Matthew Rees was a prolific contributor to The Weekly Standard from its founding in 1995 through 2004, covering American politics with a particular focus on elections, Republican Party dynamics, and political figures such as Al Gore. He wrote extensively on domestic policy debates and campaign politics for the magazine. Rees is a writer and communications consultant based in Washington, D.C.
THIS WEEK marks the twentieth anniversary of the first movie released with what was, at the time, the new rating of "PG-13." Called Red Dawn, it was a near-future tale of teenage guerrillas defending their hometown after the Soviets had invaded.
WHEN GEORGE W. BUSH was running for president, he maintained an arms-length relationship with congressional Republicans. Today, he's aggressively courting them. During his first week in office, he met with scores of members, and late last week he attended a GOP retreat in Williams-burg, Virginia.…
THEY'RE BACK. Like geese that instinctively fly south for the winter, liberal lobbyists are coming out of an eight-year hibernation just as a Republican is set to move into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Hardly heard from since the jihad against Clarence Thomas, these activists have begun whining about…
IN AUGUST 1986, Life magazine published a short profile of a precocious 29-year-old Democratic fund-raiser named Terry McAuliffe. It described McAuliffe as specializing in a "zany mix of sledgehammer persistence and personal magnetism," and it illustrated the point with an account of how he once…
IN AUGUST 1986, Life magazine published a short profile of a precocious 29-year-old Democratic fund-raiser named Terry McAuliffe. It described McAuliffe as specializing in a "zany mix of sledgehammer persistence and personal magnetism," and it illustrated the point with an account of how he once…
IN AUGUST 1986, Life magazine published a short profile of a precocious 29-year-old Democratic fund-raiser named Terry McAuliffe. It described McAuliffe as specializing in a "zany mix of sledgehammer persistence and personal magnetism," and it illustrated the point with an account of how he once…
GEORGE W. BUSH has never left much doubt that he intended to name Colin Powell his secretary of state. What Bush may not have foreseen is that Powell would try to press his influence beyond Foggy Bottom. The former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has been lobbying for Pennsylvania governor…
AS THE NATIONAL SPOTLIGHT lingers on the turmoil in Florida, back in Washington a number of congressional Republicans are vying for leadership positions and committee chairmanships. The outcome of these contests will offer some clues about the coming term.
ON THE EVENING of November 15, Al Gore took a break from wrangling over the election outcome to telephone the country's highest-rated black radio host, Tom Joyner. The call was to thank Joyner for his help in getting voters registered and motivating them to go to the polls. So grateful was Gore…
Austin
New York
IF GEORGE W. BUSH is elected president, he'll have many people to thank. One of them is Osama Siblani. During Bush's October 5 meeting with Arab-American leaders at the Hyatt Regency in Dearborn, Michigan, Siblani told the Texas governor about two top concerns of Arab Americans: the use of ethnic…
Elkins, West Virginia
Glendale, California
DEBBIE STABENOW, a Democratic congresswoman who's running to unseat senator Spencer Abraham, stood in a South-field, Michigan, pharmacy a year ago August and previewed the issue that would become the centerpiece of her campaign. "It is absolutely, fundamentally wrong," she charged, "that senior…
My wife and I are in Athens, and all we want to eat is the Greek equivalent of a hamburger, a luscious lamb gyro. Without realizing it, we've selected a hopelessly American-themed restaurant, called "Jackson," and when I ask our waitress whether they serve gyros -- carefully pronouncing it the…
AS CONGRESSIONAL REPUBLICANS return to Washington this week, preparing for their final budget scrum with Bill Clinton, they're gripped by a familiar emotion: fear. Fear that they will end up capitulating to costly Democratic health care proposals covering HMOs and prescription drugs. Fear that they…
Los Angeles
WHEN AL GORE sought the Democratic nomination for president in 1988, three leading members of his Texas steering committee were Ken Armbrister, Hugo Berlanga, and Mark Stiles. All Democratic state legislators, they helped spread Gore's name across Texas, and served as surrogate speakers for him at…
When a group billing itself as "Academics for Mumia Abu-Jamal" held a press conference in Philadelphia during the Republican National Convention, it was inevitable that Jonathan Kozol would be a featured speaker. A publicity hound of the first order, Kozol has made a nice career out of writing…
With the Republican party holding its national convention in Philadelphia this week, civic boosters have been serving up endless testimonials to the city's glorious past and glimmering future. But conveniently absent from these testimonials has been any recognition of Philadelphia's rich political…
A senator's work is a never-ending series of committee hearings, caucus meetings, floor votes, flights, fund-raisers, and constituent service. It is, in many ways, a dreadful job that inevitably produces burnout. Yet Paul Coverdell, who died suddenly and much too young last week at the age of 61,…
