The Week - News Briefs

-- Naomi Wolf wrote a book called Promiscuities. And she's advising the vice president?

-- Manchester, N.H. (AP)-Sources close to Texas Gov. George W. Bush say that the Republican front-runner will not attend the Feb. 1 primary here because of a scheduling conflict with a Houston fundraiser. The event, headlined by Tejano singer Emilio and billed as "A Salute to a Conservative Compassion that Cares," is expected to raise nearly $2 million, bringing Bush's total fundraising haul to $100 million. Bush aides brush off criticisms that their candidate is "dodging" early caucuses and primaries. "Why do we want to get down in the mud with candidates who no one takes seriously?" asks one top-level aide, arguing that the "stature gap" between Bush and the GOP candidates actually competing in the early events only serves to cement the governor's lead in national polls. The New Hampshire announcement comes a week after Bush begged off the Iowa caucuses, citing a long-planned parachuting excursion with his father, the former president.

-- President Clinton began his recent budget meeting with congressional leaders by announcing that he and they had no quarrel over spending levels: Congress had already increased funding above his budget requests for scores of programs. Hundreds of programs will receive spending increases over last year's levels. Once Clinton vetoed a tax cut, it was inevitable that much of the budget surplus would be spent on bigger government. The only consolation is that, by pledging not to spend the Social Security surplus, Republicans at least restrained the budget's growth. This is as good a result as could have been expected, given that the Republican Congress has never made a sustained argument for limited government-not even in 1995, when the elimination of the deficit was the GOP's rallying cry. Republicans are justly congratulating themselves for avoiding another political debacle in this year's budget negotiations. But a tactical victory should not disguise a strategic retreat.

-- George W. Bush's newest ads boast that the governor has "reduced the growth of state government spending [in Texas] to the lowest in forty years." The Forbes campaign volleys back that "Bush makes Bill Clinton look like a fiscal conservative." The truth lies somewhere in the middle. The Cato Institute's fiscal report card on the governors gave Bush a grade of B and said "his record of fiscal restraint puts him near the top of the list of Republican governors." But that was prior to his latest budget- which increases state spending in Texas from $86 to $98 billion, a 9 percent increase over two years. Has Bush been a tax cutter? Well, sort of. Earlier this year, he took a $6.4 billion surplus, cut taxes by $1.85 billion, and spent the rest on schools, pay raises, and children's programs. Welcome to compassionate conservatism. There is, however, a difference between Gov. Bush and President Clinton, even this year: The governor signed a tax cut and Clinton vetoed one.

-- Vice President Gore was embarrassed to disclose that his campaign has paid feminist author Naomi Wolf a monthly retainer of $15,000. That rate was quickly slashed to $5,000 when it became public-Gore had tried to keep Wolf's name off federal-election reports by funneling the money through Democratic consulting firms-but the incident threatens to become a Joycelyn Elders-style headache. Wolf has written that adults should encourage teenagers to plot a middle course between abstinence and license, something she dubs "sexual gradualism" but that can be described more mundanely as masturbation and oral sex. (The Third Way in the backseat.) Her political advice isn't much better than her parental advice: Gore, she says, must abandon his "beta male" image by challenging the White House "alpha male." It's a bit late for that. The Man Who Runs With Wolf, Earth-Tone Al, is clearly being taken for a ride.

-- Virginia Republicans won control of the House of Delegates for the first time since the Civil War, giving the GOP control of the state from the governorship on down. The victory represents the culmination of a 20- year Republican trend in Virginia and a final vindication of the vision of the late conservative activist Dick Obenshain, who realized in the 1970s that the party would be revitalized only if it moved right and lured conservative voters away from the Democrats. Unfortunately, there were not many issues dividing the two parties this year. GOP governor Jim Gilmore neutralized a Democratic attempt to make transportation a cutting issue by proposing a $2.6 billion road-building plan of his own. But Gilmore still benefits from the warm feelings he engendered by killing the state's hated car tax in 1998-and the car-tax issue continues to percolate elsewhere. In Washington State, despite dire warnings from Democratic governor Gary Locke and various business leaders, voters passed an initiative repealing that state's annual tax on cars. This will keep some $500 million per year out of the state's coffers. In addition, the initiative requires that future tax increases be approved by voters in advance. The tax revolt still lives-at least if the tax man makes a grab for our SUVs.