Clinton's Magical Mystery Bus
"When they appear
with their wives, Hillary Clinton and Tipper Gore, they look like two suburban
couples, perhaps old college friends, out on the town for a good time. And
whether they are playing miniature golf with their wives, tossing a football
around or gleefully backslapping each other at campaign rallies, the images
and the message are always the same: Youth, vigor, energy. And change."
- Washington Post reporter Edward Walsh, July 23.
"They got more
positive coverage on this bus tour than the Beatles got on their first tour of
America. More reporters were oohing and aahing. It was almost embarrassing.
I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to do it until now."
- Newsweek reporter Eleanor Clift on The McLaughlin Group,
July 25.
Media's Friends of Bill
"He's become a
little more disciplined, Bill Clinton, but you know he loves a crowd. And he
has, don't want to get carried away here, but he has the kind of hands that
people respond to."
- Peter Jennings during ABC convention coverage, July 15.
"In the most
important speech of his life, Bill Clinton did not `reinvent' himself last
night, as his handlers imprudently predicted. But he delivered enough
autobiographical details to loosen the tear ducts of voters still skeptical
about his character."
- Former Boston Globe Washington Bureau Chief Martin Nolan, July 17.
Democrats: Nearly Always Right
"Oh, Cuomo knows
all about these folks, the ordinary Americans who have been betrayed by
Reagan-Bush. The folks Democrats are supposed to rescue...He's right, of
course. The Democrats are nearly always right. And then nothing happens."
- NBC reporter Bob Herbert in his New York Daily News column, July
16.
One Campaign Ploy Not Quite As Derided As Willie Horton
"It was Lloyd
Bentsen who said to Dan Quayle `I knew John Kennedy, and you're no John
Kennedy.' It was one of the electrifying moments of the campaign. At the
Kennedy Library, just outside Boston, they went through all the files. They
couldn't see much evidence Lloyd Bentsen knew John Kennedy very well. But it
certainly was an effective campaign ploy for him."
- Tom Brokaw in convention coverage, July 16.
Better Under Communism
"The painful shift
to a market system has pushed thousands of citizens, once able to maintain an
acceptable living standard with the help of government subsidies and benefits,
below the poverty line. Homelessness, derided by the communists as a plague of
the West, is becoming commonplace. The old Soviet guarantees of work, housing,
and low fixed prices are gone, and the welfare net, designed to catch the rare
social dropout, has sprung gaping holes."
- Time Moscow reporter Ann M. Simmons in July 13 article
subheadlined "The capitalist revolution is bringing the plagues of
poverty, homelessness and unemployment to Russians, who miss the safety net of
the old system."
Jesse Jackson's Fan Club
"Jesse Jackson is
one American politician who consistently speaks for the poor and downtrodden.
One of the few national leaders openly advocating aid to the cities."
- Dan Rather, July 13 CBS Evening News.
"Jesse Jackson
never wasted his talent on the giants. He's always reached down to little
folks....Now you know a speech like this reaches me. I'm from East Texas. My
daddy was a New Deal Democrat, and I love the vibrations and the rhythms and
the cadences and the power he puts behind lost causes."
- CNN convention commentator Bill Moyers, July 14.
Moyers Leans Left
"What do you think
the American people get for their government? We have no universal health
care, we have no federal guarantee of higher education...The regulatory
agencies in many cases have been gutted...Why not just say `We will have
universal health care and we will raise taxes to pay for it.' Everybody will
have it, and we'll pay for it with taxes?"
- PBS omnipresence Bill Moyers questioning Bill Clinton on his weekly show Listening
to America, July 7.
"It's worth dying
prematurely so you can hear somebody else do your eulogy if that somebody is
Mario Cuomo....[Cuomo] went on to indict supply-side economics as if it were
the egregious offender, and it certainly deserves that."
- Moyers on CNN, July 14.
Clinton's "Moderate" Economic Platform: Take Two
"When you take a
look at the party platform, some of the planks they are going to be talking
about today, especially when it comes to business and economic affairs, this
is a very main-stream, if not in some cases almost conservative-sounding
platform."
- ABC anchor Mike Schneider, July 14 Good Morning America.
"A liberal is
willing to use the government's power to regulate, to tax and to spend, in
order to advance the well-being of people who are not independently wealthy,
and who are vulnerable to reverses in the private marketplace that are beyond
their control. Liberals are also less wary of public deficits than
conservatives. Based on this standard, Clinton is rather more liberal than
either Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, or Michael Dukakis."
- New Republic economics writer Robert Kuttner, July 24 Los
Angeles Times.
Reaganomics Fails
"The legacy of
Reaganomics is years of weakness. The great squeeze on us all is not due to
high taxation....We pin our faith traditionally on laissez faire and
individual initiative, as we did in 1929. But as in 1932, we may have to
recognize these as inadequate for a new world....Hurrah, therefore, for Bill
Clinton's notion of a national trust fund from which any American can borrow
money for a college education, so long as he or she pays it back from a small
percentage of income over time or with a couple of years of national
service."
- U.S. News & World Report Editor-in-Chief
Mortimer Zuckerman, July 20.
"By buying into the
supply-side notion that the U.S. could cut income taxes while simultaneously
paying for massive increases in defense and certain highly popular domestic
programs, Reagan may be justly dubbed the Father of the 12-Digit
Deficit."
- Time Washington Bureau Chief Stanley Cloud, June 22.
Keynes Lives
"Japan has got a
plan: public works projects, investment incentives, and tax cuts, all designed
to get the Japanese economy back up to speed. The cost in dollars: over $50
billion. This is standard government therapy to end the recession. It would be
nice if the American government could do that to end our recession."
- NBC commentator John Chancellor, July 23 Nightly News.
- L. Brent Bozell III;
Publisher
- Brent H. Baker, Tim Graham; Editors
- Brant Clifton, Nicholas Damask, Steve Kaminski, Marian Kelley, Tim Lamer;
Media Analysts
- Jennifer Hardebeck; Circulation Manager
- Cameron Humphries; Intern