Anglonautes > English vocabulary > Politics

We shall be heard: Images of American activists
Bud and Ruth Schultz have spent 25 years interviewing and photographing Americans
who have stood up to their government in the name of civil rights,
from the First World War to the present day. 2008
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/we-shall-be-heard-images-of-american-activists-841571.html

heckle
http://www.usatoday.com/video/index.html#/News/
Obama+heckled+at+Boxer%27s+fundraiser/42804638001/40264770001/746939543001
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/10/opinion/10collins.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/10/us/politics/10wilson.html

heckler

dissenter
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-07-23-bush-protesters_x.htm

resign
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-10-06-ralston_x.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-09-29-congressman-resigns_x.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-08-03-clinton-rumsfeld_x.htm

outcry
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/18/us/politics/18benefits.html

stalemate
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/opinion/l12health.html

quagmire
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/opinion/l12health.html

compromise
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/opinion/l12health.html

status quo
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/opinion/l12health.html

governor / Gov.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/17/nyregion/veto-awaits-new-jersey-bill-allowing-gays-to-wed.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/02/us/indiana-becomes-right-to-work-state.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/09/us/09texas.html
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-10-29-democrats-governors_x.htm

governorship

governor races
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/03/us/politics/03govs.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/03/nyregion/03nygov.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/nyregion/04elect.html
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-10-29-democrats-governors_x.htm

inaugural
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/31/us/politics/31inaugurations.html

deliver his/her State of the State address
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/09/us/09texas.html

sign a law
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/02/us/indiana-becomes-right-to-work-state.html

Illinois Constitution
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2008/12/19/us/AP-Illinois-Governor.html

veto
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/17/nyregion/veto-awaits-new-jersey-bill-allowing-gays-to-wed.html

impeachable offense
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2008/12/19/us/AP-Illinois-Governor.html

impeach
http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN1062947520080311

impeachment
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/03/us/politics/03illinois.html
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Spitzer-Prostitution.html

impeach
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2008/12/12/us/AP-Illinois-Governor.html

corruption scandal
Illinois Governor in Corruption Scandal December 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/10/us/politics/10Illinois.html

scandal
New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigns
amid a scandal over a $1,000-an-hour prostitute March 2008
http://www.reuters.com/news/globalcoverage/eliotspitzer

NYT > Select Editorials on New York State Government
http://topics.nytimes.com/topic/timestopic/se/s/select-editorials-failedstate/index.html

comptroller
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/16/opinion/16sat2.html

mayor
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/11/04/nyregion/mayor-vote.html

New York > Mayor Michael Bloomberg
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/michael_r_bloomberg/index.html

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/01/01/us/AP-US-NYC-Inauguration.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/24/nyregion/24mayor.html
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2009/10/24/us/politics/politics-us-bloomberg.html

mayoralty
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/27/us/27cuts.html

mayoral race
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/23/us/chicago-mayor-election.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/nyregion/03elect.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/29/us/29orleans.html

mayoral election
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/11/04/nyregion/mayor-vote.html

Atlanta Mayoral Race
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/02/us/02atlanta.html

Seattle mayor’s race
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/us/10seattle.html

New Orleans mayor's race
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-05-20-neworleans-vote_x.htm

too close to call
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/02/us/02atlanta.html

term
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/01/01/us/AP-US-NYC-Inauguration.html

mayor > corruption
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/nyregion/24jersey.html

embezzlement
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/02/us/02baltimore.html

guilty of corruption
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/08/nyregion/08bruno.html

international

Permanent Representative of the United States to the United Nations
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-12-04-bolton_x.htm

agreement >
Agreement Between the United States of America and the Republic of Iraq
On the Withdrawal of United States Forces from Iraq
and the Organization of Their Activities during Their Temporary Presence in Iraq November 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/28/world/middleeast/28iraq.html?hp
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/world/20081119_SOFA_FINAL_AGREED_TEXT.pdf

take over
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-12-18-gates-swearing-in_x.htm

call for
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/05/world/middleeast/05prexy.html

19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Women's Right to Vote USA 1920

"The right of citizens of the United States to vote
shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex."

The amendment guarantees all American women the right to vote.
Achieving this milestone required a lengthy and difficult struggle;
victory took decades of agitation and protest.
Beginning in the mid-19th century,
several generations of woman suffrage supporters lectured, wrote, marched, lobbied,
and practiced civil disobedience to achieve
what many Americans considered a radical change of the Constitution.
Few early supporters lived to see final victory in 1920.
http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=old&doc=63
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured_documents/amendment_19/
http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/woman-suffrage/
http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/woman-suffrage/script-intro.html
http://topics.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxix
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/today/jun04.html

Theocracy and Its Discontents

February 23, 2012
9:00 pm
The New York Times
By TIMOTHY EGAN

Timothy Egan on American politics and life, as seen from the West.

Ah, the founders, those starch-collared English souls planting liberty in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 17th century. For those who didn’t follow rules handed down by God through man, these New World authorities could cut out your tongue, slice off your ears or execute you. O.K., Puritans, wrong role-model founders.

Then let’s look west, beyond the Wasatch Mountains in the 19th century, where Brigham Young built a Mormon empire in which church rule and civil law were one and the same — the press, a military brigade and the courts all controlled by the Seer and Revelator of a homegrown religion. Oops, wrong founders again.

American political bedrock — God’s house and the people’s government guiding separate worlds — wasn’t always in place. Reason ultimately won out. But theocracy certainly had its colonies and its advocates; it might have prevailed but for a few outstanding voices.

One of those voices was Roger Williams’s. Banished by the Puritans, he established what became Rhode Island and created in 1636 “the first government in the world which broke church and state apart,” as John M. Barry writes in “Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul,” a new book on this founding episode.

The idea that civil law and religious law are separate has coursed through American society ever since. It was a radical thought in 1636. It’s written in the Constitution now. And yet, with Rick Santorum riding high in the Republican primaries, it looks as if this issue will get another go-round.

Santorum, who makes Mitt Romney look blandly secular by comparison, has a well-known animus against accepted sexual practices that he believes defy “God’s law” — his words, not mine. He opposes sex for reasons other than producing babies, sex outside of marriage, homosexuality, prenatal testing, and on and on. Contraception, he has said, gives people “a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”
Erik S. Lesser/European Pressphoto AgencyRick Santorum and his family prayed with a pastor at a campaign rally in a Cumming, Ga. church on Feb. 19.

Most Americans won’t begrudge him his beliefs; he’s free to practice them, and imbue his children with them, as he did by home-schooling his family. But most Americans also will part ways with him when he advocates that civil code should adhere to his religious beliefs.

“God gave us laws that we must abide by,” he said early on the campaign. Notably, Santorum, a far-right Catholic, has taken issue with President John F. Kennedy, a moderate Catholic, for having said that his presidency would not be dictated by his faith. This view, Santorum said in 2010, has caused “great harm to America.”

So, bring on the argument, once again, with history as the guide. Williams was a Puritan convert who left Britain to escape religious persecution by a king who was head of state and head of the Church of England. After initially being welcomed into the Massachusetts Bay Colony, he was persecuted for his more enlightened views and put on trial. He faced the possibility of torture, or execution. Ultimately, he was banished.

In founding Providence as a place of religious tolerance, Williams drew Jews, Quakers and nonbelievers to his new colony, and gave up trying to convert the Indians. “Forced worship stinks in God’s nostrils,” he said.

In Barry’s book, Williams is charismatic and heroic, but also far ahead of his time. “The Bay leaders, both lay and clergy, firmly believed that the state must enforce all of God’s laws,” Barry writes. Williams “believed that humans, being imperfect, would inevitably err in applying God’s laws.” And certainly, those heretics who were hanged in New England paid the ultimate price for such errors.

The Mormons, for all the cheery optimism of their present state, were birthed in brutal theocracy, first in Nauvoo, Ill., and later in the State of Deseret, as their settlement in present-day Utah was called. The Constitution, separating church from state, press from government, had no place in either stronghold. And it took a threat to march the United States Army out to the rogue settlement around the Great Salt Lake to persuade Mormon leaders that their control did not extend beyond matters of the soul.

Santorum is itching to add another chapter to this book. Last weekend, he seemed to question President Obama’s faith, alluding to a “phony theology” that supposedly guides his presidency. Who knew there was a religious test through the gates of the White House?

He also used his Biblical beliefs to deny climate change, saying, “We are put on this earth as creatures of God to have dominion over the earth.” You may think he’s running for chief deacon, and should swap his sweater vest for a clerical collar.

But his followers know exactly what he’s talking about. In Wednesday night’s debate in Arizona, Santorum defended his religious-themed campaign: “Just because I talk about it doesn’t mean I want a government program to fix it.” But in fact, he does. Santorum has long tried to get his Biblical principles taught to children in public schools — insisting that “creationism” should be in every American classroom, and trying to enforce that through riders to education bills when he was a senator. Better yet, the kids should read about Roger Williams, a man of faith, and of reason — the American model that will prevail long after Santorum has left the pulpit.

Theocracy and Its Discontents, NYT, 23.2.2012,
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/23/theocracy-and-its-discontents/

The Agony of the Liberals

June 20, 2010
The New York Times
By ROSS DOUTHAT

They doubted him during the health care debate. They second-guessed his Afghanistan policy. They’ve fretted over his coziness with Wall Street and his comfort with executive power.

But now is the summer of their discontent. From MSNBC to “The Daily Show,” from The Huffington Post to the halls of Congress, movement liberals have had just about enough of Barack Obama.

The catalyst was last week’s lackluster Oval Office address, but the real complaints run deeper. Many liberals look at this White House and see a presidency adrift — unable to respond effectively to the crisis in the gulf, incapable of rallying the country to great tasks like the quest for clean energy, and unwilling to do what it takes to jump-start the economy.

American liberalism has always had a reputation for fractiousness and frantic self-critique. But even by those standards, the current bout of anguish over the Obama presidency seems bizarrely disproportionate.

