Election 2000: What's at Stake?
GEORGE WEIGEL What is at stake in the election of 2ooo is nothing less than the cleansing of the Aegean stables of our politics after the past two presidential terms. Whatever President Clinton...
...It demands large goals and vaulting aspirations...
...That looks like a defining election--not at the level of 1932, but certainly comparable to 198o...
...If the next president of the United States "gets it," and can move at Internet speed, rather than Washington speed, Election 2ooo may yet be a watershed year in the history of American politics...
...that's t GOP-talk for Clinton's "safelegal-and-rare"), and foreign policy...
...The question that we face is whether our latest postwar binge is now finally over...
...On the presidential level, the contenders will fret over reading p scores, rush hour traffic, and the length of hospital stays, in the hope of being elected as ~ national governor...
...His general election will tone down the leftism of his campaign for the nomination, but do not be deceived...
...With his bizarre impulses on foreign policy, such as his willingness to "beg" Hanoi for our POWs, McGovem would have been a catastrophe...
...PAUL A. RAHE Our democracy does not ordinarily display itself to its best advantage in the immediate aftermath of a great war...
...Your light bulb, flush toilet, and hair spray, your washing machine and refrigerator, your compost heap and your access to contraceptives, are all of legitimate interest to the authorities...
...Republicans default to the mediocre middle...
...Goodbye New Economy...
...The most disturbing thing about the Clinton presidency is that, seven years on, the country persists in doing pretty well...
...It's about up and down...
...The new conflict is between the high-tech economy's winners and its ~class~s--neither of whom yet realizes (or admits) they constitute a class...
...At every turn, he has, in his sloppy, extroverted way, shown us that presidential ideas and actions have no consequences...
...RICH KARLGAARD How about a Pat Buchanan Administration and a Dick Gephardt-led Congress...
...Liberal presidents are still uncomfortable with the use of force-desperate to "legitimize" it by the imprimatur of the international community...
...1~ "~ This election counts for a lot...
...they'll eventually be tempted to rabble-rousing, too...
...T.R., rough-rider, hunter, Dakota conservationist gives way to AI Gore, fusspot curator, techno-rationalist, Kennedy School wonk...
...They have a more clear-headed understanding that, once one has made the decision to use American power, the categorical moral as well as strategic importance is to prevail...
...This accomplishment alone would be a great legacy for the first president of the next millennium...
...There is also another possibility, of course, and it is all too probable...
...It looks like a low-stakes election, but it's probably a calm-before-the-storm one, a lesser 1856...
...CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL If you start at 1788 and skip forward 36 years at a time, you hit most of the crisis points in American history: 18z 4 (Jackson), 186o (Lincoln and impending Civil War), 1896 (industrialism beats nonulism~_ my2 (New Deal~_ lO68 (~eneration thereof...
...Gore's advantage is his service in a popular admin- ~ _ ~ f ~ , istration, suggesting that if we don't want to . / overturn the boat, we shouldn't enlist a _9 new crew...
...America can certainly do fine with a presidency that doesn't matter...
...9 Just as the commercial world has had to accept the reality of"creative destruction," where many old companies and ways of conducting business die and new ones emerge, allowing capital, ideas, and people to be reallocated, so must government...
...Voters want dramatic departures only when they are seriously dissatisfied...
...Rogue states and terrorists are looking for our Achilles' heel...
...Those are high stakes...
...Ronald Reagan seemed in 198o to understand what was at stake...
...ROBERT D. NOVAK A1 Gore and George W. Bush as the presidential nominees will make it seem / that 2ooo is a sleeper election with not !/ all that much at stake...
...then again, maybe not...
...Second, by lowering tax rates from confiscato- ~ ry levels and pressing the case for de-regulation, he recast the relationship between government ~_ and the market conclusively in favor of the market...
...The American Spectator _9 Fe b r u a r y 2 o o o 41...
...The exception...
...the boom that followed is now in its seventeenth year...
...Anthony B. Perkins is editor-in-chief of Red Herring and co-author of The Interact Bubble (HarperBusiness...
...Nobody will be talking about a "Bush Rev- ~-" olution" by a candidate who seems uninterested in radical tax reform, real downsizing of government, or an end to racial quotas...