LATE IN THE EVENING of June 14, Tony Coelho called Al Gore at the Sheraton Towers in Manhattan and told him that owing to health problems he'd be unable to continue as chairman of Gore's campaign. The first people Gore told were his wife, Tipper, and his brother-in-law, Frank Hunger, who were with…
AL GORE and the reporters who tail him have a strained relationship. He feels the coverage of his campaign has been excessively negative; they resent his seldom making himself available for their questions. The solution may be Gore's new deputy campaign manager for communications, Mark Fabiani, who…
THE NEW YORK TIMES has described Rick Lazio, the 42-year-old Republican congressman running for the Senate against Hillary Rodham Clinton, as someone who "looks more like Beaver Cleaver than most other members of Congress." The paper is not alone in making light of his appearance. The New York Post…
Orlando, Florida
Tallahassee, Florida
DURING AN APRIL 4 press conference in the Capitol, Dick Armey, the House majority leader, was asked whether Congress should get involved in the dispute over Elian Gonzalez. "I think Congress has done a good job of restraining itself," replied Armey. "While we still feel some sort of residual…
Hard as I might try, I'll never manage to forget my first collegiate spring break, one March too many years ago. Friends asked me to join them in Jamaica, and having just endured my first Connecticut winter, I pounced at the invitation. But by the time we arrived, I wasn't so sanguine about the…
"THE ONLY THING vice presidents can do is hurt you." So says Democratic senator Joe Biden when asked whom Al Gore should select to be his running mate. Biden is right, with one big exception: Gore, who was a major asset to Bill Clinton in 1992.
Inventing Al Gore
San Jose, California
I think that the way a candidate for president communicates with the voters is directly relevant to the way a president communicates with the American people after the election.
ON NOVEMBER 6, 1987, Al Gore was in the middle of his first campaign for president, seeking the support of a black political group in Montgomery, Alabama, when he was asked a simple question: Had he ever used marijuana? "Have I ever smoked it as an adult? The answer is no. Did I try it when I was a…
AT FIRST GLANCE, the Republican Leadership Council and the National Right to Life Committee have little in common. The RLC was formed in 1997 by a group of wealthy pro-choice Republicans who feared the GOP was being increasingly defined, in the words of their executive director, "by the actions of…
IF BILL BRADLEY'S CANDIDACY isn't finished off by a defeat in New Hampshire on February 1, it will be doomed by the five Gorefriendly Southern primaries on March 14 -- so goes the emerging conventional wisdom. But this misses the mark. For several reasons, Gore will find it difficult to deliver a…
ASKED AT THE JANUARY 5 debate in New Hampshire whether any of his positions had been misrepresented by Al Gore, Bill Bradley cited one "particularly offensive" example: Gore's criticism of the Bradley health care plan as racially insensitive to African Americans.
Baltimore
"I've tried to be president . . . the way Ed Rendell serves as mayor."
IT WASN'T EXACTLY the rhetoric of a surging candidate: "We are beginning to solve some of our problems," Al Gore told reporters on October 20. His campaign, of course, has had countless fits and starts over the past six months. But Gore and his allies say he's "turned the corner." In the words of…
I probably shouldn't admit that while in Las Vegas recently for a friend's thirtieth birthday party I spent more time playing "for amusement only" video games than trying my hand at the likes of blackjack or craps. Even more embarrassing, I'd do it again.
After all the fireworks, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty took a drubbing. Fifty-one senators voted against it, 17 more than were needed to block ratification. Yet up until the very eve of the vote, a high-stakes struggle for the heart of Trent Lott was going on behind the scenes. The majority…
Guess which presidential candidate wrote the following: "I have consistently opposed federal funding of abortions. In my opinion, it is wrong to spend federal funds for what is arguably the taking of a human life. It is my deep personal conviction that abortion is wrong. I hope that some day we…
Los Angeles, California
When Bill Bradley kicked off his presidential campaign last week in his hometown of Crystal City, Missouri, he recalled that his Little League baseball team had walked out of restaurants in a southeastern Missouri town that wouldn't serve the team because its catcher and left fielder were black.…
My highly imprecise gauge for determining whether you're growing old is this: You are if your childhood baseball heroes are being inducted into the Hall of Fame. I'm embarrassed to admit I qualify. George Brett, the Kansas City Royals star I idolized in my pre-teen years, was recently inducted. I'm…
WHEN THE 18-YEAR SENATE CAREER of Alfonse D'Amato came to a crashing halt last November, it was natural to assume he, like most ex-senators, would fade into the gray Washington world of lobbying and rainmaking. That may happen eventually, but, for now, D'Amato is doing what comes naturally: acting…
ON JUNE 17, 1998, President Clinton made an unscheduled appearance in the White House briefing room to attack senators who had blocked a comprehensive anti-tobacco bill earlier that day. The president said he'd been "working for three years now to protect our children from the dangers of tobacco."…
I have never seen such a blatant, raw attempt to harass and silence a whistleblower who simply told the truth."