This is the same Barack Obama, after all, who shepherded universal health care, the dream of liberals since the days of Harry Truman (if not Thomas Paine), through several near-death experiences and finally into law. It’s the same Obama who staked the fate of the American economy on a $787 billion exercise in Keynesian pump-priming. It’s the same Obama who has done more to advance liberal priorities than any president since Lyndon Johnson.

Yet many on the left are talking as if he’s no better for liberalism than Bill Clinton circa 1996 — another compromiser, another triangulator and another disappointment.

At work in this liberal panic are two intellectual vices, and one legitimate fear. The first vice is the worship of presidential power: the belief that any problem, any crisis, can be swiftly solved by a strong government, and particularly a strong executive. A gushing oil well, a recalcitrant Congress, a public that’s grown weary of grand ambitions — all of these challenges could be mastered, Obama’s leftward critics seem to imagine, if only he were bolder or angrier, or maybe just more determined.

This vice isn’t confined to liberals: you can see it at work when foreign policy hawks suggest that mere presidential “toughness” is the key to undoing Iran’s clerical regime, or disarming North Korea. But it runs deepest among progressives. When Rachel Maddow fantasized last week about how Obama should simply dictate energy legislation to a submissive Congress, she was unconsciously echoing midcentury liberal theoreticians of the presidency like Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who often wrote as if a Franklin Roosevelt or a John F. Kennedy could run the country by fiat. (They couldn’t.)

The second vice is an overweening faith in theory. It’s now conventional wisdom among Obama’s liberal critics that the White House has been insufficiently ambitious about deficit spending. The economy is stuck in neutral, they argue, because Obama didn’t push last year’s recovery act up over a trillion dollars, and hasn’t pressed hard enough for a second major stimulus.

Technically, they could be right — but only in the same way that it’s possible that the Iraq War would have been a ringing success if only we’d invaded with a million extra soldiers. The theory is unfalsifiable because the policy course is imaginary. Maybe in some parallel universe there’s a Congress that would be willing to borrow and spend trillions in stimulus dollars, despite record deficits, if that’s what liberal economists said the situation required. But not in this one.

Yet the liberal drumbeat continues. As Tyler Cowen wrote last week: “advocates of fiscal stimulus make it sound as simple as solving an undergraduate homework problem and ... sometimes genuinely do not realize how much the rest of the world, including politicians, views them as simply being very convinced by their own theory.” Nor do they acknowledge how much risk those same politicians have already taken on (with the first stimulus, the health care bill, and much else besides) in the name of theoretical propositions, while reaping little for their efforts save an ever-grimmer fiscal picture.

But it’s here, with the looming fiscal crisis, that the more legitimate liberal fear comes in. Liberals had hoped that Obama’s election marked the beginning of a long progressive era — a new New Deal, a greater Great Society. Instead, from the West Coast to Western Europe, the welfare state is in crisis everywhere they look. The future suddenly seems to belong to austerity and retrenchment — and even, perhaps, to conservatism.

In this environment, the rage against Obama for not doing more, now, faster, becomes at least somewhat understandable. It’s not that he hasn’t done a great deal for liberals during his 18 months in office. It’s that liberalism itself may be running out of time.

The Agony of the Liberals, NYT, 20.6.2010,
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/21/opinion/21douthat-1.html

Michael Bloomberg Now Biggest U.S. Political Spender

October 24, 2009
Filed at 8:08 a.m. ET
The New York Times
By REUTERS

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has spent more of his own money in pursuit of public office than any other individual in U.S. history, spending $85 million as of Friday on his latest reelection campaign, the New York Times reported on Saturday.

Citing newly released campaign records, the Times said Bloomberg was on pace to spend between $110 and $140 million before the November 3 mayoral election. That means the self-made billionaire will have spent more than $250 million in his three bids for mayor of America's most fabled city.

In contrast, New Jersey Governor and former Goldman Sachs chairman Jon Corzine spent about $130 million in two races for governor and one for the U.S. Senate, the Times reported.

And publisher Steve Forces poured $114 million into two bids for president, it said.

Bloomberg's wealth, much of it from the Bloomberg LP media and information empire, is estimated at $16 billion. He has used it to establish what the Times called an "insurmountable financial dominance" in the race.

His opponent, William C Thompson, a Democrat, has spent just $6 million in the race. A Thompson campaign spokeswoman on Friday told the Times the mayor's spending was "obscene."

The bulk of Bloomberg's spending has gone into television, radio and Web advertising, it said.

But some of the money has trickled down to recession-hit small businesses, including Goodfellas Brick Over Pizza on Staten Island and in the Bronx. The Bloomberg campaign has so far forked over $8,892 for pizza at Goodfellas alone.

Thomson Reuters competes globally with Bloomberg in the delivery of multimedia news, data and enhanced information.

Michael Bloomberg Now Biggest U.S. Political Spender, NYT, 24.10.2009, http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2009/10/24/us/politics/politics-us-bloomberg.html

Editorial

Reviving Civil Rights

September 2, 2009
The New York Times

Few parts of the federal government veered more radically off course in the Bush years than the Justice Department, including its vital civil rights division. Attorney General Eric Holder has made clear that he intends to put the division back on track. That will not be easy, but restoring the nation’s commitment to fairness in voting, employment, housing and other areas is one of the new administration’s most important challenges.

The Bush administration declared war on the whole idea of civil rights, in a way that no administration of either party had since the passage of the nation’s civil rights laws in the 1960s. It put a far-right ideologue in a top position at the civil rights division and, as the department’s inspector general said in a scathing report, he screened out job applicants with civil rights sympathies.

The division abandoned its “historic mission,” notes John Payton, director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund — enforcing civil rights laws, in areas from housing to employment. In some cases, like voting rights, it aggressively fought on the anti-civil-rights side.

It is heartening that the Obama administration has proposed substantially increasing the number of lawyers in the division. They will have plenty of work.

On voting, the division needs to drop the Bush-era obsession with the overblown problem of vote fraud and put the emphasis back where it should be — making sure protected groups are not denied the right to vote. It has to ensure that the voter rolls are not being illegally purged, and that political operatives are not engaging in dirty tricks to suppress the minority vote. It also needs to make state and local governments comply with the “motor voter” law, which requires registration to be available at motor vehicle bureaus and welfare offices.

On employment discrimination, the division should once again start bringing the sort of high-impact cases that the Bush administration abandoned.

On discrimination in education, it has to navigate the bad decisions the Supreme Court has handed down recently and provide concrete guidance for school districts on how to legally promote integration.

Perhaps no group was more abandoned for the last eight years than prisoners. The division should challenge the dangerously crowded and inhumane conditions that are increasingly becoming the norm in the nation’s prisons and jails. As Wade Henderson of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights notes, a few strong lawsuits of this kind could prod many institutions to reform voluntarily.

The division should also tackle predatory lending and other financial bias against minorities. With millions of Americans facing foreclosure, this sort of discrimination looms especially large.

The Justice Department has enormous power under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to combat discrimination in any institution or program that receives federal funds. This authority is more important than ever with federal stimulus money flowing. The division should use it to ensure that public schools, hospitals, transportation systems and other institutions do not discriminate.

Gay men and lesbians still largely stand outside the division’s protection. If a hate crime law covering them is passed soon, as appears likely, the division should use it aggressively. Mr. Holder should also press Congress to pass the first federal law against job discrimination based on sexual orientation.

This agenda would be difficult in the best of circumstances, but the civil rights division is working under the enormous handicap of being leaderless. Senate Republicans have put a hold on the nomination of Thomas Perez to head it. The reasons offered are spurious. Their real agenda seems to be impeding the division from doing its work. When Congress returns, Majority Leader Harry Reid should make sure Mr. Perez is quickly confirmed.

Reviving Civil Rights, NYT, 2.9.2009,
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/02/opinion/02wed1.html

Week in Review

In Kennedy, the Last Roar of the New Deal Liberal

August 30, 2009
The New York Times
By SAM TANENHAUS

“AN important chapter in our history has come to an end,” Barack Obama said in his first public remarks on the death of Senator Edward M. Kennedy. “Our country has lost a great leader, who picked up the torch of his fallen brothers and became the greatest United States senator of our time.”

What Mr. Obama didn’t say — and perhaps didn’t need to — was that the closed chapter was the vision of liberalism begun by the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt, extended during the Great Society of Lyndon B. Johnson and now struggling back toward relevance. It holds that the forces of government should be marshaled to improve conditions for the greatest possible number of Americans, with particular emphasis on the excluded and disadvantaged. It is not government’s only obligation, in this view, but it is the paramount one.

No major political figure of the past half-century was so deeply invested in this idea as Mr. Kennedy was. It underlay the staggering number of bills he created or sponsored in his long Senate career, whether in medical care or education, on behalf of immigrants or labor unions. And it underlay Mr. Kennedy’s crusade for universal health care — “a right, not a privilege,” as he declared at the Democratic National Convention last August.

The belief in government as the guardian of opportunity and advancement is not a complicated one, but it is fraught with ambiguities — including the risks incurred when government grows too large and also too expensive. Indeed, the peak years of Mr. Kennedy’s Senate career, the 1980s and ’90s, coincided with the ascendancy of a countervision, captured in Ronald Reagan’s assertion: “Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.”

In that period, many Democrats began to rethink the legacy of the New Deal and the Great Society. Many distanced themselves from “the L word.” And Mr. Kennedy appeared out of step. As the authors of “Last Lion: The Fall and Rise of Ted Kennedy,” observe, “Even in his own party, his liberalism had seemed, at times, outmoded as the ‘third way’ of the Clintons gained ascendance in the Washington of the 1990s.”

So too in 2008 the party’s top presidential contenders dependably referred to themselves as “progressives.”

Still, Mr. Kennedy was unwavering. It is hard to imagine any contemporary Democrat taking the podium as Mr. Kennedy did last summer in Denver to reprise the celebrated oration he had made at the 1980 convention in New York. But Mr. Kennedy did — without apology. The passage of time, and the reordered political landscape, had not obscured his causes or dimmed his rhetoric.

