The 'Democrat' tic, Lucky Louie, and more.

The 'Democrat' Congress

THE SCRAPBOOK couldn't help but notice that, in the course of his State of the Union address last week, President Bush congratulated the new "Democrat majority" in Congress, which sat politely if not clamorously in front of him. THE SCRAPBOOK wasn't seated in the great chamber of the House of Representatives, to be sure; but when we heard that phrase, we wondered if a ripple of discontent could be felt on the, um, Democratic side.

For this particular mode of description--"Democrat" for "Democratic" party--has the effect of sending certain Democrats into a frenzy. Which, of course, is precisely the point: When Barry Goldwater chose Rep. William E. Miller of New York as his vice-presidential running mate in 1964, he explained his decision to reporters by saying that Miller "drives Lyndon Johnson nuts." Sending Democrats into orbit is an old and honored tradition in Republican politics.

Frankly, THE SCRAPBOOK doubts that President Bush meant to do that; but whatever his intention, that is what he succeeded in doing. The next morning, on NPR's "Diane Rehm Show," both the venerable hostess and her two guests--onetime Clinton White House chief of staff John Podesta and former Republican congressman Vin Weber--struggled to explain both the meaning and origin of the rhetorical practice of referring to the Democratic party as the "Democrat" party.

"It's like fingernails on a chalkboard," complained Podesta. Neither he nor Weber nor Diane Rehm herself knew how it started. The Washington Post devoted a whole story to the subject--albeit in the Style section--which shed no light on the question. And on CNN, Democratic vulgarian Paul Begala was close to tears of frustration: "It tells you what's in [Bush's] heart," he exclaimed. "It tells you that he has no damn desire to compromise."

At which point, we realized that we had arrived at what educators call a Teachable Moment, for the invention of the "Democrat" party seems to have fallen down the Washington memory hole, which is not very deep. To the best of THE SCRAPBOOK's knowledge--which is pretty good, but not infallible--the phrase originated with Leonard W. Hall, a onetime Republican congressman from New York and chairman of the Republican National Committee during Dwight D. Eisenhower's first term in the White House (1953-57). It was Hall's intention to suggest that (a) the Democrats, the party of urban machines and union bosses, were not especially "democratic," and that (b) innocent schoolchildren should not confuse the adjective "democratic" with the Democratic party.

In his effort to tease the Democrats of the Adlai Stevenson era, Len Hall, who died in 1979, seems to have succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. The phrase is still routinely used by politicians and speechwriters, and is even, unwittingly, employed by journalists--of the TV variety, that is, including the BBC. To which THE SCRAPBOOK, in the fullness of time, says: Enough is enough. The phrase is not just ungrammatical but, at this late date, slightly juvenile and mildly insulting, too. Just the sort of thing, in other words, we would expect from the Post Style section or Paul Begala.

Lucky Louie Returns

THE SCRAPBOOK let out a chuckle last week when we read in the Washington Post that Sheldon G. Adelson--chairman of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation and casino mogul--had written a $1 million check to former speaker of the House and potential Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich's new 527 group. Not because of any hypocrisy on Gingrich's part, mind you. The ex-speaker has never been a vocal opponent of gambling, nor has he ever opposed 527 groups, which can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money. No, we were chuckling because Post reporter John Solomon trotted out the Reverend Lou Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition, to scold Gingrich for accepting the casino money. "The problem is the income comes from what we call a vice, and that is an issue," said Sheldon.

Thing is, this seems to have become an issue for Sheldon only recently. Here is a passage from another Washington Post story, on October 16, 2005, entitled "How a Lobbyist Stacked the Deck." The article, written by Pulitzer-Prize winners Susan Schmidt and James Grimaldi, tells how crooked lobbyist Jack Abramoff shamelessly hired conservative antigambling groups to defeat an Internet gambling ban that would have put his client, eLottery, out of business. (The groups' ostensible complaint was that the bill failed to ban all gambling.) How did Abramoff pay those groups? With money from eLottery. One of the recipients was none other than Lou Sheldon's Traditional Values Coalition. Write Schmidt and Grimaldi:

Abramoff had teamed up with Sheldon before on issues affecting his clients. Because of their previous success, Abramoff called Sheldon "Luckie Louie," former associates said. . . . Abramoff asked eLottery to write a check in June 2000 to Sheldon's Traditional Values Coalition (TVC).

Sheldon held a personal meeting with then-majority whip Tom DeLay of Texas. The meeting helped convince DeLay that the Internet gambling bill should be defeated. This more or less killed the bill. Schmidt and Grimaldi continue:

The eLottery team was euphoric. Abramoff lobbyist Patrick Pizzella, who was in the Capitol to watch the vote, wrote in an email to colleagues the next day that he saw Sheldon celebrating the victory, too. "There was lucky Louie out front hi-fiving with some lobbyists," said Pizzella.

For the record, Sheldon told Schmidt and Grimaldi that he doesn't remember much about the 2000 campaign against the Internet gambling ban, nor does he remember getting the $25,000 check from eLottery. We're betting, though, that he still remembers the old saying that hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue.

Those 'New York Money People'

At the "packed-to-the-rafters" brunch prior to Nancy Pelosi's swearing-in as speaker of the House, blogger Arianna Huffington ran into former NATO supreme commander and Democratic presidential candidate Gen. Wesley Clark, who, Huffington writes, was "really angry" about something Arnaud de Borchgrave had written. The de Borchgrave article in question, which "Clark quickly forwarded to my BlackBerry from his Treo," was about former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's support for American military strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities.

"How can you talk about bombing a country when you won't even talk to them?" Clark told Huffington. "It's outrageous. We're the United States of America; we don't do that. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the military option is off the table--but diplomacy is not what Jim Baker says it is. It's not, What will it take for you boys to support us on Iraq? It's sitting down for a couple of days and talking about our families and our hopes, and building relationships."

And why did Clark think a U.S. attack on Iran was a certainty? "You just have to read what's in the Israeli press," Clark said. "The Jewish community is divided but there is so much pressure being channeled from the New York money people to the office seekers."

Hmm. Gen. Clark, we should note, is considering another run for the Oval Office. If he keeps sounding like the Al-Ahram editorial page, however, we'd say the odds are vanishingly small that he'll ever get to sit down with Ahmadinejad to talk about their families, their hopes, and their relationships.

Except for Bush, Clinton, Carter, LBJ . . .

A startling political aperçu from the dean of the Columbia Journalism School: "The South's political differentness, racial in origin if not in explicit content, has been an impediment to presidential ambition."

Nicholas Lemann, "What Is the South?" the New Republic , Jan. 29, 2007.