Correspondence
Correspondence MCCAIN THE PATRIOT Noemie Emery's superb article on John McCain's attraction resonates ("Ask Not . . ." Feb. 21). For one of the very few times, I feel that a journalist has...
...Now we call it Veterans' Day, and I doubt that many people have any idea of the November date's historical significance...
...21 edition of The Weekly Standard...
...I don't believe government is the source of all our problems or the solution to them," this is a mark of a movement that has succeeded—after decades of exertion—in changing what it means to be a Democrat...
...When those who once attacked New Democrats now join their ranks, we see this as a cause of celebration...
...He is mistaken, however, when he says that "Presidents' Day" has been "a bona fide national holiday since 1971...
...John McCain's presidential candidacy, The Weekly Standard has simply gone too far...
...Along the way, they built the policy groundwork for the "rich and happy and peaceful present" you now admit America is experiencing...
...But with respect to its apparent advocacy of Sen...
...senate race in New York in 1970), but as with millions of others the "Patriot party platform" goes directly to our core...
...No wonder that Democrats and the media have flocked to him, while Republicans have rejected him in state after state...
...For one of the very few times, I feel that a journalist has articulated McCain's appeal to me...
...and (c) the righteous insurgent railing against the entrenched Republican Establishment (William Kristol and David Brooks, "The McCain Insurrection," Feb...
...Thank you for your magazine and your contribution to the political dialogue...
...George Washington's birthday was one of them...
...But it's not just McCain: Certainly he's more charismatic, but faced with the same alternatives, I'd also vote for Richard Lugar, Colin Powell, Bob Kerrey, Mario Cuomo, and a host of others...
...By emphasizing anti-constitutional campaign finance "reform," by pointedly rejecting supply-side cuts in marginal income tax rates, by adopting Clinton-Gore-style rhetoric on the use of the budget surplus, and by waffling on abortion policy, McCain has painted a very clear picture of himself...
...David Tell writes that "the question how (or even whether) liberalism might have gone wrong as a political idea seems not to have concerned the new DLC...
...We should revive the original honored term and redesignate the day Armistice-Veterans' Day...
...In 1971, however, Richard Nixon issued a presidential proclamation—which had no force of law—urging Americans to honor all presidents on that day...
...Senators John Warner and Charles Robb of Virginia are co-sponsoring a companion bill...
...Reagan, for whom I never voted, also had this and it was one of his great virtues, worth vastly more than all the Clinton policies I support...
...And if we still need to do something with Presidents' Day, we could move the apostrophe one letter to the left, change the date to August 27, and celebrate the achievements of a great American jazzman, Lester ("The Prez") Young...
...To pick up on the senator's much-used Star Wars analogy ("I'm Luke Skywalker fighting his way out of the Death Star...
...GREGORY JEROZAL Millersville, PA...
...About all we have left to remind us of Washington on this holiday are comical pictures of him appearing to extol the sales of sheets, pillowcases, autos, and furniture...
...What has become increasingly clear to rank-and-file conservatives is that John McCain is no longer one of them...
...In 1968, Congress passed the Monday Holidays Act, moving some date-certain holidays to the nearest Monday...
...Think about how far we have come when a Democratic president argues for fiscal responsibility, free trade, public school choice, higher education standards, the death penalty, the line-item veto, more cops on the beat, less teen pregnancy, and yes, welfare reform...
...Veterans of all our wars surely deserve public recognition of their call to duty, but it shouldn't be at the expense of a great historical memory...
...DAVID A. WRIGHT Memphis, TN I am writing to commend you for the piece written by Noemie Emery on John McCain in the Feb...
...PETER HANNAFORD Washington, DC Greg Crosby was exactly right in deploring the trend that has succeeded in melding two traditional, popular holidays honoring the achievements of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington into one bland, ahistorical generality know as Presidents' Day...
...Murphy's may be the best translation of Beowulf that has ever been done...
...BRUCE R. CARRICK Somers, NY A BETTER BEOWULF Margaret Boerner's review of Seamus Heaney's new verse translation of Be^'wulf is both accurate and thorough ("Heaney's Beowulf," Feb...
...As for W., while it's okay for the Ivies to admit legacies, the oval office needs a higher standard...
...This is far afield from what Democrats once stood for—and this change would never have happened had New Democrats spent the Clinton presidency "shining the public's shoes and fleeing controversy...
...There is another example of cultural revisionism that needs attention and rectification...
...I thought the piece was very well written, and I especially enjoyed the cogent and succinct way in which the current occupant of the Oval Office was reduced to his proper size when put up against the standards of American greatness...
