From the WSJ Opinion Archives
Jayson
Blair for President!
Howell Raines, erstwhile executive editor of the New York Times, weighs in with
some advice to John Kerry in today's issue of the Guardian, a left-wing British
paper. Raines plainly loathes President Bush:
George W represents the conservative, greedy wing of the Privilege party. . . . George W got into the Air National Guard when others couldn't through his father's political pull, . . . he got into flight school ahead of others due to his father's political pull, . . . he was allowed to skip his normal weekend drills and make them up without being punished because of his father's political pull. . . . Cheney used graduate-school deferments to beat the draft. . . . The incumbent looks like Goofy when he smirks.
Remember, Raines is the guy who directed the Times' news coverage until his ouster last year. Yet Raines is more realistic than the Bush-haters you meet at New York dinner parties, who have deluded themselves into thinking that the whole country sympathizes with their vituperation of the president. Raines acknowledges that the Republican base is behind President Bush, and that the GOP may well succeed in portraying Kerry (accurately, in our view) as a flip-flopper. Bush will win, Raines avers, "unless Kerry comes up with something to say."
Well, true enough, but Raines's advice to the senator strikes us as rather ill considered. The ex-Timesman says Kerry should lie:
He must appeal to the same emotions that attract voters to Republicans--ie greed and the desire to fix the crap-shoot in their favour. That means that instead of talking about "fixing" social security, you talk about building a retirement system that makes middle-class voters believe they will be semi-rich someday. As matters now stand, Kerry has assured the DLC, "I am not a redistributionist Democrat."
That's actually a good start. Using that promise as disinformation, he must now figure out a creative way to become a redistributionist Democrat.
As blogger Edward Morrissey points out, the political approach Raines urges Kerry to take is roughly equivalent of Jayson Blair's approach to journalism. Blair "wrote what Raines wanted to read, regardless of whether what he wrote was true."
Raines also is so eager to perpetuate the JFK myth that he commits an embarrassing historical error, calling Kerry "America's first war-hero candidate since John F Kennedy." Pardon us, but didn't John McCain run for president just four years ago? If McCain doesn't count by virtue of not having won the nomination, we still have George McGovern, George H.W. Bush and Bob Dole, so Kerry is the fourth war-hero nominee since JFK.
Happy
Country, Unhappy Base
Two articles in the Washington Times suggest trouble for the Democrats come
November. The paper's Donald Lambro says that the Democratic base is disunited.
Some Howard Dean supporters, eager for defeat in Iraq, are leaning toward Ralph
Nader instead of Kerry. Some Black and Hispanic leaders say Kerry has too many
people of pallor among his advisers. And although hard-core Democrats hate President
Bush with a passion, "most polls show that at least 12 percent of all registered
Democratic voters say they will vote for Mr. Bush, twice the number of Republicans
who intend to vote for Mr. Kerry."
The Times' Jennifer Harper, meanwhile, reports on a new survey that finds most Americans are optimistic:
Fifty-six percent of Americans say their personal situation has improved over the last five years, up seven points since last year, and 68 percent expect their personal situation to improve over the next five years, up five points from 2003, a Harris poll released yesterday found.
This would seem to be good news for the incumbent and even worse news for the Dems, who are preparing to nominate a challenger with a dour mien. In the late 1960s and the 1970s, mired in Watergate and Vietnam, America elected a couple of grim presidents, Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter. But a more confident country rejected Carter (in 1980), Michael Dukakis and Bob Dole. If America is in a good mood, it's unlikely to elect a president as depressing as Kerry.
Dems
Dance in Dakota
South Dakota voters handed the Democrats a victory yesterday, narrowly electing
Stephanie Herseth to fill the state's lone House seat, which Republican Bill
Janklow left vacant when he resigned after a manslaughter conviction. Herseth
beat GOP candidate Larry Diedrich, 51% to 49%.
Republicans can take some solace, though, in the closeness of the election. As Reuters noted last month, polls had showed Herseth with a lead of nine to 11 percentage points. Diedrich is expected to challenge Herseth again come November, and although she will have the advantage of incumbency, he will have a higher profile now that he's run for statewide office. Herseth ran against Janklow in 2002 and lost.
In presidential races, South Dakota is a solidly Republican state; President Bush beat Al Gore there by a 22.7% margin. But Herseth's election means the state's congressional delegation is entirely Democratic. Although Bush and John Kerry are unlikely to contest the state, it will be perhaps the most interesting state in the country when it comes to down-ballot races. In addition to the Herseth-Diedrich rematch, Sen. Tom Daschle, the Democratic leader, is up for re-election. He faces a tough challenge from John Thune, a former congressman who narrowly lost to Sen. Tim Johnson two years ago.
The New York Times offers an elaborate theory that Herseth's victory could hurt Daschle:
Under this complex bit of political reasoning, the victory by Ms. Herseth has implications for Mr. Daschle because it would leave South Dakota--a state with a clear Republican majority of voters--represented by three Democrats in Congress. Republicans say that could contribute to a backlash against Mr. Daschle, who will be on the ballot this November, by Republican voters who think at least one of the three slots should be filled by a Republican. And with Ms. Herseth having just won, the voters might consider Mr. Daschle a more likely target.
