2-SEPTEMBER-1996
Charles Murray reports that illegitimacy increased at record rates in the 1990s. A third of all American births, and 70 per cent of all black American births, are out of wedlock. But hey, we're winning the debate.
The media all but ignored the quadrennial Polympic Games in Washington, D.C., so we'll give you results here as fast as we can make them up. The shocker, of course, was that President Clinton was disqualified in the Prevarathon for that unguarded remark about raising our taxes too much. The judges ruled that he was trying to tell a truth! -- an almost unthinkable lapse. Mr. Clinton had built a seemingly insurmountable lead with ``didn't inhale'' before his tragic stumble.
Republican platform deliberations began with clear victories for pro-life delegates. The Dole campaign wanted to list abortion as an issue of ``personal conscience'' on which Republicans disagree. Despite heavy pressure on delegates -- from convention manager Paul Manafort, among others -- conservatives stood firm: intra-party disagreement would be acknowledged only generically, and vaguely pro-choice language kept out of the platform. Dole apparently thought the presidential nominee's word would be decisive. The price of his hubris was that his bold new tax-cut initiative had to compete for attention with this defeat in the same old intra-mural battle. He would have known better if he had paid attention to recent platform fights -- or, for that matter, to Kate O'Beirne's recent column on ``pro-Dole, out-of-control'' delegates. The next day, repeated attempts by abortion-rights proponents to ``yank the plank'' were defeated by large margins. This was predictable: pro-choice Republicans never organize to win these votes; they take their case to the media instead. They were at pains to declare they were good Republicans who would work hard to elect Dole; California Gov. Pete Wilson even held a press conference to say he would try to force a floor vote if he had to, all in order to help Dole. Only Ann Stone, head of Republicans for Choice (a wholly owned subsidiary of CNN), was out of step rhetorically: she has taken to promising that November will be ``payback time.'' As we went to press the Dole team was deciding whether to try to placate Wilson and avoid a floor fight by allowing a pro-choice minority report. If Wilson is sincere about having Dole's best interests at heart -- which the nominee's staff doubts -- he can prove it by repudiating Mrs. Stone.
Leading in the Polympic Sword Fall are Hillary Clinton's former law partners Webster Hubbell, Vincent Foster, and William Kennedy; the Clintons' former business partners Jim and Susan McDougal; and former Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker. However, many Clinton associates have yet to take the big plunge. Keep an eye on Susan Thomases, Maggie Williams, Patsy Thomasson, Bernie Nussbaum, and Bruce Lindsey, among a host of other top contenders, in a field so crowded that we lose count.
For months the media have been going on about a forthcoming revolt by the GOP moderates. Now, at the first test -- the GOP platform debate in San Diego -- there was a successful rebellion: but by conservatives, and on the very issue which the party establishment had sought to obscure and defuse. By a nice coincidence, in the three GOP Senate primaries held on Tuesday, in Michigan, Georgia, and Kansas, the more conservative candidate won in each case. Sam Brownback won handsomely against the moderate Sheila Frahm, who had been appointed to fill the seat Senator Dole vacated in June. (Mr. Brownback's victory was achieved, it must be said, without any help from NR.) Where Mr. Brownback was vulnerable, notably on immigration, Mrs. Frahm failed to raise the issue. Where he was clearly in tune with the voters, notably on spending cuts, she attacked him as going too far. In other words, Mrs. Frahm was petrified by respectability, more attuned to media liberals than to her conservative constituents, and she is accordingly now a respectable ex-senator. Two conclusions suggest themselves. The conservative wing of the GOP is where the party's energy, passion, and ideas now repose. And moderate Republicans are a nomenklatura without an ideology. Indeed, that is why they appeal to the media.
