Scrapbook
Scrapbook As Bill Clinton accepts his party’s presidential nomination, he will look over a sea of liberal delegates who are 66.8 percent white, 18.9 African American, 9 percent Latino,...
...Convention manager Paul Manafort then called the hotel and demanded to talk to Quayle about the speech...
...Well, now we have a firmer grasp on what “most economists” believe...
...The enthusiasm for diversity was so great this year that the Florida state Democratic party put out a press release with a handy breakdown of each delegate’s religion, age, race, occupation, and sexual orientation...
...Eighty-one percent believe the Reagan tax cuts increased economic growth...
...In a very heated exchange, Reed informed Quayle he did not share Barbour’s favorable opinion of the speech and expressed strong concerns both about the use of the word “extreme” and the talk about abortion...
...Eastern time, the abortion reference intact...
...The news isn’t entirely sunny for Dole, though: Only 41 percent believe the Dole claim that “about 30 percent of the static revenue lost from a 15 percent cut in income tax rates would be recaptured by the resulting increase in economic growth...
...Since Bob Dole proposed his economic plan, we’ve seen a resurgence of a hoary journalistic genre: the “most economists” story...
...To be sure, all of these journalists issued caveats...
...Wrote David S. Broder in the Post, “Judging from the ‘bounce’ [Clinton and Gore] got in the polls, the [convention] effort was a success...
...Redskins linebackers should bump so hard...
...It was meltdown time in Republican World after THE DAILY STANDARD (a mini-version of this magazine we put out only in San Diego at the Republican convention and will issue in Chicago this week as well) broke the story that Dan Quayle intended to use prolife language in his convention speech...
...There, he was pressured by former RNC communications director Chuck Greener and superlobbyist Ken Duberstein to remove both the abortion talk and some pointed attacks on the “extremism” of Clinton and the Democrats...
...In the Washington Post, Richard Morin was exhaustively and ostentatiously dismissive of the “notoriously contradictory” surveys of the “convention season...
...Eastern time), because the convention could not find scheduled speaker Steve Largent...
...Convention Gives Bill Clinton a Big Bounce,” ran a Times headline—the “greatest convention bounce in half a century...
...EXTRA...
...ECONOMISTS LIKE TAX CUTS...
...William C. Adams of George Washington University surveyed 700 random members of the American Economics Association...
...In the current iteration, a journalist in question—Richard Stevenson of the New York Times or, most notoriously, Clay Chandler of the Washington Post—reports that “most economists” are scathing about the Dole economic plan...
...Turns out the delegate had told only a few people that he was gay and was shocked to learn that his own political party had outed him...
...A quick check of voting patterns also shows that the composition of the delegates in Chicago has an uncanny resemblance to the Democratic party’s overall electorate...
...DAN QUAYLEWAS RIGHT...
...Barbour said it sounded fine to him...
...But the media weren’t nearly so punctilious last time around, when Bill Clinton departed his convention in Atlanta...
...Welcome to Chicago...
...More than half believe deficits in the 1980s were due more to growth in federal spending than to the Reagan tax cuts...
...Quayle didn’t take Manafort’s call, and soon after he received another, this time from Dole campaign manager Scott Reed...
...I’m going to practice...
...So the audience of delegates Clinton will address Thursday night will be constructed using the most liberal application of quotas while the president will stand above pretending to be an utterly different kind of Democrat...
...Not a chance...
...Michael Jordan should bounce so high...
...A Quayle aide suspected a convention maneuver to deny Quayle a prime slot and helped his boss delay, dawdle, and otherwise take his sweet time getting to the podium...
...But there was nothing like the cold water poured Niagara-like on the polls that followed Bob Dole’s moment in the San Diego sun...
...It turns out that “most economists” are mild supply-siders...
...When the ex-veep resisted, RNC chairman Haley Barbour was contacted by cell phone to continue the pressure...
...Are you listening, Clay Chandler...
...Morin is, by the way, a pollster...
...Bump...
...When Quayle arrived a few hours later to give his speech, he learned he was being moved forward in the speaking order to 5:45 p.m...
...Scrapbook As Bill Clinton accepts his party’s presidential nomination, he will look over a sea of liberal delegates who are 66.8 percent white, 18.9 African American, 9 percent Latino, 3 percent Asian-Pacific, and 1.4 percent Native American...
...This has always been true of such “bounces”—that they can be artificial and short-lived—but opinionmakers have bent over backwards to ensure that you understand it is especially true this time...
...In the New York Times, Janet Elder warned, “The polls have to be considered in the context of a busy convention stretch, one that has not yet concluded...
...8:45 p.m...
...Even so, the survey provides evidence that most reporters are profoundly misleading their readers when they purport to describe what most economists believe...
...Quayle’s speech began in earnest just after 9:00 p.m...
...What’s more, 50 percent of a state’s delegation must be female...
...The bean counters at the Democratic National Committee long ago mandated that the racial and ethnic composition of each state delegation must be proportional to the ethnic and racial makeup of Democratic voters in the state...
...NO BIG DOLE MO’ If the media have wanted you to know one thing about the campaign lately, it’s this: Bob Dole’s post-convention “bounce” in the polls doesn’t mean much...
...Quayle reluctantly agreed to replace the word “extreme” with “radical,” but steadfastly refused to cut the pro-life section...
...Haley,” Quayle asked, “have you even read the speech...
...Coincidence...
...All of this is of course correct—100 percent...
...To make sure each racial and ethnic quota is filled, a pool of reserve delegates is on call—just in case a delegation is short a Latino or some other minority...
...When Quayle arrived at the convention hall to rehearse, he was immediately summoned to the management trailer behind the podium...
...Whereupon Quayle flung the phone at Duberstein and said, “Here, you talk to Haley...
...He hauled out several experts to admonish gullible Americans to beware: We should “take a brief vacation from pollwatching” because these Republicanencouraging polls “are seductive...
...And that same Richard Morin began an article this way: “Did somebody say bounce...
...One delegate, whom the press release named, is “retired, but works with underprivileged kids, gay and in a 20year relationship...
...Barbour said he hadn’t, so Quayle proceeded to recite the six-minute address into the phone...
Vol. 1 • September 1996 • No. 49