His roots in old-fashioned liberalism went deep. Like his brothers, he was reared in the towering shadow of President Roosevelt, who was first elected president in 1932, the year Edward Kennedy was born.

But the older Kennedy brothers drifted away from New Deal politics. John F. Kennedy stood at the center of a new post-ideological pragmatism. In 1962, the year Edward Kennedy was first elected to the Senate, President Kennedy asserted that while “most of us are conditioned for many years to have a political viewpoint — Republican or Democrat, liberal, conservative or moderate,” in reality the most pressing government concerns were “technical problems, administrative problems” that “do not lend themselves to the great sort of passionate movements which have stirred this country so often in the past.”

Robert F. Kennedy, in contrast, was drawn to passionate movements, but his devotions could shift with the political winds. An anti-Communist in the 1950s — when he worked briefly on the staff of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy — Robert later embraced the “New Politics” of the late 1960s, with its strong flavor of anti-establishment protest. In the 1968 election he seemed to be simultaneously courting militant leftists and aggrieved white ethnics stirred by the populist demagoguery of the segregationist George Wallace.

It was Edward, the youngest brother, whose “true compass” — to borrow the title of his forthcoming memoir — pointed unerringly toward New Deal liberalism. He became its champion for the remainder of his life.

This earned him a reputation for being the populist Kennedy, gifted with the common touch. Certainly he enjoyed politics at the retail level — plunging into the crowd, shaking hands.

But Mr. Kennedy’s accomplishments in the political arts were mixed. He excelled at stumping for others, as he did in his brothers’ presidential campaigns. And he performed impressively for Mr. Obama in 2008. Just before the deluge of primaries in early February, when the contest between Mr. Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton was tight, Mr. Kennedy drew large crowds in California and New Mexico, where shouts of “Viva Kennedy” greeted his visits to the barrios.

But on other occasions Mr. Kennedy faltered. His intemperate denunciation of Judge Robert H. Bork in 1987 helped poison the atmosphere of Supreme Court appointments up to the present day.

His one signal talent was for legislation, the painstaking, glacial business of shaping bills and laws. He learned at the feet of Senate giants like Richard Russell, who had also been a mentor to another superb legislator, Lyndon Johnson.

The friction between Mr. Kennedy’s uncertain feel for politics and his instinctive command of governance led to his gravest miscalculation, his ill-executed attempt to unseat his party’s incumbent president, Jimmy Carter, in the 1980 primaries.

“No real difference of politics separated Kennedy from Carter,” Theodore H. White noted when he revisited the episode in 1982.

Mr. White, curious to grasp the motives behind this quixotic mission, pressed Mr. Kennedy about it. At first Mr. Kennedy haltingly mentioned Mr. Carter’s failed leadership and squandered opportunities. But when prodded further, he delivered “a stunning discussion of just how laws are passed, of how Carter’s amateur lobbyists had messed up program after program by odd legislative couplings of unsorted programs,” Mr. White wrote. “Then, details cascading from him more and more rapidly, he concluded in an outburst of frustration” that Mr. Carter was incompetent. “Even on issues we agree on, he doesn’t know how to do it,” Mr. Kennedy told Mr. White, who likened his attitude to “the contempt of a master machinist for a plumber’s assistant.”

The paradox was that by challenging Mr. Carter, Mr. Kennedy weakened him in the general election, and thus assisted in the victory of Mr. Reagan, who promptly ushered in the conservative counterrevolution, founded on distrust of government, that Mr. Kennedy spent the next three decades battling, losing as often as he won.

The literary critic Lionel Trilling once wondered why so many liberal intellectuals he knew seemed unnerved by any mention of death. Might it be, he speculated, because death was, “in practical outcome, a negation of the future and of the hope it holds out for a society of reason and virtue?”

Mr. Trilling had in mind the “progressives” of the 1930s and ’40s, who were lit with utopian dreams and intoxicated, in many instances, by the Soviet “experiment.”

Mr. Kennedy’s liberalism had its basis in something different — New Deal meliorism, with its hopeful spirit of reform.

And he brought to it in its later stages a quality of chastened knowledge, the hardiness of the survivor. Mr. Kennedy was, of course, uniquely versed in the concrete facts of death. All three of his brothers died young, two slain by assassins’ bullets. And for 40 years he bore the guilt of the death he caused in Chappaquiddick in 1969.

Becoming “the greatest senator of our time” could not atone for this. Nor could it redress Mr. Kennedy’s many other trespasses — the boozing and womanizing and the suffering it brought.

But if the art of governance did not redeem Mr. Kennedy, it irradiated him, and the liberalism he personified. At a time when government itself had fallen into disrepute Mr. Kennedy applied himself diligently to its exacting discipline, and wrested whatever small victories he could from the machinery he had learned to operate so well. Whether or not his compass was finally true, he endured as the battered, leaky vessel through which the legislative arts recovered some of their lost glory.

In Kennedy, the Last Roar of the New Deal Liberal, NYT, 30.8.2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/weekinreview/30tanenhaus.html

'Super delegate' win would be unfair, voters say

17 March 2008
USA Today
By Susan Page

WASHINGTON — A majority of Democratic voters say it would be unfair for Hillary Rodham Clinton to win the presidential nomination through the support of "super delegates" if she lags among the convention delegates elected in primaries and caucuses, according to a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll.

If that happens, one in five say they wouldn't vote for the New York senator in the general election.

The findings in the survey, taken Friday through Sunday, underscore some of the perils ahead for Democrats as the closely fought nomination battle between Clinton and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama continues.

By 55%-37%, Democrats and independents who "lean" Democratic say an outcome in which Clinton lost among pledged delegates but prevailed with the help of super delegates would be "flawed" and unfair" — including 77% of Obama supporters and 28% of Clinton supporters.

Super delegates are party leaders and elected officials who can vote at the national convention and aren't bound by the results of their state's primary or caucus.

Most at risk is Democratic support from independents. Nearly two-thirds of those voters call that result unfair, and one-third say they would then vote for the Republican or stay home in November.

"It goes back to this notion: As this race winds down, it's not how we started the campaign, it's how we end it," says Donna Brazile, campaign manager for Al Gore's 2000 campaign, expressing concern that divisions in the party will present "obstacles" to a Democratic victory in November.

"I feel the emotions on both sides," says Brazile, herself an uncommitted super delegate. "I feel the pain and I feel the bruising."

Obama leads Clinton by 1,617 delegates to 1,498, according to an Associated Press count.

Neither candidate is likely to reach the 2,024 needed for nomination without including the support of super delegates.

The two campaigns have clashed over whether the super delegates should feel obligated to support the candidate with the most pledged delegates.

In the nationwide poll, Obama leads Clinton 49%-42% among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, a narrower margin than his record 12-percentage-point lead late last month.

In another shift from the February survey, Clinton does better than Obama against the presumptive Republican nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain, though the numbers are within the poll's margin of error of +/—3 points.

Clinton beats McCain by 51%-46%. Obama leads McCain by 49%-47%.

The survey of 1,025 adults also asked Americans to assess the traits of the major presidential contenders.

Among the findings:

•Obama rates highest on five of 10 characteristics. He is seen as a candidate who "understands the problems Americans face in their daily lives" and "would work well with both parties in Washington to get things done." His weakest showing was in having "a clear plan for solving the country's problems."

•McCain ranks first on three characteristics: As "a strong and decisive leader," as honest and trustworthy, and as someone who could "manage the government efficiently." His lowest rating also is on having a clear plan to solve the nation's problems.

•Clinton rates highest on two traits, on having a vision for the country's future and a clear plan for solving the nation's problems. Her lowest rating is as someone who is honest and trustworthy.

'Super delegate' win would be unfair, voters say, UT, 17.3.2008, http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-03-17-poll_N.htm

FACTBOX - Sex scandals in U.S. politics

Mon Mar 10, 2008
9:29pm EDT
Reuters

(Reuters) - New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, the one-time "Sheriff" of Wall Street who campaigned on a promise to clean up state politics, is embroiled in a sex scandal that threatens to force his resignation.

Following are some other sex scandals involving politicians in the United States.

* IDAHO SEN. LARRY CRAIG was publicly admonished by the Senate Ethics Committee for improper conduct after his arrest in a sex-sting operation in a men's toilet in June 2007.

The Republican lawmaker pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct after he was caught in an undercover investigation of lewd behaviour in a men's room at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. He later tried to recant saying he agreed to a misdemeanour charge without consulting a lawyer and in hopes of quickly disposing of the case. He remains in the Senate.

* LOUISIANA SEN. DAVID VITTER, a Republican and social conservative, apologized and admitted "a very serious sin" after he was linked last July to a Washington escort service. Vitter said his misdeeds occurred several years previously and he had dealt with them in confession and marriage counselling. He remains in the Senate.

* MARK FOLEY, a Florida Republican, resigned from the House of Representatives in 2006 after it was disclosed he had sent sexually explicit text messages to teenage boys who served as interns in the House. The revelations led to charges that Republican leaders tried to cover up the matter.

* NEW JERSEY GOV. JAMES MCGREEVEY, a Democrat, stepped down in 2004 over a gay affair with a man whom he hired in 2002 to head the state's Homeland Security department.

* PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON, a Democrat, had a sexual relationship with intern Monica Lewinsky, then 21, which led to his impeachment after accusations he lied about it under oath. He survived the impeachment process and was able to serve out his term but his presidency, which ended in 2001, was badly damaged.

* FORMER HOUSE SPEAKER NEWT GINGRICH, a Republican, has admitted he was having an extramarital affair while leading the impeachment charge in Congress against Clinton.

* SEN. BOB PACKWOOD, a Republican from Oregon, resigned in 1995 after 26 years in Congress. He had been accused of sexual misconduct with 17 women, among other charges.