...Big govern- r a ment has little relevance in this new - empowered global society...
...It is the old conservation, not the new, that welcomes the family in the Winnebago...
...But meantime we'll get a good eyeful of what modern liberalism looks like absent its stealthy DLC cloak...
...Communism ~ ~ and the orthodox New Deal are gone...
...Since it's academia that hatches today's elites, Democrats are better poised to represent the winners...
...As for the rest, they will be parasites on a public culture whose moral foundations have been seriously eroded, and whose resilience we imagine to be infinite at our national peril...
...Yup, that would be historic...
...The central question of government's size, for example, has, in the late 199o's, been settled: Within wide limits, Americans like big government, like its comforts and blandishments, like the goodies it doles out to them...
...9 Finally, because America is today the world's " only superpower, we have opportunity to think " ~ beyond the short term and take our military from the industrial age into the information age, and ultimately redefine the terms on which war is fought...
...That is the syndrome of the Bay of Pigs, of LBJ's "graduated escalation" over North Vietnam, of Jimmy Carter's abortive helicopter raid in Iran, and of Clinton's interventions from Somalia to Iraq to Kosovo...
...Oh really...
...But one wonders whether the current political culture and the predictable, media-driven character of our election campaigns still permit such ambition...
...If he were alive today, the author of Hunting Trips of a Ranchman would waste no time at all with the author of Earth in the Balance...
...During the impeach- ~ . . ment of the president, too many ~ Americans simply did not believe--or could not bring themselves to believe--that corruption on this colossal scale, reinforced by mendacity of epic proportions, was possible...
...A more civilized IRS...
...So what's left to fight aboutpaid paternity leave...
...Silicon Valley venture capitalists are starting to pour millions in new invesh-nent capital into education startups because they can see how the power of the Intemet can transform education in the same way it is transforming all information-based industries...
...Republicans today tend to be more strategic-minded, less na'fve about our ability to abolish the factor of power from international politics, and unapologetic about American strength, American sovereignty, and American preeminence...
...Democrats, for example, may see more gains in the Deep South (AL, GA, LA, MS & SC) as the GOP gets caught in Dixie's Democratic pincer movement of increased black voter turnout and more openness of whites to various Democratic messages...
...Defense spending, now slipping dangerously toward z percent of the GDP, will be bumped up--a bit anyway--we hope...
...Presidents Harrison, Cleveland, and McKinley had transferred some 5 ~ million acres of timberland into the reserve system...
...If they don't, then voters will be mercilessly unforgiving for their hypocrisy and the GOP will be quickly relegated to another fifty years of minority status-which they would deserve...
...and when the party actually managed to get control of Congress, they allowed themselves to be outfoxed by slick Willie...
...The election's issues won't command our attention, but the political stakes are high...
...Thus, 1996 was not a pre: ~ . / ~ ~tl,~ ~ / ventive election (though in Clinton's ; case, prophylactic would be a more l ~ / , ~ i ~ / , fitting term...
...Hello Dow 4000...
...Whatever President Clinton has touched, he has left cheapened: the Constitution, the office of President of the United States, the military, the press, the Justice Deparlrnent, the ~usrice system, the Democratic Party, our nationalsecurity, thetermsofourpublic - - ~ discourse, the political process, the list , N , goes on and on...
...In 1984, however, he was persuaded to ditch his fellow Republicans in search of a landslide...
...Are they willing to pay for a govemment that will take care of their needs...
...I~ is past time to call the nation's attention to what has happened to us since January zo, 1993...
...The Internet economy will continue to roar...
...1~ : " ~ was George Bush in 1988...
...And thanks to Rudy Giuliani, New York has an opportunity to repudiate peculation, Puerto Rican and Palestinian terrorism, criminal vagrancy, and a hypocritical feminism so shameless that, for the sake of personal ambition and aggrandizement, it has been willing to promote the political career and protect the personal reputation of a known masher and likely rapist...
...Nothing is too small, too personal, too close to home to drop beneath the new environmental radar...
...Hastings Wyman is editor and publisher of the Southern Political Report, PETER HUBER If no other crisis of consequence t ] l I turns up, it's going to be earthin-the-balance...
...The horror...
...For we must never underestimate the capacity of New Yorkers to make fools of themselves...
