COMMENT

...The House of Representatives will probably vote on the measure sometime in the fall, and the nose-counters say the outcome is up for grabs...

...But by hook and mostly by crook, the automakers have resisted...

...Amicus Brief for Meese We're as inclined as anyone to believe that Ed Meese, the departing Attorney General, is slimier than a salamander, but sleaze balls have rights, too...

...It is bad enough that most states have death-penalty statutes on their books and that several-all of them in the South—actually employ them with some regularity...

...But his knack for raising the green was one reason the Dukakis campaign tapped him...

...We may never know all of the facts surrounding the decision by Captain Will Rogers of the U.S.S...

...If, as Michael Dukakis boasted, his first Presidential act was choosing Lloyd Bentsen, we're in for a rough patch...

...Government from the brutal regimes in El Salvador and Guatemala, as James Ridgeway has documented in The Village Voice...

...Bentsen has supported the contras in Nicaragua...

...He seems to think he wears a scarlet "L" emblazoned on his forehead...

...Not for him the tough intellectual, moral, and— yes—ideological tussles with the role the U.S...

...Independent Counsel James McKay was out of line when he announced that Meese had "probably violated the criminal law" and that a judge or jury "probably would conclude beyond a reasonable doubt" that Meese was guilty...

...GM, Nader's old nemesis, will offer air bags on only five models in 1989...

...The other, most obvious reason was that Bentsen would help in Texas...

...He rejected Jesse Jackson's platform plank for no first use of nuclear weapons, perhaps the most craven of Dukakis's evasions: When asked to pledge not to blow up the world, Dukakis shrugged...

...cozied up to Jonas Savimbi, the leader of the South African-funded rebels in Angola...

...As Governor of Massachusetts, after all, he blocked the Seabrook nuclear plant and consistently—and bravely—has opposed capital punishment...

...So much for the wanton destruction of 290 innocent human lives...

...With that insipid pronouncement, Michael Dukakis accepted the Democratic nomination and set about trying to convince a majority of the voting public that he deserves to be President of the United States...

...The "drug problem" threatens to change that...

...And while it's debatable whether Michael Dukakis could even run the Government more efficiently than George Bush, that shouldn't be the issue...

...It may be able to teach him a thing or two...

...Ford's 1990 line will have eleven models with driver-side air bags...

...Lloyd Bentsen...

...But this time around, the differences between the candidates are even more murky than usual...

...For more than a decade and a half, though, capital punishment has not been part of the Federal arsenal, and it might have been hoped that the nation would lead the states into abandonment...

...So it goes these days with the business that calls itself the Nic-araguan Resistance (known to most of us as the contras, and to the President of the United States as the modern-day counterparts of America's founding fathers...

...Goodwrench Goes to Washington" is hardly an inspiring theme...

...And though Dukakis opposes aid to the contras, he shows no interest in disengaging the U.S...

...Until God or the Pentagon invents a radar screen that rids the universe of all uncertainty," wrote the editors of that esteemed publication, "fighting men must from time to time make life-saving, life-taking decisions on the basis Of incomplete information...

...The media and the parties themselves make much of the differences between the candidates...

...But if Dukakis sees himself as a Kennedy-style liberal, let him at least say so...

...he is a liberal or better, but he just can't say that aloud for fear of being clobbered in November...

...Chrysler will have driver-side air bags on all of its U.S...

...He feels safer in his Harvard School of Government blanket, accepting as givens the general outlines of Establishment politics...

...A Dukakis Administration could feature Kennedy-style anticommunism in the Third World and a belligerent stance toward the Soviets...

...voted in favor of the MX missile...

...It's about competence...

...Howard Metzenbaum of Ohio was one of these, and James Sasser of Tennessee was another...

...Answer: He is a rich Democrat...

...House members have a chance to vote against barbarism as national policy, but all of them are up for reelection this year...

...But in true fashion, the automates claim they are installing air bags because they can turn a buct on them...

...All the talk does nothing to solve a very real problem, but it is, after all, just talk...

...But if he won't own up to being even a liberal—not an encomium for many of us—what in the world makes him deserving of support from the Left...

...A few weeks ago, the contras found it necessary to serve lay-off notices on 350 to 400 staff employees—not fighters but, as The New York Times reported, "workers in publicity, communications, family support services, and clerical help...

...But Republicans didn't do this alone...

...Bentsen's pecuniary skills landed him in hot water last year, after it was revealed that he invited corporate lobbyists to pay him $10,000 to get together with him one morning a month...

...Congress poised to enact legislation that would bring the ultimate punishment into the much-vaunted War on Drugs...