* REP. BARNEY FRANK, a Massachusetts Democrat who is homosexual, was reprimanded in 1990 after it was learned that a lover had run a prostitution ring out of his Washington apartment.

* SEN. GARY HART, a Colorado Democrat, saw his second presidential bid end in 1987 when it was learned he spent the night on a yacht, named the Monkey Business, with a woman who was not his wife.

* REP. DAN CRANE, a Republican from Illinois, and REP. GERRY STUDDS, a Democrat from Massachusetts, were censured in 1983 for illicit affairs with underage pages. Crane, who had had sex with a teenage girl, was voted out of office but Studds, who had had an affair with a boy, was returned to office many times.

* REP. WILBUR MILLS, a Democrat from Arkansas and chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, was caught in 1974 with stripper Fanne Foxe, who performed as "the Argentine firecracker." Foxe leapt from Mills' limousine after it was stopped by police and jumped into the Tidal Basin. Mills went into treatment for alcohol and retired two years later.

(Compiled by Claudia Parsons)

FACTBOX - Sex scandals in U.S. politics, R, 10.3.2008, http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUKN1050929120080311

FACTBOX: Delegate counts for presidential candidates

Wed Mar 5, 2008
Reuters
1:56am EST

(Reuters) - Delegates at national party conventions in August and September will be the key to selecting the Democratic and Republican candidates who will face off in the presidential election on November 4.

Voters choose the delegates state by state.

The field of candidates has narrowed and Sen. John McCain of Arizona has taken a commanding lead in the Republican race, while the Democratic contest remains close between Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York.

Here are the total numbers of delegates awarded so far in nominating contests to the leading candidates, as estimated by MSNBC. Other news organizations may have reached different estimates.

DEMOCRATS (number needed for nomination 2,025)

- Barack Obama 1,202

- Hillary Clinton 1,042

REPUBLICANS (number needed for nomination 1,191)

- John McCain 1,205

- Mike Huckabee 248

- Ron Paul 14

HOW DELEGATES ARE AWARDED

Democrats distribute delegates in proportion to candidates' vote statewide and in individual congressional districts. That means candidates can come away with big chunks of delegates even in states they lose.

In contrast, most Republican contests are winner-take-all when awarding delegates. McCain became the likely Republican nominee when his chief rival dropped out. But former Arkansas Gov. Huckabee remains in the race.

In addition to those elected state by state, a certain number of delegates at the conventions are set aside for members of Congress, elected state officers and other leading party officials.

These "superdelegates" are not committed to a particular candidate and can back anyone they choose.

Source of Delegate Count: msnbc.com

(Compiled by Deborah Charles and Donna Smith; Editing by David Wiessler)

FACTBOX: Delegate counts for presidential candidates, R, 5.3.2008, http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN0336894120080305

Democrats Vie for Delegates

March 5, 2008
Filed at 2:20 a.m. ET
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton split delegates in four states Tuesday while Republican John McCain claimed his party's nomination for president.

Clinton picked up at least 115 delegates in Ohio, Rhode Island, Vermont and Texas, while Obama picked up at least 88. Nearly 170 delegates were still to be awarded, including 154 in Texas.

Obama had a total of 1,477 delegates, including separately chosen party and elected officials known as superdelegates, according to the Associated Press count. He picked up three superdelegate endorsements Tuesday,

Clinton had 1,391 delegates. It will take 2,025 delegates to secure the Democratic nomination.

McCain surpassed the 1,191 delegates needed to secure the nomination by winning delegates in the four states. He also picked up new endorsements from about 30 party officials who will automatically attend the convention and can support whomever they choose.

McCain had 1,224 delegates, according to the AP count. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who had 261 delegates, dropped out of the race Tuesday night.

The AP tracks the delegate races by calculating the number of national convention delegates won by candidates in each presidential primary or caucus, based on state and national party rules, and by interviewing unpledged delegates to obtain their preferences.

Most primaries and some caucuses are binding, meaning delegates won by the candidates are pledged to support that candidate at the national conventions this summer.

Political parties in some states, however, use multistep procedures to award national delegates. Typically, such states use local caucuses to elect delegates to state or congressional district conventions, where national delegates are selected. In these states, the AP uses the results from local caucuses to calculate the number of national delegates each candidate will win, if the candidate's level of support at the caucus doesn't change.

Democrats Vie for Delegates, NYT, 5.3.2008,
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Campaign-Delegates.html

Obama and Clinton Spending Furiously

February 21, 2008
The New York Times
By MICHAEL LUO

Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton both spent at the furious clip of nearly a million dollars a day in January as they battled to win the initial contests for the Democratic nomination, according to filings on Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission.

But by the end of the month, Mr. Obama was in a much better position financially because he raised more than twice as much as Mrs. Clinton did in January, giving him a commanding cash advantage heading into a pivotal series of contests in February.

Mr. Obama spent more than $30 million in January, compared with the $28.4 million spent by Mrs. Clinton. But Mr. Obama brought in $36.1 million in January, more than anyone has ever raised in a single month in the history of American politics, with $28 million coming over the Internet, according to his campaign. Mrs. Clinton raised just $13.8 million in January. She also lent her campaign $5 million at the end of the month and still has $7.6 million in outstanding debts.

As a result, aided by money he began the month with in the bank, Mr. Obama ended January with $18.9 million heading into the coast-to-coast primaries and caucuses on Feb. 5.

In contrast, Mrs. Clinton was left at the end of January with just $8.9 million in cash available for the nominating contests, along with more than $20.3 million set aside for the general election that cannot be used to help her in the primaries.

As of the end of January, the Clinton campaign had spent $106 million over all on Mrs. Clinton’s primary campaign and raised $118 million, including money for both the primary and the general election, although her total receipts were $138 million, including transfers from her Senate campaign fund as well as her loan and other money. Mr. Obama had spent $115 million for operating expenditures and raised $137 million. Most significant, all but $6 million of his money is available for use in the primary.

On the Republican side, candidates saw their financial fortunes in January rise and fall with their political prospects. Senator John McCain, who emerged at the end of the month as the Republican front-runner, brought in $11.7 million in contributions for the month, close to the most he had ever raised in a three-month span, as Republican donors jumped on his bandwagon with his victories in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida.

Even with his best fund-raising month yet, however, Mr. McCain had raised just $48 million since his campaign began through January, a fraction of the nearly $140 million that Mr. Obama brought in during the same period.

Mr. McCain’s financial report for January illustrates the depths he rose from. With his hopes for the Republican nomination pinned almost entirely on winning the New Hampshire primary on Jan. 8, Mr. McCain turned to what was left of a $4 million loan that he took out in November to bolster his final push there.

Mr. McCain had already drawn down nearly $3 million from that loan in multiple installments in November and December to keep his flagging campaign afloat. In early January, he pulled out another $950,000 — almost all of what was left in the loan — to help him in the homestretch for New Hampshire’s primary. The infusion of cash enabled him to beat back Mitt Romney’s well-financed campaign in New Hampshire, setting Mr. McCain on the path to the nomination.

Mr. Romney’s report showed that he pumped in another $7 million of his own money into his campaign, bringing the total amount of money he gave his campaign to $42.3 million. He also raised $9.7 million in January and was left with $8.8 million in the bank at the end of the month, although he would ultimately pull out of the race after a disappointing performance in the states that voted on Feb. 5.

Bolstered by his newfound fund-raising prowess and the loan to his campaign, Mr. McCain ended up matching Mr. Romney’s spending for the month as they battled each other from New Hampshire to Michigan and then on to South Carolina and Florida, which proved to be pivotal. Mr. McCain spent $10.4 million in January, compared with Mr. Romney’s $10.3 million.

Mr. McCain finished the month with $5.2 million in cash on hand, although his campaign owes $5.5 million to various creditors. Also, $2.5 million of his money is general election money. At this point, however, he is the presumptive nominee of his party. His advisers said many former fund-raisers for rival Republican campaigns are signing up to help Mr. McCain, and he is beginning to build a fund-raising apparatus to be able to compete with the eventual Democratic nominee.

Mike Huckabee, who won the Iowa caucus in the beginning of January but went winless throughout the rest of the month before rebounding in Southern states on Feb. 5, reported raising nearly $4 million for the month. After spending nearly $5 million, he finished the month with $929,401 in cash in hand.

Rudolph W. Giuliani’s campaign, which went into a free fall in January after leading national polls and many early state surveys for months, raised $3.1 million in January and finished the month with nearly $9 million on hand, although the campaign also listed $2.2 million in debt. Almost $6 million of his money was also set aside for the general election.

Some senior staff members voluntarily went without salaries in January, but the filings revealed that many continued to be paid, a sign that the campaign was not necessarily on the verge of bankruptcy but had been trying to save money to prepare for contests that would never materialize after Mr. Giuliani pulled out at the end of the month.

Leslie Wayne, Griffin Palmer and Aron Pilhofer contributed reporting.

Obama and Clinton Spending Furiously, NYT, 21.2.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/21/us/politics/21donate.html

Op-Ed Contributors

Delegates of Steel

February 15, 2008
The New York Times
By THOMAS E. MANN and NORMAN J. ORNSTEIN

Washington

THE Democratic presidential nomination battle is virtually dead even between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. And while Senator Obama has moved ahead in recent days, neither is likely to come close to the 2,025 delegates needed to win the nomination from the pledged delegates they are awarded in primaries and caucuses. So the key to victory is in the 796 votes given to so-called superdelegates, the elected and party officials — members of the Democratic National Committee, Democratic members of the House and Senate and others with automatic status under the party rules. Superdelegates are free agents, able to switch their endorsements or commitments at any time.

No one expected that this year’s Democratic race would evolve this way. But now that it looks as if the nomination battle could go on for months, conceivably all the way to the convention, a reaction against superdelegates has begun. Donna Brazile, a commentator, long-time party strategist and superdelegate herself, told CNN, “If 795 of my colleagues decide this election, I will quit the Democratic Party.” Gary Hart, the former senator and presidential candidate, recently declared that the influence of the superdelegates “should be curtailed.”