...If the sweep goes to the Democrats, Bob Tyrrell would be well advised to check the fine print in our extradition treaties...
...Democrats can dominate long-term only if they keep drawing electoral ballast (and a necessary ideological self-deception) from their lumpen wing--an incentive to the worst rabble-rousing...
...For the Democrats, the unions are protectionists...
...Republicans, however, should continue to do well in the Outer South (AR, FL, KY, NC OK, TN, TX & VA...
...What is already clear is that, leaving aside marginal lifestyle issues like the right to wear a nose-ring to school, liberty is retreating before regulation, legalism, and surveillance...
...President George W. Bush would not preside over a conservative revolution, unlike President Steve Forbes, but his Justice Department would obey the law, religious eccentrics living in communes wouldn't be killed, and Laura Bush wouldn't be found anywhere near grand juries or public policy...
...But he " j~, ~ ~ had the good fortune to mn against ! l ~ ~ ~ "~ Michael Dukakis, a candidate so sancqmw~l~ . ~- timonious and wooden he brings to " ~ . k x mind Al Gore...
...Every bit of available evidence makes this plain...
...If he fails to reverse course and to follow the Gingrich strategy of nationalizing local elections for the federal legislature by ostentatiously rallying his party's candidates for the Senate and the House around a common banner and a common program, and if his dispirited party loses control of Congress as a consequence, he will, at the first opportunity he affords the Democrats, be subjected to the same sort of treatment that his fellow Republicans tried half-heartedly to dish out to the criminal currently occupying the White House...
...It's good news for A1 Gore and George W. Bush, since you could hardly invent two better symbols of continuity than an incumbent second-term Democratic vice president and the son and namesake of the last Republican president...
...The restraints of the past eight years will be off...
...At least the Republicans will have a male candidate who's not afraid of a girl...
...Bill Bradley seems constitutionally incapable of speaking the harsh truth concerning the Clinton-Gore administration...
...But some candidates will undoubtedly try...
...So it is no surprise that we celebrated our victory in the long and arduous struggle against totalitarianism, which stretched from 1939 to 1989 , by relaxing our standards and abandoning self-discipline...
...On PBS a few years ago, John McCain told McGovern what the Hanoi Hilton's guests thought of his policies, adding: "If you had been president, I probably would still be there...
...The last time America underwent such a fundamental social and economic ~ ~ change during the transition from an agrarian society to an industrial society in the mid-nineteenth century, a significant political realignment quickly followed...
...low-risk, centrist politics, untethered to any distinct congressional or executive ~ i agenda, has become an irresistible and proven formula now widely embraced ,/ by both parties...
...This "legitimacy" is purchased by limiting the goals to humanitarian ones (lest they be tainted by any American strategic interest) and by limiting the means as well: Liberal presidents yearn to use military power "surgically," or in calibrated fashion--to do the minimum...
...Last time, we re-elected a bad man ~ 'ho doesn't believe in anything except ego boosts, cheeseburgers, and orgasms...
...Much depends on whether the wind is ruffling Trent's hair left or right when the floor vote is taken (assuming Trent's hair can be ruffled...
...But the advan, tage becomes a liability in November, because voters rarely elevate sit...
...A Gore-Bush contest will bog down in comparisons of character and temperament, but it also can define the will of the American people...
...Republicans, in contrast, are so eager to present themselves as non-partisan that, as a party, they quite often appear to stand for nothing at all...
...Here are just a few ideas on what it will take...
...KATE O'BEIRNE Candidates in 2ooo will be struggling to appear relevant as Washington's size grows and its influence shrinks...
...Same problem: The big parties defend superannuated causes...
...Republicans should see a continued ebbing of their 1994 tsunami, because the conservative movement has more or less won the battles that brought the GOP to national dominance and these issues are fading from view...
...Stay tuned...
...STEVE CHAPMAN Historic elections, which yield important changes in the status quo, generally require national calamities of some sort--as in 193z (the Great Depression), 1968 (Vietnam), and 198o (infla- ~ tion and the hostages in Iran...
...And whether Washington insiders appreciate it or not, the brave networked world the geeks are conjuring up is beginning to challenze American oolitical life in several fundamental ways...
...A1 Gore...
