Party of Fear
If dozens of Republicans actually thought they had to vote for campaign-finance reform or face the voters' wrath, it's obviously easy to scare them. So it's no surprise that most Hill Republicans have swallowed--hook, line, and sinker--the media line that a pre-election report by Ken Starr would be a disaster for them. What's the logic here? Embarrassing details about President Clinton's sexual indiscretions and legal offenses will hurt the GOP? Republicans may have been too busy caving on principles to notice, but the Lewinsky scandal has already wounded the president and done nothing to them. Clinton's job approval ratings are a shield, not a sword. He has been unable to use them to get his agenda passed or to get Democrats excited about voting. He can't effectively do battle for congressional Democrats; those approval ratings aren't transferable. Why should they worry Republicans? Do they think President Bush should have fooled around with interns, too, to put the Democrats on the spot?

Republicans should have laughed yesterday when they read Alison Mitchell's utterly ridiculous New York Times article on their supposed travails ("Vacation for G.O.P. Lawmakers, But Differences Remain in Capitol"). Sure, Republicans are going to have some headaches and screw-ups between now and November. But would they rather be in the other party--the one that has no national issues, a leader scrambling to save his own neck, a shrinking minority of governors, and a dispirited base? The party that no longer has the antibodies to reject the likes of Geoffrey Fieger?

What Republicans really should be afraid of is the prospect of a government shutdown. Rep. David McIntosh (R., Ind.) is arguing that Republicans could win a fight with Clinton over a shutdown this time, but he's not finding many takers. He may, however, have inadvertently blurred Republicans' previous line: that any shutdown this fall would be Bill Clinton's doing, and not theirs. Even saying that Republicans could weather a shutdown can sound like cheering one on--which reduces their chances of weathering it. Congressional Republicans could usefully focus their fears on this prospect, and pass a continuing resolution as soon as they return.

State of Mind
"They wouldn't do this if we were from some other state," says the First Lady. The state of marital bliss, for example?

We Told You So
Six months after National Review ran a cover story by John Hillen on our military's rapidly declining morale and dangerous readiness problems (Feb. 9), the Washington Post has joined the chorus with today's front page story "Military Readiness, Morale Show Strain." A few days earlier, the Post ran an op-ed by Brookings defense analyst Michael O'Hanlon that said conservatives have been "crying wolf about the fraying of the U.S. Armed Forces and the need to devote more money to our nation's security." He goes on to say, "They have been wrong--until now. There is finally something to their case."

Readiness problems take a while to develop. Problems of morale and institutional spirit take even longer. The handwriting has been on the wall for at least a year about each issue. Responsible policymakers try to foresee the predictable consequences of today's trends and do something about them now, rather than wait to be hit between the eyes by evidence of those consequences tomorrow. For this foresight, they are charged with "crying wolf." (So, come to think of it, was another conservative, Winston Churchill, in the '30s.) There's a pattern here: when liberals discover a problem, it suddenly ceases to be the paranoid delusion of conservative cranks and becomes a Serious Issue. We might call it the "Dan Quayle Was Right" phenomenon.

Meanwhile, we wait for some of our men in uniform to speak up, as General Edward "Shy" Meyer did in 1980, about our increasingly hollow forces.