The American Enterprise articles from March 2001

The American Enterprise archives from March 2001

Surveying the Damage.(the aftermath of the 2000 presidential elections)
March 1, 2001... Seated on the Inaugural dais, only inches from the oath-taker yet a lifetime's hopes away, Al Gore looked wan. This was duly noted by a number of my conservative friends. Confounding the stereotype of the heartless, Republican, they shyly...

Sidelights.
March 1, 2001... The Federal Aviation Administration ruled that US Airways did nothing wrong when it allowed a 300-pound pig named "Charlotte" to fly first class from Philadelphia to Seattle. * CBS legal analyst Andrew Cohen on trying to predict the outcome of...

RIGHT-WING HYPOCRITES?(tax policy of George W. Bush)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2001... Both President Bush and Vice President Cheney have argued that a tax cut is more urgent now because the U.S. economy may be heading into a recession. This claim has induced howling from liberal pundits, who smell hypocrisy. After all,...

WARNING: LESS TV MAY BE GOOD FOR YOU.(studies show children are less aggressive when they watch less television)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2001... Surprise, surprise: If kids spend less time watching TV and cut back on video games, they act less obnoxiously. Or as the scientists put it, less "exposure to media" = "a reduction in aggressive behavior." In a study just published in the...

PHONY CAMPAIGN REFORM.(campaign finance reforms)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2001... The battle to "get money out of politics" often involves putting a lot of money in to politics, a new report from Foundation Watch reveals. Author Eric Williams explains that recent efforts at so-called campaign finance reform were "backed by...

THE FINAL VOTE COUNTS.(recount of Florida votes for the 2000 election)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2001... Though you wouldn't know it from watching network news or reading major newspapers, the notion that Al Gore "really won" in Florida is not holding up well. First, the Miami Herald discovered that over 5,000 Florida felons, not legally...

HIT-AND-RUN JOURNALISM.(editorial policies of the Washington Post)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2001... Remember this joke? God breaks into the evening news and announces He's destroying the world tomorrow at noon. The next morning's headline in the Washington Pose. "God Announces Intention to End the World; Women and Minorities to Suffer Most."...

RAP RIGHT.(opinion on the nomination of John D. Ashcroft as Attorney General)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2001... "Singer" Eminem raps about busting gay men's heads, and he wins Grammys. Attorney General nominee John Ashcroft admits that his religious beliefs don't sanction homosexuality, and he's a hatemonger. Obviously, George W. Bush's appointments have...

2002 FORECAST: STORMY.(Republicans may lose more seats in 2002 elections)
March 1, 2001... While Republicans are deservedly jubilant about holding the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives for the first time in a half-century, their elation may be short-lived. A quick look at the political map for 2002 shows storm...

RATED R FOR RELATIVE DECLINE.(the number of rated R movies declined)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2001... CBS MarketWatch reports that last year the number of R-rated movies declined to 58 out of 147 films, compared to 87 out of 147 the year before. Two explanations, not necessarily exclusive, were cited by insiders. Producer John Davis (The Firm,...

THE FOX FACTOR.(Bill O'Reilly interviewed)(Brief Article)(Interview)
March 1, 2001... Almost a million television viewers tune to the Fox News Channel just to see Bill O'Reilly on "The O'Reilly Factor." And for more than four months, The O'Reilly Factor: The Good, the Bad, and the Completely Ridiculous in American Life has been...

"Live" with TAE.(Stanley Crouch interviewed)(Interview)
March 1, 2001... A JAZZ CRITIC AND NOVELIST RIFFS ON POP CULTURE, POLITICS, AND SAVING AMERICA FROM NIHILISM AND P.C. STEREOTYPES. TAE: Why make the center of Don't the Moon Look Lonesome? a white woman? CROUCH: Why not? I wanted a challenge. Your...

