IN A PERFECT WORLD—heck, in a merely rational world—President Bush’s strategy for combating the economic downturn and battered stock market would be obvious: He’d use the huge Social Security surplus to cut taxes, stimulate the economy, and increase stock values. That surplus, after all, means the…
THE MEDIA COVERAGE of the killing of 24 Iraqis at Haditha has given rich new definition to the phrase "rush to judgment." The coverage, plus the reaction of antiwar politicians like Democratic representative John Murtha, amounts to a public verdict of guilty, rendered against a handful of Marines,…
PRESIDENT BUSH AND REPUBLICANS are staring political disaster in the face on immigration. The problem isn't that they might enact a bill allowing illegal immigrants living in America to earn their way to citizenship, inviting foreign workers to come here, and beefing up security on the 2,000-mile…
PRESIDENT BUSH NEEDS TO KEEP two facts in mind as he looks to replace retiring Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O'Connor (and, should he step down, Chief Justice William Rehnquist). The first is that he can win confirmation of almost any conceivable nominee for the High Court, screams of protest by…
THE WORDS OF HUBERT HUMPHREY became the motto of American liberalism almost from the moment he uttered them on the Senate floor in 1977. "The moral test of a government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life--the children; the twilight of life--the elderly; and the shadows…
PRESIDENT BUSH HAS GOTTEN A lot of bad advice lately on how to promote Social Security reform, but none worse than the recommendation he cease talking up individual retirement accounts funded by payroll taxes. Oddly enough, this advice has come from both Republicans and Democrats. Republican…
ON THE EVE of the election in Iraq, Democratic senator Edward Kennedy called President Bush's Iraq policy "a catastrophic failure." He demanded that American troops immediately begin to withdraw. "We have no choice," he declared, "but to make the best we can of the disaster we have created in…
MAYBE WE SHOULDN'T WORRY. President Bush is bravely pushing ahead to introduce personal investment accounts in Social Security and to save the system from insolvency. This is political turf where others, including President Reagan, have feared to tread. And Bush is poised to press later this year…
THE DOG BARKS, but the caravan moves on. This Arab saying has been used privately by Bush administration officials to characterize the progress that continues, despite all difficulties, in Iraq. There's some truth to it. The turnover of sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government--a measure of…
THE TAWDRY Laci Peterson murder case has a significant twist. Scott Peterson is charged with two homicides--for killing both his wife Laci and his unborn son Conner. Under California law ("murder is the unlawful killing of a human being, or a fetus, with malice aforethought"), an unborn child is a…
THE DEMOCRATIC REVERSAL on taxes has come full circle. Forty years ago, Democratic president John F. Kennedy believed tax increases would neither balance the budget nor create jobs. Kennedy proposed deep cuts in income taxes that were enacted by an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress after his…
DEMOCRATS ROUTINELY COMPLAIN that President Bush and his political team call them unpatriotic for criticizing Bush on the war in Iraq. Democratic senator John Kerry, a struggling presidential candidate, last week went one step further. Addressing the Council on Foreign Relations, Kerry claimed to…
REPUBLICANS ARE GIDDY. The economy is on the verge of a sustained boom. After nearly two years of a "jobless recovery," new jobs are being created in large numbers. Iraq is a problem--a big problem--but a midcourse correction in postwar policy may curb terrorist attacks and hasten a democratic…
CALIFORNIA OWES a colossal debt to a Republican reformer named Hiram Johnson. He was the governor who put a recall provision in the state constitution in 1911. The idea was to allow voters to oust state officials who'd become wholly-owned subsidiaries of special interests. Along with the right to…
"PRESIDENT BUSH is the most pro-democracy, pro-freedom president on Cuba that we've ever had," says Emilio Gonzalez, who recently stepped down as the National Security Council's expert on Cuba. Maybe so. Bush has vowed to block any attempt to repeal the trade embargo against Cuba. He's transformed…
PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY president Yasser Arafat doesn't yield easily. He responds only to force and pressure, never to appeasement, unilateral concessions, or "confidence-building" gestures. The good news is that arm-twisting has finally been applied--by President Bush, Europeans, and Egypt--and…
A GROUP identified as administration officials, anxious advisers of President Bush, former Republican officeholders, and party leaders told the Washington Post early last week that the president has been getting "bum advice" from his top advisers on the war with Iraq. The group, whose members…
WHEN PRESIDENT BUSH set aside the Pentagon's strategy for war with Iraq and ordered an attack on Saddam Hussein and his inner circle, it created shock and awe in the media and perhaps in a few offices of Bush's own administration. It shouldn't have. The president behaved, without much ado, as a…
PRESIDENT BUSH has a keen sense of timing. When support slackens for the war on terrorism and regime change in Iraq, Bush strikes. After the liberation of Afghanistan, he used his 2002 State of the Union address to broaden the goals of the war and target Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as "the axis of…
PRESIDENT BUSH has a word for a policy he thinks isn't big enough to fight for. The word is "smallball." Bush prefers big ideas, the bolder the better. He loathes halfway measures. So instead of containment of Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction, a policy that would satisfy most of…
SOMEBODY TELL THE BUSH WHITE HOUSE that Republicans now control the Senate. And while you're at it, remind the president's men and women of three other things. One, President Bush has only one shot--now--at stimulating the economy. Anything done next year will be too late to affect economic…
TRENT LOTT, the Senate Republican leader, believes President Bush won a mandate in the midterm election. House majority leader Dick Armey says the Republican victories give Bush a realistic chance to reform the Social Security system in 2003. Sweeping free-market reform, long sought by…
HERE'S THE MEASURE of President Bush's success in assembling support for regime change in Iraq. Following his speech to the United Nations last week, National Public Radio put together a focus group of college students at Penn State-Harrisburg. The unanimous verdict: Bush had indeed made the case…
PRESIDENT BUSH "does not support a national ID card," a White House aide says. And, contrary to popular belief, he's never proposed one, even in the form of national standards for state driver's licenses. The National Strategy for Homeland Security, issued by the White House last April, merely…
FIDEL CASTRO, always full of bluster, says Cuba will never change its socialist ways. He says he might cut off ties with America altogether by shutting down the U.S. Interests Section in Havana. He's threatening to flood America with a new wave of refugees. We've heard all this before. It's Castro…
CONSIDER THE TERRORIST ALARMS issued by the Bush administration in just the last week (May 18-24). Bush administration officials leaked word of an upsurge in threats. Vice President Dick Cheney said another terrorist attack in the United States is "almost certain." FBI Director Robert Mueller…
SIX-MONTH anniversaries are rarely noted, except for babies. Yet President Bush staged an elaborate ceremony at the White House on March 11 to commemorate the deaths of 3,000 Americans in terrorist attacks six months earlier on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Families of victims were there,…
FARM BILL. When those two words crop up, the normal reaction is to tune out. Don't this time. The farm bill that's working its way through Congress is a disaster. It costs too much. It enriches the well-to-do. And it's likely to cause an egregious case of role reversal. For years the United States…
LAST FEBRUARY DEMOCRATIC SENATOR EDWARD KENNEDY introduced a "patients’ bill of rights." His proposal instantly became his party’s top priority on health care, attracted the endorsement of Republican senator John McCain, and won the support of a majority of senators. Kennedy introduced the…