...Still, things could have " been Worse: Ponder the harm he ! ~ ~ might have done with self-control ,~ and a real ideology...
...The horror...
...Would a GOP Congress outlaw racial preferences, the Commerce and Energy Departments, the National Endowment for the Arts, bilingual education, the IMF, and the Legal Services Corporation...
...First, by pursuing a foreign policy that accelerated the collapse of ~ , America's great adversary, the Soviet Union, he allowed us, for better or worse, to turn our attentions to small matters...
...This is a hard fact for conservatives to face, maybe, but it's a fact nonetheless, and the unpleasant experiences of House Republicans from 1994 to today make this plain...
...He's likely to beat Bill i / , / / Bradley because parties rarely spurn .. sitting vice presidents...
...In short, this election year may be the best of times-or the worst...
...The most remarkable -- and disheartening-- feature of the campaign thus far is that no one has yet launched a full-bore assault on Clinton or Clintonism...
...Taxes and regulations might be trimmed somewhat...
...Without the diversions that took up so much of Clinton's energy, they would relentlessly pursue a liberal agenda...
...They do not want to eliminate the IRS, or the Department of Education, or even the National Endowment for the Arts...
...Or maybe the other way around...
...Daniel Casse is a senior director of the White House Writers Group, a public policy communications finn...
...I'm fairly certain that if Republicans run the table in 2ooo and win the whole kit and caboodle--the House, the Senate, and the White House-- conservafives will wind up mighty disappointed with what they do with this power...
...As a political movement, environmentalism was invented by a Republican, Theodore Roosevelt...
...Thanks to George W. Bush, the nation has an opportunity to repudiate a party that has become synonymous with ethnic spoils, ambulance chasing, union corruption, libertinism, infanticide, and an acceptance of Hollywood as the arbiter of all public and private morality...
...The boom will end, or some other great foreign adversary will rouse itself, and at that moment we will wish the election of 2ooo had been about something serious: We will wish that we'd elected a candidate committed to rebuilding our tattered military, or one who had the nerve to upend the public schools, in order to produce a generation of educated citizens...
...Already, the world is in a more precarious state than when M linton eritedit peiod when American leaders and planners ought to be thinking hard about future challenges, and preparing for them...
...The next president should start re-directing government money into the hands of social entrepreneurs who are working more nimbly and efficiently in the free market to solve many of our most difficult social problems...
...The "mainstream consensus" that followed might not have pleased him...
...Would the rare combination of a Republican president and Congress actually lead to the termination of government programs...
...Nor should it seem in any way odd that, at the first opportunity, we saddled ourselves with an administration as ignominious as the one led by William Jefferson Clinton...
...And it's all Reagan's fault...
...Steve Chapman is a columnist and editorial writer for the Chicago Tribune...
...If NewYorkers throw cold water on Hillary's scary political ambitions we can watch her melt away...
...The Democratic front-runners may be dull and duller, but both are capable of the "laser-like focus" on policy that Clinton only talked about...
...Thus the fecklessness of our present posture, if continued into the future, will do us lasting harm...
...But what we lose in the process is the sense of boldness that permits presidential leadership to shape and enhance our country...
...Unless George W. Bush undergoes an un-Republican ddgringolade, even ~ less will separate their nominees...
...T.R.'s altemative is activist too, but about the traditional objects of the movement: wildemess and forest, lake and river, marsh and shore, the places undeveloped by markets and untouched by the hand of man...
...Bush is indistinguishable from Clinton on big government (he won't"balance ~ the budget on the backs of the poor"), affirmative action ("I'm a uniter, not a divider" is Republicanese for Clinton's ~ "Mend it, don't end it"), _9 abortion (Bush likes his party's pro-life "tenor...
...Of course, none of this would much matter were the Republicans not a hapless lot so lacking in the moxie requisite for political rule...
...Or let's keep the test as simple as possible: Would my tax bill actually go down for once...
...As for those who say he's too lightweight to prevail against such a knowledgeable and experienced opponent--well, they said that about Ronald Reagan, too...
...So I am all in favor of working tirelessly to create towering Republican majorities in 200o...
...The reigning consensus is more than garden-variety me-tooism...
...One party might snatch the White House, Congress, and the courts...
