Public Nuisances
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
honor were on admirable display after the liberal snipes set out to defame former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, whom the White House had nominated to chair the investigation of the September...
...He has served in the Office of the Solicitor General and in one of Washington's finest law firms, always with distinction...
...Can you imagine the look on Hillary's face if Estrada were to announce at a duly convened press conference, "Actually, I'm Japanese," and then pull out a set of chopsticks and invite all the Democrats to join SURVIVAL AMONG THE SNIPES —WASHINGTON_ him at one of Washington's stupendous sushi restaurants...
...The ordeal obviously took its toll...
...The novel would never have died if we had adopted the single-payer health care model," he might have responded, or, "Did you know Aristotle was the first gay-rights activist...
...The result was the rare improvement of a ting president's power in both houses of Congress...
...Howard Dean is going to make an excellent Democratic candidate...
...He died of natural causes, though a decade short of what might have been his life expectancy...
...But explaining away that fur collar is going to take the terminological legerdemain of a Bill Clinton, and Bill is already committed to the presidential ambitions of Hillary, lest another lamp or ashtray be hurled at his big fat head...
...Estrada has received the ABA's highest rating...
...Still, wearing a leather jacket with an obscenely furry collar is bound to imperil his prospects with a key constituency in today's Democratic Party, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals...
...Either argument helps the Democrats hold on to their minority supporters while, alas, stirring up bigotries and ignoring the nominee's merits...
...Possibly he will stomp his foot...
...Was the president lying about fundraising efforts made in the White House...
...Dean will be the George McGovernin this Democratic field...
...He is as much a man of principle as Reagan...
...Did Clinton have ties with shadowy Indonesian bankers...
...At another point, the Democrats will argue that Republican support for a nominee is based solely on ethnicity or race, as they did with Clarence Thomas...
...Yes, he looked reassuringly gung-ho in this time of imminent international hostilities...
...If Saddam does not disarm, Dr...
...Howard Dean will raise his voice...
...There is not a shred of evidence...
...He is a thoroughly professional Democratic politician...
...That the principles are an organic extension of principles Reagan governed with in the 1980s (and that Bill Clinton mimicked in the 1990s) adds to the sense that a new establishment has arisen...
...He was the governor of nearby Vermont...
...Of course he leans toward the Republicans, just as most Clinton nominees leaned toward the Democrats...
...The result is a more tightly run operation than the Reagan White House, pretty much free of leaks and of bickering...
...Bush II's control of all three branches of government and the presence in his government of ures from the "Reagan Revolution" demonstrate that this presidency represents not just a change of government but the arrival of a new political era—the final passing of the liberals, so-called...
...We know that there are numerous people of Japanese origin living in Latin America...
...Dean, and political observers who are calling him a fruitcake underestimate his savvy...
...After Watergate, the political community's judgment was that Nixon fell because "a president cannot lie to the American people...
...Now, with the Democrats in disarray, commentators might begin to wonder if the Republicans have found themselves another prodigy in W, as the snide are wont to call him...
...Some Democrats say they oppose Estrada because he has not been sufficiently talkative about his personal views and has not allowed them to review his memos from the days he served in the Clinton administration's Office of the Solicitor General—a review that every living solicitor general, Democrat and Republican, opposes...
...He, not Karen Hughes or Karl Rove or anyone else, is calling the shots at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue...
...In our TV days he always had the Clinton spin down pat, as if he had been reading talking points sent directly from George Stephanopoulos...
...The next time you tune in This Week, see if you can envision Ron Ziegler seated in George's place...
...All the paranoid charges against him, claims of plotting in Latin America and scheming in Southeast Asia, have proven as vaporous as the liberal Democrats' more recent paranoia over October surprises and Vast Right-Wing plots...
...Dr...
...Voters had the opportunity to rectify what the Democrats decried as a great wrong, Al Gore's defeat in the Electoral College...
...He now ranks with the nation's greatest elder statesmen...
...Well, Howard, neither you nor I have had a woman step forward and accuse us of rape...
...What the Democrats are really telling us is that they will nix any judicial nominee whom they assess insufficiently Democratic...
...Yet the administration's support never wavered...
...THE PLEATHER OF HIS COMPANY —WASHINGTON hat numbskull in the Kerry for W President campaign allowed the senator to be filmed wearing a bombardier jacket as he dashed into the hospital for surgery...
...Yet Democratic partisans sought to exploit his international business contacts as reason for denying his return to public service...
...Absolutely not, that is the kind of thing you Clinton-haters make up...
...You laugh, but I actually know Dr...
...Do the Democrats expect Republicans to nominate Democrats...
...Ultimately Kissinger decided that the Democrats' partisanship would impair his commission's work, and he withdrew...
...Yet if the Democrats continue to humiliate a respected Hispanic American in front of the entire country, they can be sure that many proud and independent-minded Hispanics are going to drift toward the party that championed Miguel Estrada...