JANET RENO FACED A DILEMMA in August 1997. A senior FBI official named John Lewis informed her that her Office of Intelligence Policy and Review had rejected three FBI requests to tap the phone and computer of a government scientist accused of nuclear espionage. Reno knew little about the case, but…
LAST NOVEMBER, after Hurricane Mitch devastated Nicaragua and Honduras, President Clinton dispatched a delegation led by Tipper Gore to assess the damage. "The scale of the disaster is beyond anything we have ever witnessed," she would write in a "Report to the President" that's featured on the…
September 9, 1998, will be remembered in Washington as the day Kenneth Starr delivered his impeachment referral to the House of Representatives. But on the same day, another drama was playing out on the other side of Capitol Hill. Susan Gaffney, the inspector general at the Department of Housing…
WHAT HAS LAMAR ALEXANDER to show for his six years as a presidential candidate? According to a recent poll, only 2 percent of New Hampshire Republicans are behind him, while another poll of Republicans nationwide puts his support below 1 percent. He has less cash on hand than any of his announced…
Sacramento, California
ROY BLUNT, A SECOND-TERM CONGRESSMAN from Missouri, may be the most influential Republican no one's ever heard of. GOP presidential favorite George W. Bush just made him his liaison to House Republicans. And Tom DeLay, the House GOP whip, recently tapped him to be his top deputy, the post Dennis…
SENATOR RICHARD LUGAR is one of the few congressional Republicans who have supported the president on issues of foreign affairs and national security. The Indiana Republican strongly backed the president on NATO expansion, the chemical weapons treaty, and the nomination of William Weld for…
When seven Republican presidential candidates turned up at California's recent state party convention, they expected to be star attractions. Instead, they were eclipsed by James Rogan, the second-term congressman who leapt to prominence during the president's impeachment trial. Countless…
If you have any doubt whether George W. Bush is going to run for president, consider this: On the evening of February 10, a Republican state representative from New Hampshire named Tim McGough called Bush's office, hoping to talk with him about charter schools. Bush's secretary politely told…
IF SUPPLY-SIDERS EVER HAD REASON to be optimistic, they do now. Tax cuts are easier to pass with a budget surplus in Washington, and congressional Republicans have embraced a supply-side article of faith: across-the-board reductions in income tax rates. Besides, the GOP has dropped two decidedly…
There was a period of my childhood when the Super Bowl meant the world to me. Immersed in my football-card collection, I knew all the players' vital statistics -- height, weight, college, hobbies, interceptions, receptions, rushing yards, and everything else. It was just then that the Miami…
HOW DO REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL candidates whip the crowds into a frenzy? They tear apart Clinton and Gore, demand tax cuts for hard-working Americans, and reminisce about the Gipper. Now add to this ballistic missile defense. As unlikely as it sounds, the issue -- boosting America's defense against…
IT's SOMEHOW FITTING that senators and pundits should be swooning over the White House lawyer who made the weakest defense of President Clinton. Cheryl Mills, a deputy counsel to the president, argued on January 20 that Bill Clinton did not obstruct justice in conversations with Betty Currie last…
SHORTLY AFTER JAMES ROGAN of California was elected to Congress two years ago, he set out on a mission: to have a conversation with each of the 434 other members of the House of Representatives. It took him two years, but eventually Rogan collected a signature for every person in his congressional…
I'M DELIGHTED WE HAVE THE prospect of calling witnesses. I'm disappointed we have to go through so many hurdles to get there." That's how Asa Hutchinson, one of the House managers prosecuting the case against the president, views the deal approved by the Senate on January 8. Hutchinson and his…
THE DECISIVE MOMENT in the House Judiciary Committee's deliberations over impeachment occurred the morning of November 4. The previous day's disappointing election returns were still dribbling in, and there was speculation the Republicans would scale back their inquiry. The quickly emerging…
Twenty years ago, my elementary-school friends teased me for dressing up on Halloween as Gene Simmons, the freakish bassist in the rock band Kiss. Last month, my Washington friends teased me for going to see Simmons -- still a freakish bassist for Kiss -- in concert. Some things never change.
