrorism and suchlike contemporary concerns. President Clinton has decided that: 1. Osama bin Laden's mass murders at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were a direct and deliberate assault on the Clinton legacy, specifically. After all, the former president points out: "The people who died represent, in my view, not only the best of America, but the best of the world that I worked hard for eight years to build." Makes you even madder than you were before, doesn't it? 2. The Western world's hands are not entirely clean. "Indeed, in the first Crusade, when the Christian soldiers took Jerusalem, they . . . proceeded to kill every woman and child who was Muslim on the Temple Mount." And later, in the United States, some similar stuff happened: slavery and dispossession of the Indians and Jim Crow and whatnot. Why, "even today . . . we still have the occasional hate crime rooted in race, religion, or sexual orientation." So don't start feeling all superior or anything, because "terror has a long history." 3. There will be a happy ending, because a certain former president was tireless in preparing us for just such a crisis as we now confront. "In the years that I served, career law enforcement officials working with our intelligence services and others and people around the world prevented many, many more terrorist attacks than were successful," and "worked hard to strengthen the biological weapons convention and to pass the chemical weapons convention," and "worked hard to begin to build our stock of vaccines and antibiotics and to support an organized civilian preparedness," and "tripled our investment in counter-terrorism." Who was the great president who gave us all these wonderful gifts? Modesty prevents him from saying. THE REPUBLICANS ARE IN GREAT SHAPE! Great news for Republicans in last week's elections! Actually, we had been under the impression that the Democrats did okay, what with winning the high-profile governor's races in Virginia and New Jersey, but that was before we got our talking points from the National Republican Congressional Committee. First of all, nervous Republicans can relax, because "The 2001 off-year elections have no bearing on next year's mid-term elections. These races revolved around local issues and local candidates. There were no discernible national trends. This was a status quo election. Both Democrats and Republicans had their share of victories and defeats. Democrats fell short of their predictions that last night's elections would result in a clean sweep." Second, Republicans shouldn't worry, because the Republican candidates really stunk up the joint. In Virginia, the NRCC notes, "The primary media message from the Earley campaign was opposition to a regional referendum. Polling from the summer indicated this strategy would not work. The Earley campaign ignored this information. Democrat Mark Warner embraced Republican themes portraying himself as a pro-gun, fiscal conservative." Meanwhile, in New Jersey, "The acting [Republican] Governor failed to endorse the Republican candidate, and the Schundler campaign failed to unite the Republican Party. It also did not help that Schundler campaigned on a platform that was out of touch with NJ voters." Plus which, even though (see above) off-year elections have no bearing on next year's races, there is one "bellwether for the midterm elections"--that would be the special election that took place in June in Virginia's Fourth Congressional District. And guess what? A Republican won that one! And besides, did we mention what turkeys those Republican candidates were? "Both Republican gubernatorial candidates got beaten on message (and money), not tactics. Those messages were specifically focused on the two candidates, not broader themes. In Virginia, Warner had a slight advantage on phone and mail contact, while the two campaigns tied on personal and election weekend contact. In New Jersey, McGreevey had a slight advantage on phone and final weekend contact." Perhaps unsurprisingly, the NRCC concludes that its "post election survey clearly shows that by working with President Bush and the House GOP leadership the Republicans will maintain their majority in 2002." And if they don't, we can be sure it won't be the fault of the national party. Okay, end of sarcasm. The Scrapbook understands that one of the things political professionals get paid to do is spin. But a little bit can go a long way. Not to mention, the NRCC likes to brag about the quality of the candidates it recruits. But what kind of message is it sending to its recruits if the explanations of defeat it offers basically come down to candidate stupidity? PROFILES IN PROFILING The Scrapbook has no police experience and no particular desire to snipe at the FBI's anthrax investigation, which we are certain is taking place under unimaginably high-pressure conditions. But we couldn't keep our heart from sinking when the FBI profile of the anthrax assailant was released Friday. When the profilers are trotted out, this is usually a sign that the investigation isn't going well. In our book, profiling is a wildly overrated specialty, ranking just this side of voodoo in efficacy. We remember back when the FBI was certain Richard Jewell was the bomber at the Atlanta Olympics. Do you recall what the profilers were saying then? An AP report quoted them theorizing that the bomber "may not have worked alone" or "he may have been a loner." Well, yes, that did exhaust the permutations. Now they're telling us that the anthrax murderer was "probably an adult male." If not, we surmise it was almost certainly either a woman or a child, unless there have been advances in robotics we're unaware of. In a further investigative breakthrough, the FBI theorizes that whoever sent the letters probably took "appropriate protective steps to insure their own safety." What's more, he "probably has a scientific background to some extent or at least a strong interest in science" and may also be "comfortable working with hazardous materials." The real breakthrough, though, is this: "It is highly probable, bordering on certainty, that all three letters were written by the same person." Did anyone who looked at the pictures of the letters ever doubt this? Yes, the press goads the FBI into such statements. But sometimes, less is more. An Odd Statement for a Boxer "I am against any form or any shape of violence . . ." --Australian middleweight Anthony Mundine, in "an open letter to the world," apologizing for saying Americans had "brought [Sept. 11] upon themselves." OUR FAVORITE WEBSITE The Scrapbook's favorite website, weeklystandard.com, has been been up and running in its new incarnation for over a month now, and things are going swell. Which is to say, lots of useful daily coverage has been published there, and to date, it's lost much, much less money than Boo.com. Be sure to check in Monday through Friday for the exclusive, online-only essays written by The Scrapbook's colleagues. Plus--and this is the really cool part--if you're a Weekly Standard subscriber, you no longer have to wait for the post office to deliver your magazine. Go online to weeklystandard.com and you can download the latest issue in snazzy Adobe PDF format every Saturday morning. November 19, 2001 - Volume 7, Number 10