Mid-Week Briefing

1. Veto with a Rusty Knife. Unless Sen. Mitch McConnell is successful in knotting up the disastrous Shays-Meehan campaign finance "reform" bill the House passed last week, President Bush has no choice but to veto the sham legislation. The reasons are numerous: the assault on the First Amendment (banning advertisements by independent groups?both left- and right-wing?30 days before a primary and 60 days prior to a general election); the unconscionable increase of media influence (there's a reason why George Will, in his Feb. 25 Newsweek column, called this travesty the "Shays-Meehan-Times-Post-Couric bill") in the absence of say, NARAL or NRA ads; the lack of "paycheck protection," which means that union members can have their dues docked to support candidates they may or may not support; and the "millionaire's" proviso, in which a candidate who's opposed by a person as wealthy as Jon Corzine is allowed to raise more cash than other aspirants.

Never mind that the public doesn't, in general, give a hoot about money in politics: most citizens are so inured to the cynicism, hypocrisy and corruption that defines Washington, DC, that they've long tuned out legislation that's a favorite of affluent reporters and incumbent office-holders.

The Beltway's "conventional wisdom" says that Bush will sign this bill if it's hoisted out of the U.S. Senate. The Permanent Government advocates (i.e., all of Congress and the elite media) predict that the President will want to jump on the bandwagon of "reform" and get John McCain out of his hair. They also note that the GOP historically is more adept at collecting "hard money" than the Democrats are, a reality that will result in a record-breaking reelection kitty for Bush in 2004. Also, parts of the legislation will be delayed by court battles, in particular over the abridgment of free speech.

Nonetheless, it's this President's duty to veto the bill on purely ethical grounds. Here's the smart move for Bush: demand that "paycheck protection" be eliminated, and then flummox the zealots by saying he'll only sign the bill if it takes effect immediately. Largely overlooked in all the self-congratulatory editorials in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe and Washington Post is the outrageous provision that campaign finance "reform" won't become law until after this November's midterm elections, giving both parties (but especially Terry McAuliffe's Democrats) plenty of time to line their pockets with "soft" money. This strategy would cause explosions on Capitol Hill and also immediately flip over to Bush the high ground on the bogus issue of money in politics.

I haven't the stomach to cite more than one pundit's take on last week's Black Thursday, so The Washington Post's E.J. Dionne, a hack of the first order, will have to do. On Feb. 15 he wrote, in a column laughably called "A Reforming Tide": "This week's achievement was, well, Olympian. The mild, quietly confident [Chris] Shays and the peppery, fast-talking [Marty] Meehan did what almost never happens in the House of Representatives. They took on the entire Republican leadership?which usually commands the results it wants?and won. Democrats, who were said to be straying from reform at the very moment when it might finally triumph, were cajoled into line by Richard Gephardt. For this moment, their leader transformed himself from a political mechanic into an apostle for a cause."

That's fairly noxious commentary: I'd advise you to open a window immediately. Gephardt's an "apostle"? Please. He's a career pol who's simply trying, against all odds, to position himself against Sens. John Kerry and John Edwards (who's blowing a nascent campaign by his despicable "borking" of District Judge Charles Pickering) and Al Gore for the opportunity to challenge Bush two years from now.

2. Think It'll Snow Today? One of The Boston Globe's unmistakable characteristics as a third-tier newspaper is the throwaway editorial. I'm not sure if it's Harvard or Brandeis interns who are responsible for the reflections on weather, daylight savings time, Groundhog Day, Native-American summer or traffic patterns, but it's clear these bits of nonsense are written after the "grownups" have punched the clock at 5 p.m.

Monday's stop-before-I-keypunch-again effort, headlined "Everybody's day," concerned the abominable federal boondoggle known as "Presidents' Day." The Globe doesn't particularly care that today's kids have no conception of the date when George Washington or Abraham Lincoln was actually born; it's the three-day weekend that's most important.