...This election is especially crucial because for the first time in my lifetime, the Republicans could control virtually every lever of power in Washington, thus liberating conservafives and libertarians from 2o years of the GOP establishment concocting every possible excuse for nonperformance...
...And if their party retook the House, the new committee chairs would include such nasty leftists as John Gonyers of Michigan (Judiciary) and George Miller of California (Resources...
...Probably not...
...Conservative judicial appointments will be hoped for, but our hopes will be mocked anew: Sandra Day O'Connor redux...
...But their pre- , dictable tactical turns toward the &/A center constitute an illusion...
...A new direction needs to be charted and the current one criticized...
...The West triumphed over Communism...
...therefore mistaken...
...And the nation is absorbing the changes brought about by the civil rights revolution, without embracing racial quotas...
...9 We need to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship in education...
...Even the limited 1994 Contract with America seems a bit too much for ~ . this Republican...
...Interact access provides individuals with all the information and power they need to communicate and operate around the world beyond the control of any particular government...
...That's bad news for Bill Bradley, John McCain, and Steve Forbes, who are trying to tap a popular discontent that just ain't there...
...George W. will probably win because i " he enough of change to satisfy represents a a public in constant search of novelty but not enough to create fears he'll ruin a good thing--much like John Kennedy in 196o...
...With detectors and computers that claim to count everything, everywhere, the new green of the left never has to stop...
...But if Election 2000 goes to form--moderate Republican president, Trent Loft's Senate, left-wing Democrat House--few will call it historic...
...The Silicon Valley experiment has proved that it's the untethered and well-financed entrepreneur who creates new jobs and wealth, not the government...
...Such a contest makes a difference not so much because of what the winner does, but because of what the loser would have done...
...The failure of the Forbes campaign makes this plain...
...STEPHEN MOORE A good friend who has worked most of his adult life on Capitol Hill for Republicans keeps assuring me that "we are one election away from huge conservative policy victories in Washington...
...In 1988 when Republicans won a third consecutive term for the first time since Herbert Hoover, George Bush the elder consciously moved away from Ronald Reagan's legacy to aim for a "kinder, gentler" Republicanism (and incidentally guarantee Democratic victory in 1992 ) . NotA1 Gore...
...Any election has short-term high stakes for the politicians, but don't look for a major recasting of the nation's political landscape this year...
...DAN I E L CASS E Will the next election be an overdue repudiation of the Clinton years...
...I This perspective helps us under~ ~ ! stand the stakes in the upcoming t election...
...ANDREW FERGUSON If the election of 2ooo is a low-stakes election, which it is, and if politics today seems stupefyingly mushy, which it does, then there's only Ronald Reagan to blame...
...Information technology and the Interili~ ~../ net not only represent a commercial boom, but also an opportunity to refine our system of democratic capitalism and reinforce the liberal political tradition...
...Once in power, they would push hard and move fast...
...We don't need two big government parties in Washington...
...The Justice Department goes in hot pursuit on Microsoft, and the NASDAQ takes off...
...j The Left retains a liberal guilt about American power, which it , assuages by faith in multilateral institutions, diplomatic nostrums like arms control, and "New Age" issues like environmentalism...
...It has been some time since Republican presidential candidates evidenced any sense of the importance of party...
...But the two major parties aren't likely to take a clear position on these momentous questions...
...In 1998, businesses and consumers purchased over $5 ~ billion worth of goods and services online, and this number is expected to mushroom to $2 trillion by the year 2003 . To put this in perspective, the government's a n n u a l ~ is $1...
...Indeed, Clinton seems to have persuaded the public that nothing he does is of sufficient consequence to justify the indignation of his opponents...
...No one has suggested (as Reagan did in 198o ) that the bulk of ideas advocated by the current occupants of the White House are both wrongheaded and dangerous...
...Peace and prosperity have left politicians promising to scratch every itch of a satisfied electorate...
...They have no great desire to enlarge it, at least not at the moment, but absolutely no desire to see it made smaller...
...In a networked society, the state's main claim that it "knows better what is good for people than the people know themselves" rings hollow...
...Steve Forbes, a better commentator than a politician, has tried...
...His book Republics Ancient and Modern: Classical Republicanism and the American Revolution is available in a three-volume paperback edition from the University of North Carolina Press...