...Abortion and school prayer are only going to be ended if legislatures rewrite the law or amend it...
...Yes, I think Dr...
...He seems to have Reagan's mastery of political timing, the same human touch, and an emphasis on values rather than on being a policy wonk...
...Future appointees have no reason to fear that serving the Bush administration will damage their good name, save with the reactionary left...
...That is the way the nominating process always goes...
...For decades Kissinger's bona fides as a statesman and patriot have grown...
...Dean was not an editor...
...CHUCKING ESTRADA —WASHINGTON he administration's nomination of T Miguel Estrada to the U.S...
...As Robert Bartley recently noted in the Wall Street Journal, the presidency of George W. Bush probably marks the rise of a new political establishment...
...Legislatures, not judges, create the law...
...Before that the only criteria for acceptance by the Senate were a nominee's demonstrated integrity and expertise with the law...
...My thoughts about all this were interrupted by the untimely death of a White House figure from years past, Ron Ziegler, age sixty-three...
...In three volumes of memoirs, a superb book on diplomacy, and now a history of the Vietnam War due shortly, Kissinger has answered his critics to the satisfaction of any objective observer...
...Yet this president is a more energetic chief executive...
...Estrada's nomination reveals the insidiousness of identity politics...
...Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia is now paralyzed...
...Others—Senator Hillary Clinton, for one—say this T he sight of George W. Bush comfortably ensconced in the White House and of his liberal opponents forlornly shivering in the cold vividly signifies that the winds of history have ushered in a new era...
...Years ago their judicial activism made the politics of judicial nominees very significant...
...Others complain that Estrada, though born in Honduras, is not a genuine representative of the Hispanic community but mere bait to lure Hispanics into the Republican Party...
...Just the kind of thing you Clinton-haters want to believe," and then he would throw in something about sex being a private matter or everyone having a thing or two they are not proud of...
...In Ziegler's New York Times obituary the paper noted that while he was press secretary "a study team from American University and the National Press Club" reproved him for having "misled the public and affronted the professional standards of the Washington press corps...
...Howard Dean's for the asking...
...Take a look at Estrada's picture in the paper—he certainly looks Japanese to me...
...At one point, the great champions of identity politics, the Democrats, will argue that Republican opposition to a nominee is based on prejudice against the nominee's ethnicity or race, as they did with Ronnie White...
...In fact, many now are...
...Another gaffe like this and the Democratic presidential nomination will be Dr...
...After George Stephanopoulos did the same, ABC made him heir to the Sunday morning talk show of Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts, scene of some of George's most implausible deceits...
...Surely an agile Kerry aide has already telephoned the nuts over at PETA headquarters—cleverly located at the heart of things in Norfolk, Virginia—to assure them that the jacket was not actual leather but rather its enlightened plastic substitute, pleather...
...The president's loyalty and sense of Harvard Law School graduate, upon whom the American Bar Association has conferred its highest rating, is not qualified...
...Every month during the fall, winter, and early spring, he would motor up to Montreal (I envisaged him riding the Greyhound surrounded by plump country girls eating sandwiches, some carrying chickens in cages...
...Ridiculous...
...It was called The Editors, though Dr...
...The Estrada deadlock is obviously about something else—probably the Democrats' ability to hold on to the Hispanic vote...
...Actually it would be more accurate to say he held down the Democratic end, for never did he wander from the party line, even when we of a more philosophical caste of mind brought up a nonpolitical topic, say, Aristotle or the death of the novel...
...The Democrats balk that he has not told them enough about himself...
...For several years he and I did a television show together taped in Montreal...
...Would Clinton lie his way into an impeachment...
...Well, those who speculate on how the deadlock on Estrada might be broken ought to consider the possibility that he is in truth not Hispanic but Japanese...
...The impasse is another example of liberals creating a problem, then demanding a solution that is as bad as the original one or worse...
...This fall's midterm election should have cleared up any doubts that sensible people might have harbored about the 2000 election...
...Kissinger's reputation remained intact among the reasonable, and more lurid still among the paranoiacs...
...With a boldness that New Frontiersmen once celebrated in JFK, President Bush placed his popularity on the line by campaigning widely...
...Truth be known, this whole debate is ridiculous...
...That is to say, he is well practiced in the art of contradicting himself without betraying a hint of embarrassment or even awareness...
...Ziegler, of course, was President Richard Nixon's press secretary, and it fell to him to explain away Watergate's ongoing presidential lies prior to the resignation...
...The Bush administration stood by him, rightly pointing out that his vast experience made him ideal for assessing September 11 and the performance of American intelligence agencies...
...But then Hillary says a lot of things that turn out to be untrue...
...Howard Dean is a glassy-eyed idealist...
...On the show he held down the liberal end of a panel, I the conservative...
...honor were on admirable display after the liberal snipes set out to defame former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, whom the White House had nominated to chair the investigation of the September 11 attacks...
...Yet, it is a mistake to believe Dr...
Vol. 36 • March 2003 • No. 2