These reactions reflect in part a legitimate concern that heavy-handed lobbying of the superdelegates might reverse the outcome of the contest for pledged delegates in the primaries and caucuses. But a review of the history of superdelegates suggests they are likely to play a constructive role in resolving the nomination before the convention and in unifying the party for the general election campaign.

Superdelegates were created by the Hunt Commission, set up in 1982 and led by Gov. James Hunt of North Carolina. The commission was reacting in part to a nominating process in which the weight of influence was with a relatively small cadre of ideological activists whose involvement with the party was essentially limited to the once-every-four-years push to nominate a like-minded presidential candidate. Their influence coincided with election losses in 1972 and 1980, when Jimmy Carter’s re-election effort was crimped by a draining primary challenge from the left.

The Hunt Commission proposed superdelegates (initially set at 14 percent of all delegates, subsequently increased to about 20 percent) to improve the party’s mainstream appeal by moderating the new dominance of these activists and by increasing the contributions of elected and party officials to the Democratic platform and their impact on the selection of a nominee; to provide an element of peer review, weighing the requirements of the office, the strengths and weaknesses of the candidates and the chances that they’ll win; and to create stronger ties between the party and its elected officials to promote a unified campaign and teamwork in government.

In 1984, the superdelegates stepped in to provide a majority for Walter Mondale — who had a huge edge in pledged delegates over Gary Hart but not enough to win the nomination — avoiding a potentially bitter and divisive convention that would have fractured the party.

Contrary to the assertion by Mr. Hart, who is understandably unhappy with the system, the superdelegates do have to answer to the party’s electorate. They have to go through the fire of elections themselves, or, as state or local party officials, are responsible for the election of the party’s slate. No delegates are more sensitive to the potential pitfalls of the presidential candidates or their electability than the superdelegates.

They are not immune to the emotions that drive other delegates to be enthusiastic about certain candidates. But superdelegates, sensitive to the implications of internecine battles, are more likely to try to transcend emotions to find a reasonable outcome that enhances the party’s chances of winning an election. The superdelegates do not unite to block the candidate with the strongest support from voters; they have always cast a majority of their votes for the candidate who won a majority or plurality of votes in the primaries.

In 2008, where two strong and capable candidates are fighting it out on every front, where the difficult issues of race and sex are on the table and where the gap between the two in total votes and pledged delegates is likely to be small, the potential for an explosive convention, where in the end half the delegates (and half the party) feels they have been cheated, is real.

In this case, the nomination could come down to a difficult and complex credentials battle over whether to seat delegates from Michigan and Florida. To have a nomination settled in this way is a bit like having an election settled by a 5-4 vote of the Supreme Court. Averting this kind of disaster is just what superdelegates are supposed to do.

Thomas E. Mann is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Norman J. Ornstein is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

They are the co-authors of “The Broken Branch.”

Delegates of Steel, NYT, 15.2.2008,
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/15/opinion/15mann.html

From Bush, Foe of Earmarks, Similar Items

February 10, 2008
The New York Times
By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON — President Bush often denounces the propensity of Congress to earmark money for pet projects. But in his new budget, Mr. Bush has requested money for thousands of similar projects.

He asked for money to build fish hatcheries, eradicate agricultural pests, conduct research, pave highways, dredge harbors and perform many other specific local tasks.

The details are buried deep in the president’s budget, just as most Congressional earmarks are buried in obscure committee reports that accompany spending bills.

Thus, for example, the president requested $330 million to deal with plant pests like the emerald ash borer, the light brown apple moth and the sirex woodwasp. He sought $800,000 for the Neosho National Fish Hatchery in Missouri and $1.5 million for a waterway named in honor of former Senator J. Bennett Johnston, a Louisiana Democrat.

At the same time, Mr. Bush requested $894,000 for an air traffic control tower in Kalamazoo, Mich.; $12 million for a parachute repair shop at the American air base in Aviano, Italy; and $6.5 million for research in Wyoming on the “fundamental properties of asphalt.”

He sought $3 million for a forest conservation project in Minnesota, $2.1 million for a neutrino detector at the South Pole and $28 million for General Electric and Siemens to do research on hydrogen-fuel turbines.

The projects, itemized in thousands of pages of budget documents submitted last week to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, show that the debate over earmarks is much more complex than the “all or nothing” choice usually presented to the public. The president and Congress both want to direct money to specific projects, but often disagree over the merits of particular items.

The White House contends that when the president requests money for a project, it has gone through a rigorous review — by the agency, the White House or both — using objective criteria.

Congressional leaders said they would focus more closely on items requested by the president this year. “The executive branch should be held accountable for its own earmark practices,” said the House Republican leader, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said Democrats agreed that “the large number of presidential earmarks deserve the same scrutiny and restraint” as those that originated in Congress.

Mr. Bush has often derided Congressional earmarks as “special interest items” that waste taxpayer money and undermine trust in government. Congress, he said, included more than 11,700 earmarks totaling almost $17 billion in spending bills for the current fiscal year.

But some of those earmarks were similar or identical to ones included in the 2009 budget that Mr. Bush sent Congress last week. For example, Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the Democratic whip, obtained an earmark of $1.5 million last year to deal with the emerald ash borer, a beetle that attacks trees, lawns and crops. Mr. Bush now wants more money to fight that insect.

A similar pattern is evident at the Bureau of Reclamation, an Interior Department agency that provides water and power in 17 states. Congress and the White House both support construction of a huge water project known as Mni Wiconi, which would deliver water from the Missouri River to rural South Dakota.

At the behest of South Dakota lawmakers, Congress earmarked $38 million for the project last year. In its budget justification for 2009, the bureau requests $779 million for more than 150 specific projects, including $26 million more for the one in South Dakota.

Similarly, the Bush administration is requesting money for a water project near the Nueces River in South Texas — the same project that benefited from a bipartisan Congressional earmark last year.

In effect, the president accepted some Congressional earmarks as worthy of continued federal support. But he rejected many more and sought no money for them in 2009.

The White House defines “earmarks” in a way that applies only to projects designated by Congress, not to those requested by the administration.

“Earmarks,” as defined by the White House, “are funds provided by Congress for projects or programs where the Congressional direction (in bill or report language) circumvents the merit-based or competitive allocation process, or specifies the location or recipient, or otherwise curtails the ability of the executive branch to properly manage funds.”

Sean M. Kevelighan, a spokesman for the White House Office of Management and Budget, said: “The administration’s budget proposals are available for any taxpayer to see. We submit a justification for each item. That’s very different from what happens on Capitol Hill, where items are dropped into legislation at the last minute, for no rhyme or reason other than the seniority of a member of Congress.”

Democrats sometimes say the Bush administration has approved projects to help its political allies, but such assertions are hard to prove. In the 2004 campaign, administration officials raced around the country handing out money for federal programs, including some that Mr. Bush had tried to cut or eliminate.

Senator John McCain of Arizona, the leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, is winning support with a different tactic. Mr. McCain regularly receives cheers and applause when he declares, “I will not sign a bill with earmarks in it, any earmarks in it.”

It is virtually impossible to determine the dollar value of items requested by the president because they are scattered through voluminous budget documents prepared by dozens of federal offices and agencies, and the administration does not publish comprehensive lists, as Congress did last year for the first time.

Administration officials say that many projects in the president’s budget — though they may look like Congressional earmarks — were evaluated as part of a coherent program to address some national need, like pest eradication or flood control.

Mr. Bush’s budget says, for example, that the Army Corps of Engineers uses “performance-based guidelines” to set priorities for navigation and flood control projects, ensuring that benefits will outweigh costs.

But the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, found that the corps’s studies of proposed projects were “fraught with errors, mistakes and miscalculations” that tended to overstate the benefits and understate the costs.

When Transportation Department officials unveiled their 2009 budget this week, they boasted of more than two dozen new projects, and they said they had carefully weighed factors like “benefits per passenger mile.”

The president requested $125,000 for a new rapid bus line on Troost Avenue in Kansas City, Mo., and $11 million for bus-only lanes along parts of Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles.

“We are putting tax dollars where they will move the greatest number of people, so taxpayers get a good return on their investment,” said James S. Simpson, administrator of the Federal Transit Administration.

Criticism of earmarks has been a constant theme in the Bush administration. Within three months of taking office, Mr. Bush asked Congress to kill many of the earmarks enacted into law at the end of the Clinton administration.

In his State of the Union address last year, Mr. Bush complained that 90 percent of Congressional earmarks were concealed in committee reports.

“You didn’t vote them into law,” Mr. Bush told Congress. “I didn’t sign them into law. Yet they’re treated as if they have the force of law.”

On Jan. 29, Mr. Bush ordered federal officials to “ignore any future earmark that is not voted on and included in a law approved by Congress.”

The president submits legislative language to Congress for every appropriations bill, but most of his project requests are not found there. They are buried in thick documents that carry titles like “Budget Estimates” or “Justification of Estimates for Appropriations Committees.”

From Bush, Foe of Earmarks, Similar Items, NYT, 10.2.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/10/washington/10earmark.html

Earmarks Likely to Continue, but With Details

January 22, 2008
The New York Times
By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON — President Bush is unlikely to defy Congress on spending billions of dollars earmarked for pet projects, but he will probably insist that lawmakers provide more justification for such earmarks in the future, administration officials said Monday.

Fiscal conservatives in Congress and budget watchdogs have been urging Mr. Bush to issue an executive order instructing agencies to disregard the many earmarks listed just in committee reports, not in the text of legislation.

More than 90 percent of earmarks are specified that way, not actually included in the texts. White House officials say such earmarks are not legally binding on the president.

Congressional leaders of both parties, who are scheduled to meet on Tuesday with the president, said Mr. Bush would provoke a huge outcry on Capitol Hill if he ignored those earmarks.