Reform the Electoral College, Don't Toss It.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2001... The five-week post-election contest between Al Gore and George W. Bush has utterly de-mystified the Electoral College in the minds of Americans. Most of them tell pollsters they want to get rid of it. So do lots of politicians, including...

The police behind America's biggest crime drop.(Edward F. Davis III and the Lowell, Massachusetts police department)
March 1, 2001... Since Edward F. Davis III took the reins of its police department six years ago, crime in Lowell, Massachusetts, has fallen by well over 50 percent, Between 1994 and '99, Lowell reduced crime more quickly than any other American city with over...

The lawyers' war on law.(post-election analysis)
March 1, 2001... It didn't end with Florida Now that the 2000 presidential contest is finally over, let's try to figure out how we reached the point where national elections are determined by a cadre of lawyers and judges. And more importantly, how we can...

Choosing better judges.(Supreme Court membership)
March 1, 2001... A new president's guide The last election made painfully clear both the importance of the courts in American politics and the danger of activist judges, The candidate who explicitly opposed judicial activism won, but just electing such a...

Governing A Divided America.(Statistical Data Included)
March 1, 2001... Advice & Predictions from Seven Sages The Moment May Be Righter Than You Think Jonathan Rauch So: The national electorate is evenly split, the Senate is evenly split, the House is almost evenly split. Statehouses are divided...

Divided Democrats.(panel discussion on Democratic Party's future)(Panel Discussion)
March 1, 2001... The Post-Clinton Party Whither the Democratic Party? Have eight years of Clintonism and prosperity made it the party of Middle America? Or, in the wake of the Gore defeat, is it a mere agglomeration of interest groups rolling down the path...

The Great Florida Recount of 2000 as told by two survivors.
March 1, 2001... Palm Beach Counts John R. Bolton If there's a beach in Palm Beach County, Florida, you couldn't prove it by me. After over two weeks there, heading up Governor George W. Bush's legal team during the Great Recount of 2000, I thought...

Trash Talk.(Midwestern states in political journalism)
March 1, 2001... A reply from America's hated heartland I'm stupid, and if you're reading this, you probably are too. Chicago Sun-Times columnist William O'Rourke has named the great center of America--the part represented in red on all of the TV maps of...

TALL LATTE, HOLD, THE RUDENESS.(teaching manners to children in the face of adult rudeness)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2001... WASHINGTON, D.C.--In the early morning, I enjoy walking my baby girl through the neighborhood, getting coffee, and watching her absorb the world around us. During a recent Starbucks stop, the woman in front of me felt she had been waiting too...

The Elector Defector.(Roger Lea MacBride)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2001... The Electoral College has shut down for another four years. Gore-y fantasies of "faithless electors" escaping their ironclad lockboxes and bolting from Bush to Prince Albert have come to naught. Apparently the Republicans have learned something...

The Soft Bigotry of Double Standards.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2001... Here's one thing we learned from the post-election Florida folderol: Black "leaders" can say anything, and the mainstream press will take it seriously. "This is a replay of Selma all over again," Jesse Jackson declared. He yelled that...

Honest Drugs.(A review of the motion picture 'Traffic')(Review)
March 1, 2001... Sometimes movies earn their keep by providing a picture of where we stand. When it comes to preventing the illegal drug trade, we stand on shaky ground--every inch of which is covered by the ambitious and exhaustive Traffic. Proponents of...

What the Poor Need Most.(welfare reform efforts)
March 1, 2001... For much of the twentieth century, it was generally assumed that to help the poor, one must give them money, because that was what they chiefly needed. Today a new consensus has arisen on helping the poor. In the words of a 1987 manifesto...

A Mixed Record in Telecom.(Telecommunications Act of 1996)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2001... A Mixed Record in Telecom Thomas W. Hazlett, "Economic and Political Consequences of the 1996 Telecommunications Act," in Regulation (No. 3, 2000), Cato Institute, 1000 Massachusetts Avenue N.W., Washington, D.C. 20001. In 1996,...

