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Show O~NION : ],,~ I ; I WM. F. BUCKLEY, JR. COMMENTARY - --- COMMENTARY ·-------· Rip Van Winkl e reviews the political scene Crossing Eurasia on a train from Bejing to Moscow is a n unusual experience for exactly the reasons one would suppose. But what this traveler neglected to anticipate was 12 days without one whisper of the news of the world. If on arriving in Moscow the passengers had been told that Vice President Al Gore had resigned from office after confessing to having shot Vincent Foster, and that Princess Di had announced her betrothal to John John, we'd have accepted the news with dumb fatalism of those who come to terms with the vicissitudes of exile." So what does one do after such a period of alienation? One reads. Everything in sight. And discovers that the Dayton Accords a re the fruitl ess enterprises predicted, that John Ke nn edy Jr. d id in fact get ma rried, and that candidate Dole is slipping out of sight. Why is this? "Wha t are they go ing to deb a t e about?" says rejected debater Ross Perot, t h umping his wris t on th e table and u nleashing a battery la wyers. A of genera t ion ago cand i date Ge orge Wa llac e tol d t h e voter s that they w as n't "a di1n e' s worth -of difference " be tween candidates Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey . Th er eafte r, the GOP tidied up its philosophical house under Ronald Reagan, but slippage resumed under Bush. In and out of Nixon-Ford-Reagan-Bush all those years was Bob Dol e, and his Democratic contender does what he can to suggest that Dole has flexible views on such matters as taxes and drug laws and the rest. Dole''s reach for the hard position of tax reduction seems not to have aroused either excitement or confidence. The poll figures haven't moved, except for the spurt that coincided with the naming of Jack Kemp as his running mate and the exhilaration of the four narcissistic days in San Diego. And the Wall Street Journal sends out a poll. "Do you think your taxes will go down, will go up, or will stay the same if Bill Clinton is re-elected or if Bob Dole is elected?" 36 percent say up with a Clinton victory 35 percent say up with a Dole victory. The figures tell it all about what voters conclude after listening to politicians make promises. Clinton promised in 1992 to reduce taxes, but didn't-he raised them. Are the voters mad at him on that account? No, the voters aren't mad at Clinton over anythi ng. With ONE exception. They would not like it if they thought Clinton was a liberal. lt"s okay for him to say that he is in the tradition of Jefferson, Jackson, Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy. But it would not be okay for him to say he was a liberal. And Clinton is greatly aware of that danger and goes to thunderous lengths to guard against it. Adulterer, okay; tax cheat, okay; drug user, okay; draft dodger, okay. Liberal, never! " President (Clinton) came to town a liberal; he's still a liberal, " said Bob Dole last week. "The only thing that stopped him in his tracks was electing a Republican Congress in 1994." The reporters, of course, questioned Clinton on the point later the same day in the White House. " There' s a real problem with that,"" Clinton began. "One is m y re cord, my reco rd as governor, my recor d as president." How, he as ked, co ul d an ybody say that he was a liberal given that he reduced th e deficit, supported the dea th pen al t y and o verhaul ed th e w e lfare system? Sure, he and Bob Dole had "different tax plans, but I don't think that qualifies me as a closet libi::ral. There it is. the term liberal lies bloodied on the floor. But liberalism lives. The percentage of the gross domestic product spent by the federal government (excluding defense) has risen, the tax on the incremental dollar has risen, the hand of government regulates everything except the security of unborn children; and poor Bob Dole struggles to make himself heard. Of course there are differences, and of course it is true that Clinton is a liberal. But the voters are manifestly unimpressed with with the differences, with one enormous exception, which is women. If white men only were to vote (The Wall Street Journal figures do not relay the black or Hispanic vote), Dole would sink Clinton, 51 percent to 37 percent. If only white women voted, Clinton would sink Dole, 53 percent to 35 percent. Women aged 35-49 appear to detest poor Dole (60-28). We must be grateful that lesbian marriages will be childless. So what will the psephologists say after hard studies given to American politics? That Clinton always had a way with the ladies? What