Public Nuisances: Unsolicited Solicitude/Our Debt to Forbes
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
PUBLIC NUISANCES by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. Unsolicited Solicitude Perhaps the liberal Democrats are justified in the exalted view they have of their own moral heft. No other...
...Marc F Plattner "A Campaign Reform for Yesteryear" APRIL 1975 14 April 2000 • The American Spectator ardent for abortion...
...Interestingly, our liberal prelectors never think it politically dangerous for liberal politicians to solicit votes from Adapted from RET's weekly Washington Times column syndicated by Creators Syndicate...
...Again, vanity plays its role in political enthusiasms...
...When conservative politicians make the mistake of soliciting votes from staunchly conservative supporters, liberals speak right up, admonishing against such reckless imprudence...
...Thanks, fellows...
...Alan Keyes is a more commanding presence...
...Has liberalism come down to this...
...The party bosses have been banished...
...Note, the Reform Party is self-destructing over the assembled egotists' failure to compromise...
...Dionne is particularly selfless in advising us on how to be true conservatives...
...He ducked...
...Now the-blessings of three generations of reform politics are upon us...
...The politically independent usually envisage themselves as superior to the hum of Republicans and the drum of Democrats...
...Here is another reason for scoffing at the media's claim that campaign finance reform is a burning national issue...
...A disproportionate number of them say the office once held by Roosevelt and Eisenhower should now go to Keyes, Alan Keyes...
...My conclusion is that vanity plays a very large role in political enthusiasms, particularly the enthusiasms of the politically independent...
...Again, is it because there are not enough Alan Keyeses to fetch their enthusiasm...
...The combination of the House vote and the Nixon resignation made it all but certain that public financing would become law...
...Oiii...
...C-Span's matutinal oracle blubbered...
...And that almost always is their advice...
...Compromise is a valued principle in democratic politics...
...Fifty-one percent of those voting in the Republican primary admitted to being independents or Democrats...
...Of course, campaign finance reform is another of the noble causes of the political independent...
...They listen to radio...
...Perhaps that is why the editorial page of the backward-looking New York Times greeted his retirement from the presidential race with graceless derision...
...What are we to conclude from the political connoisseurs' weakness for the Keyes fantasia...
...This progressive editor's whole career has been devoted to advocating such false pieties from the public discourse as "political independence," "telling it like it is," "principled politics," withal: the power of high intelligence...
...The American Spectator • Apra 2000 15...
...Democrats are deciding the presidential nominees of both parties...
...What was Brian Lamb's distinguished guest to do, admit that the civic-minded audience was composed of a large number of fools...
...After all, how many elections feature an Alan Keyes...
...Then C-Span's host, Brian Lamb, asked his perspiring guest to explain why probably two-thirds of the political sophisticates calling in avowed that "Forsooth, the honey-tongued Keyes is my candidate for possession of the nuclear football...
...He is a friend of the military, the tax cutters, and limited government...
...Doubtless the alibi is that neither party is sufficiently intelligent or principled to deserve financial support...
...Our Debt to Forbes 0 ne of my lewd pleasures during this presidential primary season is to tune in C-Span on the morning after a debate among the Republican candidates...
...They sacrifice time and money to advance policies they believe will improve the commonweal...
...They do not otherwise participate until election day, and maybe not then...
...By the end of March the nominees of both parties will have been chosen by nine or ten percent of the electorate...
...Forbes's failure was not solely a matter of his inability to provide political theater...
...The columnist E.J...
...The Senate had already passed similar legislation in April...
...But Senator McCain is really not much of a liberal...
...His successor was also reportedly opposed to public financing, but the prospect of a Ford veto never seemed very credible...
...In the Republican primary in Michigan, the liberals went beyond advising us of the best presidential nominee we could choose...
...The party bosses, of course, have been the targets of liberal reformers for years...
...When George W. Bush set foot on the campus of South Carolina's Bob Jones University, you can be sure that E.J...
...The liberals might tell us he is the true liberal...
...Now the Democrats are showing themselves to be even more energetic in helping the conservatives to victory...
...The new king makers C are the primary voters of New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Michigan...
...Are his stands on campaign finance and tobacco the desiderata that make him a true blue liberal...
...Yet, as I suggest, few of them contribute financially to politics...
...C-Span is not unrepresentative...
...A few weeks back I watched a uniquely self-righteous editor from a uniquely self-important "progressive" political journal weathering the Keyes fantasia...
...They tried to save us from George W. Bush, the candidate from Bob Jones U. Their choice was Senator John McCain...
...Nixon had made perfectly clear his own strong opposition to such a measure, and until his departure, the threat of a Presidential veto could not be discounted...
...No other political point of view spends so much of its time selflessly lecturing the opposition on how to improve itself...
...There are only two candidates in the Democratic primary...