THE WHITE HOUSE -- supremely confident until two weeks ago that the House of Representatives would not impeach the president -- is suddenly on the defensive. Lawyers for President Clinton, reversed themselves last week and decided to appear at the House Judiciary Committee hearing scheduled for…
Shortly after Bob Livingston started campaigning for speaker eight months ago, he was asked to explain the differences between him and his likely opponent, Dick Armey. He replied by telling a story about their approaches to fishing. "Dick likes to catch and release," said Livingston, "and I like to…
THE HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE is likely to hold its first impeachment hearing on November 16. There's just one problem: Not a single committee Democrat believes the president's behavior is impeachable. So what do they do? Carpetbomb Ken Starr, make life miserable for Republicans, and defend the…
LATE IN THE EVENING OF SEPTEMBER 5, Rep. Jim Moran, a Virginia Democrat, received a phone call at home from Rahm Emanuel, a senior White House official. Emanuel wanted to discuss what Moran -- who had emerged as a vocal critic of President Clinton -- was going to say the next morning on Fox News…
HOUSE DEMOCRATS FACE THEIR most politically charged vote in years this week: whether to support a Republican-sponsored resolution authorizing an inquiry into President Clinton's impeachment. Yet relations between the Democrats and the White House are so strained that Clinton officials weren't even…
RARE IS THE CONGRESSMAN who'll bring an overhead projector to a town meeting so he can lecture on the federal debt. And Wisconsin Republican Mark Neumann, to be sure, is no ordinary congressman. But his quirkiness -- along with an aggressive campaign and Bill Clinton's woes -- has put him in a dead…
Fanesville, Wisconsin
A HALLMARK OF THE Clinton administration is the personal smear. Billy Dale, Linda Tripp, Paul McHale -- all tarred because they interfered with President Clinton and his objectives.
WHAT IF REPUBLICANS NOMINATED for governor a fringe figure with a history of making derogatory comments about Catholics and Jews? Klansman David Duke created roughly this scenario seven years ago in Louisiana. The national media charged that hateful extremists were taking over the GOP. And…
ON JUNE 16, the Senate considered a proposal to cap at $ 4,000 per hour the amount plaintiff's attorneys can charge in tobacco litigation. It was a revealing moment: What would anti-tobacco Democrats do? By voting for the cap, they could increase the tobacco bill's chances of passage and avoid the…
ON JUNE 16, the Senate considered a proposal to cap at $ 4,000 per hour the amount plaintiff's attorneys can charge in tobacco litigation. It was a revealing moment: What would anti-tobacco Democrats do? By voting for the cap, they could increase the tobacco bill's chances of passage and avoid the…
DURING THE SIX MONTHS he's been running for Congress, Paul Ryan, a Republican, estimates he's spoken to 30,000 people. When he's asked questions, Social Security and taxes almost always come up. So how many people have pressed him for his views on campaign-finance reform? "Somewhere between three…
WHEN PRESIDENT CLINTON returned from China on July 4, congressional Republicans were in a bind. A number of GOP leaders, most notably Newt Gingrich and Jack Kemp, had praised the president's performance. Other Republicans had quietly stuck with their criticism of Clinton's China policy on issues…
Members of Congress don't come much more conservative than John Shadegg, an Arizona Republican first elected to the House in 1994. But last year, Shadegg cosponsored a bill many conservatives derided as "ClintonCare II." Before long, interest-group ads excoriating Shadegg were running on the radio…
HOUSE SPEAKER NEWT GINGRICH demanded an explanation when the story broke last month that a big Democratic donor, already under investigation for illegally giving military technology to China, got special treatment from the Clinton administration. "If the president won't share this information with…
The Clinton administration made a fateful decision in 1996 to put the Commerce Department in charge of overseeing exports of American satellite technology. Under fire now for transferring this weighty responsibility from the more security-conscious State Department, the administration insists the…
A FEW MONTHS AGO, Republican education policy was in disarray. Proposals from the Clinton administration had put the GOP on the defensive, and the only Republican idea that was gaining any prominence was one many Republicans considered at odds with party principles -- the federal funding of 100,000…
WHEN HOUSE SPEAKER Newt Gingrich arrived in Lemoyne, Pa., on February 21 to speak at a fund-raiser for Rep. Bill Goodling, fewer than 50 people were present. Gingrich, who is accustomed to fund-raisers attended by at least a few hundred, wasn't amused. At a House GOP leadership meeting a few days…
OLD HABITS DIE HARD AT THE University of California. A law passed by the state's voters in 1996 prohibits UC schools from using race or gender in admissions, but that hasn't stopped them from trying to determine the racial breakdown of the students they admit. This year, a formidable obstacle…
IN THE BABBLE ABOUT who's up and who's down among House Republican leaders, Tom DeLay of Texas doesn't get much play. He's majority whip, the third- ranking Republican, but he's usually described as a sharp-edged conservative, a hard-sell fund-raiser, and not much more. Meanwhile, the speculation…
March 21, 1997
The symbolism couldn't have been worse: At a March 3 press conference devoted to a House bill on Puerto Rico's future, a reporter asked whether the congressmen could give some of their answers in Spanish, for the benefit of the Spanish-language media. Rep. Jose Serrano, a Puerto Rican-born Democrat…
WHEN REP. BILL PAXON announced last week that he was quitting Congress, it looked like good news for majority leader Dick Armey. Paxon was about to challenge Armey for the number-two job in the House. And whoever won would be in line to be the next speaker of the House -- perhaps as soon as next…