The Federal Election Commission's complaint against the Christian Coalition -- that its voter guides constitute partisan activity co-ordinated with candidates -- is spurious and likely to fail in court. The operative legal standard here requires literature to include ``express advocacy'' (i.e., words like ``oppose,'' ``vote for,'' or ``defeat'') for it to count as partisan. The Coalition's guides simply inform voters how officials voted on issues of concern to Christian conservatives. If Democrats fare worse than Republicans, it is because of their votes. All the FEC has revealed is its penchant, typical of regulatory bodies, to expand its powers.
In the Heavyweight Lifting event, Maggie Williams, the First Lady's chief of staff, managed to hoist 422 Vincefosterfiles, a world record and solid gold. Patsy Thomasson took the silver by lifting 419 Vincefosterfiles. Keep an eye on Craig Livingstone, whose practice lift of 1,000 RepublicanFBIfiles marks him as a rising star.
Rep. Sue Kelly (R., N.Y.) is part of the Republican fringe that voted against the ban on partial-birth abortions. She is being vigorously challenged by Joe DioGuardi, a right-to-life conservative who used to hold the seat. So it's not surprising that Reps. Bob Dornan (R., Calif.) and Chris Smith (R., N.J.), two of the most committed pro-lifers in Congress, would back DioGuardi. For this crime, the House leadership has come down on them like a ton of bricks. They are being denied legislative-conference seats which their subcommittee chairmanships would normally guarantee them. They were warned that their amendments would not reach the floor (the leadership has backed off on this point). And Smith's travel budget -- he chairs the International Operations and Human Rights subcommittee -- has been cut off. This follows a pattern in the 104th Congress of conservative dissenters being disciplined more harshly than liberal ones. Perhaps Bob Dole could suggest a tolerance plank to the House GOP leadership.
Susan Thomases, Maggie Williams, and Hillary Rodham Clinton took the Amnesia Relay Team gold, although none of them has any specific recollection of being in the event.
The Dole campaign has found an issue -- marijuana. Pot use among kids is up since Bill Clinton was inaugurated, so vote for Dole. But cocaine use is down; should we therefore vote for Clinton? It is too much to expect the GOP to rethink drug policy in the midst of an election campaign, but certain points -- the medical uses of marijuana; the draconian sentences still being served by casual possessors -- should induce it to show reason on the topic. Sending out Jointman to joust with Buttman keeps the debate on the puerile level favored by the Democrats. If Dole wants to make headway, he will have to focus on policies (e.g., affirmative action) which the Clintonites support when they are stone cold sober.
Whitewater Kaiaiaiaia!aking: Gold, Mike McCurry. Silver, Eleanor Clift. Bronze, also Eleanor Clift.
Much uneasiness among gun-control supporters. Prof. John Lott of the University of Chicago has released a terribly inconvenient study which finds that when law-abiding people are allowed to carry guns, crime drops. His nationwide, 15-year study records an 8.5 per cent drop in homicide, a 5 per cent drop in rape, and a 7 per cent drop in aggravated assault in jurisdictions which permit concealed weapons. Lott observed a slight rise in non-violent crimes, presumably as criminals plied their craft less riskily. Today 36 states now permit concealed weapons, up from 9 states ten years ago, which suggests the common sense underlying Prof. Lott's research has made a bigger impression on state legislators than on gun-control advocates.
Hillary Clinton won the Heavyweight Lift-and-Shred, disposing of everything but her Rose Law Firm billing records.