Lawmakers, including the House Republican whip, Roy Blunt of Missouri, have cautioned the White House that a furor over earmarks could upend Mr. Bush’s hopes for cooperation with Congress on other issues, including efforts to revive the economy.

Moreover, Republicans shudder at the possibility that a Democratic president might reject all their earmarks.

In effect, the White House is avoiding a clash with Congress over specific projects while preserving the president’s ability to demand a further reduction in earmarks generally.

A band of Republican lawmakers led by Representative Jeff Flake of Arizona and Senators Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Jim DeMint of South Carolina has attacked earmarks, saying they waste money and corrupt the legislative process. But a larger number of lawmakers avidly seek them and boast of success in securing money for constituents. Republicans received about 40 percent of the earmarks in the spending bills for 2008.

A new tally by the White House Office of Management and Budget shows that the 2008 spending bills signed by Mr. Bush include more than 11,700 earmarks, totaling $16.9 billion. By the White House count, the number was down 1,754 from 2005, and the amount of money was down $2.1 billion, or 11 percent.

Using different definitions, some groups have come up with different figures, showing a larger decline in the dollar value of earmarks. Ryan Alexander, president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan budget watchdog, estimates the reduction at 25 percent, half the goal set by Mr. Bush.

The earmarks for this year set aside money for museums and bicycle trails, control of agricultural pests like the emerald ash borer beetle and aid to specific military contractors producing items like missiles, munitions and “merino wool boot socks.”

Mr. Bush recently mocked earmarks for a prison museum in Kansas and a sailing school in California.

Nearly one-fifth of the earmarks and more than one-third of the money were in the Defense Department appropriations bill.

On Dec. 20, Mr. Bush instructed Jim Nussle, director of the Office of Management and Budget, to “review options for dealing with the wasteful spending” in earmarks.

At the same time, 19 groups urged Mr. Bush to shut “the Congressional favor factory” by directing agencies to disregard earmarks tucked into committee reports.

“Such an action is within your constitutional powers and would strike a blow for fiscal responsibility,” said a letter from the groups, which included the American Conservative Union, the National Taxpayers Union and Taxpayers for Common Sense.

The groups pressed their case in a recent meeting with Barry Jackson, a top aide to the president, but they said they received no assurances.

In his State of the Union message last year, Mr. Bush said: “Over 90 percent of earmarks never make it to the floor of the House and Senate. They are dropped into committee reports that are not even part of the bill that arrives on my desk. You didn’t vote them into law. I didn’t sign them into law. Yet, they’re treated as if they have the force of law. The time has come to end this practice.”

White House lawyers have found many court decisions holding, as the Supreme Court said in 2005, that “restrictive language contained in committee reports is not legally binding.”

The comptroller general, the nation’s top auditor, and the Congressional Research Service agree with that position, as a matter of law. But in setting forth that view in a 1993 case, the Supreme Court observed, “An agency’s decision to ignore Congressional expectations may expose it to grave political consequences.”

Mr. Blunt, the Republican whip, said that any White House actions were likely to be prospective, setting standards for future earmarks. The purpose, he said, would be to ensure that a project “meets the criteria the taxpayers want it to meet before the money is distributed.”

Grover G. Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, a coalition of taxpayer groups, said he expected the White House to establish rules and procedures to screen out “the most egregious earmarks.”

The sponsor of an earmark might, for example, be required to provide a written justification, including requests for the money from local officials, universities or companies that would benefit.

Presidential candidates should be asked whether they would keep such standards, Mr. Norquist said.

Even in Alaska, long dependent on federal largess, officials are trying to wean the state off earmarks. In her State of the State address last week, Gov. Sarah Palin, a Republican, said, “We cannot and must not rely so heavily on federal government earmarks.”

Earmarks Likely to Continue, but With Details, NYT, 22.1.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/22/washington/22earmark.html

Religious Groups Reap Share of U.S. Aid for Pet Projects

May 13, 2007
The New York Times
By DIANA B. HENRIQUES and ANDREW W. LEHREN

St. Vincent College, a small Benedictine college southeast of Pittsburgh, wanted to realign a two-lane state road serving the campus. But the state transportation department did not have the money.

So St. Vincent tried Washington instead. The college hired a professional lobbyist in 2004 and, later that year, two paragraphs were tucked into federal appropriation bills with the help of Representative John P. Murtha, Democrat of Pennsylvania, awarding $4 million solely for that project. College officials said the work would improve the safety and appearance of the road into the campus, which President Bush visited two days ago to give the college’s commencement address.

Religious organizations have long competed for federal contracts to provide social services, and they have tried to influence Congress on matters of moral and social policy — indeed, most major denominations have a presence in Washington to monitor such legislation. But an analysis of federal records shows that some religious organizations are also hiring professional lobbyists to pursue the narrowly tailored individual appropriations known as earmarks.

A New York Times analysis shows that the number of earmarks for religious organizations, while small compared with the overall number, have increased sharply in recent years. From 1989 to January 2007, Congress approved almost 900 earmarks for religious groups, totaling more than $318 million, with more than half of them granted in the Congressional session that included the 2004 presidential election. By contrast, the same analysis showed fewer than 60 earmarks for faith-based groups in the Congressional session that covered 1997 and 1998.

Earmarks are individual federal grants that bypass the normal appropriations and competitive-bidding procedures. They have been blamed for feeding the budget deficit and have figured in several Capitol Hill bribery scandals, prompting recent calls for reform from White House and Congressional leaders.

They are distinct from the competitive, peer-reviewed grants that have traditionally been used by religious institutions and charities to obtain money for social services.

As the number of faith-based earmarks grew, the period from 1998 to 2005 saw a tripling in the number of religious organizations listed as clients of Washington lobbying firms and a doubling in the amount they paid for services, according to an analysis by The Times.

Sometimes the earmarks benefited programs aimed at helping others. There have been numerous earmarks totaling $5.4 million for World Vision, the global humanitarian ministry, to conduct job training, youth mentoring and gang prevention programs. Another earmark provided $150,000 to help St. Jerome’s Church in the Bronx build a community center, and Fuller Theological Seminary, a leading evangelical seminary in Pasadena, Calif., received $2 million to study gambling and juvenile violence.

But many of the earmarks address the prosaic institutional needs of some specific religious group, like the ones giving the Mormon Church control over two parcels of federal land of historic significance to the church, transferring 10 acres of federal forest land to a small church in Florida, allowing a historic church surrounded by a federal park in Ohio to use public land to expand its parking space, and handing several acres of government land over to a Catholic college in New Hampshire. (An interactive database of almost 900 faith-based earmarks can be found at nytimes.com.)

Earmarks have also helped finance new buildings on religious college campuses, including a fitness center at Malone College, a small evangelical Christian liberal arts college in Canton, Ohio.

The $1 million that helped build the center came from an earmark by Representative Ralph S. Regula, whose district includes the college, according to Suzanne Thomas, director of communications for the college. Another earmark helped pay for a new school of nursing, she said.

In seeking the earmarks, the college hired a Washington lobbyist “to help us with a ‘boots on the ground’ program of meeting with various Congressional and Senate leaders,” Ms. Thomas said, noting that many private colleges are enlisting similar lobbying help.

Several scholars who wrote books about religious advocacy work in Washington in the 1980s and early 1990s say the push for earmarks identified in The Times analysis represents a sharp departure from the lobbying strategies traditionally associated with religious groups. One of them, Allen D. Hertzke, a professor at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, said, “I never heard religious lobbyists talk about earmarks.” That view was echoed by Daniel J.<133>B. Hofrenning, a professor at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn.: “Getting heavily into the pork-barrel politics of earmarks — that is a distinctive change.”

It is a shift that some religious advocates find worrisome.

“Earmarks are bad public policy,” said Maureen Shea, director of the Episcopal Office of Government Relations in Washington. “If earmarks are not in the public interest, I would wonder why the faith community would be involved in them. It would hurt our credibility.”

James E. Winkler, who has represented the United Methodist General Board of Church and Society since 2000, says he fears that the pursuit of earmarks could muffle religion’s moral voice. “For example, we’ve opposed the war since day one,” he said. “But what if an earmark benefiting us — money for a Methodist seminary, perhaps — is attached to the supplemental appropriation for the war? You can see how very serious moral conflicts could arise.”

The Rev. Richard Cizik, vice president for governmental affairs at the National Association of Evangelicals, said that while religious organizations should be able to compete for federal money, such groups “shouldn’t do that through earmarks.” He explained, “As good stewards of the public trust, we have to be transparent and above board — and earmarks are not transparent or above board.”

And, constitutional lawyers point out, because the First Amendment prohibits direct government financing of religious activities, earmarks that steer money to religious groups pose constitutional risks. Indeed, several faith-based earmarks were successfully challenged as unconstitutional long after Congress approved them.

Paul Marcone, a lobbyist and former Capitol Hill staff member who specializes in getting earmarks for nonprofit clients, disputes the notion that religious groups should not pursue them.

“Despite what the critics say, there is far more transparency in earmarks than in the discretionary grant process,” Mr. Marcone said. “It’s the difference between unelected bureaucrats using a peer-review process and an elected member of Congress.”

Applying for competitive government grants “is a very frustrating process,” Mr. Marcone added. “You might score very high and have an innovative program, and still not get funded.” By contrast, he said, all his nonprofit clients who sought earmarks received grants within two years of signing on with him.

The lobbying firm to which Malone College and dozens of other religious organizations have turned is Mr. Marcone’s former employer, the Russ Reid Company, based in Pasadena, Calif. Since 1964, Russ Reid has provided direct-mail and other fund-raising services to some of the nation’s largest charities, like World Vision and Habitat for Humanity.

But it also maintains a government relations office in Washington, directed by Mark D. McIntyre, a former Congressional press secretary and a vice presidential speechwriter in the Reagan administration. “If your focus is on how faith-based organizations are getting earmarks, I’m your guy,” Mr. McIntyre said in a brief telephone conversation last month. But the company subsequently canceled an interview with Mr. McIntyre and declined to comment further about his work.