WHEN A WHITE HOUSE STEWARD WAS reported to have told a grand jury that he had seen Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky together in a compromising position, the Clinton administration's vaunted rapid-response team kicked into action. Only this time, it had a new member: Joseph Small, the steward's…
"I DON'T HAVE TO STAY HERE and take this." That's what Sandy Berger, President Clinton's I national-security adviser, said in exasperation during a February 11 meeting with Senate Republicans, who were berating him and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright for shortcomings in the administration's…
WHEN THE MONICA LEWINSKY storm broke, many reporters wrote that Bill Clinton would lack for allies among congressional Democrats: He has always held them at arm's length. But by the time he delivered his State of the Union address, he had them in his hip pocket. Almost in lock step, Democrats had…
FOR 20 YEARS NOW, REP. IKE SKELTON of Missouri has been a solidly conservative, even hawkish, voice on military and security affairs. He has supported aid to the contras, the Gulf War resolution, and the B-2 bomber. He has opposed cuts in defense spending, quotas aimed at increasing the number of…
CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR PETE WILSON made a splash at last year's Republican convention in San Diego by noisily agitating for removal of pro-life language from the party's platform. That earned him scorn from anti-abortion groups like the Christian Coalition. But times have changed. When Wilson spoke to…
LAST MARCH, House speaker Newt Gingrich assembled all House Republicans in a basement room of the Capitol, planning to force 11 of them to stand up and explain why they had helped defeat a routine appropriations bill. One of the renegades, Rep. Steve Largent of Oklahoma, realized he'd been in a…
ONCE AGAIN, THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION has made known its unwillingness to get tough with Beijing. A few days after Chinese president Jiang Zemin left Washington in late October, the administration announced its opposition to six modest legislative proposals intended to stiffen U.S. policy toward…
Contrary to the conventional wisdom, John Glenn is not the most shameless apologist for President Clinton in Congress. That distinction belongs to Rep. Henry Waxman of California, the senior Democrat on the House committee probing last year's fund-raising abuses. Waxman and his staff have gone to…
"THE INCOME TAX SHOULDN'T BE a fulllemployment program for accountants and economists," says a leading tax reformer in the House of Representatives. " The lobbyists who have rigged our tax code for decades" must be curbed, he says, and tax forms made so simple they are "printed on a small…
IT WASN'T JUST THE PRESS that sensed dynamite ahead in the recent Senate hearings on the Internal Revenue Service. The Clinton administration was alarmed at the prospect of testimony from IRS agents indignant over abuses of power by their own agency. A senior Treasury official even pressured an…
Fred Thompson hasn't had many good weeks chairing the Senate committee investigating illegal and improper activities in last year's presidential campaign. But in the week beginning September 15, the Thompson hearings finally started to generate serious public attention. A Clinton foreign- policy…
A few years ago political advisers to Paul Coverdell, the Republican senator from Georgia, thought he should attend an Atlanta Braves baseball game to show he was a regular guy. But when they went to pick Coverdell up at his house on the outskirts of Atlanta, he was wearing a suit and tie -- keep…
I'M DEAD SERIOUS ABOUT THIS," says Republican senator John McCain of his threat to attach sweeping campaign-finance reform to nonbudget bills that come to the Senate floor. In the afterglow of the bipartisan balanced-budget agreement, McCain is promising disruption. If he makes good on his threat,…
Mitch Wallerstein doesn't seem like someone you'd want in a key job affecting national security. In the 1980s, when the Reagan administration was tightening controls on American exports to Communist countries, he noisily called for export liberalization. Through the Bush years, he used his perch at…
TRENT LOTT ISN'T THRILLED that Jesse Helms has decided, as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to prevent former Massachusetts governor William Weld from becoming ambassador to Mexico. It's easy to see why this fight displeases the Senate majority leader: It has crowded out…
WHEN HOUSE REPUBLICANS GATHERED on the evening of July 23, everyone wondered what Lindsey Graham would say. Lindsey Graham? Hardly a household name, the second-term representative from South Carolina had emerged as a ringleader in the effort to remove House speaker Newt Gingrich. He had caused a…
Here's how bad things are among House Republicans: After the collapse of the coup attempt against Newt Gingrich, the speaker is being described as " utterly contemptuous" of his fellow GOP leaders Dick Armey, Tom DeLay, and John Boehner. Having forced Bill Paxon's resignation, Gingrich is eager for…
ON JUNE 11, the night before Democratic representative Tony Hall introduced his resolution apologizing for slavery, he called Jesse Jackson. During their 15-minute conversation, Jackson expressed support for Hall's effort, telling him, "I don't have any problem" with the proposed apology. But when…
Among the many unhappy campers in the House GOP last week, two may have been the unhappiest of all: Christopher Cox and David McIntosh. Republican leaders had attached a couple of worthy but wonkish riders to an unrelated flood-relief bill (and had allowed it to get loaded down with specialinterest…
Like millions of Americans, I've succumbed to the allure of a wild bull market and plunged into mutual funds over the past 18 months. It wasn't so long ago that I had no idea what a "mutual fund" was and found myself confounded by their promises to make me money. Now, I am familiar with arcana like…