else? II II I I IThe man without a ~~ NAT HENTciFF political party During the Democratic convention, the unsinkable Bella Abzug assailed the managers of the Republican convention for "muzzling some of their guys who didn't agree with them about abortion." A reporter for the New York Post asked her what she thought of her own party's refusal to allow former Pennsylvania Gov. Robert Casey (1987-95)) to speak at her convention. After all, Al Gore had promised on ABC-TV: 'We don't have a gag rule the way the other party does." "So what?" said Abzug, the tribune of free speech, about the gagging of Casey. "Its not required," she said, ""to have someone speak who has a position in contrast to the majority of the party." Casey is pro-life, so he had to be silenced. Four years ago, Casey was also banished from the podium at the Democratic convention in New York . The reason, said James Carville-who used to be a campaign strategist for Casey in Pennsylvania- was that no one could speak that has yet endorsed the Clinton ticket. However, Kathleen Brown of California had not endorsed C linton, but she was give n th e microphone. This year, Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., the chairman of the party, told the New York times that he had made a "'number of calls"" to Casey before the convention but they had not been returned. Casey wrote to Dodd and to the Times that "I checked with members of my staff and they had received no such call or message." Robert Patrick Casey is a pariah despite his having been arguably the most liberal and efficient Democratic governor in the nation-with a far more impressive record than Bill Clinton's in Arkansas. Casey put millions of dollars into job training, helping over 330,000 people, most of them single mothers out of welfare and into solid jobs. And according to Dr. T. Berry Brazelton, a much respected pediatrician professor, Casey's prenatal and child health care programs were " a model for the rest of the country." Moreover, despite a time of recession, he consistently increased state funding for the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) nutrition program while Republicans elsewhere were cutting it. Casey also increased funds for home care for the elderly. None of this counted with the Clinton-Gore team in 1992 because a number of pro-choice (sic) feminists-who were raising a lot of money for the ticket-objected strenuously to Casey's appearance at the convention. Forty percent of Gov. Casey's cabinet were women, but that too didn't count. With this year's "open" Democratic convention again closed to him, Casey delivered an address in Chicago anyway, and in it delivered an elementary free-speech point. Citing the many Democrats who oppose abortion-in Congress, at other levels of across the country and among the rank-and-file-he asked: "Do we not have the right to attempt to persuade people in the direction we believe the country ought to go? Is this not the essence of democracy?" . That definition of democracy was not in play at either convention. Ask Pat Buchanan. But the Democrats are more aggressively hypocritical in insisting on their devotion to free speech. Jesse Jackson, for example, charged during the convention that the Republicans did not permit "uncensored" speeches and that heretics in San Diego "'were sentenced to Siberia." In heretic Casey's unofficial speech, his pro-life argument contained the same analogy that Jesse Jackson used to make when he w as the m os t compelling anti-abortion speaker in the country. (That was befo re he decided to run for president and looked at the odds against a pro-life candidate.) Twice in American history, said Casey, the law "'excluded an entire class of people from their most sacred human rights." The first was the Dred Scott Supreme Court decision when blacks, slave or free, were told they were property, with no rights of their own. The second time, Casey continued, was Roe v. Wade: "An entire class of human beings was excluded from the protection of the law, their fate declared a private matter." Casey, by the way, has no more confidence in Republicans than Democrats in this matter: Republican pro-lifers drop the children at birth and do nothing for them after that."' Though unwelcome in the New Democratic Party, Casey still has the soul of a classic Democrat. He fiercely opposed the president's signing of the Republican welfare "reform" bill. Until Dick Morris overindulged himself, he had unlimited access to the ultimate leader of the Democratic Party that had no room for Robert Casey. Nat Hentoff is a nationally renowned authority on the First Amendment and the rest of the Bill of Rights |