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The President and Mrs. Clinton toured South America, which will not soon forget nor easily forgive. In Brazil, the First Gringos told President Fernando Henrique Cardoso to change the time set for a state dinner at his palace. ``Who decides about what time I have dinner in my palace?'' he fumed. ``That's me.'' The Clintons remarked that Brazil's judicial system was ``inefficient'' (causing Chief Justice Celso de Mello to decline an invitation to dinner with Mr. Clinton in protest), and that the country was marred by ``endemic corruption'' (prompting the leader of Brazil's lower house, Inocencio Oliveira, to sputter, ``I hate Americans''). The Clintons kept spreading their sunshine, observing that Rio de Janeiro was ``one of the most dangerous cities in the world'' (Washington, D.C., isn't?), that Brasilia, the capital, was ``dry and sterile'' and ``soulless,'' and that commuters in São Paulo made love in their cars during traffic jams, probably without even having any Astroturf in the back seat. On leaving, the Clintons made some remarks in Spanish, no doubt forgetting that Brazilians speak Portuguese.
Congressional Republicans should grow up and stop whining about President Clinton's efforts to use the line-item veto. For decades the GOP campaigned in favor of restoring the presidential budget-impoundment authority that was terminated after Watergate. Well, the line-item veto passed in 1995, and in recent weeks Mr. Clinton cut a measly $144 million from a $248-billion defense-appropriation bill and $287 million from a $9.2-billion military-construction bill. But hear the GOP howl! House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bob Livingston described the President's use of the vetoes as ``a raw exercise of power.'' Deficit hawk Sen. Pete Domenici moans, ``We will have a real war going.'' Sen. Robert F. Bennett whimpers, ``We had no warning.'' Only Sen. John McCain has urged the President on, submitting his own $27-million list of terminations. Remember when the GOP pledged to eliminate the Departments of HUD, Energy, and Commerce? You've come a long way, baby.
GROWING, GROWING, GONE: Wisconsin's tax-cutting governor Tommy Thompson has outraged conservatives, and harmed his presidential chances, by, yes, raising taxes. The state's 1998 budget includes higher levies, pushed by Thompson, on gasoline, cigarettes, and Internet sales, and the governor fought the legislature's plans for income-tax cuts. What happened? Gov. Thompson has been influenced, reports columnist Bob Novak, by liberal staff at the National Governors' Association, which Thompson once chaired and in which he remains active.
Some years ago Lt. Patrick Burns, a Navy flight instructor, began collecting evidence about the training of two F-14 pilots, Lt. Kara Hultgreen and Lt. Carey Lohrenz, because, on the basis of their performance, he feared some catastrophic mishap, and he feared the Navy would be less than truthful if such a mishap occurred. He was right, on both counts. Lt. Hultgreen was killed in a carrier landing accident which the Navy initially blamed on equipment failure. Two years later, a Navy investigation found Lt. Lohrenz's flying to be ``unsafe, undisciplined, and unpredictable.'' She was restricted to land-based aircraft. After the Hultgreen crash, Lt. Burns gave copies of the women's training records to Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness, and Mrs. Donnelly, with help from the Senate Armed Services Committee, brought them to the attention of Navy brass. Now the Navy, like a king executing the bearer of bad news, is withholding a promotion from Lt. Burns. If the Navy ends his career, a brave serviceman, acting in the best interests of his male and female colleagues, will have been sacrificed to the military's devotion to gender-blind standards.
Sex reared its head at the annual conference of the British Conservative Party. Michael Portillo, who once was the leadership candidate of the party's right wing, cooed like a dove, urging tolerance toward homosexuals. Meanwhile the party's new leader, 36-year-old William Hague, ostentatiously shared a hotel bedroom with his fiancee, Ffion Jenkins. Unkind persons said this was to demonstrate his own sexual preference; the slightly less unkind said it was to identify him with young voters. The idea, obviously, was to match Prime Minister Tony Blair's self-proclaimed warmth and modernity. The truth is that many senior Tories still do not understand the reason for their catastrophic electoral defeat, which they attribute to longevity in office, to a ``ruthless'' capitalist image, and to divisions in the parliamentary party. But divisions are not necessarily a bad thing. Suppose Conservatives were split between those aiming to cut spending by 20 per cent, and those determined on a 30 per cent cut; between those pledged that Britain would not go an inch further toward European federalism, and those ready to break free of Brussels now. The party might have won by as big a landslide as it lost by. Dreams, dreams.
