The Week - US political news

Hillary Clinton to Rick Lazio, after he fell in the street and split his lip: "You better put some ice on that."

In a New York Times profile of George W.'s years at Andover, Nicholas D. Kristof writes that Bush was a "mediocre student" who "paled in comparison with his father . . . who had been brilliant at everything he did." But when George the Elder was running against clever Michael Dukakis, all we heard about was how mediocre he had been in school. It's called grading on a curve: Any Republican is smart, except the one running for president.

Maybe former President Bush is just a late bloomer.

A REPORT YOU'LL NEVER SEE: Watching the media discussion of how George W. Bush could broaden his base by picking pro-choice Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge as his running mate, the Al Gore campaign has begun considering a similar, outside-the-box appeal. Pro-lifer Ray Flynn, former Boston mayor and ambassador to the Vatican, is being short- listed for the Democratic number-two slot. "Democrats can agree to disagree," Gore campaign manager Donna Brazile said. Feminists have not hit the panic button. "There are more issues for women than abortion," NOW president Patricia Ireland said. Gore adviser Tony Coelho thinks Flynn makes fundraising sense. While conceding that "big-ticket donors" are all pro-choice, he argued that the party can ill afford to ignore "folks who give $10, $20." Political observers agree the discussion is "a smart move," in the words of Wall Street Journal columnist Al Hunt, even if Flynn doesn't get the nod. "You can't ignore the opinions of millions of Americans."

Jon Corzine spent $30 million of his own money to win the New Jersey Democratic Senate primary. Groans all round, at the state of campaign- finance laws. But Corzine could have won without spending that fortune: His opponent, former governor Jim Florio, is still the most unpopular politician in the state, for having raised taxes during a recession ten years ago. Corzine will, if possible, be even worse than Florio should he win in November: The lefty former Goldman Sachs exec supports universal health care and a "free" college education for high-school grads with a B average or better. New Jersey's real problem is what its politicians do with everybody else's money.

The Club for Growth, a free-market PAC run by NR contributing editor Stephen Moore, made an auspicious debut on the political scene-coming close to toppling a liberal Republican who has served ten terms in Congress. New Jersey congresswoman Marge Roukema was able to win only by moving sharply to the right and leaning on House leaders. Roukema Republicans be warned: The Club for Growth is just getting started.

The case of little Elian Gonzalez has been full of perplexities for conservatives, involving as it has issues of immigration policy and parental rights. Another conundrum was revealed by the federal appellate panel's June 1 decision upholding the right of the INS to permit the boy's father to take him back to Cuba. "Although the courts should not be unquestioning, we should respect the other branches' policy-making powers," said the decision. "The judicial power is a limited power." These are heartening words for conservatives to hear . . . if only they did not mean, in this case, that a child whose mother died to give him freedom is to be shipped back into slavery. We should applaud the three judges for their proper and well-argued restraint. Some of us might even confess a sneaking admiration for the boldness the administration has displayed in pursuing its malign ends in this case. But wait: Isn't there a third branch of government in the United States? What's it called again? Someone remind us, please.

Now that the Cuban-American community has been Kathleen Willeyed and Fidel Castro successfully repackaged as a champion of family values, the administration can deal with Cuban defectors as it pleases, without any risk of negative media reaction. The latest victim of this new brazenness is Cuban baseball star Andy Morales, intercepted at sea by the U.S. Coast Guard with 32 others attempting to flee the Caribbean worker's paradise. Morales was shipped back to the plantation on the grounds that he could demonstrate no "well-founded fear of persecution." It may be true that he had no such fear until the instant he stepped into the boat; from that moment on, however, his career and life prospects changed drastically. As Morales's Miami father-in-law expressed it: "They buried him alive and all the family." Even before Morales landed back in Cuba, the government- controlled press (theirs, not ours) was already publishing articles denigrating his playing skills. On the bright side, though, Andy Morales was spared the 5 a.m. raid by armed INS agents.

Supply-side economics lives. Almost a third of House Democrats crossed party lines to vote to repeal the estate tax. This is a tax levied on top of at least two other layers of tax: Americans pay when they earn money, pay again when they save it, and pay once more when they pass it on. The estate tax is also extraordinarily complex, accounting for as much as 10 percent of the tax code. Defenders say that only 2 percent of Americans pay the tax; but many more juggle their assets to avoid paying it, and still more are affected by it indirectly. President Clinton threatens a veto, but repeal is popular (as evidenced by the House vote). Clinton will doubtless play the class-warfare card, saying that most people do not have a large estate. True enough. But in investor America, a lot of people can hope to build one.