Correspondence
Correspondence Ike's Bad D perament FDR's Temperament Alan Ehrenhalt's statement that "[w]hen Eisenhower accepted the nomination, he could plausibly claim that he had promised no one anything and...
...In the end, one gets the feeling that all Ehrenhalt means by "conservative" is someone who has met with the approval of liberal historians...
...Ben Nighthorse Campbell ("Campbell in the Soup," Feb...
...12) was both delightful and foreboding...
...But he wrongly asserts that such an arrangement was "unacceptable to Brinkley" As I explained to him, the decision not to comply was made by my managing editor, not by me...
...Yet when Ehrenhalt mentions Roosevelt in passing, he cites him as a positive example...
...Rees correctly notes that my story led Campbell to declare that he would accept questions from me only in writing...
...As a doctoral candidate at Louisiana State University, I have come into contact with some instructors who have dispensed undeserved grades, but they have been a minority...
...No nominating system is guaranteed to produce good presidents," he writes...
...Senator Robert L. Owen was a Cherokee from Oklahoma who, in 1913, sought to place all banking in the United States under federal control...
...therefore (a) must have caused (b...
...Of course the spinmasters themselves must now view it this way...
...Even leaving aside his legislative record and political ideology, Roosevelt was hardly a temperamental conservative in the way that Stevenson was...
...They do this at great cost in time, treasure, emotional pain and (to borrow a now-hackneyed phrase of the Left) self-esteem...
...Their True Colors," Feb...
...A reliable conservative, Curtis was placed on the 1928 Republican national ticket, at the insistence of party elders, to keep an eye on the unreliable progressive Herbert Hoover...
...I agree with his most likely answer: "Appearance and reality have merged for them, and spin has become a conditioned reflex...
...If you add the 14 percent of earned income that comes from doing business with business, that percentage of our income increases to 22 percent...
...This is not to say that academic standards can't be improved...
...b) his press coverage in the ensuing year has been generally less flattering...
...It sounds to me as if the son in that story is "blaming the victim...
...Correspondence Ike's Bad D perament FDR's Temperament Alan Ehrenhalt's statement that "[w]hen Eisenhower accepted the nomination, he could plausibly claim that he had promised no one anything and had committed to nothing" is false ("There Are No Conservatives Here," Feb...
...All of this would be amusing but for the fact that many of these ersatz "values" of the Left make their way into the classroom...
...Wells's Eloi-unfortunately, long before he predicted...
...Horace Mann will be replaced by the crumbling books of H.G...
...If they didn't cling to the beautifully spun image of Clinton, they would be considered "stupid or unfit for their office," just as are those who could not see the emperor's new clothes...
...Shannon Mader Huntington Beach, CA Nighthorse's Diversity In his fine piece about Sen...
...The article was foreboding because in education these false supports will be responsible for the final dumbing down of America...
...Armed with all that information, the article is surprising for its omissions...
...Students who were required to do little work and who are praised for the bare minimum of scholarship find themselves over their heads in the real world...
...The remaining 70 percent comes from individual contributors and foundations...
...The truth is that the Center received more money from business than from labor...
...So when Carlson classifies "unions as [Lewis's] major donors," I can only conclude that either your definition of "major" differs from the dictionary's or that your abacus was in the shop...
...How unfortunate that there was room for only one answer from our 30-minute discussion...
...That Ehrenhalt would cite Roosevelt as a positive example and Harding as a negative one raises questions about his use of the word "conservative...
...The emperor's-new-clothes metaphor applies perfectly here...
...Clearly, Roosevelt does not qualify as conservative in any sense, while Harding was both an ideological and temperamental conservative...
...Ike later expressed regret over this appointment, but it was too late to remedy the damage...
...Regina Rabin Chicago, IL...
...It gave us a long series of liberal decisions from the activist Warren court...
...The image spun of the good and compassionate Clinton is as marvelous as the cloth woven for the emperor by the so-called weavers in the fairy tale...
...How else can his curious inclusion of Roosevelt and his blithe dismissal of Harding be explained...
...the idea is not original with Herbert Kohl and Colin Greer...
...I wrote one story reporting that the senator had fired two aides without cause and pressured a third to resign...
...If anything, Roosevelt was, it seems to me, a precursor to the sort of candidate Ehrenhalt laments...
...Campbell switched parties...
...By the same token, the Democratic process that chose Stevenson in 1952 chose Roosevelt in 1932...
...Two stories discussed the resignations of Campbell aides, one was on Campbell's treatment of his aides, and another highlighted staff discontent over the defection...
...Lewis's Center for Public Moralizing," Feb...
...At one I worked in, at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, we had strict policies to ensure that students did their own writing...