...A big-money Democrat...

...Dukakis talks of increasing conventional forces in Europe and has not ruled out a new land-based intercontinental ballistic missile to replace the MX and Midgetman, which he opposes...

...We don't need a competent concierge of the U.S...

...That is really all that needs to be said about the death penalty...

...Dukakis's performance at the Democratic Convention in Atlanta was a case in point...

...The issue is, what should our Government stand for and what should our nation's policies be...

...Don't worry, they say...

...He just wants to tinker here and there with existing policies to make sure they're not idling too fast...

...So long as weapons of mass destruction are allowed to exist, we must assume that mistakes will happen...

...Government should play at home and abroad...

...Issues vanish, politics becomes vapid, the hollow men take charge...

...The sixty-five bloodthirsty Senators included twenty-eight Democrats, among them several who have opposed capital punishment in the past...

...If Dukakis is right and this election is about competence, count us out...

...However, using drugs as a back-alley route to sneak the death penalty back into the Federal criminal code is a disgrace...

...On the other hand, he has evinced a hostility to gay and lesbian rights that is unsettling in the extreme...

...Navy's downing of an Iranian airliner in the Persian Gulf—and there was no small number of such remarks emanating from the Reagan Administration and its devoted flacks in the American mass media—we saw none more obnoxious than the bland approbation extended by The Economist of London...

...If that were true, McKay had an obligation to seek indictments...

...In his acceptance speech he praised John Kennedy for looking "Khrushchev in the eye during the Cuban missile crisis"—a confrontation that nearly destroyed the world...

...They disputed the safety evidence, bamboozled Government officials, and brayed that a few hundred dollars more for air bags would reduce car sales...

...Cynics Slogan painted on a bridge over Boston's Charles Riven 'If voting could change things, it would be illegal.' President Reagan on the Soviet downing of Korean Airlines Flight 007: 'an act of barbarism [and a] horrifying act of violence.' President Reagan on the U.S...

...We don't need a competent manager of the nuclear arms race...

...The cause of the contras' financial distress is, of course, the curtailment of Congressional appropriations...

...He placed hawks and doves on the same plane, and said: "Conservatives and progressives, when you fight for what you believe, you are right—but your patch isn't big enough...

...Meese should seek assistance from the American Civil Liberties Union—which he once labeled "the criminals' lobby...

...We don't need a competent accountant for an irrational economy or a competent mechanic for a structurally flawed society...

...Political Death Killing people is no way to demonstrate reverence for life...

...Yet Dukakis runs from ideology the way a toddler runs from thunder...

...The downing of Flight 655 offers still more compelling evidence—if more were needed—that the nuclear arms race represents a totally unacceptable risk...

...That's what it comes down to when ideology is shunned...

...Ford recently announced that it would install air bags on the driver and passenger sides of its 1989 Continentals...

...He's not interested in what ought to be...

...As the President has often been known to ask, what's the Government for, after all, if it can't help the disadvantaged...

...A what's-good-for-business-is-good-for-me Democrat," responds Dave Denison, editor of The Texas Observer...

...And Meese's have been violated...

...supported mandatory prayer in public schools and restrictions on busing...

...Dukakis's foreign policy—to the extent that it can be detected—is also troublesome...

...Air Bags, At Last For twenty years, Ralph Nader has campaigned heroically for the installation of air bags in automobiles...

...Forced by Federal regulations to install air bags or automatic safety belts the car makers are opting for the bags, since consumers prefer them...

...Still, they did not feel compelled to lay off any members of their directorate, who are reported to receive $75,000 salaries, plus expenses, directly from what The Times delicately refers to as "an American Governmment source...

...It is a risk that must be dealt with not by the palliative of arms control but by the remedy of disarmament...

...Drugs serve as a smokescreen to avoid serious debate about serious issues in this political year, as we commented recently in these pages...

...Now, finally, the automakers are coming around—led ever so haltingly by the Federal Government...

...Temporary Lay-Off When a business falls on hard times, management must look for ways to cut costs...

...In line with standard Republican economics, Dukakis has been clamoring about balanced budgets, which could throw the economy on the skids in no time...

...Ideology does matter...

...And he squashed two other eminently sensible planks put forward by Jackson, one calling for Palestinian self-determination, the other for increasing taxes on the richest Americans...

...His top economic aide is Lawrence Summers, a former staff member on Ronald Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers and protege of the ultraconservative Martin Feldstein...

...If not, he should have kept his mouth shut...

...All we are told is that Dukakis is from an immigrant family and Bush is from an aristocratic one...