...ANDREI CHERNY Valley Village, CA HAIL TO EVERY CHIEF...
...To portray McCain as (a) the ideal anti-boomer, anti-Clinton candidate (David Brooks, "The Anti-Boomer Candidate," Feb...
...14) is selective reporting at best, complete fantasy at worst...
...I am a 30-year Democrat (the last Republican I voted for was also the first, Charles Goodell in the u.s...
...On occasion, the magazine has veered off the conservative path to push for this or that dubious cause (Colin Powell for president, Teddy Roosevelt and "national greatness" conservatism, China as the new Evil Empire, Kosovo as a great foreign policy triumph), but for the most part it has maintained a principled conservative outlook...
...b) the proud heir to the "Patriot party" tradition of Alexander Hamilton, JFK, Ronald Reagan, and (of course) Teddy Roosevelt (Noemie Emery, "Ask Not . . ." Feb...
...They focused on offering new ideas that would modernize the Democratic party...
...Enterprising commercial interests seized upon the new three-day Washington's birthday holiday to hold three-day sales for used cars and the like...
...We will cross party lines and vote for McCain not because of his resume, which we admire, but more for his long history of thoughtful outspokenness (e.g., Bosnia), which reveals someone who—seemingly unlike the other candidates out there today—actually thinks about America's role in the world...
...I encourage her readers to seek out Timothy Murphy's Be^-wulf translations, which have appeared in the Hudson R^'view and the Formalist, to date...
...GENE SALORIO Storrs, CT As a loyal reader and subscriber to The Weekly Standard almost since its inception, I have generally enjoyed your magazine's fresh, timely coverage of the American political scene...
...It's a start...
...Representative Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD) has sponsored a bill (HR 1363)— with 34 bipartisan cosponsors—to reaffirm the holiday as "Washington's Birthday" by requiring that it be referred to as such in all publications and utterances of the federal government...
...Greg Crosby is correct that "when we honor all [presidents], we honor none" ("Happy Generic Presidents' Day," Feb...
...They won the battle of ideas by fighting that battle— day in and day out...
...In fact, there is no holiday by that name...
...That's too bad for all of us...
...Murphy knows large portions of the text by heart, and it shows in his ability to capture the spirit and substance of Beowulf...
...In rescuing a party that had lost its way, New Democrats—as Tell points out—did not focus on campaign cash or mobilizing troops on the ground...
...After all, didn't an ascendant conservative movement once succeed in converting a former liberal named Ronald Reagan—not to mention one named Irving Kristol...
...She is right to point out that Heaney's is a bad translation...
...It's called political and philosophical success...
...Every November 11th, the country used to celebrate Armistice Day...
...I'd prefer not to read it as well in the pages of a conservative magazine...
...it's evident that McCain has gone over to the Dark Side...
...When Hillary Rodham Clinton begins her Senate campaign in New York by speaking of "responsibility and enterprise," by announcing that, "I'm a New Democrat...
...And in light of the stench of the Clinton administration, there is no way that I could ever pull the lever for anyone associated with it...
...That The Weekly Standard has determinedly ignored McCain's numerous shortcomings makes me fear that it, too, has joined forces with the bad guys—in this case, the mainstream media...
...In fact, if Kenneth Baer's excellent new book, Reinventing Democrats, shows anything, it is that New Democrats from their very beginning have been a movement based in ideas and philosophy...
...If I want to hear unabashed hero worship concerning Sen...
...MATTHEW MAY Birmingham, MI DLC.ISA-OK After a variety of articles in The Weekly Standard over the last four years grudgingly conceding the New Democratic movement's success in changing the Democratic party, and urging conservatives to get out of denial about it, it's disappointing that you've plunged back into denial yourselves, for no apparent reason other than perhaps an inkling of a coming political obsolescence ("The New Democrats' Wretched Trifles," Feb...
...In a Democratic primary battle, the vice president criticizes his opponent for opposing time limits on welfare recipients, opposing the use of military force abroad, and offers a plan for rigorous teacher testing...
...For years, most schools and many offices observed two minutes of silence at 11:00 a.m.—the precise moment the cease-fire went into effect in 1918—to honor the Allied victory and the enormous sacrifice of the First World War...
...They and the uncritical news media simply inhaled Nixon's proclamation...
...It wouldn't have to be a three-day weekend...
...Congress did not change its name...
...Gore, Bush, and Bradley are all running for governor of America...
...McCain, I can tune in day or night to the likes of Al Hunt, Mark Shields, Paul Begala, and George Stephanopoulos...
Vol. 5 • March 2000 • No. 24