...Phyllis Schlafly Washington, DC Iread Alan Ehrenhalt's article with a great deal of interest, but also with some suspicion...
...Finally, I did not write "a series of stories focusing on turmoil among former staffers...
...Sweet are the uses of diversity, as Shakespeare might have said...
...The son (predictably) resents this: "I blame my mother for her bad taste and cheap ways...
...Herbert Kohl and Colin Greer take Babar's "Rich Lady" to task basically for being rich and then recommend a story about a mother too poor to buy her son a decent jacket...
...Second, Sen...
...What is the moral here...
...In order to get the large California delegation to vote with him on the crucial issue of the contested delegates at the 1952 Republican National Convention, Ike promised his first Supreme Court appointment to California governor Earl Warren...
...The subsequent legislative clash resulted in a compromise measure, the Glass-Owen bill, and the Federal Reserve system...
...As fate would have it, the first vacancy was for chief justice...
...His equation is that (a) Sen...
...It's okay to be rich as long as you're a Democrat...
...Alejandro Benes Managing Director Center for Public Integrity Washington, DC Emperor's Primary Colors In his commentary on the political bestseller Primary Colors, Christopher Caldwell asks why veterans of the Clinton campaign seem to be applauding rather than denouncing this "potboiler cum-expos...
...however, Weissberg's doom-and-gloom portrayal of higher education does not do justice to the many administrators and professors who do insist that grades and diplomas be earned fairly...
...Philip Terzian Oakton, VA Matthew Rees employs some interesting algebra to reach the conclusion that Sen...
...I answered all of his questions about our financial support and faxed him funding and other information...
...Carlson's allegation that the Center or Lewis "openly and aggressively defended the president's health care plan" is simply wrong...
...John Brinkley Rocky Mountain News Washington, DC Matthew Rees Responds: In addition to the story mentioned above, Brinkley wrote four others in the month following Campbell's defection...
...Michael Sierra Somerville, MA No Public Moralizing Iwas impressed that Tucker Carlson insisted on visiting the offices of the Center for Public Integrity rather than doing an interview by phone for his article ("Mr...
...It struck me as self-serving to choose 1952 as the year against which to compare 1996...
...Our interest is in the decision-making process of government and whether or not it has been distorted in any way...
...After all, the same Republican process that chose Eisenhower in 1952 chose Willkie, surely no conservative, in 1940...
...The process that created Dwight Eisenhower and Franklin Roosevelt also created Warren Harding...
...Business contributions account for slightly more than 8 percent...
...Would it be better if the mother stole an acceptable jacket so her son could have "self-esteem...
...Warren had a tantrum and claimed that, since Ike had promised the "first" vacancy, he was entitled to be chief...
...Many years later the children indoctrinated in this belief system must unlearn them as the real world intrudes on their utopia...
...John Burtis Derry, NH Robert Weissberg over-generalizes in his critique of the value of a university degree...
...There have been at least two other Native American senators in the 20th century...
...That was a backroom deal of immense and lasting national significance...
...If Rees has anything more than circumstantial evidence for this thesis, he left it out of his article...
...This is not true...
...Dumbing Down America Robert Weissberg's article "Potem-kin Diplomas" (Feb...
...Michael P. Gilroy Alexandria, VA The story of Babar the elephant has long been recognized as thinly veiled imperialist dogma...
...The Argentinian writer Ariel Dorfman expounded this long ago in his book The Empire's Old Clothes: What the Lone Ranger, Babar, and Other Innocent Heroes Do to Our Minds...
...In fact, we have been fully forthcoming...
...In the 195-page Well-Healed: Inside Lobbying for Health Care Reform, we make very clear that "[t]he Center's aim in this study is not to recommend how health reform should proceed-or if it is needed at all...
...Weissberg claims that "some college writing centers come close to functioning as officially sanctioned ghostwriters...
...Delightful because I have been employed in higher education for 15 years and have seen the damage that special courses, administrative "due process," and "bridge courses" have wrought...
...12), Matthew Rees repeats a familiar claim about Campbell-that he is the first person of Native American descent to serve as a senator...
...Charles Curtis, also from Oklahoma, was an Osage...
...Carlson grudgingly admits that the Center has "been relatively forthcoming" about our funding sources...
...Tonya Stremlau Johnson Baton Rouge, LA Babar's Bad Values Many thanks to Wendy Shalit for her article "Babar, Bennett, and the Book of Values" (Feb...
...Ben Nighthorse Campbell's defection to the Republican party has caused the press to turn on him...
...Labor money accounts for 8 percent of our total income...
Vol. 1 • February 1996 • No. 23