IN 1994 SEN. PHIL GRAMM OF TEXAS vociferously opposed the Clinton health- care plan. "Anything I can do within the rules of the Senate to prevent the government from taking over or controlling the health-care market," he declared, "I'm going to do, and I'm going to do it proudly." Gramm was key in…
WHEN A SCHEDULER FROM Newt Gingrich's office called Ed Crane, president of the libertarian Cato Institute, to invite him to discuss the budget deal with House Republican leaders recently, Crane's response was curt: "Tell the speaker to cut some spending." Then he hung up. Paul Weyrich, president of…
ON HIS SUCCESSFUL TRIP TO CHINA, Newt Gingrich was treated as America's second or third most important politician. Now that he's back, the House speaker has resumed his less glorious role as Washington's most famous deadbeat. Gingrich agreed to a $ 300,000 fine in his settlement with the House…
HOUSE MAJORITY LEADER DICK ARMEY is the kind of guy who sports an Adam Smith necktie and worships at the altar of free trade. In his 12 years in Congress, he's never opposed a trade-liberalization agreement, and he's always voted to renew most-favored-nation trading status with China. But asked how…
WHEN TRENT LOTT became Senate majority leader last year, he at once began striking deals with Democrats in Congress and the White House. He had an inner circle of one: himself. That's changed. Now Lott meets with a small group of Senate Republicans -- he calls it the Council of Trent -- with whom…
DURING THE GULF WAR, Rep. Dan Burton proposed launching nuclear weapons against the Iraqis. A noisy Clinton critic, he's lambasted the White House for using taxpayer dollars to respond to letters written to Socks. He's also questioned whether Vince Foster's death was a suicide. A few years ago he…
THINK THE CLINTON WHITE HOUSE and congressional Republicans never agree? Well, when it comes to federal judges, think again. In his first term, the president nominated 202 judges, and not one of them was rejected. What's more, Republicans demanded an actual roll-call vote on only four nominees --…
IN 1989, WHEN ANTHONY LAKE was toiling as a professor at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, he published a well-received book about U.S. policy toward Nicaragua entitled Somoza Falling. Among the explanations he offered for the Carter administration's slow response to the Sandinistas' rise was…
BILL CLINTON AND TRENT LOTT, the Senate majority leader, are the two most important politicians in Washington, and, from all evidence, they really like each other. They've talked about ten times since the election -- about the balanced-budget amendment, Medicare, tax cuts, and education. Twice, the…
I moved from Belgium to Washington in July 1995 and my life has changed in a number of appreciable ways. I no longer eat French fries with mayonnaise. I no longer write on subjects like the Italian pension system. And I am, at long last, on the verge of joining the American consumer culture. I…
WHEN HOUSE SPEAKER NEWT GINGRICH met with House minority leader Richard Gephardt two years ago to settle committee assignments, there was a problem. Representative Jim McDermott of Washington, the former ethics chairman and one of the most partisan members of Congress, planned to remain the…
WHEN CHINA'S DEFENSE MINISTER, Chi Haotian, was granted an extraordinary meeting with President Clinton in the Oval Office on December 9, Chi's role as the military leader of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre barely made a ripple in official Washington. Oh, a few get-tough-on-China Republicans,…
REPORTING ON NATIONAL SECURITY and intelligence maters has traditionally been the province of Ivy League-educated reporters working for elite papers like the New York Times and the Washington Post. Bill Gertz hardly fits this profile. He never graduated from college, and he writes for the…
BRIEFLY LAST WEEK, House Speaker Newt Gingrich appeared on the verge of toppling, pushed by a small band of House Republicans and outside allies. Columnist Kate O'Beirne launched the first strike. Writing in National Review after the election, she called on Gingrich, beset by ethics troubles, to…
To appreciate the ways in which the political landscape has been altered since Republicans took control of Congress two years ago, consider the ways in which the Democratic party has changed in the past four years. Before 1994, Democrats on Capitol Hill actively sought a $ 265 billion tax increase…
Santa Barbara, California
Lansing, Michigan
REPUBLICANS ARE EXITING the first Congress they've controlled in 40 years in terror-stricken retreat. Senate majority leader Trent Lott says they just want to get their work done and go home. He and others admit that their reluctance to risk political fights carries a cost. They probably erred in…
WHAT A DIFFERENCE 12 months makes. A year ago, congressional Republicans were giddy over the prospects of passing $ 270 billion in Medicare savings, approving a budget that would come into balance by the year 2002, and revolutionizing the way Washington does business. Newt Gingrich's insurgents…
Terrorism has been quietly emerging as an issue in the race between Bob Dole and Bill Clinton. Dole portrays the president as insufficiently wary of the world's rogue states. Soon, though, Clinton will have handy ammunition -- when the Senate approves a chemical weapons treaty endorsed by the…
WHATEVER THE MEDIA SAY, the skirmishes at this week's Republican platform committee meetings in San Diego leading up to the GOP national convention won't amount to much. The real battles have already been fought in Washington, behind closed doors, with conservatives, mostly congressional staffers,…
"THE MOST BRUTAL ACT of social policy since Reconstruction" is how Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Democrat of New York, characterizes the welfare legislation that will soon land on Bill Clinton's desk. Could the president dream of signing such a bill into law?
