Two Minutes to Launch
The bitter disputes over national missile defense (NMD) have obscured a related but dramatically more urgent issue of national security: the 4,800 nuclear warheads–weapons with a combined destructive power nearly 100,000 times greater than the atomic bomb that leveled Hiroshima–currently on “hair-trigger” alert. Hair-trigger alert means this: The missiles carrying those warheads are armed and…
The Clear and Present Danger
It’s the oldest con trick in the world: Divert their attention to something outrageous. Then, while they’re jumping and pointing and yelling, sneak the truly awful thing by their noses without their even noticing. President George W. Bush’s nomination of John Ashcroft as attorney general is outrageous, to be sure. The nominee blatantly distorted the…
In Extremis
The confirmation of John Ashcroft as attorney general conjoins fearsome power with reactionary politics. The attorney general makes crucial decisions regarding the administration of justice that are beyond the power of the press, Congress, the White House, or the courts to oversee effectively on an ongoing basis. And Ashcroft, despite his sudden amiability and professed…
Utah Defends Missionary Position
Conservative leaders in Utah do not want to follow the rules of Florida math–that is, the precept that the first count is the best one, no matter how incomplete. The state of Utah, led by its Republican governor and five congressmen, has filed suit in federal court demanding a recount of Census 2000 numbers. The…
How Ashcroft Happened
If all had gone according to George W. Bush’s original plan, Marc Racicot would today be our attorney general. Racicot, who was, until recently, governor of Montana, would have been a solid choice. Though he’s enough of a GOP loyalist to satisfy the party faithful (he earned his partisan spurs working on Bush’s behalf during…
Who Let the Liberals Out?
Don’t buy into the mainstream media’s propaganda about how the recent transfer of power in Washington was remarkable for its lack of violence. That ignores the mobs of bloodthirsty liberals rampaging through the nation’s capital, ready to hoist the heads of innocent conservatives on newly sharpened pikes. Or at least that’s how the sensitive souls…
Let’s (Not) Make a Deal
“I love a 50-50 tie,” Senator John Breaux of Louisiana told me recently. “This is the kind of thing you dream about being involved in. It’s a mandate for getting things done.” And, boy, does he want to get things done. Breaux has a reputation in the Senate as a consummate deal maker, a people…
Lowering the Bar
It wasn’t surprising that during the fight over John Ashcroft’s nomination for attorney general, one side seemed especially eager to discuss his putative racism while the other side eschewed the matter. But it was surprising that his defenders were the eager ones. “I have never known John Ashcroft to be a racist,” proclaimed Oklahoma Representative…
Darth Rumsfeld
See the online sidebar “Punch-Drunk on Hardball” Since Donald Rumsfeld’s appointment as secretary of defense was announced on December 28, approbatory phrases have been the order of the day. The Washington Post cast him as “elder statesman,” while The New York Times characterized him as a “tough-minded manager.” At his January 11 confirmation hearing, the…
Short Items
Department of Stunning Revelations Ashcroft vows to let laws prevail Headline in The Boston Globe, January 17, 2001 Key to pardon is access: Many who get presidential action have connections Headline in The Washington Post, January 22, 2001 Amazon Man Has there ever been a more compulsively didactic politician than the…
Comment: The Political Fed
So Alan Greenspan is a political animal. What–you were expecting a philosopher-king? A lot of people who should know better were taken by surprise when Fed Chairman Greenspan made George W. Bush’s inaugural week by embracing a big tax cut. But it’s not as if Greenspan got this far on, say, charm. As Bob Woodward’s…
Mr. Bush Gets His Honeymoon
Before the election, I wrote in this column that “several possible squeaker scenarios could produce some strange political dynamics after November 7” [TAP, November 6, 2000]. Of course, I had no idea just how strange the outcome would be, though I started off with the possibility of “one candidate winning the electoral college and another…
Blackout
If California’s misbegotten electricity deregulation scheme is ever reduced to canvas or film, the artist would have to be some cross between Hieronymus Bosch and Federico Fellini. At one level, it’s a surreal story of grossly compounded economic errors; at another, a gruesome morality tale–not only about corporate greed and political stupidity, but about the…
Glad to be Unhappy
Rock critics a few years back coined the clever term miserablism to describe a brand of guitar music light in metallic crunch but heavy with emotional self-flagellation. It wasn’t a compliment, exactly. Yet with songs like “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now,” bands such as the Smiths and their flamboyant lead singer Morrissey proclaimed their angst…
The Myth of Lincoln, Reconstructed
Abraham Lincoln was born poor on the rugged frontier. He was physically odd, ugly even, and prone to despair. But he educated himself, elevated himself, and struck the first fatal blows against slavery. While saving the union, he also made it “the last best hope of earth.” While winning an awful war, he pledged “malice…
Poverty Solved: No Muss, No Fuss
The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else, Hernando de Soto. Basic Books, 276 pages, $27.50. Solving third-world poverty is the alchemy of economics. For decades international-development specialists have searched for the magical combination of programs and policies that would transform poor countries into rich, advanced economies. But all…
Chins Up, Liberals
Americans are ideological conservatives and operational liberals. That was the finding of social psychologists Lloyd A. Free and Hadley Cantril, who based much of The Political Beliefs of Americans, their classic work about public opinion, on a massive survey they conducted during the fall of 1964. As ideological conservatives, Americans are skeptical about the “role…
Native Sons
Honky, by Dalton Conley. University of California Press, 231 pages, $22.50. All Souls: A Family Story from Southie, by Michael Patrick MacDonald. Ballantine (paper), 266 pages, $14.00. In the 1970s, when Dalton Conley was growing up, Avenue D on New York City’s Lower East Side was a dicey place. Masaryk Towers, the housing project where…
American Beauty
When I was in law school in the early 1970s and professors were struggling with the honorific “Ms.,” one of my male classmates used to chide me and several other women for “distracting” him with our presence. We were irritated, not flattered, by his flirtations–intent on being taken seriously as lawyers or, at least, as…
Punch-Drunk on Hardball:
See “Darth Rumsfeld” When Gerald Ford fired James Schlesinger from the Pentagon in 1975 and replaced him with Donald Rumsfeld, Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater — a fan of Schlesinger’s owing to the latter’s advocacy of massive defense expenditure — angrily asked Ford what qualified Rumsfeld to run the Department of Defense. As The New Republic’s…