Keep Regulators Honest.(cost-benefit analyses of state regulations)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2001... Keep Regulator Honest Robert W. Hahn, "State and Federal Regulatory Reform: A Comparative Analysis," in The Journal of Legal Studies (June 2000, part II), University of Chicago Press, Journals Division, Box 37005, Chicago, Illinois 60637. ...

Info Age Evolution.(Review)
March 1, 2001... Info Age Evolution Joel Kotkin, The New Geography: How the Digital Revolution Is Reshaping the American Landscape. Random House, 299 Park Avenue, New York, New York 10171. The dispersal of manufacturing and the rise of the Internet and...

Terminate Section 8.(public housing reforms)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2001... Terminate Section 8 Howard Husock, "Let's Eliminate Housing Vouchers," in City Journal (Autumn 2000), Manhattan Institute, 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, New York 10017. Most recipients of government housing subsidies don't live in public...

Save Our Schools: Cut Taxes.(universal education credit)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2001... Save Our Schools: Cut Taxes Darcy A. Olsen and Matthew I. Brouillette, Reclaiming Our Schools: Increasing Parental Control of Education Through the Universal Tax Credit. Cato Institute, 1000 Massachusetts Avenue N.W., Washington, D.C. 20001....

Will China Become Democratic?(lecture by Arthur Waldron)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2001... Will China Becom Democratic? Arthur Waldron, "A Free and Democratic China?" in Commentary (November 2000), 165 West 56th Street, New York, New York 10022. Waldron, director of Asian studies at he American Enterprise Institute, suggests a...

The Politics of Tuna.(lecture by Theodore C. Bestor)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2001... Theodore C. Bestor, "How Sushi Went Global," in Foreign Policy (November/December 2000), Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1779 Massachusetts Avenue N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036. Globalization isn't just about faceless...

The Right Moment.(Review)
March 1, 2001... The Right Moment By Matthew Dallek Free Press, 320 pages, $25 The Right Moment may be the seminal work on Reagan s first gubernatorial campaign. This much is certain: Matthew Dallek grasps the long-term importance of those early Reagan...

Robert Nisbet: Communitarian Traditionalist.(Review)
March 1, 2001... Robert Nisbet: Communitarian Traditionalist By Brad Lowell Stone ISI Books, 152 pages, $19.95 With the rise of "communitarian" thought on the American Left and of "civil society" theory on the Right, Robert Nisbet (1913-1996) only grows in...

The Art of Teaching (1950).(Review)
March 1, 2001... The Art of Teaching (1950) By Gilbert Highet Teaching is not a science. So underscores Gilbert Highet at the outset of The Art of Teaching. Highet (1906-78), a sort of "Yankee don," was an Oxford-educated Scot who spent a long and...

The Voters Speak.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2001... On Election Day, Voter News Service surveyed more than 13,000 voters as they left the polls. The data below show how different demographic groups voted and also how Gore and Bush supporters felt about some key issues. To take one example, a...

Tax Cuts Matter.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2001... When asked to choose from a list of issues that mattered most to them in casting their ballots, voters placed taxes close to the top. In another question in the exit poll, they said they preferred a larger, across-the-board cut to a smaller,...

The Generation Gap.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2001... The National Opinion Research Center recently examined how the views of different age groups have changed over the past quarter century. We show below the views of the youngest and oldest groups. In the early 1970s, 48 percent of 18 to...

the Mail.
March 1, 2001... In his review of my book Shows About Nothing (September), Paul Cantor makes two misleading assertions. First, that I, yearning nostalgically for a more innocent America, make "highly selective" use of evidence such as the optimistic films of...

Last Gasp.
March 1, 2001... Can you recommend something to Read while I'm watching television? [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] MARTIAL ARTS & CRAFTS SHOW [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "Assuming I am a hypochondriac, couldn't that condition be brought on by a brain...