Columnist.
As Harvard's president, Larry Summers, economist and former Treasury secretary, was a lion in a den of Daniels. The faculty Daniels, their tender feelings hurt by his occasional testiness, cowered together and declared him a meanie. Facing a faculty vote of no confidence, he resigned.
WASHINGTON -- Demure Delaware was the first state to ratify the Constitution, but since then has not made many waves. It might, however, be part of a political wave a year from now, thanks to a direct descendent of Benjamin Franklin. The great man's great-great-great-great-great grandson, Mike Castle, 70, a nine-term Delaware congressman, will be next year's Republican nominee for the Senate seat Joe Biden held for 36 years. This and other candidate-recruitment successes make it reasonable for Republicans to hope that in January 2011 the Senate will contain fewer than 60 Democrats.
WASHINGTON -- Consider nature. Not the placid nature that Constable painted, but nature as Tennyson saw it, "red in tooth and claw." To glimpse a state of nature as Hobbes imagined it, where human life is "nasty, brutish and short," visit the Whole Foods store on River Road in Bethesda, Md. There, and -- let the political profiling begin -- probably at many Whole Food stores and other magnets for liberals, nationwide, you will see proof of this social equation: Four Priuses + three parking spaces = angry anarchy.
In the Niagara of words spoken and written about the Obamas' trip to Copenhagen, too few have been devoted to the words they spoke there. Their separate speeches to the International Olympic Committee were so dreadful, and in such a characteristic way, that they might be symptomatic of something that has serious implications for American governance. Both Obamas gave heartfelt speeches about ... themselves.
WASHINGTON -- Last Thursday, the president's "engagement" with Iran began. This Wednesday, the U.S. war in Afghanistan will enter its ninth year. And U.S. foreign policy is entering a White Queen phase. In "Through the Looking Glass," Alice says she is unable to believe the White Queen's claim to be 101. The Queen responds, "Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes." Alice: "There's no use trying, one can't believe impossible things." Queen: "Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
Plateau in Temperatures Adds Difficulty to Task Of Reaching a Solution -- New York Times, Sept. 23 WASHINGTON -- In this headline on a New York Times story about difficulties confronting people alarmed about global warming, note the word "plateau." It dismisses the unpleasant -- to some people -- fact that global warming is maddeningly (to the same people) slow to vindicate their apocalyptic warnings about it.
MIAMI -- Florida, a geological afterthought, was the last portion of what are now the lower 48 states to emerge from the ocean, and it emerged halfheartedly: Its highest point is just 345 feet above sea level. But the fourth-most-populous state will loom over American politics next summer when Republicans select a Senate nominee. Their primary will test whether the party has become so risk-averse that it flinches from interesting choices. The nominee almost certainly will be either Gov. Charlie Crist or Marco Rubio, former speaker of the Florida House (term limits, which he supports, retired him). Leading national Republicans rushed to endorse Crist. In tennis, such decisions are called unforced errors.
WASHINGTON -- While in Pittsburgh, a sense of seemliness should prevent President Barack Obama from again exhorting the G-20, as he did April 2 in London, to be strong in resisting domestic pressures for protectionism. This month, invertebrate as he invariably is when organized labor barks, he imposed 35 percent tariffs on imports of tires that China makes for the low-price end of the market. This antic nonsense matters not only because of trade disruptions it may cause, but also because it is evidence of his willowy weakness under pressure from his political patrons. In 2000, as a price of China's admission to the World Trade Organization, Congress enacted a provision for "relief from market disruption" to American industries from surges of Chinese imports. Actually, American consumers cause "disruption" in American markets when their preferences change in response to progress -- better products and bargains. Never mind. Congress said disruption exists whenever imports of a product "like or directly competitive with" a U.S. product increase "rapidly" and threaten "significant" injury to a U.S. industry. Evidence of disruption includes the volume of imports of a particular product, the effect of imports on the prices of competing U.S. goods, and the effect on the U.S. industry.
WASHINGTON -- For 11 days in late August and early September in 1995, U.S. and NATO air power defended Bosnian Muslims, who were being attacked by Bosnian Serbs, who were supported by Serbian Serbs. This was merely the overture to something much more ambitious -- a grand concert of nation-building that began when the Dayton agreement reached in December of that year calmed the Balkan furies of revanchism and revenge, for a while. But agreements, like flowers, last while they last, and today's fraying of Bosnia is not the fault of Richard Holbrooke, whose skill and tenacity produced the Dayton peace. Or perhaps the Dayton pause. Holbrooke, whose diplomatic career began in Vietnam, continues in the Obama administration, where his portfolio is Afghanistan and Pakistan. As the president contemplates an ambitious mission in the former, as a prophylactic measure to stabilize the latter, he should read "The Death of Dayton: How to Stop Bosnia From Falling Apart," in Foreign Affairs. Political scientists Patrice C. McMahon and Jon Western note that Bosnia was "once the poster child for international reconstruction efforts" and was considered "proof that under the right conditions the international community could successfully rebuild conflict-ridden countries." Now, however, Bosnia "stands on the brink of collapse."
WASHINGTON -- "This is just the beginning," said Yosi Sergant to participants in an Aug. 10 conference call that seems to have been organized by the National Endowment for the Arts and certainly was joined by a functionary from the White House Office of Public Engagement. The call was the beginning of the end of Sergant's short tenure as NEA flack -- he has been reassigned. The call also was the beginning of a small scandal that illuminates something gargantuan -- the Obama administration's incontinent lust to politicize everything. Sergant's comments, made to many individuals and organizations from what is vaguely and cloyingly called "the arts community," continued: "This is the first telephone call of a brand-new conversation. We are just now learning how to really bring this community together to speak with the government." Wrong preposition. Not "with" the government, but for the government.
