Capitol Ideas: The Frenzy of Politics
Bethell, Tom
by Tom Bethell The Frenzy of Politics McCain wins Strange New Respect Award of Century. T he Bradley-Gore rivalry has unintentionally drawn attention to the sorry mess that is...
...His latest book is The Noblest Triumph (St...
...Watts and establishment icon Colin Powell...
...GEOs and company employees both do well when a business flourishes...
...Pols from raw and remote places like Kansas and Arkansas can find the attention irresistible...
...Shouldn't they oppose it...
...If there were any candidate capable of devolving power to the states, I would vote for him...
...Assessing the presidential campaign, the bellwether Washington Post writer David Broder noted that "Democrats are strongly favored on the issues that do matter most to voters-health care, education and Social Security...
...But such a change would threaten the coalition that sustains the huge federal spending on education...
...Gender differences are assaulted by legislation and propaganda...
...So we owe a debt of gratitude to Bill Bradley...
...They are less inclined to foment crises and stir up the pots of envy and class war...
...Winning in war benefits both generals and privates...
...At bottom, it is driven by an unquenched revolutionary desire to reform human nature...
...Over the past 2o years, therefore, an informal Washington eye has been kept on promising newcomers...
...It is the world that we live in...
...Bradley could see how this might play out in the general election...
...Castro is its last gasp...
...The black leadership is shameless in this regard...
...But it turns out that they don't know what's going on...
...How many new senators have arrived in Washington in the past 2 5 years and moved to the right...
...The National Education Association and the Black Caucus would be at odds...
...The same is true of football coaches and football players...
...Now they know...
...John Lewis, the demagogic black congressman from Georgia, went so far as to call Republicans who sought welfare reform "Nazis...
...Maybe...
...That is why race relations in this country never seem to improve...
...My guess is that Buchanan erred in allowing himself to be lured away by federal money...
...T he Bradley-Gore rivalry has unintentionally drawn attention to the sorry mess that is contemporary liberalism-a melange of coercion, expropriation, racial spoils and slander, and privileges for victim groups...
...I can't think of any...
...The Constitution Party's Howard Phillips promises to do just that, and he has spent a great deal of effort getting on the ballot in 3o-odd states...
...The problem lies in the topsy-turvy incentives of the redistributive state...
...I would put my money on Bush, but not a large sum...
...But Buchanan wanted to capture the federal millions that came with the Reform Party's nomination...
...Coalition building in Washington ensures that the leaders will resist a change in policy if that change threatens a prevailing majority...
...L iberal Republican Elliot Richardson died, and I was g!ad to see that the Washington Post s Mary McGrory called him "the last of a dying breed...
...Younger voters especially may not have noticed...
...None...
...For Democrats, it is an uncontroversial truth that the military is a taxpayer-supported opportunity to re-engineer gender roles and sexual-preference attitudes...
...Several months ago, he told me, he offered his party's top spot to Pat Buchanan...
...Journalists in relays praise their good sense, their political wisdom, their willingness to adapt to change...
...It may have kept the underclass down, but it also empowered the leadership...
...Chuck Hagel of Nebraska is only the latest to receive the friendly treatment...
...The frenzy of modern politics, with legislatures in session around the clock, is not going away any time soon...
...Slowly, they shed their conservatism, which begins to seem, somehow, a little.., well, not really thought through...
...A1 Gore didn't hesitate to snap off his salute...
...In his book Hating Whitey, David Horowitz showed how important preserving the existing system has become to those in power...
...The non-democratic method was tried in the Soviet Union and elsewhere, but came to naught...
...All the pressure comes from one side...
...And timid Republicans can be counted on not to counter-punch...
...The markets today effectively discipline politics-more so than at any time in the history of the republic...
...Nonetheless, the Black Caucus mechanically supports the procedure...
...Did someone mention a litmus test for gay-approving Joint Chiefs...
...That way, it keeps the benefits that empower the leadership...
...Not that the Black Caucus needs to be told...
...Dan Rather himself calls for an interview...
...In fond memory of Richardson, great waves of adulation and gratitude swept over the national press: public setvant, Boston blueblood, saved the country, reverently recalled, civic leadership, bravery, fearless, prosecutorial independence...
...In much the same way, government schooling could be falling out of favor...
...Heavens be praised, there is even a growing sense that maybe Washington shouldn't be doing so much to organize every aspect of life...
...Ifs true that New England liberals from old families are more likely to register as Democrats these days, so in that sense the breed really is thinning out...
...What was so pathetic about Donna Brazile's comment, that Republicans "would rather take pictures with black children than feed them," was not so much her cynicism as her apparent belief that blacks are incapable of feeding their own children and depend on politics to perform so basic a task...
...Normally, the leaders of groups have the same incentives as the rank and file...
...Still, A1 Gore is ill-served by his trash-talking campaign manager Donna Brazile, who attacked Congressman J.C...
...Also, the national news media are better behaved with a Democrat in the White House...
...Once I kept a "dying breed" file but it grew too bulky and I must have thrown it away...
...And Washington needs congenial Republicans as much as ever--the desired policies seem more persuasive if called "bipartisan...
...Former Commerce Secretary Pete Peterson comes to mind...
...There was no such revelation in 1996 , when Bill Clinton lacked primary opposition and faced the inept Bob Dole in November...