I did something recently I probably won't do again: I spent a weekend at Harvard Business School. My main reason for going was to see a set of friends while they're all in one place. But a small part of me wanted to go because my economic ignorance has occasionally prompted me to think I should go…
The brutal clash between moderates and conservatives expected at the Republican national convention in August is already unfolding in Kansas. At stake is the Republican nomination for Bob Dole's Senate seat and a lot more. The outcome of the Kansas primary on August 6 will affect the mood in San…
ASK TRENT LOTT WHETHER HE will do the job of Senate majority leader differently from Bob Dole, and he will invariably remark, "The torch has been passed but the flame is the same." This may be appropriately deferential toward Dole, but it's not entirely accurate: At the all-important staff level,…
ASK TRENT LOTT WHETHER HE will do the job of Senate majority leader differently from Bob Dole, and he will invariably remark, "The torch has been passed but the flame is the same." This may be appropriately deferential toward Dole, but it's not entirely accurate: At the all-important staff level,…
It wasn't supposed to be this way. As soon as the Republican victories of November 1994 made clear that Jesse Helms, fire-breathing senator from North Carolina, would be the next chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, there were dire predictions: Helms would impair U.S. diplomacy. He would…
It wasn't supposed to be this way. As soon as the Republican victories of November 1994 made clear that Jesse Helms, fire-breathing senator from North Carolina, would be the next chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, there were dire predictions: Helms would impair U.S. diplomacy. He would…
WHEN BOB DOLE TRAVELED to Kentucky on June 13, he hoped to convey to the state's huge tobacco constituency that as president he would end the Clinton administration's war on nicotine. "To some people," Dole said, "smoking is addictive. To others, they can take it or leave it." These politically…
WHEN BOB DOLE TRAVELED to Kentucky on June 13, he hoped to convey to the state's huge tobacco constituency that as president he would end the Clinton administration's war on nicotine. "To some people," Dole said, "smoking is addictive. To others, they can take it or leave it." These politically…
Want to know how decisions are really made in Washington -- how a company can be bankrupted, how an effective medical procedure can be terminated, how science can be brushed aside, all in pursuit of a bureaucrat's ambition? Read on.
Want to know how decisions are really made in Washington -- how a company can be bankrupted, how an effective medical procedure can be terminated, how science can be brushed aside, all in pursuit of a bureaucrat's ambition? Read on.
Senate majority leader Bob Dole isn't the only Republican running a campaign from the Senate floor. The race to succeed him as Senate Republican leader won't generate many headlines. The candidates don't admit to running, and the votes won't be tallied till December. Yet the outcome will heavily…
HOUSE SPEAKER NEWT GINGRICH is a major advocate of medical savings accounts (MSAs), because, he says, they will inject market-based cost controls into the health-care system. In To Renew America, he wrote that "every American ought to have the opportunity to belong to a [medical savings account]…
HOUSE SPEAKER NEWT GINGRICH could have used his stint hosting Larry King Live on March 29 to preach free-market environmentalism. With a zookeeper, a Bengal tiger, an iguana, a wallaby, a mountain lion, and a cockatoo among his guests, he could have denounced failed government programs and laid out…
FOUR WEEKS AGO, CONGRESS was on the brink of passing radical immigration reform. Legislation sponsored by Sen. Alan Simpson of Wyoming and Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas would have beefed up controls on illegal immigration and dramatically reduced legal immigration. But when the House easily passed its…
TOURING MAN QUENTIN PRISON in California on March 23, Bob Dole highlighted a budding theme of his presidential campaign: Bill Clinton's liberal judicial appointments. "We don't need judges who try to find excuses for more criminal behavior," Dole said, and he called on Judge Harold Baer, a Clinton…
THE PROPOSED BAN ON "PARTIAI. BIRTH" abor- tions-passed by the Senate in December and scheduled for a final House vote the week of March 25 -- is the work of one of Washington's least well-known but most influential lobbyists. Douglas Johnson, legislative director of the National Right to Life…
HOUSE SPEAKER NEWT GINGRICH now relies on what staffers call "the Jupiter graph." In meetings, Gingrich refers to the planet Jupiter and the attention devoted to the "spot" marring its appearance even though this "spot" is unimportant to understanding the planet. Gingrich sees Washington as the "…
