Roundup: Media's Take

November 17, 2004

WSJ: Democrats Need to Remember that Americans Are Optimists

Brendan Miniter, in the WSJ (Nov. 16, 2004): It's time to let Democrats in on a little secret. America is a land of perpetual rebirth and reform--always has been. That's why George W. Bush gets a pass on whatever he did before he found Jesus and swore off drinking. And it's why Bill Clinton received the benefit of the doubt over his "youthful indiscretions" in 1992. And it is why John Kerr

November 15, 2004

Fred Barnes: Bush Can Beat the Curse of the 2nd Term Blues

Fred Barnes, in the Weekly Standard (Nov. 15, 2004): WHY DO PRESIDENTS stumble in their second terms? Four reasons. They try to govern without a real agenda, having exhausted their policy initiatives in the first term. Their wisest and most competent aides and advisers leave and are replaced by less talented people. They suffer from bad relations with Congress as a result of past scuffles and disagreements. Or they are brought down by a scandal. President Bush need not

November 15, 2004

David Gelernter: Truman Beats Dewey Again

David Gelernter, in the Weekly Standard (Nov. 15, 2004): ON ELECTION DAY, Establishment big shots were certain that America wanted change and that the suave, sophisticated challenger had to beat the blunt, plain, downright embarrassing incumbent. All day long they were certain. At midnight the famous radio commentator H.V. Kaltenborn summed up the position: Harry Truman was 1.2 million

November 15, 2004

Robert D. Kaplan: Iraq Was Never Good Soil in Which to Grow a Democracy

Robert D. Kaplan, in th NYT (Nov. 14, 2004): Whether one views the war in Iraq as a noble effort in democratization or a brutal exercise in imperialism, there can be little doubt that it has proved the proverbial "bridge too far" for those who planned and, like myself, supported it. While much has been made of the strategic missteps the Bush administration has made since the Saddam Hussein

November 15, 2004

Why Did Liberals Not Condemn Arafat?

George Neumayr, in the American Spectator (Nov. 2004): It is not true that the Democrats didn't show sympathy toward fundamentalists during the campaign. They did -- just to the wrong ones. Islamic fundamentalists received a great deal of understanding and tolerance from the Democrats. John Kerry made a point of showing sensitivity to the Islamic community and for it earned numerous endorsements from Muslim Imams.

November 13, 2004

Bush Was Faith, Kerry Was Reason?

Click here for Wash Post: Review of Smithsonian's The Price of Freedom"Paul Gray, in the Melbourne heralde Sun (Nov. 8, 2004): TO George W. Bush's critics, the US election contest was the battle of faith and reason. Bush was faith, and Kerry was reason.With record numbers of Americans voting -- 120 million -- the result decisively favoured Bush.Can almost 60 million Americans really be irrational? A

November 12, 2004

WSJ: What LBJ Did for the New Deal, W Is Doing for the Reagan Revolution

Brendan Miniter, in the WSJ (Nov. 9, 2004):[Mr. Miniter is assistant editor of OpinionJournal.com.]With a historic electoral victory at his back, George W. Bush is now being compared to some pretty consequential presidents. Lincoln and FDR--as war presidents--immediately come to mind. But there is another, more obvious, comparison that strikes to the heart of why the left hates t

November 12, 2004

A Look Arafat's Life And Leadership

unsigned, The Toronto Star, 10 Nov. 2004 Palestinians are coming to grips with the realization that Yasser Arafat, the only leader they have known, is passing from the Middle East political scene without achieving his ultimate goal of a separate Palestinian state for his people. To Palestinians the world over, Arafat has always been more than a mere leader. Emotional crowds hail him as"our father." He has been the icon of Palestinian identity, the symbol of a marginalized peo

November 12, 2004

A Reflection On Ashcroft's Term As Attorney General

Eric Lichtblau, The New York Times, 10 Nov. 2004 John Ashcroft was flying in a Cessna jet over Detroit on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, when he received word that the Twin Towers had been hit. Scribbling notes on the back of a speech that he was supposed to give that day, he turned to an aide and declared, ''Our world has changed forever.'' Indeed, the terrorist attacks and Mr. Ashcroft's unexpected role as point man in carrying out the administration's antiterr

November 12, 2004

Theo van Gogh's Death Forces Dutch To Rethink Toleration

Daniel Johnson, The Daily Telegraph(London), 10 Nov. 2004 The assassination of Theo van Gogh, the Dutch film-maker whose funeral took place yesterday, is something new in Europe. There are, of course, antecedents. Fifteen years have passed since Ayatollah Khomeini issued his fatwa against Salman Rushdie: the first shot in the culture war between fundamentalist Islam and the West. But there is no precedent for the ritual slaughter of a prominent artist in broad daylight on the