...In 1981, in fact, "no other Democratic Senator was more supportive of the President," The New York Times reported...

...To mask one's ideology is to be dishonest...

...Dukakis could hardly have chosen a more unpalatably conservative Democrat to run for the Vice Presidency...

...Somehow, the marketing geniuses at the Big Three failed to figure this out twenty years ago...

...The reason is pellucidly clear: Air bags save lives...

...False dichotomies are presented, harrowing consequences predicted...

...empire in the Third World...

...Still, we're indebted to The Economist for underscoring—unintentionally, to be sure—a critically important point that has been all but overlooked in the discussions of the Gulf tragedy (which seems to be fading rapidly from public consciousness): We, all of us on this planet, are held hostage not only by the ineptitude, incompetence, and immorality of those who wield political and military power, but also by the egregious fallibility of weapons technology...

...By a margin of 65-to-29, the U.S...

...Vincennes to fire a missile at Iran Airlines Flight 655...

...Every four years, like kids in Chicago choosing whether to root for the White Sox or the Cubs, American citizens are expected to vote Democratic or Republican...

...opposed Federal financing for abortions and Federal gun-control laws, and sided with President Reagan on the giant tax cuts that were passed early in the Administration...

...to have no ideology is to be hollow...

...Jackson, too, lapsed into the relativism that was so Omnipresent in Atlanta...

...So it is extremely distressing to see the U.S...

...downing of Iran Airlines Flight 655: 'a proper defensive action.' note that both face reelection fights this year and thus are not bound to follow their convictions...

...Desperately, Dukakis is shunning the "liberal" tag, one of the "meaningless labels" he alluded to in his acceptance speech...

...What, then, of the radar systems on which our nuclear "deterrent" depends...

...Interior decorators and recreation directors were not listed, though U.S...

...Mr...

...Sometimes they will make mistakes...

...Their ethical indifference and commercial stupidity cost at least 150,000 lives...

...Even the most disreputable Attorney General deserves the presumption of innocence...

...Senate voted this summer to execute "drug kingpins"—to apply the label used by New York Republican Alfonse D'Amato, the bill's sponsor...

...What kind of a Democrat is Lloyd Bentsen...

...models by 1990...

...He has climbed aboard the Reagan Administration's unsavory campaign to oust General Manuel Noriega of Panama...

...make life-saving, life-taking decisions on the basis of incomplete information"—and decide to snuff out not 290 lives but 290 million...

...Mistakes Will Happen Of all the offensively callous comments on the U.S...

...Allison now has Dukakis's ear on foreign policy...

...Often the first step is to reduce payroll—to get rid of workers deemed nonessential or redundant...

...What of the complex and ever-so-error-prone networks that can trigger a launch-on-warning strategic attack on the Soviet Union (or a Soviet attack on the United States...

...Surely, there is more to being "right" than fighting for what you believe in...

...What will happen on the day when, in The Economist's words, "fighting men must...

...But if we rule out a deliberate act' of criminal savagery, we are left with the inescapable conclusion that he was befuddled by malfunctioning radar that failed to distinguish between an F-14 military plane and a civilian airbus and that provided false data on the plane's altitude and direction...

...On economic and foreign-policy issues, Dukakis seems to have few differences with Bush...

...The American people have no real basis on which to choose between Dukakis and Bush...

...On military matters, there's Graham Allison, former dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, who was last seen in Washington carrying water for Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger...

...May they prove the cynics wrong...

...the Progressive In a June 28 speech, Michael Dukakis reassured the foreign-policy Establishment that he was 'not another McGovern,' and added: 'We need a strong and survivable nuclear deterrent and we have a strong and survivable nuclear deterrent.' Comment The Hollow Men This election is not about ideology...

...And the Reagan Administration is expected to seek new funding that will make it possible to rehire at least some of the laid-off contra bureaucrats...

...humanitarian aid" to the contras includes sofas, volleyball equipment, and dominoes...

...That's politics—cynical politics, old-school politics, not the kind of inspiring, substantive politics that many progressives in the Democratic Party desperately hope for but simply can't find in Michael Dukakis...

...Bush is a wimp, Dukakis a bore...

...You've got to be kidding...

...Friends in the Dukakis camp assure us their candidate is just being coy...

...Of the major industrialized nations, only South Africa, Japan, and the Soviet Union also still employ the uncivilized sanction of death...

...It was evidently looking for a Development Director as much as a Vice President...

...The breakfast club was dubbed "Eggs McBentsen," and when the word got out the Senator returned the tainted money...

...Those are ideological questions—and properly so...