The Unbearable Costs of Empire
Talk in Washington these days is of Rome and its imperial responsibilities. But George W. Bush is no Julius Caesar. France under Napoleon may be the better precedent. Like Bush, Napoleon came to power in a coup. Like Bush, he fought off a foreign threat, then took advantage to convert the republic into an empire.…
The Taxonomist: The Tax Cheaters Lobby
There are some subjects I just can’t stop harping on. But there’s a rationale for my repetition. I hope that someday the mere mention of “Cato Institute” or “Heritage Foundation” or “Bush” will make people immediately think, “Yeah, those are the guys who support tax cheating.” Here’s the latest entry in the dossier. In the…
The Traditionalist
Many liberals were startled when one of the strongest Senate voices warning against invading Iraq turned out to be 84-year-old Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, a man slightly to the center-right of his party, a defense hawk and very much a traditionalist. But at the heart of Byrd’s traditionalism is reverence for the U.S.…
The Fly-by-Night 107th
As the 107th Congress limps into the midterm elections without having passed most of its routine spending bills, it’s safe to say that the legislative branch hasn’t been a model of efficiency. But, then again, there are worse things than gridlock. The GOP had big plans in 2000 for its House-Senate-White House axis. Those designs…
The Rising Latino Tide
I. I Can Help McBride! “When I go door-to-door, and they open it up, they don’t really listen to me,” says Patrick Vilar, a fresh-faced young Democrat who is seeking election to the Florida House of Representatives this November in a district that, the conventional wisdom says, is Cuban, Republican and, for a Democrat, a…
Revolt on the Ranch
In early October, as the Iraq debate heated up in Washington, U.S. Rep. and Senate hopeful John Thune (R-S.D.) began airing a campaign ad on western South Dakota television stations. The 30-second spot featured images of Saddam Hussein while an announcer assailed opponent Tim Johnson, the incumbent Democratic senator, for voting against missile-defense implementation. Opposing…
Herrera’s Winning Hand
“Dario [Herrera] is the best one-on-one campaigner I’ve ever seen,” says Paul Brown, Las Vegas coordinator of the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada (PLAN), and after a day going door-to-door with Herrera in the city’s new 3rd Congressional District, I don’t doubt it. A 29-year-old Democrat and a member of the powerful Clark County Commission…
Books in Review
The Emerging Democratic Majority By John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira. Scribner, 213 pages, $24.00 With the 2002 campaign in its final days, the two parties are engaged in a form of trench warfare. Neither side is expecting a big breakthrough this November. There seems little chance that Republicans will significantly pad their margin in…
On the Contrary
Sectarian conservatives have reason to resent the First Amendment: It prohibits government officials from posting the Ten Commandments in public places while it protects the Godless Americans March on Washington (scheduled for Nov. 2.) No wonder they think the road to hell is paved with the Bill of Rights. The Constitution surely paves the way…
Bloody Good Fun
Dr. Hannibal Lecter is the premier Hollywood monster of our time — even scarier, in his way, than John Travolta. Fish-eyed and slightly phosphorescent, wearing an expression of icy beatitude, he hovers monklike behind his sheet of perforated plastic (which recalls the captivity of laboratory locusts), bodily contained but limitless as to his mind. Nothing…
Good Company
“A day doesn’t go by but somebody comes into my office and says, ‘How do I get into the intelligence system?'” remarks Arthur Hulnick, a 28-year Central Intelligence Agency veteran who now teaches international relations at Boston University. This avid interest is a far cry from 15 years ago, at the height of Iran-Contra, when…
The Repudiation Syndrome
Since Lyndon Johnson, every Democrat who has run for president has suffered repudiation within his own party after either serving in office or losing the election. Democrats repudiated Johnson because of the Vietnam War, Jimmy Carter because of the economy and Bill Clinton because of his personal conduct, and they repudiated George McGovern, Walter Mondale…
Comment: Outward Bound
The last time the Republicans controlled the House, the Senate and the presidency for a full two-year term was 48 years ago, in the years 1953-54. Dwight Eisenhower was president. Ike, however, was a bipartisan sort of Republican who worked closely with Democrats in Congress. Among other un-Republican achievements, he gave us the Warren Supreme…
Tinker, Banker, NeoCon, Spy
If T.E. Lawrence (“of Arabia”) had been a 21st-century neoconservative operative instead of a British imperial spy, he’d be Ahmed Chalabi’s best friend. Chalabi, the London-based leader of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), is front man for the latest incarnation of a long-time neoconservative strategy to redraw the map of the oil-rich Middle East, put…
Lula’s Rules
Just when it was looking as if the Bush administration would stamp its economic model on the entire Western Hemisphere, a credible challenge has emerged. South America’s largest and most self-reliant economy is very likely to elect a popular moderate leftist. Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of the Workers Party in Brazil has campaigned vigorously…