Among the dozens of institutions for which Russ Reid has helped obtain earmarks are several faith-based rescue missions, including the Detroit Rescue Mission Ministries, the Light of Life Mission in Pittsburgh and the Gospel Rescue Ministries of Washington; a host of religious colleges and seminaries, including Fuller seminary and Vanguard University in Costa Mesa, Calif., which got a $750,000 earmark for its new science center; and various Catholic ministries, including the specialized children’s educational programs of the Holy Family Institute in Pittsburgh.

Russ Reid has also lobbied for earmarks for World Vision, the humanitarian service ministry. Seeking earmarks is a departure for World Vision. “On the international side, we do not do earmark advocacy,” said Joseph Mettimano, director of public policy and advocacy. Instead of competing for an earmarked slice of money, the charity joins with other aid organizations to lobby for a bigger pie of foreign aid, he explained, adding that similar solidarity on the domestic front could “absolutely” be beneficial.

World Vision is evaluating whether to continue to seek earmarks, according to Romanita Hairston, its vice president for domestic programs. A main concern is the cost-effectiveness of such financing, but the controversy over earmarking is also being weighed, she said.

Among the beneficiaries of Mr. Marcone’s lobbying was the Silver Ring Thing, a faith-based abstinence program for teenagers. The program’s earmarked grant was suspended after being challenged as unconstitutional in May 2005, but other earmarks have been granted to Silver Ring Thing programs in Pennsylvania, Alabama and South Carolina.

Federal law and regulations require that all faith-based recipients of earmarks use the money only for non-religious purposes. But a federal appeals court decision late last year has raised fresh constitutional questions about earmarks awarded specifically to religious rescue missions.

The ruling came in a pending case that involves a homeless shelter owned by the city of Boise, Idaho, but operated, under city contract, by the Boise Rescue Mission. In a preliminary ruling, a trial judge refused to ban voluntary worship services at the city-owned shelter.

In November, the Federal Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco reversed that decision, citing “serious questions” about whether the city’s support for the faith-based rescue mission has the unconstitutional effect of advancing religion.

Constitutional questions aside, the political controversy over earmarks has already begun to affect their availability for all petitioners, including faith-based groups. But some lobbyists are optimistic that earmarks for faith-based groups and other nonprofits will be spared.

Indeed, Mr. Marcone said that increasing the transparency of the earmark process could actually work to the advantage of faith-based groups and other deserving nonprofit groups. If members of Congress are required to put their names on their earmarks, he explained, “they are going to want to award money to programs that are going to make them look good, and those are going to be groups that are doing good work.”

But for those who believe religious organizations should not pursue private-purpose earmarks, that is not necessarily good news.

Clyde Wilcox, a Georgetown University professor who has written extensively on religion and politics, said religious groups would naturally justify earmarks. But their moral authority in Washington — “the extra prophetic power of the religious voice,” as he put it — largely arises from the fact that they are not seen as self-interested, he said. “The loss of that prophetic voice would be profound.”

Kenneth Wald, a professor at the University of Florida who also studies religion in the political arena, foresees a more pragmatic danger for religious organizations that lobby for earmarks. “If they start to act like any other special interest, they’ll start to be treated like any other special interest,” he said. “I think it’s nuts to take that risk.”

Religious Groups Reap Share of U.S. Aid for Pet Projects, NYT, 13.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/13/business/13lobby.html

Pork No Longer Paves the Road to Re-election

December 25, 2006
The New York Times
By TIMOTHY EGAN

PLEASANTON, Calif. — Until this year, Richard W. Pombo, the seven-term Republican congressman from the Central Valley, had never caused much fanfare about bringing home earmarks, the special local projects that circumvent the normal budgeting process. He was far better known for his work fighting environmental regulations.

All that changed in the closing months of this year’s surprisingly tight re-election campaign, when Mr. Pombo began trumpeting the money he had directed to his car-bound district — particularly $75 million for highway expansion, a gift for one of the most congested areas of California.

But it was not enough to persuade voters like Alex Aldenhuysen, a self-described independent, just out of the Navy and voting for the first time in two years. He said he was turned off by Mr. Pombo’s earmark talk. And in the end, Mr. Pombo lost his seat to a Democrat in one of the year’s most significant upsets.

A timeworn bit of political wisdom has been that larding one’s district with pork projects can act as an incumbency protection program. And the Republican leaders in Congress ardently followed that principle.

“The leadership talked all the time about how we’ve got to use earmarks to help these vulnerable members,” said Representative Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, who has become one of Washington’s loudest opponents of earmarking. “But what this election showed was that earmarks just aren’t that important to voters.”

The powers of incumbency could not outweigh far more pressing issues, this year, like the war in Iraq — which became the central point of most of the Democratic campaigns — or the scandals that tarnished the Republican Party as a whole. The abuse of earmarks itself became an issue in several races with some of their biggest users, including two senators and four House members who served on the appropriations committees that oversee federal spending, losing their seats.

It would be premature to write off the power of earmarks. Even in a highly unfavorable year for Republicans, some of the biggest pork-style spenders handily won re-election. And though Democrats have vowed to strip earmarks from unfinished spending bills, the practice is such an oft-used political tool that it may prove too tempting to eliminate.

“When you’re talking about institutional change, you need something sweeping to happen in an election,” said James D. Savage, a professor of political science at the University of Virginia and the author of a book on earmarks. “I think the incentive to use earmarks is still there because it’s one of the few tools a member of Congress can use.”

The number and total cost of earmarks reached record highs over the last two years, but they seemed to offer little help to some members.

Representative Anne M. Northup, a Kentucky Republican who was a member of the House Appropriations Committee, was defeated after five terms despite bringing earmarks to her district, which includes Louisville, that were worth more than five times that of two other districts without competitive races. Mr. Flake identified her as one of the Republican leaders who pushed for earmarks to help troubled incumbents.

“Anne Northup was in there saying we’ve got to have these earmarks to help certain members,” Mr. Flake said. “She was always saying how valuable they are.”

In an interview, Ms. Northup defended earmarks as a flexible budget tool for members of Congress, and she took issue with Mr. Flake’s conclusion that voters rejected politicians who relied on them.

Instead, she singled out one of the most notorious earmarks of the last budget cycle — $230 million to build a bridge from a small town in Alaska to an island with fewer than 50 people — as an anchor that dragged down other Republicans. Representative Don Young, an Alaska Republican who served as chairman of the Transportation Committee, guided a bill loaded with a record amount of earmarks, including his bridge project in his district.

“How do you explain to voters a $230 million bridge to nowhere?” Ms. Northup asked. Mr. Young, who has been chairman of the Transportation Committee since 2001, did not respond to interview requests.

A few weeks before the end of his re-election campaign, Senator Conrad Burns, Republican of Montana, issued an unusual news release. He added up all the earmark projects he had delivered to his state, boasting of bringing home $2 billion to a state with fewer than a million people.

Montana, Mr. Burns said, had been awarded a huge range of federal projects, from $597,000 for the Montana Sheep Institute to $8 million to encourage private space travel.

“That money is going to be spent somewhere,” Mr. Burns said in a debate at Montana State University, where the Burns Technology Center is named for him. “I want Montanans to get first share.”

Mr. Burns, a three-term senator who was considered one of the Senate’s most vulnerable incumbents, lost by about 3,000 votes.

“These vulnerables were literally screaming at the top of their lungs about what they’ve been able to deliver,” said Steve Ellis, a vice president at Taxpayers for Common Sense, a budget watchdog group.

Representative Mike Sodrel, Republican of Indiana, was put on an influential transportation committee two years ago specifically so he could increase the amount of financing for his swing district, he said in a news release.

For Mr. Sodrel’s district, it paid off. He boasted that he had been able to increase transportation spending there by $220 million, or 37 percent, from the previous spending bill. Mr. Sodrel still lost his seat in November.

There were several races in which the ability to bring home hundreds of federal projects might have made enough of a difference to withstand a Democratic tide.

Representative Deborah Pryce of Ohio, the fourth-ranking Republican in the House, issued dozens of news releases over the last 18 months boasting of the projects she brought home to a district that is considered evenly divided between the two parties.

There was $2.27 million to convert a mountain of garbage into a green energy center, $1.1 million to help keep residents of a fast-growing suburb from having to pay more in user fees for a new sewage system, and the latest installment in $2.7 million in federal disbursements to “evaluate freeze-dried berries for their ability to inhibit cancer.”

In a spending bill that never passed the most recent session of Congress, Ms. Pryce’s district stood to get the largest single earmark in Ohio — $1.75 million for a health research institute. In total, the Columbus area lined up about $4.5 million in special money.

By comparison, Portland, Ore. — a similar-sized metropolitan area with no contested Congressional seats — was to receive $625,000 in earmarks.

Ms. Pryce won by barely a thousand votes.

But she was in some ways an exception this year. Several Republican incumbents who tried a similar strategy of touting their earmarks were unsuccessful. Representative Charles Taylor, an eight-term Republican from North Carolina who lost his race, set up an interactive map on his re-election Web site to show the largess that he had directed to every county in his district.

“Click on the map to see how many of your taxpayer dollars Congressman Taylor has returned to your county,” it said, going on to detail items like $1 million for the creation of an Appalachian wine institute, $2 million to an astronomy center deep in the forests of Transylvania County and $3 million to a local school “to promote healthy childhood development and prevent violence.”

Mr. Taylor was chairman of the appropriations panel on the interior and environment, making him a spending “cardinal” in the House. His position may have led him to be caught off guard, said Mr. Ellis said.

“I think being an appropriator makes people lazy,” Mr. Ellis said. “They think they don’t have to do all the other important things for their district. It makes them feel bulletproof — ‘The voters wouldn’t be so stupid as to vote me out of office.’ ”

Mr. Taylor, who refused interview requests, lost his seat to Heath Shuler, who made excessive federal spending one of his campaign themes.