...ting vice presidents...
...38 Fe b r uary 2 o o o " The American Spectator In the end, few Americans will care...
...Recapturing a sense of presidential importance requires something vital to be at stake...
...II Republican government-slashing is discredited, too...
...But who now aspires to host the East Room environmental conference of 2oo8...
...and, not long thereafter, at the time of the Iran-Contra scandal, he suffered the consequences of his party's toss of leverage in Congress...
...So don't mourn the absence of a new Reagan revolution...
...Both parties pre[ tend politics is still about right and left, but it's not...
...Peter W. Rodman, a former White House and State Department official, is director of National Security Programs at the Nixon Center and a senior editor of National Review...
...Christopher Caldwell is senior writer at the Weekly Standard...
...17ollowing this logic, the next election will determine only who's left holding the bag in 2oo 4. Little separates the parties...
...In an ideal world, we would eliminate capital-gains taxes altogether, and resist the temptation to over-regulate electronic commerce...
...The first two achievements made possible the third, which is this: By his very success Reagan rendered obsolete the ideological arguments that had obsessed political types-~ himself among them (and me too) --for at least two generations...
...Republicans will be out in the cold until they find something to believe in and someone to represent...
...But no such candidate presents himThe American Spectator _9 F e b r u a r y 2 o o o 35 self at the moment, because none is looked for...
...For the GOP, big business is for free trade, but Pat Buchanan's pitchfork brigade and other rightists tend toward isolationism...
...It's as if all the president's mischief and misdirection were trees falling in a woods...
...The two parties, judging by their leading candidates, are sharply differentiated along these lines...
...Clinton's...
...The new reality-what Clinton saw and the GOP didn't-- is that government, like computers, doesn't need to get bigger to get more powerful...
...That's due in part to internal conflicts in both major parties...
...Indeed, without Clinton's personal encumbrances and assisted by a Democratic House of Representatives, Gore has a golden opportunity to expand regulation, add spending programs, and redistribute income...
...Already, other major powers (Russia, China, Europe) are reacting to America's dominance by actively building counterweights to it...
...Our fellow citizens were mistaken...
...Politics will take a back seat...
...As for the Reform Party, it first has to solve its Fulani problem...
...Did anybody hear them...
...He would extend and expand Bill Clinton's aggressive governing that in defiance of Congress has increased intervention--and, yes, provided lots of help--in the lives of ordinary Americans...
...3 4 Fe b ruary 2 o o o _9 The American Spectator Taxes were raised, and the economy surges...
...Would we finally get a fiat tax or national sales tax...
...Thanks to Bill Bradley, the Democratic Party has an opportunity to repudiate a presidency that has become synonymous with a policy of appeasement bordering on treason, with widespread blackmail, with the use of federal law-enforcement agencies to target political enemies, and with a systematic and successful obstruction of justice...
...The spread of computer networks is also moving commerce from the physical world to an ethereal plane that is difficult for ~ , ~ the state to tax and regulate...
...But evolutionary changes will continue...
...If the younger Bush proves to be as deficient in political cunning and ruthlessness as his father, we will be back in the soup...
...This year, satisfaction prevails...
...Some conservatives may remember Richard Nixon as a disappointment, citing deviations ranging from his China trip to his plan for a guaranteed income...
...On other social questions, such as abortion and gay rights, both parties are likely to move toward the center after their conventions, blurThe American Spectator _9 Fe b r uary ~ o o o 37 ring, not joining, such issues...
...Alexander Hamilton thought the task of president was to undertake "extreme and arduous enterprises...
...And the winners will want the losers controlled...
...that could take Hurricane Floyd...
...With one - ' " ~ exception, it hasn't happened ~ ~ " ~ since Martin Van Buren was r .~': h - elected in 1836...
...9 We need to simplify our tax codes and reduce tax rates to encourage the accumulation of investment capital and foster entrepreneurship and new business creation...
...and Pat Buchanan hopes to throw a spanner in the works once again--this time, by reviving the Know-Nothing Party...
...For the right, the real challenge is simply to reclaim what it once owned...
...Clinton's secret...
...the intellectuals, internationalists...
...Electing a candidate who understands this could turn Election 2ooo into the most important election in American history...