Even if South Dakota voters aren't as calculating as the Times supposes, both the Daschle and Herseth races will be tests of whether President Bush has coattails--a factor that will be crucial in determing the composition of the Senate in the next Congress. Close Senate races are expected in at least six other states Bush is expected to win handily--Alaska, Colorado, Louisiana, North Carolina, Oklahoma and South Carolina--as well as in Florida. A GOP sweep of these contests would give the party a sizable majority in the Senate, while the Democrats could conceivably do well enough to take the majority.
The Press Corps' Porn Addiction
More gratuitous Abu Ghraib references from the New York Times:
- Sunday's
Times features an article on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's commencement
speech at West Point. It reports that the address "made no mention of
the abuse of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq." That didn't
stop the Times from mentioning it..
- Yesterday's Times profiles the late First Lt. Therrel Shane Childers of Powell, Wyo., who died in combat in Iraq last year. "Lieutenant Childers died too soon to see the strife in Iraq today, or the photographs of prisoners being humiliated at the hands of American guards in the Abu Ghraib prison," the Times points out.
What
Would We Do Without Not Puppets?
"U.S. Backs New Iraq Leaders, Says Not Puppets"--headline, Reuters,
June 1
Partial-Truth
Journalism
In an article on a court ruling striking down the Partial Birth Abortion Act
of 2003, the Associated Press gets tripped up by the terminology: "Doctors
call it intact dilation and extraction but abortion foes refer to it as 'partial-birth
abortion.' " How come we get scare quotes around the plain-English
term but not around the clinical one? And what do doctors who oppose abortion
call it?
What
Would We Do Without Shock Research?
"Shock Research: Sex Makes Us Happy"--headline, the Australian, May 29
I'm
Going Crazy, Missing You Baby
"Mental Illness Missed in Many Parts of the World"--headline, HealthDay
News, June 1
Secondhand Pork
Several readers objected to our analogy, in an item
yesterday, between ultra-Orthodox Jews who seek to ban the sale of pork
in Jerusalem and ultraorthodox smoking opponents in America. Reader Jonathan
Biviano offers one criticism:
When you smoke in a restaurant, the smoke goes everywhere, even to people who don't smoke. When a non-Jew eats pork, it in no way effects any Jew, because they don't get "secondhand pork." Smoking and nonsmoking areas were a joke, because the smoke never observed the division. The pork won't wander on its own from stomach to stomach; it's kept a personal choice of the person eating it.
In fact, there is such a thing as "secondhand pork." A restaurant cannot both serve pork and cater to diners who keep kosher; the use of the same utensils and facilities to prepare pork is enough to render other food unclean under Jewish dietary law. It's true that a non-Jew eating pork in a nonkosher restaurant doesn't impose on anyone in a kosher restaurant, but by the same token, someone smoking in a restaurant that permits it is no imposition on anyone eating in a nonsmoking restaurant.
In both cases, the solution is the same: smoking and nonsmoking restaurants, kosher and nonkosher restaurants. But America's antismoking zealots seek to ban smoking in all restaurants, and have succeeded in doing so in several states. Similarly, the ultra-Orthodox Jews quoted in our item seek to ban pork throughout Jerusalem, even in nonkosher restaurants.
Reader Israel Pickholtz criticizes us from a different angle:
The correct analogy would be how New York City, Chicago or Los Angeles would react if some enterprising U.S. citizen wanted to open a dog-and-cat restaurant to cater to local Thais. Eating pigs and shellfish but not cats and dogs is simply a cultural issue, and unless there is some religious basis, the line between permitted and forbidden species is random.
This is a better argument, but Jews don't lose if a pagan eats bacon. The Jewish proscription on pork consumption applies only to Jews (though Islam also forbids it). Furthermore, America bans the consumption of dog and cat meat because we value dogs and cats. Judaism has no reverence for pigs; it prohibits eating their meat on the ground that it is unclean.
The ultra-Orthodox Jews seem to be of the view that the presence of pork in Jerusalem is objectionable because it defiles a holy city. But Israel is a pluralistic country, unlike, say, Saudi Arabia, which prohibits non-Muslims from setting foot in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. In our view, those who seek a citywide ban on pork go too far, just as antismoking zealots do when they outlaw establishments catering to smokers.
Only
in Arkansas
KPOM-TV in Fort Smith, Ark., reports that Karen Young, who lives in the town
of Rogers, "says she's upset after her first grader came home with a toy
gun." Young asked her son where the gun came from, and "he told her
that his teacher gave it to him."
The gun is shaped like a fish, but "Young says she has strict guidelines at home and she wants her children to understand that guns are not toys." And you can understand why she's so averse to guns. For it turns out "she accidentally shot her ex boyfriend when the gun she hit him with went off."
(Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Robert Sherman, Ann Ellwood, Barak Moore, David Darby, Tom Linehan, Ethel Fenig, Steve Roberts, Doug Schwartz, Craig Greiner, Jason Hupe, Jim Orheim, David Crimmins, Chris Fountain, John Knoeckel, Tim Graham, David Eike, John Brinkmann, Aaron Gross, Mick Gleason, John Corso and Michael Segal. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
Today on OpinionJournal:
- Roger Ailes: The L.A. Times' editor is terrified of Fox News. How pathetic.
- Claudia Rosett: Saddam is from Mars. Is Kerry from Venus?
- Catesby Leigh: The new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad will likely fall short aesthetically.
