Editorials

...party of reform, launch their campaigns against tobacco today, booze tomorrow, and down the road, McDonald's hamburgers, caffeine, perfume, the list lengthens as the Democrats' desperation to stay in office intensifies...

...Instead it publishes sonorous tracts such as "Under the Influence: Congress Backs Down to Big Booze...

...Kids are having caffeine early and often...

...Not much is at issue in national politics today and so the Democrats, historically the Adapted from RET's weekly Washington Times column syndicated by Creators Syndicate...

...the magazine inquires and sweeps on, "These days constraints on caffeine consumption for kids and young 25 YEARS AGO IN The American Spectator The Best and the Brightest is the product of David Halberstam's quest "to find out the full reasons why it (the Vietnam war) had all happened...

...Now our Boy President stands accused of corruption across the widest range of scandals in presidential history...

...Common Cause has no interest in examining an administration that misuses the FBI and the IRS, that hounds RTC and FDIC administrators, that thwarts campaign finance laws, and attracts all the other more exotic allegations of scandal...

...While the traditional forces of reform in the country duck their obligation to pursue real corruption, they quiet their restless consciences by pumping up campaigns against personal indulgences that have pleased Americans for centuries...

...Well, Common Cause, founded in the 1960's to reinvigorate the campaign against corrupt government, has just sallied forth against the liquor industry...

...One of the admirable roles American reformers have played is to root out corruption, usually in urban politics and state politics...

...Then comes the magazine's assault on Coca-Cola...

...Common Cause does not mind the arbitrary use of police powers by the White House and would extend that threat to the state level...

...Although the book is largely based on "some five hundred interviews" and contains not a single footnote, the credulous reader is expected to excuse the author's failure to document his account because "the political climate is somewhat sensitive these days, and the relationship of reporter to source is very much under attack...

...Fast foods are always on the reformers' hit list, as though they were poisons being retailed for corporate profit...

...They have utterly failed in their attempts to keepdrugs out of the hands of "the kids," and so they turn their ardors against Coca-Cola...

...Anyone remember when caffeine was off-limits for children...

...Terry O'Rourke "The Best and the Brightest" JUNE-SEPTEMBER 1973 16 June 19 9 8 The American Spectator teens are non-existent...

...As for me, I was sipping my matutinal coffee whilst reading scintillating historic documents, to wit, Arkansas state campaign contribution reports going all the way back to the early 1980's...

...L'it 18 June 1998 • The American Spectator...

...Five independent counsels are inspecting his government...

...The reformers are great poseurs...

...That is correct—the Boy Governor of Arkansas was the appreciative beneficiary of thousand-dollar checks from such agents of the Vast Nicotine Conspiracy as the Tobacco Institute, the Grand Prairie Wholesale Tobacco & Candy company, and as recently as 1990, RJR Nabisco, Inc.—incidentally it is amazing how many out-of-state donations flowed into the Arkansas governor's campaign...

...Rich desserts and candy could be next...

...University politics are so heated because so little is at issue...

...Apparently Congress displeased Common Cause by failing toadopt a harsh national blood alcohol driving standard...

...Not long ago the left-wing Nation magazine fell on caffeine, supposedly for the threat it poses to children...

...Compared with the national governments of continental Europe, corruption in American national government has been insignificant, at least until the arrival in Washington of the Whitewater Gang...

...Oh, you did...

...Oh, for the morning when I could read through Big Caffeine's contributions records whilst sipping my coffee...

...So what is the response of the Republic's reformers...

...Yet I wonder: Would they accept donations from Big Caffeine as gladly as Boy Clinton accepted donations from Big Tobacco...

...You could never guess who was receiving handsome sums from the tobacco industry in those days...

...Now that the Cold War is over and the Welfare State is a dead issue one is struck by the paltriness of the issues that fire the politicians' phony passions...

...His aides are brazenly harassing the press and smearing the legal system...

...Who doubts that tobacco money continued to flow into Clinton's presidential campaigns...

...The extravagant rhetoric hurled at the sale of tobacco by plastic pols such as Boy Clinton puts one in mind of the old line about university politics...

...Of course it is a sign of the moral bankruptcy of America's reform movements that they would make a political issue of these innocent personal indulgences...

...While the Boy President obstructs justice and abuses power to the point that his old adviser, Dick Morris, speaks of the president's "secret police," Common Cause chides Congress for agreeing with the liquor and restaurant industry...

...Common Cause and its allies will transform liquor into the monstrous legend that they have invented for tobacco...

...It is difficult to know whether the reformers' real target is the product peddled or the big corporations that peddle the product...

...Under normal circumstances, the author's omission to substantiate his work, coupled with his almost extrasensory capacity to know the innermost thoughts of his subjects, would lead the reviewer to dismiss the book as another lamentable example of declining historiographical standards...

...Killer Coffee I wonder what House Speaker Newt Gingrich was doing the other day when the morning headline boomed the Boy President's assault on Gingrich for being "a mouthpiece for the cigarette industry...