SCRAPBOOK
Scrapbook A CHIP OFF THE OLD BUSH BLOCK Maureen Dowd buried the lead in her N^'w York Times column last week. You had to slog through the jokes about Al Gore—"so feminized and diversified and...
...But if it turns partisan, all bets are off...
...I know what I believe in...
...i.e., her chat with George W. Bush at the Bush family home in Kenneb-unkport, where they were celebrating the old man's 75th birthday...
...TN PRATSE OF BTPARTTSANSHTP After months in which the mainstream press bemoaned the excessive partisanship in Washington, there were a couple of strikingly bipartisan votes in the House last week...
...That's—that's in the context of the effort by—a partisan effort, what I felt was a partisan effort in the congress to remove [president clinton] from office...
...And even he seems to recognize this...
...But this is a shabby way for conservatives to treat a worthy Reagan legacy...
...NOT A PENNY FOR NED...
...The National Endowment for Democracy works because, while accountable to Congress, it operates at arm's length from the U.S...
...AL GORE'S SITUATIONAL ETHICS As a service to readers, The Scrapbook sat through the entire Diane Sawyer interview of Al Gore last week just to bring you these highlights...
...I'm telling you, people out there, they're looking for something—dignity, integrity, optimism, big themes [the vision thing...
...Dingell brought along with him a substantial contingent of 45 Democrats who joined with 173 Republicans in passing the bill—which is about as bipartisan as it gets these days...
...THE SCRAPBOOK is reassured that Bush feels he knows what to do, especially those key presidential skills of issuing statements in response to crises and being tough enough to tell an adviser to kiss off...
...So, there you have it...
...one highlight, actually: SAWYER: You said [during last fall's impeachment debate] that misleading statements are very different from lying...
...A second instance: 45 Democrats also joined 203 Republicans to pass the Ten Commandments Defense Act, which restores to the states the freedom to post the Ten Commandments in government buildings, including schools...
...GORE: Well, no, of course not...
...I believe the big issues are going to be China and Russia...
...But in the long run, security in the world is going to be how do we deal with China and how do we deal with Russia...
...All of this is something to bear in mind the next time you hear a lament about the "death of bipartisanship...
...Bush revealed himself to Dowd as, well, a late-nineties version of his father...
...Is that the article of faith that you want to run your presidential campaign on...
...As long as the presidential election remains nonpartisan, we can expect Al Gore to be truthful...
...Republican Judd Gregg suggested the administration could find NED's requested $32 million by reallocating State Department funds...
...I'll ask the people who've had experience...
...It's important for the president to think globally...
...He recently told the Des^^et News, his hometown Salt Lake City daily, "If I decide to run, I know it's a long shot...
...The bill, by the way, was a small victory for the Gary Bauer campaign...
...Dartmouth is a private school with an endowment of $1.5 billion...
...Funny thing, though: This new spirit of bipartisanship went utterly unappreciated...
...You had to slog through the jokes about Al Gore—"so feminized and diversified and ecologically correct, he's practically lactating"—to get to the really good stuff...
...The Senate Appropriations Committee has zeroed out funding for the National Endowment for Democracy, which was launched by President Reagan in 1983 to help build up and consolidate new democracies around the world...
...People think the Russian situation, or used to think, Russia was not an issue...
...And I'm tough enough to tell somebody to kiss off if they're trying to put one over on me or on the country...
...The Scrapbook tried to reach Hatch last week to talk about his strategy, but he wasn't taking calls, and there are scant details available about his candidacy...
...government...
...As a former board member of the endowment, Secretary of State Albright may well take the hint and shift the funds rather than let the organization die...
...The debate on the Ten Commandments bill also led to the solecism of the year: Democrat Nita Lowey of New York opposed it because, she said, "I cannot superimpose my views on other people"—something, The Scrapbook suspects, that only superliberals worry about...
...Given his success over the past decade in infuriating conservatives over everything from working with Ted Kennedy to laying out a censure deal for Bill clinton, to say nothing of his late start and lack of an obvious distinctive message, it's difficult to envision Hatch's faring well in the primaries...
...I think what's important for you to know is that I feel I know what to do...
...There will be moments when situations, incidents will flare up...
...But if the East Timorians decide to revolt, I'm sure I'll have a statement...
...Apparently "real" bipartisanship is when House Republicans join the "Democratic" side, not when Democrats cross over...
...Sometime before the end of the month, the veteran senator from Utah will announce his bid for the White House...
...Just one question: If, say, Condy and Paul should ever disagree, who gets to break the tie...
...I think that's an interesting measurement...
...It can help build democracy in nations where the United States has no diplomatic relations...
...But again, there was negligible praise for the spirit of comity that saw so many Democrats crossing the aisle...
...He's not the world's smoothest off-the-cuff speaker, but he's exceedingly in touch with how he feels about how he's doing at playing his important role in the scheme of things: "All I can tell you," George W. told Dowd, "is I was fairly anxious for the week leading up to this, but when I got up there in Cedar Rapids, it felt good...
...I'm smart enough to know what I don't know and I have good judgment about who will either be telling me the truth or has got some agenda that is not a right agenda...
...I really do...
...Bauer had worked last year on crafting the measure with its sponsor, Republican Robert Aderholt of Alabama...
...And where democratic forces need rapid help, it can act with a dispatch unusual for government bureaucracies...
...In one instance, Michigan's John Dingell, the senior Democrat in the House, made common cause with supposed uber-partisan Republican Tom DeLay of Texas to pass a gun-control measure that was less strict than the Senate's and, hence, deeply disappointing to the White House, not to mention all the gun-controllers in the media...
...It's not as if some small-government balanced-budget principle were at stake here...
...According to a Wall Street Journal story last week, Gregg may deliver as much as $26 million in new federal funds to Dartmouth College, in his home state of New Hampshire...
...Surely the cause of supporting democracy around the world is at least as deserving...
...I may not be able to tell you exactly the nuance of the East Timorian situation but I'll ask Condy Rice or I'll ask Paul Wolfowitz or I'll ask Dick Cheney...
...DOWN THE HATCH Don't look now, but another high-profile Republican is about to enter the presidential campaign: Orrin Hatch...
...It's a huge issue...
...With State Department funding, NED would lose these virtues...
Vol. 4 • June 1999 • No. 39
