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Wladyslaw Pleszczynski and William McGurn

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from: Wladyslaw Pleszczynski

Bush: Maybe Too Smart?

Posted Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2001, at 11:10 AM ET

Dear Bill,

I feel better already. Dawn seems to be appearing earlier these days, and when I went to the car to take the boys to school, a pair of geese flew across the brighter part of the sky. Naturally one of them was giving the other an earful, and I doubt they were discussing politics.

We should be so lucky. For my morning exercises, I found an AP list of the Senate's 75-24 vote to confirm Gale Norton as interior secretary. Any surprises? Fair-weathered Bushite Torricelli voted against. Both Florida Democrats voted for. The women? Four Democrats opposed (Boxer, Clinton, Mikulski, Stabenow), but six said yes (Feinstein, Landrieu, Carnahan, Cantwell, and Murray). Add those six to the three GOP women, and by nine to four Bush's woman won with women. Bush could be too smart.

To answer my own question from yesterday: Buried in a Post story is a reference to Sen. Joe Lieberman's appearing with Bush at a Northeast Washington school to help launch the administration's new faith-based program. Once again, though, Joe gets hammered in the Post's post-Florida series, this time for undercutting the Gore effort to disqualify unpostmarked absentee ballots by telling Tim Russert, "If I was there, I would give the benefit of the doubt to ballots coming in from military personnel generally." Once recounted, those absentee votes cost Gore any chance of regaining a lead, today's segment contends.

Still, what stands out to me about the Post series is the picture it painted Monday about Bill Daley and Warren Christopher--who from the start were dubious Gore could ever reverse Florida's results. You mean they put us through all that for nothing?

Well into Bush's second week, the evaluations of week one continue. They're all contained in Howard Kurtz's story, though Bush should consider himself warned: "Media's First Impression May Not Be Lasting," the subhead reads. The post-jump headline is even more ominous: "Honeymooners: How Long Will Bush's Respite Last?" You tell us, Howard.

Someone will have to come up with a new cliché to account for Bush's political touch. It will sooner come from a writer like Ben Stein than from a political journalist. Ben knows and cares about people; the journalist is more likely to deal in stock figures and catch phrases. Even if well-intentioned, he remains insular. Thus the New York Times' Frank Bruni, who's been fair to Bush, twice in his "Week in Review" piece last Sunday couldn't fathom why Bush acted so quickly to cut federal aid to pro-abortion groups overseas. It failed to register with Bruni that Bush timed his announcement with the Jan. 22 annual March for Life, an easy call for any pro-life president, but apparently a source of miscomprehension for a press corps that pays next to no attention to an event that draws hundreds of thousands of evidently invisible marchers to the nation's capital.

By the way, where were you?

As ever,
Wlady

the breakfast table
entries
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from: Wladyslaw Pleszczynski

Bush: Maybe Too Smart?

Posted Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2001, at 11:10 AM ET
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Wladyslaw Pleszczynski is executive editor of the American Spectator. William McGurn is the Wall Street Journal's chief editorial writer. (Read the Journal's editorial page here.)
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