It's hard to remember while perusing Jude Wanniski's Web site these days that the man was, until recent years, an intimate and trusted adviser of serious Republican presidential candidates like Jack Kemp and Steve Forbes. Then the New Jersey-based publicist for supplyside economics started falling for political thugs like Louis Farrakhan, Saddam Hussein, and, now, Slobodan Milosevic.
THE SCRAPBOOK extends its sympathies to Republican senator Tim Hutchinson of Arkansas, who through no particular fault of his own managed to become the recipient of the latest Wanniski-gram, a March 25 memo posted on his Web site on "the essence of democracy," titled "Abe Lincoln and Slobodan Milosevic."
"Yes," writes Wanniski to Hutchinson, "it will sound outrageous at first, but I want to compare Yugoslavia's leader, Slobodan Milosevic, to Abe Lincoln. I chose you for this exercise because I saw you on CNN's Crossfire last night and realized you had a mind that was comfortable with political philosophy." (Political philosophy on Crossfire? Please.) And trust us: The Honest Abe Milosevic stuff doesn't sound outrageous just at first. It's outrageous all the way to the end.