The Week.

--Word is that Hillary Clinton has joined a Senate prayer group. Better count the Bibles.

--Democrats are accusing President Bush of "talking down the economy" in order to sell his tax cuts. The idea is that his remarks about economic troubles are self-fulfilling because they hurt consumer and investor confidence. But signs of economic weakness were multiplying before Bush became president. The Nasdaq's slide started a year ago. If Bush were playing Pollyanna in the face of this evidence, the Democrats would be saying he was out of touch-as he is well aware, having watched them do it to his father. Instead, Bush has offered a realistic appraisal of the economy. If that appraisal has reduced consumer spending, it's hard to tell from the data, which show spending to be rising. There is something a little ridiculous about the importance the Democrats are attaching to the president's words: If Bush is making the economy get worse by saying it is getting worse, aren't Tom Daschle and Dick Gephardt equally guilty of making it worse by saying that? But perhaps Bush should consider their attack a compliment: It's not often that Democrats are so impressed by his rhetorical power.

--Not everyone dislikes a recession. When stocks go down, the stock of the gloomy rises. Some savor the gloom because it works to the advantage of the big-government status quo. Privatizing Social Security, as Mark Shields observes every week on Capital Gang, "becomes a harder sell when you've got a market, if not in free fall, at least in decline." And how much easier it becomes to sell the notion that government, not you, knows best what to do with your money! Others enjoy a contraction because it takes down the high fliers, the improbably young dot-com millionaires, the owners of all those hideous new mansions described by Tom Wolfe and David Brooks. As Gore Vidal, who has spent many years studying malice, puts it, it is not enough to succeed-others must fail. Finally the Left, not all of it young, yearns for a dustup in times of peace. They rioted in Seattle because America was too prosperous; now they will riot in Oshkosh because America is no longer too prosperous. Can any of the dozen Democratic senators who feel qualified to fill the chair of Lincoln and George W. Bush ride these discontents to victory in 2004? You can bet they're already bent over their abacuses, calculating.

--Based on the speech he gave at Catholic University, George W. Bush may be the second Catholic president-the third, if you count John Kennedy. How's that? JFK was of course the first formally Catholic president. But he had been carefully de-churched and deracinated by his father, so as to escape the fate of Al Smith. Ronald Reagan had the Protestant beliefs of his mother; but the persona and worldview of his Irish Catholic father clung to him, which, more than policies, may explain his attraction to so-called Reagan Democrats, i.e., ethnic Catholics. Now President Bush, sprung from haut-WASP New England, raised in Texas, and born again, speaks at the dedication of the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. He called the Pope "a hero of history," defending the "culture of life," and carrying a message of "justice and human rights" to rich and poor, free and enslaved. When was the last time the National Catholic Reporter said that?

--Much has been said about Ralph Nader's keeping Al Gore out of the White House-the Green-party nominee drew more than 97,000 votes in Florida, for example-but hardly anybody has noticed what Libertarians have done to the Republicans. In both 1998 and 2000, a Republican nominee for the Senate lost to a Democrat by a margin much less than the Libertarian vote. The most recent victim was Slade Gorton of Washington. Maria Cantwell beat him by 2,229 votes in a race that saw Libertarian Jeff Jared hauling in 64,734 votes. Two years earlier, Republican John Ensign failed to unseat Democrat Harry Reid in Nevada by 428 votes. Libertarian Michael Cloud drew 8,044 votes in the same election. "Exit polling shows that we take twice as many votes from Republicans as from Democrats," says Libertarian-party spokesman George Getz-which means Republicans might very well have had a 52-48 Senate majority right now if not for the Libertarians. Washington would not be consumed with speculation about Strom Thurmond's health. Those Libertarians who are not intransigent opponents of the GOP should reconsider their tactics. Republicans, for their part, should pay more attention to their libertarian constituents. It's something Trent Lott may want to think about when members of his GOP conference complain that President Bush's proposal to limit federal growth to 4 percent is too austere. If they let government grow, their caucus may shrink.

--Al Sharpton was ordered to pay $65,000 in damages to Steven Pagones-a former assistant DA in New York's Dutchess County-for defaming him in the Tawana Brawley hoax. That was back in 1998. With interest and penalties, the amount outstanding is now $87,000. The Reverend Al, meanwhile, has developed large political ambitions, which do not sit well with a reputation as a scofflaw. So just pay the settlement, right? Two problems with that. First, it would contradict Sharpton's longstanding claim that he cannot pay because he has no funds. As we are learning, black "community leaders" with the title "Reverend" in front of their names are not awfully keen to have their personal finances scrutinized. Second, as an implicit acknowledgment that the Brawley affair was, indeed, a fraud, payment would baffle and shock those of Sharpton's followers who, incredibly, still believe in the reality of Brawley's "rape" by a gang of white men. One of those followers-he declares he has always believed Brawley's claims-is Percy Sutton, a black media mogul. Sutton has organized a whip-around among New York's black business elite to pay off the Pagones settlement on Sharpton's behalf. So Sharpton is off the hook, with no need to admit that he was a leading participant in one of the worst cases of racial arson of the 1990s, and with a clear path to a position of supreme "leadership" among black Americans. Will no prominent black American stand up and denounce this appalling man for what he is: liar, fraud, and crook?

--"I want to sign a patients' bill of rights this year, but I will not sign a bad one," said President Bush on March 21. "And I cannot sign any one that is now before the Congress." The president's stance recognizes both the popularity of federal regulation of health plans and the drawbacks of it. Regulation is popular because people have reasonable anxieties about insurers' second-guessing of decisions made by doctors and patients. It is flawed because regulations would increase the price of insurance and thus increase the number of uninsured. So Bush is in the familiar Republican position of accepting a liberal policy in theory while trying to control its cost. The alternative would be to address the root cause of the public's anxiety: individuals' lack of control over their own insurance plans. Bush has, in fact, endorsed policies that would make it easier for individuals to own their own plans rather than rely on their employers. But he is not pushing for those policies. Given his ambitious agenda this year, he may be handling health-care issues the right way. But eventually Republicans should get out of their defensive crouch.