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pundit central:

The Devil in Mr. Graham

Michael Brus
Posted Monday, Jan. 3, 2000, at 3:43 AM ET

Issue 1 is the upcoming caucuses in Iowa and primary in New Hampshire. Issue 2 is predictions for the upcoming millennium.

The pundits are excited by the close presidential races, especially in the Democratic Party. Mara Liasson (Fox News Sunday) notes that Bill Bradley raised about twice as much money as Al Gore last quarter, and George Stephanopoulos (ABC's This Week) says that Bradley is spending it furiously in New Hampshire and Iowa. Pundits are less sanguine that John McCain can topple George W. Bush, but many note that McCain's fund raising, while well behind Bush's clip, has increased substantially. Moreover, his lead in the New Hampshire polls seems to be holding. Skeptics like Bob Novak (NBC's Meet the Press) argue that no matter how well McCain does in the early primaries, the party establishment will never let such a maverick become the nominee. George F. Will argues that for Bradley and McCain to win their party's nominations, independent voters (that is, those not affiliated with a single party) would have to become decisive, which is very unlikely in the primaries. (For an opposing view, click here.) Michael Oreskes (This Week) wonders whether Iowa and New Hampshire matter at all: They represent a tiny fraction of nominating delegates, and the value of their traditional spoils--such as early press coverage--has diminished as other states have moved their primaries closer to the first two.

Many panelists and guests muse on what the 21st century will bring. On Meet the Press, Sen. Pat Moynihan, D-N.Y., says that the successful conquest of the Y2K glitch bodes well for future technological hurdles. Journalist William F. Buckley Jr. hopes that the 21st century brings greater religious faith than the 20th. Gen. Colin Powell says that America's ability to overcome the political trauma of 1968 gives him hope that its society will be just as "resilient" this century. Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin opines that the 21st century will provide more opportunity to help the poor. On CNN's Late Edition, Tucker Carlson predicts that politics will continue to be yoked to the whim of current events. Susan Page predicts that the globalization of society will render ideological differences obsolete in the developed world. E.J. Dionne predicts that the economic boom of the '90s will lead to a period of social reform, much as the Gilded Age of the late 19th century led to the Progressive Era.


Caressing the Hand that Feeds Him

Bruce Morton, who ends each Late Edition show with a pithy television essay on culture and politics, pokes fun this week at the fatuous use of millennial themes to sell products--from Millennium Barbie to Millennium Budweiser to M & M's, the "official candy of the millennium," and so on. After Morton's segment finishes and Late Edition host Wolf Blitzer signs off, there is a moment for station identification. That's right, the station is "CNN: The Network of the Millennium."


Department of Self-Parody

MARK SHIELDS (on CNN's Capital Gang): Bob Novak, what were the great catastrophes of the 20th century?

BOB NOVAK: Mark, this was a century of big government. It could be bloody totalitarian murderous government, as in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, or it just could be the intrusive, well-meaning socialist governments all over Scandinavia, Europe, even the United States. But this has been the blight of this century: too much government. And the hope of the next century is that government will ease off. But looking around the world, I'm not that optimistic. ... I would say government has done much more harm than good over the world. And the idea that government is [not responsible for] the social engineering that we find--which was by Hitler, by Stalin, on a smaller level is by Franklin Roosevelt and the other leaders of the century--[is preposterous].


Last Word

TONY SNOW (on Fox News Sunday): When you get to heaven, who's going to speak first, you or God?

REV. BILLY GRAHAM: When I get there, I'm sure that Jesus is going to say that he will welcome me. But I think that he's going to say: Well done, our good and faithful servant. Or he may say: You're in the wrong place.

SNOW: You really worry that you may be told you're in the wrong place?

GRAHAM: Yes, because I have not--I'm not a righteous man. People put me up on a pedestal that I don't belong in my personal life. And they think that I'm better than I am. I'm not the good man that people think I am. Newspapers and magazines and television have made me out to be a saint. I'm not. I'm not a Mother Teresa. And I feel that very much.

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Michael Brus, a former Slate assistant editor, is a writer and social worker in Seattle.
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