The editorial concludes: "Other people think of this weekend as a tribute to automobile dealers and might assume, from the advertisements, that Washington and Lincoln were in retail. These two figures are, of course, much bigger than a fuzzy holiday. Their mark on the nation is indelible and felt every day. [That's worth a snort: one look at the grandstanding jokers in Congress dispels that myth.] Another sure thing is that Presidents' Day moves us closer to spring. The days are growing lighter, the birds are crowding the feeders, and the garden is starting to become a possibility. All that, plus a day off, is worth celebrating, no matter whose birthday it is."

Who knows, maybe sometime this year a brown-nosing Globe employee will advocate a day off that commemorates the birthday of Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the weak-kneed feminist publisher of The New York Times, whose company owns New England's largest daily, not to mention a tiny share of the Boston Red Sox, a subject I'm not quite ready to comment upon.

3. Proof in the Funny Papers. Look, I'm as tired as anyone of seeing Bernard Goldberg flog his excellent book Bias on (mostly) cable-tv talk shows. The guy's not a natural; same jokes, same stories, same vignettes each time out. But the fact that he's a crummy self-promoter doesn't detract one bit from the thesis of Bias; that the New York-DC media elite is so cocooned in its snooty cocktail-party lifestyle that it automatically condescends to its audience. A Washington Post article on Feb. 17, trashing Ralph Reed, offered a microcosm of what Goldberg explained in his bestseller that's aggravated so many See-You-in-the-Hamptons-on-Memorial-Day journalists and executives.

Joe Stephens wrote: "Enlisting Reed's aid would have been in character with Enron's strategy of aligning itself with high-visibility political figures and pundits. Those who have accepted pay from Enron for their advice and other help include Bush economist Lawrence B. Lindsey, Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, economist Paul Krugman, CNBC commentator Larry Kudlow, U.S. Trade Representative Robert B. Zoellick and incoming Republican National Committee chairman Marc Racicot."

Funny that Krugman, the one liberal cited, was described merely as an "economist" and not also an op-ed columnist for The New York Times.

This is exactly what Goldberg's book is all about.

4. Let Powell Bond with Rumsfeld. Conservatives ought to give Secretary of State Colin Powell a break. You'd think religious groups like the Family Research Council and Eagle Forum might understand that Powell's got a lot more on his mind?like preparing the military for the inevitable overthrow of Saddam Hussein?than an insignificant appearance on MTV. Powell's sin? He said, in a question about condom use: "I certainly respect the views of the Holy Father and the Catholic Church. In my own judgment, condoms are a way to prevent infection, and therefore I not only support their use, I encourage their use among people who are sexually active and need to protect themselves... It's the lives of young people that are put at risk by unsafe sex, and therefore protect yourself."

Quoted in the Feb. 16 Washington Times, the Eagle Forum's Lori Waters said: "We're certainly displeased with Mr. Powell's statements. Perhaps Mr. Powell should read studies that show that condoms don't prevent the spread of HIV. Perhaps he should read the Republican platform on abstinence-only education. His remarks undermine the president."

What idiocy. Perhaps Waters, and Powell's other detractors, ought to consider that if this country's war on terrorism goes awry, and there are more attacks on U.S. soil, scores of teenagers won't even be alive to make their own decisions on whether or not to use a condom. In addition, I have a real problem with all these abstinence-only scolds: I wonder, if given truth serum, how many of them could prove they waited until matrimony to have sex. The number would make a Montreal Expos crowd look like a sell-out at Yankee Stadium.

On the other hand, the Boston Globe, in a Feb. 18 editorial, thought Powell didn't go far enough. The paper said: "Powell's appearance on MTV, which also included sensible remarks on race, the role of the United States in the world, and its slowness in dealing with the menace of the Taliban in Afghanistan, made up for lost ground. It would have been even better if he had combined it with an announcement of a major increase in support for the global AIDS fund."

Here's an idea: Why doesn't The New York Times Co. sell the Globe and contribute the proceeds to that global AIDS fund?

Feb. 19

Send comments to [MUG1988@aol.com](mailto:mug1988@aol.com) or fax to 244-9864.