WASHINGTON -- Last March, during the Supreme Court argument concerning the Federal Election Commission's banning of a political movie, several justices were aghast. Suddenly and belatedly they saw the abyss that could swallow the First Amendment. Justice Antonin Scalia was "a little disoriented" and Justice Samuel Alito said "that's pretty incredible." Chief Justice John Roberts said: "If we accept your constitutional argument, we're establishing a precedent that you yourself say would extend to banning the book" -- a hypothetical 500-page book containing one sentence that said "vote for" a particular candidate. What shocked them, but should not have, were statements by a government lawyer who was only doing his professional duty with ruinous honesty -- ruinous to his cause. He was defending the mare's nest of uncertainties that federal campaign finance law has made, and the mess the court made in 2003 when, by affirming the constitutionality of McCain-Feingold's further speech restrictions, it allowed Congress to regulate speech by and about people running for Congress.
SAN DIEGO -- Becoming governor next year will be a daunting challenge for California's Republican insurance commissioner, but Steve Poizner has surmounted other obstacles, as when he volunteered to teach without pay in an East San Jose high school. After he sold, for $1 billion, one of the technology companies he founded after moving to California from Texas, and after serving as a White House fellow, he walked into East San Jose's school district office, explained that he graduated No. 1 in his class at the University of Texas, earned a Stanford business degree, and now wanted to teach American government to high school seniors. A functionary declared: "Nothing you have said qualifies you to be in the classroom."
WASHINGTON -- Since U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq's cities, two months have passed, and so has the illusion that Iraq is smoothly transitioning to a normality free of sectarian violence. Recently, Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of U.S. troops there, "blanched" when asked if the war is "functionally over." According to The Washington Post's Greg Jaffe, Odierno said: "There are still civilians being killed in Iraq. We still have people that are attempting to attack the new Iraqi order and the move towards democracy and a more open economy. So we still have some work to do."
WASHINGTON -- "Yesterday," reads the e-mail from Allen, a Marine in Afghanistan, "I gave blood because a Marine, while out on patrol, stepped on a (mine's) pressure plate and lost both legs." Then "another Marine with a bullet wound to the head was brought in. Both Marines died this morning." "I'm sorry about the drama," writes Allen, an enthusiastic infantryman willing to die "so that each of you may grow old." He says: "I put everything in God's hands." And: "Semper Fi!"
SAN DIEGO -- The most ominous domestic event of the 1970s was the collapse of self-government in New York City, which before being put into receivership by the state was liberalism's laboratory. Since then, California has been the slate on which liberalism boldly writes its recipe for decline -- high taxes, heavy regulation, subservience to public employees unions and environmentalism that is simultaneously apocalyptic and chiliastic. Because California's calamitous present -- creative accounting as a rickety bridge to the next budget crisis, coming soon -- might prefigure the nation's future, next year's gubernatorial election is portentous. An especially intriguing candidate in a colorful field is Tom Campbell. Colorful he is not. "Talk softly and carry a small calculator" could be his motto. What glitter, however, are his resume and agenda.
WASHINGTON -- At the Democrats' 1960 convention in Los Angeles that nominated John Kennedy, his 28-year-old brother Ted was standing with the Wyoming delegation when it sealed the victory. He was then a sibling for minor missions. He would become the most consequential brother. His two political brothers were young men in a hurry: John became the youngest elected president at 43; Robert died at 42, seeking the presidency as soon as possible after the murder of his brother. Ted came to embody the patience of politics. Charisma is less potent than the smitten imagine; endurance is not sufficient, but is necessary.
WASHINGTON -- As memories of the Cold War fade, like photographs bleached by sunlight, few remember the Brezhnev Doctrine. It was enunciated by Leonid Brezhnev in Warsaw in November 1968 as a retrospective justification for the Soviet-led invasion of Prague the previous August by Warsaw Pact forces to halt Czechoslovakia's liberalization. The doctrine was supposed to guarantee that history would be directional, controlled by a leftward-clicking ratchet. It asserted a Soviet right to intervene to protect socialism wherever it was imposed.
WASHINGTON -- It began with the proliferation of campus "speech codes" ostensibly designed to promote civility but frequently used to enforce political conformity. The new censorship accelerated with the McCain-Feingold legislation that licenses government regulation of the quantity, timing and content of speech in political campaigns. Now the attack on First Amendment speech protections has taken an audacious new turn, illustrated by a case being pondered by a Texas judge. He is being asked to collaborate in the suppression of a book, and even of expressions of approval of the book.
WASHINGTON -- Howard Lederer, aka "the Professor," is a professional poker player, not a gambler. If Congress will acknowledge this distinction, it will rectify one of its recent mistakes. In 2006, Congress, cloaking cunning with moralizing, effectively outlawed Internet gambling by making it illegal for banks or credit-card companies to process payments to online gambling operations. This was more than moral pork for social conservatives. It also blocked online competitors from poaching gamblers from the nation's most aggressive promoters of gambling -- state governments. They are increasingly addicted to revenues raised by lotteries -- the 42 states that have lotteries spent $520 million in 2007 promoting them -- and from taxation of other legal gambling. The law exempted Internet state lotteries and two powerful and vocal interests -- online betting on horse racing and some fantasy sports betting online.