...Andrew Ferguson is a senior editor of the Weekly Standard...
...Under the circumstances, a preventive election will do just fine...
...It's not Yellowstone that has to be fenced off, but humanity itself...
...Their worst absurdities will be checked (I think, anyway) by the Senate and White House...
...Before dismissing the election as inconsequential, however, weigh the alternative...
...George WeigeI is senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and author of Witness to Hope: The Biography of John Paul II (Cliff Street/HarperCollins...
...The new green puts the conservation of trash on a par with the national park...
...After three decades of political rout on i green matters, the right ~ ~ q ~ ~ 1 has got to stake out a pos- i !' itive, comprehensive, and 1~ credible position of its own...
...Dubya" has had an all too easy time with the Democrats in Texas, and he has evidenced a foolish inclination to run for the presidency while distancing himself from the congressional Republicans...
...The American Spectator _9 February 20 o o 39 PETER W. RODMAN Many Americans seem to have concluded that, with the Cold War over, foreign policy and national security are of no compelling concern...
...will we get along with China...
...Reagan did three very large things, it seems to me...
...The WTO riots are the first signs of a losers' revolt...
...And so we have an election in which all the plausible presidential candidates are saying roughly the same thing: They all want a !'limited but vigorous government," an elaborate socialwelfare apparatus paid for by transfers of wealth from one income group to another, and only the mildest possible reforms of the public education system...
...But absent l , _ n v ~q_%N~) some unforeseen, cataclysmic event, the coming election threatens to be a confir- ~ : mation of the Clinton approach to politics, not a referendum on it as many conservative commentators would like...
...That has much more to do with Gore than Bush...
...It's not enough for the 20oo candidates to talk of "restoring honor and integrity to the office"--even A1 Gore can do that...
...It requires a politician willing to translate personal popularity into triumphs of leadership and legislation...
...Republicans may hesitate to pose the question that starkly, but it's really what's at stake in 2ooo...
...Likely to nominate a mod: ~ : crate presidential candidate, and unlikely to strengthen its congressional _9 majorities, the GOP can scarcely promise a conservative revolution in 2OOl...
...And they will be the ones worthy of support...
...PauI A Rahe is lay P. Walker Professor of History at the University of Tulsa...
...Will this happen, in large scale...
...Peter Huber is the author of Hard Green: Saving the Environment from the Environmentalists (Basic Books), and a fellow of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research...
...HASTINGS WYMAN The millennial election isn't likely to have high stakes for the nation's future...
...36 Fe b r uar y 2 o o o _9 The American Spectator First, the cyber-revolution is challenging the expansionary tendencies of the state...
...The Civil War was succeeded by the Gilded Age and World War I, by the Roaring Twenties--and the administrations of Ulysses S. Grant and Warren G. Harding, which inaugurated these two periods, 40 February 2000 _9 The American Spectator remain to this day bywords for corruption...
...Scholars have put elections into all sorts of categories, but there's one type they've missed: the preventive election...
...Or lose the election, ~ , and the environment along with it, to the endlessly meddlesome green left...
...Both share a deadly earnest belief that only liberals are righteous and that conservatives spend their days hugging smokestacks and burning black churches...
...The challenge for this fall is to make , ~ ' ~ presidential politics matter again...
...9 We must accept that over 3o percent of the new technology companies started in America are founded by immigrants, largely of Chinese and Indian descent...
...would hardly recognize the environmentalism of the man who now bids to succeed him...
...Equally important is that his jaunty, down-toearth manner fits Americans' self-image far better than Gore's brooding wonkishness (again, the 196o analogy holds...
...While making the presidency sensational, he has also managed to make it irrelevant...
...ANTHONY B. PERKINS The average computer geek in Silicon Valley believes that the rise in clever electronic devices tapped into global digital networks is inexorably shifting power from organizations to individuals, decentralizing authority, and accelerating innovation...
...When they do, each will try to clear some breathing room for itself at the other's expense...
...Twice, in the last decade, they have nominated presidential candidates who were willing to serve but not eager to run...
...All this will change, of course, sooner or later...
...Would we even get a partially privatized Social Security system or just more insulting pablum about "saving Social Security...
...A lot of folks out there, in other words, are gunning for us...
