Scrapbook
Scrapbook NEWT GOES THE MINIMUM House speaker Newt Gingrich boasted to Paul Gigot of the Wall Street Journal that, for all his troubles, he's never lost a vote on the House floor. True, but he did...
...Imagine it's September and Perot has announced a campaign for president...
...Perhaps the RNC should praise Dole for his candor, rather than his poll ratings...
...A GOP presidential candidate hasn't lost in Virginia since 1964, and in Arizona since 1948...
...The first hearing is May 16...
...Arabian Sands, by Wilfred Thesiger...
...The leaders of both parties denied any such conversation ever took place, but Perot aired the charge again on the April 21 Meet the Press...
...But David McIntosh of Indiana proposed hearings before his subcommittee on cutting regulations that currently discourage businesses from paying higher wages and hiring more workers...
...What better way to get some ink and throw the Dole campaign off-balance than to try to tar Scott Reed with this absurdity...
...Sometime this fall, Perot said, "I will make [the name] clear...
...Too perfectly, as Perot himself might say...
...Seems a bit stilted, no...
...A gorgeous 20th-century description of the Rub al-Khali-the Empty Quarter, the vast patch of desert on the Arabian peninsula...
...His order was passed to GOP leaders by an aide, because Gingrich was in New York at the time...
...True, but he did lose a vote in the House Republican leadership on hiking the minimum wage...
...The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, by T. E. Lawrence...
...Asked on live television by David Broder about his "strange, unsubstantiated" tale, Perot seemed defensive but insisted he had the name of at least one person who attended the meeting in question and asked for the dirty-tricks money...
...Is that true...
...Let's think for a minute...
...THE READING LIST In honor of the current war/peace/electoral hijinks in the Middle East, the Reading List thought readers puzzled by the elaborate politics of Arab countries might profit from reading some of the great British nonfiction literature about the area: Travels in Arabia Deserta, by Charles Doughty...
...That happened," Perot said, "no ifs, ands, or buts...
...The RNC's lead item on April 22, titled "Dole Rising in Arizona," trumpeted Dole's two-point lead over Bill Clinton . . . in Arizona and Virginia...
...Later, majority leader Dick Armey, whip Tom DeLay, and deputy whip Dennis Hastert all took on Gingrich, forcing him to change course and hold off on scheduling a vote on the minimum wage...
...Even if you loved Lawrence of Arabia, based largely on this book, you will be dazzled by this frank, uninhibited memoir, one of the seminal autobiographies of our time...
...PEROT'S SEPTEMBER SURPRISE...
...Pun intended...
...Many pols get their ideas from focus groups and polling data, but few are so upfront about it...
...LIKE A PHOENIX FROM THE ASHES As Bob Dole's spring slide continues-he trails Bill Clinton by 18 points in a recent national poll conducted by the Los Angeles Times-he's making life a little difficult for the folks at the Republican National Committee...
...Gingrich demanded one thing in return: Republicans must come up with their own plans to help working families...
...Dole replied, "It's what a couple of people have told me who've had focus groups...
...Pressed for the trickster's name, the wily tycoon played coy, replying instead with a trademark non sequitur about professional wrestling...
...Like dialogue out of a TV movie...
...No," he said the trickster replied, "but it'll work...
...Every Monday, they fax out a nifty summary of polling data showcasing Republican popularity...
...Gingrich liked the idea...
...In March, Ross Perot gave an extraordinary interview to Dan Balz of the Washington Post...
...On Face the Nation, Dole was asked about his comment days earlier that parents would be safer leaving their kids with him than with Bill Clinton...
...MEANWHILE AT THE JACKIE O. AUCTION...
...Terrified by polls showing that 80 percent of Americans favor a boost, Gingrich sent instructions on April 21 that no House Republican should publicly criticize the minimum wage...
...And since Perot rarely says anything, no matter how demented, except in the hope of political gain, the mystery man would probably be connected in some way to one of the two other men running for president this fall...
...In the meantime, he offered this tantalizing hint: "Haley Barbour was not directly involved, but in this case, I would see that he do a little bit of diligence up and down the chain of command, and I would say after about 15 minutes, you know, one of the two parties is going to say 'Ooops!'" Who could this trickster be...
...You're not going to believe this," Perot told Balz, but in 1993 "one of the two parties called up" and "wanted me to give a million dollars for dirty tricks" against the other party The approach to Perot supposedly featured the unnamed dirty trickster laying out the tales his party was going to spread about the other party...
...It all fits perfectly...
...Which leaves one likely target of Perot's ludicrous allegation: Scott Reed, now Bob Dole's campaign manager-and at one time, conveniently enough, Haley Barbour's chief of staff...
...At last, the truth has been spoken: America deserves a leader as good as its focus groups...
...That may take some time, though Armey began outlining an approach last week that would involve reforming the controversial Earned Income Tax Credit...
...Perot said he asked the trickster...
...It's a bad sign when the best the RNC can come up with is a two-point margin in reliably Republican states...
...Since there is nobody above RNC chief Haley Barbour in the Republican party's chain of command, that would leave a Barbour underling as the main suspect in Perot's latest psychodrama...
...Chris Cox of California, who heads the House Republican Policy Committee, was the first to challenge it...
...We know of no other work like this massive 19th-century first-person account, largely concerned with the haj to Mecca and written in an original and unduplicatable voice that is half Pilgrim's Progress, half Sir Walter Scott...
...I'm just repeating what the focus groups said...
Vol. 1 • May 1996 • No. 33