WHEN SENATE MAJORITY LEADER Robert Dole anounced last July 27 that he wanted to ban set-asides for women and minorities in federal contracting and hiring, he didn't do it quietly. He published an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal entitled "A New Civil Rights Agenda" and held a press conference…
WHEN BEN NIGHTHORSE CAMPBELL of Colorado was elected to the Senate in 1992, he quickly became a darling of the national Democratic party. As the first person of Native American descent to serve as a senator, and someone who had spent part of his youth in an orphanage, he seemed to embody the…
MICHAEL CHERTOFF CHIEF COUNSEL to the Senate Whitewater Committee, can make smart people look stupid. Fade back to the summer of 1995. He is getting his first crack at the Clinton inner circle in the matter of the death of Vincent Foster, deputy White House counsel, two years before. In an intense…
IN THE SPACE OF 10 DAYS AROUND NEW YEAR'S, one Republican presidential candidate was treated to cover stories in insider Washington magazines the $ INew Republic and National Journal as well as a frontpage profile in the New York Times. But the subject wasn't front-runner Bob Dole or insurgent…
THE DAY TOM DASCHLE WAS ELECTED Senate minority leader in November 1994, he pledged independence from the Clinton administration. He was as good as his word this past December 30, when the House passed a measure that would have sent federal employees back to work. The measure had the tacit support…
JIM JEFFORDS OF VERMONT holds the dubious distinction of being the most liberal Republican in a Senate increasingly populated by conservatives. In recent weeks, Jeffords has emerged as the chief Republican obstacle to enacting the party's legislative agenda. In the process, he has acquired…
ON THE EVENING OF DECEMBER 13, with the Senate tied in knots over the deployment of 20,000 American troops to Bosnia, Majority Leader Bob Dole shuttled back and forth from his second-floor Capitol office to the Senate floor, working to ease political tensions. Legislation that would have blocked…
ON NOVEMBER 20, 1990, 45 House Democrats filed suit in federal court to prevent President Bush from taking military action against Iraq without congressional approval. "The president of the United States on his own cannot make that kind of determination," said Rep. Ron Dellums of California, who…
ON NOVEMBER 9, THE SENATE considered linking the abolition of the Commerce Department to a debt-limit extension soon to be sent to the White House. A whip count showed that 14 GOP senators would oppose the measure, ensuring its defeat. This infuriated a group of House GOP freshmen, who marched over…
ON NOVEMBER 9, THE SENATE considered linking the abolition of the Commer ce Department to a debt-limit extension soon to be sent to the White House. A w hip count showed that 14 GOP senators would oppose the measure, ensuring its de feat. This infuriated a group of House GOP freshmen, who marched…
IN THE LATE AFTERNOON or November 8, Bill Clinton met with advisers in the Oval Office to discuss an analysis of the Senate's welfare legislation by the Office of Management and Budget. The study indicated that the bill -- which Clinton was on the record as supporting -- would push an additional…
JUST HOW MUCH DOES PETE DOMENICI, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, carea bout a balanced budget? Following the committee's approval on a party-line vote to settle Washington's accounts by the year 2002, he solemnly called the vote "the culmination of the my life work." That may be only a…
SENATE REPUBLICANS, never particularly unified, can't make up their minds about the size, shape, and timing of tax cuts this year. They considered a scheme to make some of the curs temporary, quickly abandoned the idea, then on October 12 decided to look at the scheme again. No Republican is in…
THE DIE HAS BEEN CAST," Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole said in July after Republicans failed to halt a filibuster against regulatory reform, once a wildly popular item on Congress's agenda. The issue was dead, the victim of extraordinarily intense lobbying by the White House and ideological…
AT 9:30 P.M. ON SEPTEMBER 20, Newt Gingrich met with Republican Reps. David Mcintosh, Ernest Istook, and Robert Ehrlich to discuss their fear that Gingrich might compromise away their measure to curb political advocacy by groups that receive federal money. The issue, dubbed "welfare for lobbyists,"…
THE BITTER SQUABBLES LAST WEEK over welfare reform among Senate Republicans suggest the political difficulties of advancing the conservative agenda through that body. But they also suggest that today, the policy debate in America is among conservative ideas -- and virtually among conservative ideas…
WHEN HOUSE REPUBLICAN LEADERS met on September 6, giddiness reigned. House members had not been brutalized at town meetings during the August recess, as some had feared, over GOP plans to save $ 270 billion in Medicare spending (and thus balance the budget in seven years). The town meetings held by…