7/11/00 2:45 p.m.
What Might Have Been
If not for a narrow loss in 1994, there'd be no contest about who should be Bush's running mate.

By NR's John J. Miller & Ramesh Ponnuru

llen Sauerbrey for vice president? Just think how easy George W. Bush's running-mate choice would have been if a few thousand Marylanders had cast their gubernatorial ballots the other way six years ago and given Republican Sauerbrey an upset victory over Democrat Parris Glendening. (Or, according to one theory, if Glendening hadn't bought phantom votes in Baltimore.) She probably would have won again in 1998, and been positioned perfectly for promotion this summer.

Sauerbrey would have been a stellar choice: The media would have adored her (at least for a few news cycles) because she's a woman, and conservatives would have loved her because she's one of them (she carried a Reagan sign at the GOP convention — in 1968!). In fact, the only risk for Bush would have been charges that he headed a kangaroo ticket — i.e., one with stronger hind legs than front legs, as pundits said about the 1920 presidential race, when Calvin Coolidge and Franklin Delano Roosevelt filled their parties' veep slots.

There are several important elections this year for conservatives thinking about GOP bench strength — David McIntosh's run for governor in Indiana, Jim Talent's in Missouri. They give conservatives reasons to think of what might be, rather than what might have been. But as Bush narrows the field to a handful, it's impossible to avoid wishing Sauerbrey were in it.

All Apologies
The Washington Post recycles a popular urban legend among reporters in its story today on Bush's NAACP convention speech. Writers Terry M. Neal and Michael A. Fletcher remark that Bush, in his comments, refrained from "explicitly acknowledging his party's failure to support much of the 1960s-era civil rights agenda."

Perhaps that's because there's no failure to acknowledge. In fact, Republicans in both the House and Senate were more likely than Democrats to favor, say, the 1964 Civil Rights Act. (In the Senate, Republican support was 82 percent, compared to 69 percent among Democrats; in the House, it was 80 percent and 63 percent, respectively.) Many conservatives voted against the legislation on federalist or libertarian grounds. And yes, many Southern Democrats who also opposed it (Vice President Gore's father, for instance) later drifted toward the GOP. But the truth of the matter, contra Neal and Fletcher, is that Republicans did in fact support much of the 1960s-era civil rights agenda.

So why is that Democrats never do the apologizing at NAACP conventions? Well, Bush himself essentially asked for the Post's rebuff, however erroneous it is, when he said that "there's no escaping the reality that the party of Lincoln has not always carried the mantle of Lincoln." It's not clear what this is supposed to mean.

Republicans should get over thinking that they have to apologize for being Republicans whenever they appear before black audiences. In fact, it would be nice if they simply cited the 1964 vote totals and then segued, as Bush essentially did yesterday, into a discussion of the new civil rights battles — not over hate-crimes laws, but making sure poor children can attend good schools.

Cato's Comeback
We've criticized the prevailing response on the Right to Gore's retirement-security accounts; Derrick Max of the Cato Institute says it's we who are wrong.