November 12, 2004

A Reflection On China's One-Child Policy

Catherine Bennett, The Guardian (London), 09 Nov. 2004 November 9, 2004 [Editor's Note: This is a short excerpt from a much longer article.] Soon after China implemented its one-child policy in 1979, reports reached the west of a new breed of plump, pampered creatures who had never learned to share. They were called Little Emperors, and nobody ever said"No" to them. It was as if our own country had decided to spawn millions of Prince Andrews. As these children h

November 11, 2004

So We Are on the Verge of Civil War?

Mathhew Continetti, in the Weekly Standard (Nov. 10, 2004): STUNG BY DEFEAT, puzzled and adrift, Democrats spent much of the past week turning to history, looking back at the great many-colored tapestry of the American past, in order to find where we--the people--find ourselves, now that George W. Bush has been reelected. And after consulting textbooks, and opening biographical dictionaries,

November 10, 2004

Lou Cannon: Will Bush Face the Second Term Jinx?

Lou Cannon, in the NYT (Nov. 9, 2004):President George W. Bush justifiably casts himself as the apostle of the Reagan Revolution begun by his father's predecessor. But Mr. Bush may find in his second term, as Ronald Reagan did before him, that he must overcome resistance as much from his friends as from his adversaries. Perhaps

November 10, 2004

AP: Second Term Blues

Tom Raum, writing for the Associated Press (Nov. 7, 2004): [http://www.theolympian.com/home/news/20041107/topstories/28895.shtml] ... "We expect too much. Second-term presidents get careless and cocky. They either overreach, or do something illegal, or don't manage the way they should," said Stephen Wayne, a political science professor at Georgetown University. Cla

November 9, 2004

Can History Save the Democrats?

Dean E. Murphy, in the NYT (Nov. 7, 2004):A LITTLE more than a month before he was assassinated, Abraham Lincoln stood at the east portico of the Capitol and delivered his second inaugural address. It was a brief speech with a distinctly religious message: he twice cited biblical verses, and made a dozen references to God, most strikingly in assessing the opposing side

November 6, 2004

Fred Barnes: It's Time to Dump the Debates

Fred Brnes, in the Weekly Standard (Oct. 30, 2004): LET'S GET RID OF PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES. They don't bring out or test the characteristics and skills we want in a president. They take up days and days of practice before the actual debate, then dominate the campaign with sound bites from the 90-minute encounter for days afterwards. They often trivialize the issues in the campaign and reduce

November 6, 2004

Daniel Henninger: The Democratic Party Lost Its Way in 1965

Daniel Henninger, in the WSJ (Nov. 5, 2004): How did the 2004 election map of the United States come to look like a color-field painting by Barnett Newman? In fact, if you adjust the map's colors for votes by county (as at the Web sites for CNN and USA Today), even the blue states turn mostly red. Pennsylvania is blue, but between blue Philadelphia and Pittsburgh every county in the state is re

November 6, 2004

Robert Samuelson: The Problems With Deadlocked Democracies

Robert J. Samuelson, The Washington Post, 01 Nov. 2004 In his 1963 book,"The Deadlock of Democracy," the historian James MacGregor Burns complained of too much fragmentation in American politics. Presidents couldn't enact their programs because it was too hard to assemble congressional majorities. Party loyalties were too weak; single-minded interest groups were too strong. To break the deadlock, Burns wanted the parties and Congress overhauled. The system should allow"the wi

November 6, 2004

New Republic Analysis of the Election: Karl Rove Revived the Republican Strategy of the 1970s

John B. Judis, Ruy Teixeira & Marisa Katz, in the New Republic (Nov. 15, 2004): George W. Bush's victory shows that the political strategy that conservative Republicans developed in the late 1970s is still viable. Bush won a large swath of states and voters that were once dependably Democratic by identifying Republicans as the party of social conservatism and national security. Massachusetts Senator John Kerry rallied a powerful coalition of minorities and college-educated

November 5, 2004

David Gelernter: Bush Pulls a Truman

David Gelernter, in he Weekly Standard (Nov. 15, 2004):ON ELECTION DAY, Establishment big shots were certain that America wanted change and that the suave, sophisticated challenger had to beat the blunt, plain, downright embarrassing incumbent. All day long they were certain. At midnight the famous radio commentator H.V. Kaltenborn summed up the position: Harry Truman was 1