While people who oppose earmarks saw last month’s election as a rejection of the growing volume of special projects, others say that is the wrong way to interpret the results.

“Bringing federal projects home to a district helps an incumbent — period,” said Carl Forti, a spokesman for the National Republican Campaign Committee. “Jeff Flake is totally misreading the results.”

He said Mr. Taylor and another member of the Appropriations Committee, Don Sherwood, Republican of Pennsylvania, had lost because of personal problems. Ms. Northup, he said, “was just in a bad district — it’s always been tight.”

He attributed Indiana’s three losses to poorly run campaigns.

But Mr. Flake cited his own state as proof that that pork does not ensure re-election. A fellow Arizona Republican member who had embraced earmarks, Representative J. D. Hayworth, lost his seat.

“In the end, the voters saw through it,” Mr. Flake said.

Mr. Forti attributed Mr. Hayworth’s loss to running a single-issue campaign, against immigration.

Still, Mr. Flake cites his own experience to back his point. Two years ago, Mr. Flake drew a strong opponent in the primary who rounded up several mayors in his district and made an issue of his refusal to tag earmarks for the home district.

Mr. Flake still won. This year, he was unopposed.

Pork No Longer Paves the Road to Re-election, NYT, 25.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/25/washington/25pork.html

From The Times Archive > On This Day - May 18, 1976

After the Watergate scandal,

Jimmy Carter’s position as a Washington outsider became an electoral asset,

and he received more than 50 per cent of the popular vote in the 1977 election

MR JIMMY CARTER’S campaign technique has improved since the primary season opened in New Hampshire last February. He now carries the aura of a man who might very well be President next January, instead of seeming simply one of a large number of candidates claiming that the wind of victory was in his sails.

He treats the topics he discusses seriously, balancing specific proposals with his now familiar oath of sincerity which still sounds sincere, even though he has been swearing it in public several times a day for nearly 18 months.

At a rally in a Veterans of Foreign Wars hall in a working class suburb of Baltimore on Friday night, the effects of this balance in his oratory were striking. He started to talk about the need for honesty in government and the hall fell silent. Everyone listened. This is the thing which disturbs everyone in America, the long-latent suspicion that every politician in Washington was corrupt, which exploded with Watergate’s demonstration that the suspicion was often justified.

He said that the important thing was for the candidate to keep the confidence of the electors. “I would far rather lose the election, I would rather lose my life, than betray your confidence”, he said. Enough people have heard him and believed him to bring him to the brink of victory.

From The Times Archive > On This Day - May 18, 1976, 18.5.2005,
http://www.newsint-archive.co.uk/pages/main.asp

From The Times Archive > On This Day - July 20, 1974

A resolution submitted to the House Judiciary Committee

sought to impeach President Richard Nixon over the Watergate scandal.

Two weeks later Nixon became the first US president to resign.

A FOUR-PART draft resolution impeaching President Nixon for alleged “high crimes and misdemeanours” ranging from obstruction of justice over the Watergate affair to personal tax fraud was presented to the House Judiciary Committee today. The devastating case was presented by Mr John Doar, chief committee counsel to the 38 members who will have to vote whether to submit a full bill of particulars to the full House. A vote is expected within a week.

Mr Doar was quoted by members as saying “reasonable men acting reasonably would find the President guilty”. Mr Nixon was cited by Mr Doar for:

1. Being “personally and directly responsible” for the cover-up of the Watergate break-in which had been done on his “behalf”. Specifically, he was accused of suborning perjury, paying hush money, destroying evidence, and interfering with the legal investigations.

2. “Massive and persistent” abuse of his powers through the break-in at Dr Ellsberg’s psychiatrists’ office, unlawful wiretapping and abuse of government agencies like the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Internal Revenue Service.

3. Contempt of Congress through his refusal to supply subpoenaed evidence.

4. Fraud in his income taxes, through claiming over $450,000 deductions for a fraudulent gift of his pre-Presidential papers to the nation.

From The Times Archive > On This Day - July 20, 1974, The Times, 20.7.2005,
http://www.newsint-archive.co.uk/pages/main.asp

From The Times Archive > On This Day - August 26, 1967

John Patler, a former propaganda minister for the American Nazi party,

served eight years in jail for the murder of George Lincoln Rockwell,

who founded the party in 1959

MR George Lincoln Rockwell, the leader of the American Nazi Party, was shot and killed by a sniper today in Arlington, Virginia, a suburb of Washington.

The police later announced that they had charged Mr John Patler, a white man, with the murder of Mr Rockwell. Mr William Hassan, a state attorney, added that Mr Patler, who had been arrested a block away from the scene, was a former associate of Mr Rockwell.

Mr Rockwell was in the Dominion Hills shopping centre in Arlington, near where he lived, and the sniper fired from a roof across the street, according to the police and witnesses.

Mr Robert Hancock, aged 17, an attendant in a coin-operated laundry in the shopping centre, said he had heard two shots at about 12.20pm. He walked out of the “laundromat” and saw a man standing on the roof of a beauty shop next door. He said that Mr Rockwell had been driving out of the centre’s parking lot at the wheel of an old model Chevrolet when he was shot and that he then apparently dived for the door of the passenger’s side of the vehicle and fell out. The car crashed into another vehicle.

Mr Tom Blakeney, the owner of a barber shop next to the beauty parlour, said he had seen the bullets go through the windowshield of Mr Rockwell’s car. He and another barber had run after the sniper who immediately leapt from the roof of the beauty shop and ran into Bon Air Park.

From The Times Archive > On This Day - August 26, 1967, The Times, 26.8.2005,
http://www.newsint-archive.co.uk/pages/main.asp

November 23, 1963

A tragedy for the world

From The Guardian archive

Saturday November 23, 1963
Guardian

President Kennedy was in Texas to gather support for his Civil Rights programme. Like Lincoln before him, it has cost him his life. He believed in it and he fought for it.

The best memorial to him would be a more rapid acceptance of it in the South and in Northern communities where the subtler forms of segregation and discrimination are practised and, for that matter, in every country where equal rights and opportunities are not accorded without regard to race or religion.

Civil rights became the foremost part of his domestic programme. He had to move carefully; both because haste could so easily bring bloodshed, and because he was opposed by the Southern wing of his own party.

His platform in the 1960 Presidential campaign came out boldly for the Negro's right to share school benches and polling booths with whites, and for the Federal Government's duty to enforce this. He was backed in this by Lyndon Johnson, himself a Southerner and now President.

To the world, he will be remembered as the President who helped to bring the thaw in the cold war. The real change came only after Cuba.

That crisis, taking the world to the edge of a nuclear war, left its mark on both him and Mr Khrushchev. Kennedy certainly - and Mr Khrushchev probably - knew that a false move by either of them could have been catastrophic.

Although, in a conventional sense, the Americans won the encounter, there was no crowing in the White House. The President recognised how frightening were the consequences of misunderstandings. But he worked for improvement, as did Mr Khrushchev, and it came. He leaves in this a monument - but one on to which his successors must build.

President Kennedy respected his allies and worked with them. His last visit to this country was during a lightning tour of Europe - part triumphal and part persuasive - in which he sought to reassure people and Governments that the United States was as deeply committed as ever to the defence of Western Europe.

But he will be remembered for his youth and friendliness. "The torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans," he said.

To people in many other countries it was gladdening to see leading the greatest of Western nations a young man, though one matured by war and years of public service.

He and Mrs Kennedy made the White House what it has hardly ever been before - a place where artists and thinkers of all nations and creeds were welcomed. He was a true liberal, a thinker himself no less than a man of action, and a courageous leader.

From the Guardian archive > November 23, 1963 > A tragedy for the world, G, Republished 23.11.2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/fromthearchive/story/0,,1954874,00.html

President Kennedy assassinated

November 22, 1963
Alistair Cooke, New York

President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was shot during a motorcade drive through downtown Dallas at 1pm (6pm British time) this afternoon. He died in the emergency room of the Parkland Memorial Hospital 32 minutes after the attack. He was 46. He is the third president to be assassinated in office since Lincoln, and the first since President McKinley in 1901.

Police held as chief suspect Lee Oswald, said to be a self-styled Communist who once renounced US citizenship and unsuccessfully sought to become a Russian citizen. The chairman of a Fair Play for Cuba committee, he was arrested in a cinema after a policeman had been killed.

The new President is the Vice-President, Lyndon Baines Johnson, a 55-year-old native Texan, who took the oath of office in Dallas at five minutes to four at the hands of a woman judge, and later arrived in Washington with the body of the dead President.

This is being written in the numbed interval between the first shock and the harried attempt to reconstruct a sequence of fact from an hour of tumult. However, this is the first assassination of a world figure that took place in the age of television, and every network and station in the country took up the plotting of the appalling story. It begins to form a grisly pattern, contradicted by a grisly preface: the projection on television screens of a happy crowd and a grinning President only a few seconds before the gunshots.

The President was almost at the end of his two-day tour of Texas. He was to make a luncheon speech in the Dallas Trade Mart building and his motor procession had another mile to go. He had had the warmest welcome of his trip from a great crowd at the airport.

The cries a personal touch were so engaging that Mrs Kennedy took the lead and walked from the ramp of the presidential plane to a fence that held the crowd in. She was followed by the President, and they seized hands and forearms and smiled at the people.

The Secret Service and police were relieved to get them into their car, where Mrs Kennedy sat between the President and John B Connally, the governor of Texas. Dallas police had instituted the most stringent security in the city's history: they wanted no repetition of the disgraceful brawl that humiliated Adlai Stevenson when he attended a United Nations rally on October 24. The motorcade was going along slowly but smoothly when three muffled shots, which the crowd first mistook for fireworks, cracked through the cheers.

    President Kennedy assassinated, Alistair Cooke, New York, November 22, 1963,
    The Guardian > Archives, G, p. 30, 23.11.2005,
    http://digital.guardian.co.uk/guardian/2005/11/23/pages/ber30.shtml

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