Scrapbook
Scrapbook Sid's List Arriving unbidden on The Scrap-book's desk last week—who knows how many layers of forwarding removed from its original and unknown recipient—was a most interesting copy of an...
...Having inadvertently acquired Blumenthal's Miami Herald missive, THE SCRAPBOOK seems also to have acquired a longish list of folks through whom he likes to spread his special brand of "information...
...It very correctly overruled the Florida Supreme Court, which had gone much too far in the direction of judicial activism...
...It was unfortunate that the majority of the court had to go to the equal-protection clause, which hasn't been applied in voting cases before this and has potential for future mischief if it comes to be supposed that equal protection requires each vote to have the same power...
...What's truly interesting about the document, instead, is something that a quirk of Blumenthal's office computer has revealed: the full roster of people to whom the e-mail was addressed...
...Go figure...
...The result, the Chronicle's headline on this feature promised, was "9 Views on Bush v. Gore...
...Polls were even, it seems, the essential device by which the president survived his impeachment ordeal...
...Followed by, among others: Jane Mayer and Jeffrey Toobin at the New Yorker...
...So I voted for Bush, and I very much supported the final decision made by the U.S...
...Its first two names: Clinton-ophantic columnists Joe Conason and Gene Lyons...
...The two parties were very much themselves throughout...
...That would run counter to our federal system...
...Supreme Court...
...Scrapbook Sid's List Arriving unbidden on The Scrap-book's desk last week—who knows how many layers of forwarding removed from its original and unknown recipient—was a most interesting copy of an e-mail recently sent by White House staff ideologist Sidney Blumenthal...
...Which The Scrapbook likes so much it reprints now: "This decision saved the country from possible turmoil and a good deal of further partisan confusion...
...News...
...Whereas the Republicans believe in doing things properly or legally...
...There must be a new, new, new math now being taught in university-land, because the "9 views" in question, so far as The Scrapbook can tell, actually add up to only two...
...It's good for Republicans and conservatives to remember this...
...It really was a contest of principle between two parties...
...Supreme Court...
...In this election, there seemed to be more partisanship after people voted than before...
...One of them, beautifully expressed by the extremely non-partisan Cass Sunstein of the University of Chicago (see "Sid's List," above), is that B-ush v. G^re will be judged "illegitimate, undemocratic, and unprincipled...
...And so on, and so on, and so on...
...None of these esteemed ladies and gentlemen would ever actually take instruction from a Blumenthal e-mail...
...Greta" at cnn.com...
...The actual message in that e-mail is for present purposes inconsequential: It's just a full-text copy of a late December Miami Herald story on the "undervote" in Florida's majority-black voting precincts...
...And the Democrats, because they stand for the rule of the people, believe that rule should be paramount, and that technicalities are subordinate to that will...
...And it took an activist majority in the U.S...
...But it's not inconsistent or malicious of them to resort to the final constitutional power of the U.S...
...and Sean Wilentz of Princeton and Todd Gitlin of NYU...
...But I think the five conservative justices agreed to using the equal-protection clause in order to get two more votes, from Breyer and Souter, and that was a reasonable and statesmanlike thing to do in the circumstances...
...It's true they mainly support states' rights, but I don't think that's a principle that people can hold to on every occasion...
...The View from the Faculty Club For its Jan...
...Supreme Court...
...For example, the morning of New Year's Eve, the Washington Post's lead story was a superb review, by White House reporter John F. Harris, of the unprecedented extent to which the Clinton presidency was dependent upon public opinion polling...
...5 issue, the Chronicle of Higher Education, industry newsletter of eggheadery, asked a number of "scholars and writers" to predict how future historians will view the Supreme Court's recent election-deciding ruling...
...Harris bends over backwards to be fair to Clinton, and acknowledges that it's "true" the president didn't "always" do what Penn told him to...
...According to unnamed "close associates" of Clinton, he is a man "for whom polls fill important intellectual and emotional needs...
...I think they would have made a grave mistake and looked quite foolish if they had held to the right of the Florida Supreme Court to abuse its discretion in this matter...
...And on this Post front page, Bill Clinton has scrawled one word: "Thanks...
...I don't think it was a violation of principle by the U.S...
...Would they...
...It would have been better if Florida had been able to decide its own affairs constitutionally, but states' rights are not an absolute—we live under a constitution that also has a federal government...
...Jill Abramson, Eleanor Randolph, and Anthony Lewis at the New York Times...
...But Harris's legwork leads him unmistakably close to an entirely opposite conclusion...
...The president's defensive explanation for this obsession with public opinion numbers is already familiar: that he has used those numbers not to decide what he thought, but to help him choose the words by which he would persuade other people to think it, too...
...The Republicans stand for the rule of law, and the Democrats for the rule of the people...
...Hanging on the wall of Mark J. Penn's office, Harris reports, is a framed copy of the Washington Post from the day Clinton was acquitted...
...I heard hardly anyone agreeing with the thesis of the person he didn't vote for in the matter of the Supreme Court...
...And no predecessor has integrated his pollster so thoroughly into the policymak-ing operation of his White House...
...one other question, come to think of it: What official, government business could Sidney Blumenthal possibly have been performing when he wrote and mailed this thing while at work in the White House...
...And then there's a lonely, token dissent by Weekly Standard friend and contributor Harvey C. Mansfield, professor of government at Harvard University...
...And a couple of people at the online magazine Salon...
...How Clinton Won The best reporting on the Clinton administration is appearing only as the president prepares to depart...
...The list surpasses self-parody...
...And Tom Oliphant of the Boston Globe...
...Six other academics, plus Gore Vidal, reach pretty much the same conclusion, while writing less well...
...No previous president read public opinion surveys with the same hypnotic intensity" as Clinton, Harris wrote...
...And unsuccessful author David Brock...
...Speaking of academics, The Scrap-book is puzzled by the presence in such company of Cass Sunstein of the University of chicago, who is, as he himself has recently written to this magazine, an extremely non-partisan fellow, motivated only and always by principle...
...But no thanks, THE SCRAPBOOK would add...
...The delightful result...
...Harold Evans of U.S...
...Go figure, too, the inclusion on Sidney's list of columnists John Judis, Michael Tomasky, and Robert Scheer...
...That would be Mark J. Penn, who ran a private poll for Clinton "at least once a week all through the second term...
...Polls were "the essential device" by which the president survived an often hostile Washington...
...Supreme Court to correct an even more activist one in the Florida Supreme Court...
Vol. 6 • January 2001 • No. 17
