7.25.00
Cheney and the Right

7.24.00
Cheney Reaction

7.21.00
Live Issue

7.20.00
Men and Marriage

7.19.00
Sen. Paul Coverdell, R.I.P.

7.18.00
Veep-O-Rama!

7.17.00
Circuit Breakers

7.14.00
A Hater in Michigan

7.13.00
VP Day

7.12.00
Clinton's Dreamscape

7.11.00
What Might Have Been

7.10.00
Gagged at the Globe

7/25/00 3:00 p.m.
Cheney and the Right
A choice conservatives can laud.

By NR's John J. Miller & Ramesh Ponnuru

he Republican ticket is now exquisitely balanced: A man of the center who doesn't alienate the right has now chosen a man of the right who doesn't alienate the center.

But that's not how everyone sees it. In a New York Times op-ed today, David Frum calls Cheney's selection as George W. Bush's running mate a sign of conservative decline: "If Mr. Cheney is conservative, he's not 'a conservative'; he's not someone whom the right wing of the Republican Party recognizes as one of its own. . . . The choice of Mr. Cheney offers a Bush-Bushie ticket, one that declares the Reagan chapter of the Republican Party's history not merely completed, but closed."

This is a strange critique. First, Cheney isn't a "Bushie" except in the trivial sense of having served in the Bush administration (like Bill Bennett and Jack Kemp). It's true that Cheney wasn't waving a Reagan-for-president sign at the 1976 convention — he was a member of the Ford administration, after all. But Cheney was one of Reagan's lieutenants in the House. And let's not forget that Cheney was President Bush's second choice for the Defense Department, picked for an easy confirmation after the Senate rejected John Tower.

But more to the point, Cheney is deeply conservative — as Frum concedes, he's more conservative than Kemp, whom he nonetheless labels "a conservative." (Don't miss Larry Kudlow's review of Cheney as a supply-sider.) Conservative activists consider Cheney one of them. Your average conservative citizen may have only vague memories of Cheney — but he probably hadn't heard of Frank Keating either, and he was considered a movement candidate for veep.

Bush had plenty of options. He could have chosen a veep who's bad on taxes (George Voinovich) or racial preferences (John Danforth) or abortion (take your pick). Instead, Bush made what conservatives have to regard as the best veep choice a Republican nominee has made since Eisenhower tapped Nixon. He's more conservative than Kemp or Bush's father, and not a political-calamity-in-waiting like Quayle. If Cheney had run for president himself this year, he might have been seen as the most credible conservative in the race, rather than Bush. His selection is hardly a sign that Bush takes conservatives for granted.

If he did, Tom Ridge would be in Austin today.

Al Gore, Esq.
From Nicholas Lemann's profile of Al Gore in The New Yorker's July 31 edition: "One doctor asked Gore about malpractice, beginning with an amiable dig — vintage, locker-room-of-the-hospital stuff — about Gore's being a lawyer. . . . 'Actually, I did not wind up becoming a lawyer,' Gore said. 'I wound up becoming a newspaper reporter.' Actually, Gore left being a full-time newspaper reporter to go to law school, and then left law school to run for Congress. This is the kind of exaggeration he falls into when he's forcing his game, trying to ingratiate himself in a way that obviously isn't real — the kind that, if anybody catches him at it, can be presented as one of his 'lies.'"

And Now for Something Completely Different...
HR 57 is a music archive and live jazz club in D.C. named for a congressional resolution honoring jazz. (For non-D.C. readers: Don't worry, most clubs in D.C. don't take their names from bill numbers.) To help HR 57 preserve jazz in the region, the America's Future Foundation is hosting a fundraiser there on Thursday, July 27, from 8 p.m. until midnight. The $15 at the door will go to event costs and a new sound system. We're told the fundraiser will feature "beer, wine, and the Lady Byron's Jazz Trio." It's at 1610 14th St. NW, just north of Q Street.

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