...In a quiet ceremony in Washington, attended by Daniel Schorr, Mary McGrory, Richard Cohen, and Bill Kristol, McCain was suitably honored with the Strange New Respect Award of the Century...
...It would be better if there were none...
...You might think that the black leadership would spearhead a move toward school vouchers and choice, for example, because government schooling puts inner city children at particular risk...
...Flattering, at times unnerving: What might the folks back home think...
...It's a measure of the corruption o f the black leadership that coalition politics drives them to put their own power and privileges ahead of the welfare of their rank and file...
...Only a couple of months earlier, Sen...
...So it goes...
...Growing" is all benefit and no Cost...
...If a President Gore were to try to enact his environmental fantasies-shutting down power plants to eliminate global warming, for example--the markets would turn a severe thumbs-down and he would have to beat a quick retreat...
...Abortion, too, is hardly in the interest of blacks in general, who are two to three times as likely as whites to get abortions...
...Stick with us, say the teacher-union bosses, and we'll stick with you on racial preferences, or whatever your hearts desire...
...So, if heredity will not produce them, environment must...
...ButAl Gore's close alignment with the teachers' unions already looks unwise...
...I suspect it matters less and less anyway...
...Occasionally, to be sure, it may still be needed for peacekeeping operations...
...As he and AI Gore have tried to outdo one another in appealing to the left, a sizable segment of the population has been exposed to the Democrats' ungodly vision of government...
...The main problem is that the underdogs are expected to stay that way in order to preserve the group's victim status...
...The American Spectator _9 Mar c h 2 o o o 21...
...Wi~ess the codification of impure thoughts as hate crimes...
...I imagine she will be gone by summer...
...One reason I am glad the eloquent Alan Keyes did well in Iowa is that he may have shown at least some that it is possible for blacks to embrace the virtue of self-reliance...
...It is not in the interest of the NAACP high command to allow that any such improvement has occurred...
...When welfare became unpopular with the public, Clinton signed the legislation that ended AFDC...
...Two dozen have moved in the opposite direction, however...
...It's a heady experience to be told that suddenly one is looked upon with a Strange New Respect...
...He reported that the White House's chief adviser on race denounced as a "crime against humanity" an academic book showing that blacks' educational opportunities had increased more rapidly before affirmative action than after...
...The unwillingness of conventionalopinion shapers to criticize blacks may have misled the leadership into thinking that slandering white America has no costs...
...In a New Hampshire debate, even Bill Bradley queried Gore's intransigent hostility to school vouchers...
...In the U.S., it is perforce yoked to democracy...
...Welfare has been disastrous for blacks, having kept millions in the ghetto as wards of the state...
...Liberalism inverts these incentives...
...There's some trickle-down from the top dogs to the underdogs, but that's not the issue...
...Yet welfare was reformed, which shows that publicity can from time to time trump these log-rolling arrangements...
...Others oft_he breed are still living, of course, and Mary McGrory is remiss if she does not have lunch with them from time to time...
...Stick 20 March 2 0 o o _9 The American Spectator with us, the feminists say, and we will stick with you on district gerrymandering, affirmative action, what you will...
...Yet the black leadership fought desperately to preserve the main welfare program--Aid to Families with Dependent Children...
...Still, as the boomers age and the thirties generation passes away, the old ideological fervor is waning...
...I write before the New Hampshire primary, but I assume the presidential race will boil down to Bush versus Gore in November...
...Fidel TOM BETHELL is TAS'S Washington correspondent...
...John Chafee died, and he too was deemed to have been the last of the same breed...
...Those who show signs of political adaptability are warmly welcomed...
...Failing that, the Democrats would be goners at the next election...
...Martin's Press...
...Bush would be more likely to cut taxes, and I would certainly prefer to see him in the White House than Gore, but it may not matter a great deal...
...Most whites wisely pay no attention...
...John McCain is only the latest, and he is the first to have run a presidential campaign on that basis--taking dictation from the media...
...Throw in the dotty old liberals who still believe that if only government is big enough, justice and peace will be ours in full measure, and you have the recipe for much of modern politics...
...The "social card" is played--invitations to Katharine Graham's dinner table, tickets to the Kennedy Center...
...All they know is what the media tell them anyway...
...And I don't recall it in x992 , either, when Ross Perot was yapping at us non-stop and George Bush the Elder was showing that he didn't believe in much of anything...
...I need hardly add that there is no countervailing social pressure to move in a conservative direction...
...In this instance, mutual back-scratching with women's groups would be threatened by any black change of heart...
...Dan Schorr reminded guests that the zoth century isn't over yet...
...More and more, we are left with interest-group politics, pure and simple, and in Washington, trillions to redistribute...
...Jesse Jackson and the Black Panthers did so in the mid-7o's , before the present political coalitions developed muscle...
...But the will to remake man still burns in reformers' breasts...
...Democrats represent trade union leaders, Black Caucus and NAACP ringleaders, teachers' unions, victim groups, and trial lawyers...
...But we shall see...
...To the losers go the spoils...
...It's the goal of Democrats to sustain in their constituency groups an enlarged sense of grievance, to arouse their sense of envy, and to depict their lives as more miserable than they are...
Vol. 33 • March 2000 • No. 2