...Contrary to myth, congressional Democrats are more unified and disciplined than their Republican counterparts...
...But it's too early to tell even if the parties will survive...
...Would Republicans actually do any of these things that they have promised for so long...
...7 trillion...
...If Republicans stand and deliver- if they actually shrink the New Deal/Great Society nanny state--then America will be a much freer and more prosperous place in the twenty-first century...
...JOHN J. PITNEY, JR...
...Kate O'Beime is Washington editor of National Review...
...But there are others (including myself) who believe the present euphoric moment of relative international bliss will not last forever...
...We bluff our way through foreign crises, and somehow our credibility remains intact...
...But T.R.'s distinction was to give conservation its name and, more importantly, to transform it into an enduringly popular political force...
...The most significant single race will take place in New York, should Hillary and Rudy wind up duking it out...
...It creates win- ' ning politicians and dull elections...
...As their near unanimity in defense of the indefensible demonstrates, when party advantage is at stake, today's Democrats are in no way restrained by political or moral scruples...
...It is the spectacle of Republicans imitating Democrats imitating Republicans...
...The classic case is 1972...
...The next president must resist the pressure of Big Labor, and significantly increase the allotment of H1-B visas which allow highly skilled workers from other countries to work in the United States...
...But his high-pitched harshness seems out of place in a political culture anesthetized by Clinton's therapeutic triangulations...
...The next president needs to open up the educational system to such innovation, and resist the backward ways and special interests of the teachers' unions...
...Stephen Moore is director of fiscal policy studies at the Cato Institute and president of the Club for Growth...
...The president is impeached, and everyone else in Washington looks like a buffoon...
...George Bush, when inaugurated, offered the Democrats his hand in "friendship," and they obliged him by promptly cutting it off...
...Good news: C-SPAN will be more entertaining, what with Majority Leader David Bonior lobbying to get Sinn Fein into NATO--or will it be Charlie Rangel trying to outlaw private property...
...Communities are now being formed around common interests, rather than physical proximity and citizenship...
...I doubt it...
...Chester Arthur and Grover Cleveland proved that...
...When one of these candidates steps out of line with the prevailing consensus, he is instantly reprimanded by one of his fellows--witness Al Gore's rebuke of Bill Bradley for even whispering about the remote possibility of a small tax increase...
...It's Gore that makes 2ooo a potential turning point...
...It guarantees a really historic conservative landslide in 2oo 4. Rich Karlgaard is the publisher of Forbes...
...The best way to deal _9 with the "digital divide" is to create a more competitive education market, not invent new govern,- ~ ment programs...
...I really do hope the Dems win the House...
...Yes, that is what it has come to...
...But charge him with every possible sin, and you still owe him eternal thanks for beating George McGovem...
...The clich6 that the end of the Cold War has abolished the dis- ~ 1 ~ ~ , ~ tinction between Left and Right is jr-,-.~~~,.._tlW~l ~ @.iv...
...If we want peace, a strong military yields good diplomacy...
...Capitalism, not socialism, is even accepted by most liberals...
...Thereare, of course, important decisions to be made--will we expand world trade...
...The Dow will hit zo,ooo during the new president's first administration...
...Robert D. Novak is a nationally syndicated columnist, CNN commentator, and author of Completing the Revolution: A Vision for Victory in 2ooo (Free Press...
...The struggle for independence was followed by the Critical Period-a time of massive, state-sponsored fraud and political disharmony in which the Union very nearly dissolved...
...John J. Pitney, Jr., associate professor of government at Claremont McKenna College, is author of the forthcoming book, The Art of Political Warfare (University of Oklahoma Press...
...But in order for such a candidate to be successful, he must have the courage to facilitate rather than try to regulate this radical transformation in our society...
...And, the election of the vice president would mean that Bill Clinton had successfully redefined his party so the left-wing nuts in its base no longer scare voters...
...It is the old that dispenses with oligarchy and caters to the common tastes of the common man...
...Politically speaking, that should be enough...
...But there's only one way to find out...
...The seriousness of candidates for Conand the White House in zooo / ~ . v gress ought to be measured by their willingness " " / / / to do that sort of truth-telling...
Vol. 33 • February 2000 • No. 1