Reviewing in the New York Times Book Review, Michael Lind's latest philippic against conservatism, Brent Staples whoops with delight over the author's discovery of the ``hoax'' of mass illegitimacy which, ``along with the idea that welfare causes out-of-wedlock births, is driving virtually all welfare policy.'' If Mr. Lind is right, Mr. Staples's review should have been on the newspaper's front page: MILLIONS OF FATHERS FOUND AT HOME./WOMEN HONEST AFTER ALL./WELFARE REFORM A MISTAKE. Not even the New York Times, however, will run that story because Mr. Lind's conclusion was a . . . fallacy. He pointed out that the rate of black teenagers' having out-of-wedlock babies has remained stable at 80 per 1,000 from 1920 through 1990. On this argument, illegitimate births have risen as a percentage of all births because married couples have fewer children, not because single women have more. Even if that were so, it would still be cause for concern because, unlike the period 1920 - 60, most young blacks today grow up in communities in which illegitimate births (and their attendant ills) are the norm. But it is not so. As Richard Brookhiser points out in NR's review (page 89), Mr. Lind's own book shows that from 1960 to 1989 expected lifetime births almost doubled for the average unmarried black woman (and almost tripled for the average unmarried white woman). The culprit? Welfare. Until the Sixties, single women might have children outside marriage, but they would then find a father for them and establish a two-parent family. Welfare enables single-parent families to subsist indefinitely while excusing fathers from their duties. The resulting family crisis is, alas, no hoax. And Mr. Staples's ready acceptance of it as one merely shows that fallacies which comfort are harder to detect than those which jar.
The Trough Bucketball gold went to Rep. Dick Gephardt with a near-perfect score of 9.91 slops. Mr. Gephardt also won a bronze in logrolling.
In this issue (Letters, page 4), Linda Chavez and John J. Miller seek to drive a wedge between NR and our economics analyst, Ed Rubenstein, by suggesting that he shares their view that immigration reduces inflation. Alas, they commit an elementary confusion between inflation and inflationary pressures of which Mr. Rubenstein, a staunch monetarist, was not guilty. When wages outstrip productivity (an inflationary pressure), the Fed has a choice: it can either do nothing and watch unemployment rise, or reduce the value of the wage hike by increasing the money supply (inflation). Immigration certainly works to remove this painful dilemma from the Fed -- but at the cost of producing the secondary effects directly. By increasing the supply of labor, immigration either reduces wages, or displaces existing workers, or a little of both. Naturally, anything that cuts wages and hikes unemployment will also tend to reduce inflationary pressures. Perhaps Miss Chavez and Mr. Miller favor other policies that will produce these desirable results. As for their general complaint about NR on immigration, we will happily say something good about them when they produce a good argument.
Inhaling: Gold, Mike McCurry. Silver, George Stephanopoulos. Bronze, Bill Clinton.
NR apologizes for its mistaken assertion two issues ago that General Sherman destroyed the Virginia Military Institute, when, in fact, he was preparing for urban renewal in Atlanta. We were misled by a professor of history teaching at VMI, who must have been confused by the spirit of General Sherman now at work in Lexington, Virginia. We also regret that our contents page incorrectly advertises Karina Rollins's interview with Libertarian presidential candidate Harry Browne, which will appear in our next issue. Instead, we run Andrew Stuttaford's article on candidates for cryonics on that page.
Bimbothalon finals: Gold, Gennifer Flowers. Silver, that mummy. Bronze, the Marriott Hotel. Disqualified, Paula Jones.
Word 7.0, the fancy Windows '95 version of Microsoft's popular word processor, has a partisan spellchecker. It recognizes the names Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, and Clinton, but not Nixon (for which it offers to substitute ``Nikon'') or Reagan (``regain,'' ``reign''). Either Bill Gates favors Democrats, or he appreciates that conservatives don't need spellcheckers.
As the Hague Tribunal tries to hale Serbian war criminals before the bar of justice, the world should remember 1) that there are also Muslim and Croat thugs who are being (or should be) pursued; and 2) that most Serbs in the former Yugoslavia have been bystanders of its chaos. The Bosnian agony is the work of former Communist politicians and ideologues, willing to use communal hatreds in order to gain or hold power. And lest we feel too complacent, this is a feature of multi-ethnic regimes with no commonly acknowledged source of authority.
Dr. Jack K. Death presented some of his weird philosophy to the National Press Club, discoursing on Christ ``dying for three or four days'' with all those nails through Him, ugly, ugly. How much more ``dignified'' it would have been, he ventured, ``had Christ died in my van.'' He does, Jack, every time.