...He bloviated...
...Sectional interests are C.) history...
...If I could possibly feel sorry for such a pompous ass I would, but his pomposity could turn Mother Teresa's heart to stone...
...He also had the problem that the Republican frontrunners profited from his years of tirelessly advocating tax reform, school choice, medical savings accounts, and privatization of some of Social Security...
...Viewing the spectacle, one would have thought that Bradley and Gore were running for election in South Africa...
...It is their conceit that they are too intelligent, too principled, and too busy to work with either party...
...On October 15 President Ford signed the bill...
...Somewhere off-stage I heard Mother Teresa laughing...
...Bring back the smoke-filled room...
...foresaw Bush's imminent doom...
...Perhaps by Campaign 2004 Alan Keyes will win...
...Our liberal friends are also very helpful in advising conservatives on tactics...
...C-Span is the public affairs network that attracts many of the country's most ardent political connoisseurs...
...Republicans and even some Democrats nationwide have taken up Forbes's issues...
...By the way, what happened to Ronald Reagan's presidential possibilities when he visited the Bob Jones campus in 1980...
...Only two to three percent of the population contributes money to politics...
...the staunchly liberal...
...Liberals are forever telling us how we conservatives can better our electoral chances and be more true to our highest conservative ideals in general...
...On that same day, the House of Representatives, after long uncertainty and delay, approved legislation providing for the public financing of all future Presidential elections...
...They gave the Republic the likes of Roo-sevelt and Eisenhower...
...They inspire hope in many of the political connoisseurs until their loud-mouthed supporters gather in one convention too many and self-destruct as the American Reform Party is doing...
...Forbes made these policies staples of Campaign 2000...
...In the Republican primary there are three, the last one being Alan Keyes...
...That not many of the political connoisseurs in C-Span's audience telephoned in their support for him again casts doubt on their seriousness...
...After a debate in mid-February, ABC's Clinton-flack-turned-journalist George Stephanopoulos visited a focus group that was equally swept away by Keyes...
...They are the parties of loud-mouthed egotists such as Ross Perot, Jesse Ventura, and Donald Trump...
...The major issue in the Democratic Party is which candidate is more 25 YEARS AGO IN The American Spectator Richard Nixon's announcement of his impending resignation was not the only event that made August 8, 1974 a crucial date in the history of the American Presidency...
...The other day, when Bill Bradley and Al Gore went on stage before an audience of black political leaders and did contortions before them, I heard no liberal commentator admonishing against the reckless pandering that ensued...
...As he put it the day before he left the race, "Some of us do well on the television screen and some don't, which is why I'm in the print business...
...Thus far Campaign 2000 qualifies as one of the Republic's most bizarre presidential elections...
...The excellent Bill Sammon, reporting in the Washington Times, recorded that "The vice president and the former New Jersey senator talked of reparations for descendants of the slaves, promised 'info stamps' that the poor could use to buy computers and harshly scolded white Americans for not holding similar views on how to unify the races...
...Something is indeed wrong...
...especially after the Nixon pardon, the political costs of such a move would have been too great...
...Of course, conservatives have reason to grow suspicious when those liberals, advising us on how to improve our electability, counsel us to nominate candidates who are liberals...
...There are some outsiders who enter politics free of vanity and goaded mainly by principle and public spirit...
...Perhaps the Republicans and Democrats deserve a little more respect...
...Call it a matter of principle if you will, but I see it as personal vanity...
...They actually pulled on their boots, buttoned up their winter coats, and went out and voted for him...
...Steve Forbes has spent five years and tens of millions of his own dollars to advance ideas that even some Democrats now find compelling...
...Well, the callers obviously shared these pieties...
...Vanity once again makes the morally earnest a laughingstock...
...Quite possibly, Forbes is to the future of American politics what the Socialist Norman Thomas was to the decades of Liberal welfarism that crested in the 197o's, an intellectual exemplar...
...Most likely, the independently minded political connoisseur does not even contribute to campaigns...
...He is against regulation, big spending, excess pork...
...Third parties such as the Progressive Party of generations past and the Reform Party of recent years might more appropriately be called the Vanity Party...
...Ha, ha, ha...
...Remember how they warned us against our suicidal impulse to nominate Ronald Reagan...
...Their phoned-in pronunciamentoes on the morning after tell us much about some of the country's political junkies...
...The major issue in the Republican primary is that rich people and rich corporations are actually paying for the cost of elections...
...His rating from the right-wing American Conservative Union was 77 in 1999...
...and their candidate was a mercurial gadfly, intelligent, principled(admirably conservative), and utterly devoid of any sense of responsibility for anything save getting to the next debate with his shoes on...
...Forbes may have been long on ideas but he was not long on theater...
...They watch television...
Vol. 33 • April 2000 • No. 3
