The Washington Times

The prospect of a 108th Congress with Sen. Frank Lautenberg and Sen. Walter Mondale in it is really too delicious to contemplate. We will have reached a new stage, I think, in the phenomenon of political branding.

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The Washington Times

John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira have written a book that is certain to galvanize and energize their fellow Democrats. In “The Emerging Democratic Majority,” they argue that the cycle of Republican electoral dominance first announced by Kevin Phillips in 1969 in “The Emerging Republican Majority” is at an end. If Democrats play the demographic and ideological hand they have been dealt with sufficient skill, the authors argue, the party should have little difficulty regaining and keeping the upper hand through the next long cycle of American politics.

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The Washington Times

At a conference here on trans-Atlantic relations jointly sponsored by the Potomac Foundation and the Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung, when the subject turns to Iraq, the question quickly becomes broader: How much faith is it possible to place in the idea of deterrence, the proposition that states, including Iraq, will refrain from the use [if not the acquisition] of weapons of mass destruction because they know that if they do resort to them, they will meet with massive retaliation that their current political leadership will not survive?

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The Washington Times

The top question Democrats are asking these days would seem to be this: Where are the Democrats? A couple weeks, ago, the New Republic wanted to know how come Democrats opposed to going to war with Iraq didn’t have the nerve to say so. I heard a presentation on Democrats’ future prospects at the National Education Association shortly thereafter, at which several of the members of a panel consisting largely of Democratic activists decried what they took to be the spinelessness of their political leaders – their unwillingness despite ample opportunity to offer a robust alternative to the Bush administration.

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The Washington Times

One could not say that the anti-globalization protesters in Washington for the World Bank and International Monetary Fund meetings last week were any more coherent in their objectives than they were on previous occasions here and elsewhere, going back to Seattle in 1999. Nevertheless, there has been a net reduction in incoherence for the simple reason that the protests are getting smaller. This is progress.

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Brookings Review

In April 1998, Al Gore suffered an embarrassment. As usual, he released his income tax return for the previous year. Total taxable income on the joint return for 1997 was $197,729, most of which came from his vice presidential salary of $171,500. The Gores paid a total of $47,662 in federal taxes. But Schedule A, for itemized deductions, listed charitable contributions for the year at a grand total of $353.

Critics pounced: Gore was a charity cheapskate. The Republican National Committee issued a press release. Conservative columnists snickered. Nor was the furor confined to conservative media. As Stacy Palmer of the Chronicle of Philanthropy was quoted in USA Today, “Certainly a lot of other Americans in that income bracket have found ways to dig deeper in their pockets.” The New York Times noted that the Gores’ charitable contributions for 1997 amounted to “less than two-tenths of 1 percent of their income.” Ouch.

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