Many Asian Americans who listened to President Clinton's press conference
yesterday weren't pleased. A reporter asked Clinton why "not a single
person of color" has held one of the top seven West Wing jobs in his
administration — i.e., chief of staff, counsel, press secretary, and
advisors on national security, domestic policy, and the economy.
Replied Clinton: "I've had more blacks who've served in my cabinet, more
Hispanics who've served in my cabinet. More people, more people from Asia
have been appointed in my administration than any previous administration
by far. It's not even close."
People from Asia? Doesn't he mean Asian Americans? If so, this is exactly
the kind of slight civil-rights groups are constantly complaining about:
the implication that Asian Americans are a bunch of foreigners. "I think
that the term should have been Asian American, especially because you have
to be a U.S. citizen to hold any of those jobs," says Daphne Kwok, head of
the National Council for Asian Pacific Americans. "We're not all from
Asia. Maybe our ancestors were from Asia. Talk like this confuses the
American populace about the Asian-American community. Are we from Asia or
are we really Americans?"
Bill Bradley and Al Gore have been arguing over taxes, but it's hard to
see the daylight between their positions. Gore's press secretary Chris
Lehane says he has "ruled out tax increases barring a drastic change in
the economy." Bradley says he is not proposing tax increases, but won't
take a no-new-taxes pledge because "nobody can predict the future of a
trillion dollar economy." If we're reading these and other comments
correctly, it appears that it is now the official position of the
Democratic party, or at least its presidential wing, that if the economy
weakens the thing to do is raise taxes. It's certainly an interesting
position, and we look forward to hearing Bradley or Gore defend it next
fall.
Gleaves Whitney, an aide to Michigan Gov. John Engler who spoke at the
Heritage Foundation today, on what he's heard people say about the late
conservative writer Russell Kirk: "He had the heart of a liberal — he kept
it in a jar on his desk."
