Editorials
Bush's bubble Ceorge Bush's bubble has burst. Despite his success with the Souter nomination, despite his adroit handling of the postinvasion Persian Gulf crisis, his strategy in addressing the...
...That same day he told Congress that his long opposition to income tax raises for the very wealthy was now on the bargaining table...
...Former Times managing editor Rosenthal is a figure of legendary ego, volatility, and vitriol...
...Along with everybody, he liked cats...
...Proposing some dubious correlations, Rosenthal even linked Buchanan's attitude to the Nazis and Auschwitz...
...After the profligacy of the Reagan era what is needed is a thorough reexamination of the nation's agenda, a realignment of its programs...
...How could they not after a half-decade of unprecedented peacetime deficits, of continuing trade deficits, of the growing cost of the savings and loan bailout (nearly $ 100 billion of which, over the next three years, was not even included in the proposed budget agreement...
...He eventually won the presidency in 1988 holding fast to its Midas instincts...
...It must set goals based on tough, realistic financing...
...It can only be done the old-fashioned way: planning and paying for it...
...Although not as bombastic as Buchanan, Rosenthal is often as strident and uncharitable to those with whom he disputes...
...The evil of anti-Semitism has been responsible for unspeakable crimes...
...When the president could not persuade even his own party to vote for it, Democrats deserted in droves and rediscovered the issue of tax progressivity...
...He kowtowed to nobody, twitted everybody, and gathered friends...
...The unfairness was patent...
...He will have to unseal his lips and tell the people the truth about their condition: The coffers are empty, the bubble has burst...
...Buchanan's remarks about Jews are often grotesque and insupportable, and cynically so...
...Getting caught in a Beltway traffic jam, however, outdid the Grand Canyon as a metaphor for Mr...
...which is to say, supremely...
...In this spirit, Rosenthal labeled Buchanan an anti-Semite in a September 14 column for the latter's contention that "only two groups...are beating the drums for war in the Middle East-the Israeli Defense Ministry and its amen corner in the United States...
...Such a shift in direction and purpose will come only from a president willing to put the fate of the country and the economy above discredited ideologies and the howls of threatened interest groups...
...Jews and non-Jews alike think Saddam Hussein an outsized criminal as well as a threat to American interests...
...The plan for reducing the budget $500 billion over the next five years relied heavily on regressive excise taxes that would have raised the tax bill of Americans with incomes under $10,000 by 7.6 percent, those with incomes between $20,000 and $50,000 by around 3 percent, while those with incomes over $200,000 would have gotten by with a mere 1.7 percent increase...
...First he wanted the deal to be made in secret, removing the process from public scrutiny and the messy, consensus-producing process envisioned by the Constitution/Then, having failed to convince the American people of the seriousness of the crisis (it is hard hearing about austerity over the noise of a speedboat) or the fairness of the deal, the president stumbled on symbols...
...Surely he's more polemical clown than storm trooper, and does not damning him as racist and genocidal only poison the public debate further, raising the rhetorical volume to literally deafening levels...
...like almost nobody, he liked pigeons and found surreptitious ways of feeding them...
...He was as Irish and as acerbic and as quickwitted and as intolerant of fads, foibles, and foolishness as he was Catholic...
...The latter means equitable taxation based on a truly progressive standard, one that taxes those most able to pay and most rewarded by the system...
...That, it seems, is what he's paid to do...
...but several hours later, pressured by Republican senators, he backtracked again...
...ET CETERA ANTI-SEMITE...
...He is a geyser of hyperbole, offering only the grossest caricature of his political opponents' arguments...
...In recognition of that legacy and continued danger, precision and forbearance should mark any such accusation, lest it lose its rightful and necessary power of condemnation...
...May he rest in an interesting peace...
...Such a reappraisal must include scrutiny of all entitlements and the behemoth military budget...
...In his oblique but hardly subtle rhetoric, Buchanan has pandered to prejudice for years...
...With an economy on the verge of recession, with state and local governments no longer able to pay for responsibilities shed by Washington, and with lenders from abroad staying home, George Bush needs to face up to getting the nation's house in order...
...He was a little guy with a big megaphone...
...Rosenthal (often on the right), one is initially tempted to say it couldn't happen to two nicer fellas...
...Despite his success with the Souter nomination, despite his adroit handling of the postinvasion Persian Gulf crisis, his strategy in addressing the budget impasse has been a disaster...
...they are his legacy...
...Through the association (its book club, its press, its newsletters, its bookshop, its magazine the Critic), he introduced a great many people to whatever liveliness could be found in Catholic literary and intellectual circles...
...Bush's stop-and-go leadership...
...To be nominated vice-president in 1980, he sold his soul to Reaganomics...
...To prove his mettle, the president drove back to the White House from Camp David while his helicopter returned empty...
...Buchanan an ideologue of uncompromising insensitivity...
...If they strayed, he turned their photos on his office wall to the wall...
...Yes, Israel has been urging the United States to fight Iraq sooner, not later-but so have many Arab states...
...Of the invective exchanged between newspaper columnist and TV star Patrick Buchanan (on the right) and New York Times columnist A.M...
...and one that encourages investment in our most important capital assets-the health, welfare, and education of the nation's future generations...
...Bush's veto of the continuing resolution then shut down the Statue of Liberty, the Smithsonian, and the Grand Canyon...
...And isn't that precisely the atmosphere in which the Buchanans of this world thrive...
...Rosenthal went on to compile a lengthy indictment of Buchanan's alleged anti-Semitic opinions, confessing he long had been "silently contemptuous of him" but "did not address the Buchanan situation before because it was so distasteful...
...CURMUDGEON, WITH HEART Dan Herr, who died last month at seventy-three, was not the founder of Chicago's Thomas More Association, but from 1948 till just yesterday he was its soul...
...He was not Ronald Reagan's director of communications for nothing...
...To these friends, he was absolutely loyal and on occasion seriously helpful...
...But as an oil man, he knows deep down that wells run dry...
...Bushwacked...
...But while Buchanan's antics are despicable, is it just or honest to call him a Nazi...
...George Bush is a divided man trying to lead a divided party and a divided government, in a country where, in part because of his policies, the chasm between the rich and the poor grows daily...
...In this, at least, he is a firm believer in equality-everyone he disagrees with is treated shabbily...
...He was soft and hard as the occasion required...
...that is, as long as they were reasonably loyal to [his] principles...
...Three days later he signed a continuing resolution nearly identical to the one he had vetoed...
...So are many of his remarks about blacks, immigrants, liberals, the poor, apartheid, crime, AIDS-well, you name it...
...As usual, Buchanan was giving only a partial, distorted, and inflammatory version of the facts...
...The staff he recruited and retained divided its time between bantering briskly with the boss and briskly getting the job done...
...Rosenthal certainly was right in rebuking Buchanan on this issue...
Vol. 117 • October 1990 • No. 18