As China's President Jiang Zemin comes to Washington to discuss high politics and economic cooperation with President Clinton, attention focuses on China's human-rights record. Less scrutinized is the status of China's so-called free-market economic revival. An interesting column by New York Timesman Thomas L. Friedman warns that China suffers from ``the same state-directed, authoritarian crony capitalism practiced by the Asian tigers Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and Korea.'' This includes financial flows directed toward politically favored banks, failed state enterprises, and overbuilt commercial real estate. It is true that real economic growth in China is running at around 9 per cent, with a wondrous zero inflation rate. However, both inventories and unemployment are beginning to rise, and tens of millions of state workers face lost paychecks if large-scale privatization of state enterprises goes forward. Meanwhile, the Chinese yuan has appreciated relative to the strong dollar, suggesting a sizable illiquidity threat to the economy. Should there be a recession, China's undemocratic political regime could implode in violent repression. President Clinton should make the case for accelerated free-market economic reforms, as well as true democratization and religious freedom. And by the way, it is nice to see Mr. Friedman progressing on the free-market path.
Did the technocrats working on the Euro hear the news from Sweden last week? The Nobel Prize for Economics was awarded to Robert C. Merton of the Harvard Business School and Myron S. Scholes, professor emeritus at the Stanford Business School. With the late Fischer Black they developed a formula that enables financial markets to price stock options and other ``derivatives'' (i.e., instruments whose value is derived from future prices or events). Among the many benefits of their insight, a French farmer can sell Brie in England, Italy, or Germany without worrying about the value of the pound, lira, or Deutsche Mark. Like the Euro, the Black - Scholes option-price equation is fiendishly difficult to understand, let alone explain. Unlike the Euro, it helps the farmer and other producers, without double-digit unemployment, tax hikes, punishing monetary policy, large bureaucracies, or a relinquishing of national sovereignty.
Nobel Peace Laureate Jody Williams is a chunky, barefoot rural Vermonter with lank blonde hair. And a conscience -- she is against pain and against land mines. That's it, right? Wrong. The columnist Philip Terzian discloses that ``before stumbling on land mines as her personal crusade, she had devoted several years of her life to active support for the Sandinista dictatorship in Nicaragua, and promoting the Communist insurgency in El Salvador.'' Miss Williams's real motive is ``rage -- aimed, specifically, at her native land. This became obvious during the several television interviews she gave upon receiving the Nobel Prize.'' Keep your eye on Miss Williams, and on Vermont, which has undergone enormous demographic and political changes in recent decades. Its sole representative in the House is Bernie Sanders, a self-described Socialist. Vermont is now the leftwardmost state in the nation. Jody Williams is right at home there.
And Dario Fo, the Italian Abbie Hoffman, has won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Signor Fo, a longtime member of the Italian Communist Party, said he was ``flabbergasted.'' Everyone else joined him in flabbergastment. After all, he is a lightweight nightclub farceur and prankster who ``questions authority,'' such as it is these days. Snore. Move over, Yeats, Faulkner, Hemingway. The Nobel Prize is careening off the tracks and disappearing into a swamp. Splash. Ooze. Glunk. Are even the Swedes post-modernists now?
Naomi Wolf, being surprisingly gentle toward the Promise Keepers on Meet the Press, said, ``I would like to see them fulfill Jesus' vision, and Jesus was the initial feminist, I think, in the Judaeo-Christian tradition.'' Rightly understood, yes, He was. May we hope that Miss Wolf's feminism will shortly come into line with His?
It looks as if Bill Gates missed a coffee.
In Colorado, on the eve of being executed for rape and murder, Mr. Gary Lee Davis made his last request: a smoke. Is that too much to ask? It is in Colorado, where death row is a smoke-free facility. Request denied.
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