It’s true George W. Bush has been stumbling and mumbling and doing a
perfect imitation of a man trying to lose a presidential race. The
Republican faithful are becoming so despondent, Rush Limbaugh spends
half of his shows trying to buck-up their morale.
But take heart from William Kristol. The editor of
the Weekly
Standard, who is considered one of the Republican Party’s sagest political strategists, thinks G.W. can still beat Al Gore — if he follows the free advice he offers this week in his magazine.
It’s really not that complicated, Kristol says — Bush should run as a conservative: “George W. Bush is a reasonably conservative Republican who deeply disapproves of Bill Clinton’s conduct in the White House. Perhaps he should run as a reasonably conservative Republican who deeply disapproves of Bill Clinton’s conduct in the White House.”
That means instead of playing namby-pamby, two-hand touch politics and hoping that Clinton-Gore fatigue and his own allegedly winning personality will carry him to the White House, Bush should seek victory “through ideology and contrast and partisanship.”
“The point is to make a serious case against Gore’s fitness to be president. Bush needs to treat Gore not as just another slippery politician but as a willing aider and abettor of Bill Clinton’s corruption of the electoral, political, and legal processes of our nation. He needs to explain that to elect Gore is to fail to hold Clinton-Gore responsible for what they have done.”
While Bush and Gore arm-wrestle for the keys to the Oval Office, many Americans will be distracted by another quadrennial event the whole world is allegedly watching — the Olympics in Sydney.
The 2000 Games, which begin today on the other side of the world and run through Oct. 1, will never be the world-mesmerizing event they were when we were up against the cross-chromosomed and drug-enhanced robo-jocks of the Evil Empire.
And no matter how many billion earthlings they say will tune in, it’s hard to believe anyone but NBC’s accountants and a few sports mags are really excited. If you really do care who wins what Down Under, however,
ESPN the Magazine and
Sports Illustrated offer deep guides to the Games. Most of the events will take place while we’re asleep, which is why everything will be televised by NBC 12 hours later, when it’s prime time in America.
For those who won’t be able to face the new day without knowing the final score of our “Dream Team’s” death match with international basketball powers such as Libya, Sports Illustrated offers a handy guide to all the Olympic Internet sites, where results will be posted in real time.
And God bless Brian Cazeneuve. He bravely
predicts who’ll win medals in every single event, 200 meters to men’s handball. He may be right that China will win its first gold in gymnastics, but he’s crazy if he thinks Cao Ling of China is going to beat Lolita Evglevskaya in the 10-meter air pistol.
Quick Reads
If you live anywhere near a large American city, you’ll be able to relate to
Mother Jones’ “Death of a Neighborhood,” which focuses on how urban renewal projects of the early 1960s destroyed much of the life and character of New Haven, Conn.
The federal urban renewal projects of yore that turned so many poor and/or black city neighborhoods into sterile, concrete wastelands have been discredited by everyone. But as MJ writer Rob Gurwitt explains, there is a new kind of corporate-powered urban renewal coming to a town near you.
These private-public partnerships (i.e., taxpayer-subsidized development projects) already are tearing down large chunks of what’s left of central cities like Baltimore and Pittsburgh, where local politicians are abusing blight laws and making deals to turn over run-down but vibrant commercial districts to their favorite development companies.
Gurwitt’s piece focuses on explaining how New Haven became the national poster child for the failure of 1960s urban renewal. He does a nice job, though he tends to heap too much blame for today’s new kind of urban “removal” project on greedy corporations instead of where it belongs — on slimy local politicians who make the usually uneconomic projects possible.
By the way, in spite of its progressive/union-loving/corporate-hating political tilt, let’s be open-minded and take time out to give Mother Jones some credit for being such a good magazine.
OK, they’re a bunch of left-wing wankers who flout the basic laws of economics, want all workers in one big union and think everyone is entitled to a living wage of $50K a year. But over the years, MJ has consistently practiced good journalism and put out a solid product.
We’re not just talking about its new graphics, which debut with the September/October issue, and which MJ’s press releases say gives it “a smart contemporary look.”
Unlike its dreary, type-heavy, ideological soulmates the Nation and the Progressive, MJ has taken great pains to make itself attractive, accessible and reader-friendly. Lively, slick, photo-filled, it looks like it belongs at the corner newsstand, even if its content is more suitable for the local Socialist Workers’ bookstore. MJ’s got a good
website, too.
The New Republic, where the Gore for President cheerleading never stops, takes a long hard look at the reality of the Great State of Texas in this week’s cover story. In
“Why Texas Isn’t Texas Anymore,” writer Benjamin Soskis says that Texas is neither the cultural, political and economic backwater the Democrats say it is nor the land of the free and self-reliant that Republicans say it is.
Both characterizations are wrong, says Soskis. The reality is that Texas, despite the tenacious myths and commonly held stereotypes, is no longer an exceptional place. It is “becoming more like the rest of the nation than anyone, Texan or non-Texan, wants to admit.”
And how else can you say it: The new magazine about space,
Space
Illustrated, has been launched. Lou Dobbs, the former anchor of CNN’s “Moneyline,” who left to form the website space.com, is the magazine’s chairman and CEO.
He says the magazine, which has a full-page ad for an Omega “Moon Watch” on its first inside page and an ad for a $495 limited-edition NASA Space Watch on its last page, was created “to convey the wonder and mystery of space by combining breathtaking space photography with the best writing and space reporting.”
It’s only 64 pages fat, but it is filled with stories about spacewalks written by astronauts, articles on the Hubble Space telescope and huge photos of mud-red Martian craters and close-ups of black holes that only a geologist or astronomer could love. How long it stays in orbit — it costs $10 a year for six issues — is anyone’s guess.
Space exploration, sadly, is a lot like the Olympics — not as exciting as it used to be.
