Scrapbook
Scrapbook Dole's Two Messages It's not true that Bob Dole lacks a message in his presidential campaign; actually, he has two. It depends on who gets to Dole last-will it be his campaign staff, or...
...The president believes Dole is the key to a long-term budget deal but that serious talks with him must wait until after the New Hampshire primary...
...That's Clinton's view, but his chief political adviser, Dick Morris, has a slightly different take...
...The 100 percent marginal tax rates...
...It depends on who gets to Dole last-will it be his campaign staff, or his Senate aides...
...Forbes also pulled in $500 from Robin Leach of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous and, amazingly, another five bills from none other than Olivia Newton-John-even though Forbes has, we would guess, never really been mellow...
...It's a curious aspiration for a conservative Republican...
...He has raked in nearly $1.5 million in contributions, including a cool thou' from Ann Landers, a thou' each from Bob and Georgette Mosbacher, and a surprising thou' apiece from Jackson and Warren Stephens-Arkansas bankers widely thought of as Bill Clinton's political godfathers...
...One name acceptable to Ickes is Kevin Thurm, a pal of George Stephanopoulos who is chief of staff to Health and Human Services secretary Donna Shalala...
...Apparently "Franco for the '90s" didn't click with focus groups...
...The kickbacks and payoffs...
...Guess Who...
...In a choice specimen of the genre, the Washington Post Book World last week offered this feast for the cinematically starved: "In the movie classic 'Casablanca' the worldly police captain played by Claude Rains tells saloon keeper Humphrey Bogart that he is 'shocked, shocked' to find gambling in this casino...
...A budget deal now will help Dole win the GOP nomination...
...The division among Dole aides is nothing compared to the ill will at the White House between political adviser Morris and Harold Ickes, Clinton's deputy chief of staff...
...And so on...
...But how to explain ludicrous over-explaining of this same clich...
...Actually, it was Steve Forbes, who bills himself as a "Conservative for President," not as a Beyondist...
...would do the trick...
...In the New York Times, Stein argued that "responsible" Republicans (going back to Ike) understand the need to raise taxes...
...Or maybe you have ideas for other lists you can let us know about...
...Who wrote that...
...Probably just the demagoguery...
...Every Man a Dupe Blazing his way through Louisiana in early February, Pat Buchanan reinvented himself yet again...
...Or just the demagoguery-the exploitation of frightened and ignorant voters...
...things would only improve, he said, when Newt Gingrich was dethroned and Democrats regained control...
...It almost seems personal...
...So, like George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life, the Reading List needs to know if you truly wish it to continue...
...Dionne...
...Morris, by the way, also thinks a deal will help Clinton enormously by erasing his image as a tax-and-spend liberal...
...Something different...
...To impress his Nazi guests, the French police commander, played by Claude Rains, allows that he is 'shocked, shocked' to discover that gambling occurs on the premises of Rick's famous cafe...
...Even its deliberate errors are probably too easy: In only a few days, it has received several missives (including one from noted legal scholar Nelson Lund) pointing out that we purposely misidentified the author of Medea last week...
...But it was music to Clinton's ears...
...Republicans must be "flexible...
...The Reading List The Reading List is, it must confess, tired...
...What's striking about Phillips/Stein opposition is the tone...
...This might be of interest to Forbes's donors...
...Their feud is preventing Clinton from appointing a campaign manager...
...One of the Beyond Left and Right thinkers from the Democratic Leadership Council...
...Or something...
...Our cooperation must increase," he said...
...Stein has dropped his usual amused and whimsical voice and adopted one that is hectoring and scornful...
...if, to paraphrase Sally Field, "you like it, you really, really like it...
...Morris, who believes his greatest achievement is having pulled Clinton to the right, recoils at the thought of an ally of Ickes, the White House's most unswerving leftist, in charge of the campaign...
...Which planks of the Kingfish's platform will Pat take for his own...
...Crains Detroit Business wins the booby prize with this passage: "This righteous indignation reminds us of one of the best scenes in 'Casablanca,' the Bogart-Bergman classic...
...Clinton might not have a campaign chief for a few months...
...Ablurb on Ben Wattenberg's book Values Matter Most reads: "It is a lucid look at the major 'hot button' issues, including welfare, and constructively breaks out of the usual liberal-conservative mindset...
...The New Nixon Enemies List The Republican Congress has attracted a lot of enemies, but none so visceral as two old Nixonians, Kevin Phillips and Herbert Stein...
...or "how hypocritical...
...If Dole wins there, he'll be free to ignore attacks by GOP presidential rivals and negotiate (and compromise) with the White House...
...Not surprisingly, Dole's campaign advisers, who put together his tough response to Clinton's State of the Union, loathed the NGA speech...
...Nationalization of the banks...
...Morris argues there's no reason to wait until post-New Hampshire...
...When it Rains, It Pours That scene in Casablanca-you know the one we mean-is such a journalist's clich...
...that we were not shocked, so to speak, when a search of the Nexis news database for the words "shocked, shocked" returned a stern warning from the Nexis gods: "Your search has been interrupted because it probably will retrieve more than 1,000 documents...
...Ickes, who is close to Hillary Rodham Clinton, balks at anyone who might have a connection with Morris...
...It's Euripides, not Aeschylus...
...Something else...
...But the Morris forces are skeptical of him, and thus there's no consensus...
...Gentlemen, the purpose of an allusion, after all, is for the reader to get the point with merely a slight nod in the direction of the original source...
...When Dole addressed the National Governors Association on February 6, Senate staffers drafted his conciliatory, bipartisan remarks...
...A recent Phillips broadside in the Los Angeles Times called the current Congress the worst in half a century...
...A cafe worker then presents Rains with his own winnings from the gaming table, and Rains quickly stuffs them into his pocket...
...Surely the Nixon veterans couldn't expect all Republicans to live up to the high standards of the Nixon domestic policy, which gave us wage and price controls, expanded the welfare state, and laid the groundwork for stagflation...
...Thus, Morris leaked those poll results buttressing that point to a Dole operative...
...a Video List, perhaps, or Recordings...
...If you find the List of value, and wish to see it appear weekly in this space, let us know by writing or faxing us (you can find address and fax number on the Correspondence page...
...Week after week, coming up with book after book, and trying hard not to make too many mistakes has taken a toll...
...His ambition, he told crowds, was to be, we're not kidding, "a Huey Long for the '90s...
...President Clinton really wants a budget deal this year...
...The herd instinct explains reporters' overuse of an allusion to a movie scene when a simple "how cynical...
Vol. 1 • February 1996 • No. 22
