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Potomac Crossings Hurricane Chad Blows Out To Sea Poor Rhymes With Gore. Talk about a bad week, the Electoral College met and the only Faithless Elector was a Democrat from the District of Columbia. Vice President Al Gore’s nomination to be the president of Harvard was accepted by Robert Stone, chairman of the search committee, as one of a pool of 500 nominees. "I doubt he would get it," said Stone, " he doesn’t have the academic and intellectual standing." Terry McAuliffe was selected to head the DNC. McAuliffe is a long-time crony of Bill Clinton and Dick Gephardt and the man who financed the Hillary house in Chapaqua. McAuliffe’s announced strategy is to use "bleeding wounds to raise big bucks" by a We Wuz Robbed sustained resentment fund-raising effort. His selection means that ex-president Clinton will become the principal political strategist for the Democrat Party, controlling how funds will be raised and distributed. McAuliffe has already confirmed that he intends to give Bush no honeymoon and that the permanent campaign, complete with the politics of personal destruction, will continue uninterrupted. Elvis lives. Gore is toast so burnt that he can’t scrape off the dark stuff and find anything left to butter. Where Is The Public? President-elect Bush is known to be suspicious of all polls. None-the-less, the Zogby American Values quarterly survey gives a fair indication of where the public stands at the moment on key policy issues. The poll of likely voters says that 71 percent consider the estate tax unfair and want it abolished. Some 54 percent support the elimination of the marriage penalty, 55 percent would like to see a one dollar increase in the minimum wage over three years. About 70 percent favor better enforcement of existing guns laws over creating new laws, 58 percent favor a ban on partial birth abortions, 59 percent favor being allowed to invest up to two percent of their Social Security taxes in stocks and bonds, 56 percent believe we should shore up a depleted military and 51 percent approve the use of government vouchers in private schools run by religious organizations. The Political Center Shifts. The most important effect of the 2000 election is a shift in the power of the middle bipartisan consensus from left-of-center (Gore-Gephardt) to right-of-center (Bush-Breaux). The places where Gore won big were population-losing states such as New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Illinois. These are Old Economy states clinging fast to an old-fashioned, preserve the status quo at any price, big-government 60’s liberalism. Excepting California, Bush’s votes came from the New Economy, fast-growing states of the mid-South, deep South, Southwest and Rockies. These are the fast-growing business states. They are the places where new investors, new business owners, new entrepreneurs and free market people dwell. They are the engine of prosperity. As Larry Kudlow notes, a center-right coalition favors politics of equal opportunity, not government-mandated results. It believes in personal responsibility and spiritual renewal. It advocates shareholding ownership and free-market entrepreneurship. It doesn’t believe in regulating, planning or targeting the major sectors of the economy for big-government solutions. The Future of School Choice. A review of education data by the Wall Street Journal shows that the 30-year old solution offered by the public school monopoly has failed. The public has been obedient to the education establishment when it said that what it needed most was money to lower student-teacher ratios. According to data supplied by the U.S. Department of Education (http://nces.ed.gov), the student teacher ratio was 25.8 in 1965 and dropped to 17.3 in 1995. Funds have trebled over that time while scores on reading, writing, math and science have remained flat to slightly declining. Overall, student achievement has not improved nor have U.S. students shown any improvement in comparative international tests, according to Eric Hanushek of the Hoover Institution. Public schools offer an inferior education at higher and higher prices because they are a public monopoly serving their own self-interests first. The only solution, as with any monopoly, is to introduce competition. The huge debate will be the role allowed to charter schools, voucher programs, education tax credits, home-schooling or supplemental schooling and private scholarship funds. The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to accept a school voucher case soon. They are thought to rule that there is no constitutional objection to vouchers so long as their purpose is neither to promote or inhibit religion and that the choice of school is made by the parent and not the state. The 21st Century Begins. It never was last year that began the new century. It’s this year. It is possible to view the election battle as a struggle for birth of a new world. The Democrats stand solidly in opposition to progress and defend the status quo. The election was much like an epic boxing match between an old champion and a young challenger. Yes, the fight went the limit. Yes, it was a split decision. But what is the future of each contestant? The old champion has no place to go but down. The new champion still has a career ahead. After their epic battle, they pass on to different futures. In spite of the media and the spinners, a drop from an 8.3 percent growth rate to a 2.3 percent growth rate is not a recession. We enter the 21st Century with a durable prosperity that will flourish for a long time. Prosperity is the fruit of hard work by creative people, not the maneuverings of government. According to Alan Keyes, the combination of scientific advance and economic liberty will give us the tools to enable a reliable systematic reduction of poverty. For almost all of human history, disease and poverty have been the twin tyrants of human existence. We stand on the threshhold of such strong advances in human knowledge that we can dare to speak of abolishing disease and the infirmities of age. The great challenge of our era is far beyond partisan politics. "It is the accumulation of a stock of moral wisdom and responsibility sufficient to ensure the right use of that new knowledge. Self-government," Keyes says, "means the control of our desires out of respect for the requirements of justice." |
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