7/14/00 5:25 p.m.
A Hater in Michigan
An attack on Sen. Spence Abraham crosses the line.

By NR's John J. Miller & Ramesh Ponnuru

ill Ballenger publishes Inside Michigan Politics, a respected newsletter that's required reading for political junkies in his state. He's also a well-known critic of Spencer Abraham, the Republican senator from Michigan.

Ballenger lambastes Abraham's campaign-trail rhetoric on how the state has benefited from Republican political leadership in an article for intellectualcapital.com.

That's fair enough, except for the repulsive charge in Ballenger's first paragraph: "Nobody would confuse Spencer Abraham with Adolf Hitler, but evidently Michigan's junior senator endorses the Fuhrer's well-known words in Mein Kampf: 'The great masses of the people ... will more easily fall victim to a great lie than to a small one.'"

There's a hater loose in Michigan, but it sure isn't Abraham.

PR VP?
When a presidential candidate visits Podunk, Ia., it's customary for him to confirm that the mayor of Podunk is indeed on the list of potential veep nominees. The comment generates positive regional press for a member of the same party and also energizes the local base. And who knows? The mayor may think that by raising a little extra cash for the candidate, he really does have a shot at the ticket.

The Gore campaign took this logic to a weird extreme this week. The San Juan Star reported on Wednesday that Puerto Rican governor Pedro Rossello has a chance of running with Gore. From the Star: "Rossello confirmed that he was recently called by former Secretary of State Warren Christopher [Gore's veep vetter]. ... The governor was asked by Christopher whom he thought would make a good running mate for the vice president and whether he, himself, could fill that role, according to a source close to the process."

Gore-Rossello in 2000? Don't count on it. As the Star points out, it's not completely clear that someone born in Puerto Rico and living there now can qualify for the presidency, with its U.S.-native-born and 14-year-residency requirements.

Halftime
Bill Bradley may have endorsed Gore on Thursday — his words were tepid, though we have yet to see a press account mentioning this — but he's already positioning himself to run for the Democratic nod in 2004. Next month, Artisan will publish his new book, The Journey from Here. That means there must be one. An excerpt from an advance manuscript: "The global economy doesn't care ... that you have aging parents as well as small children to look after. It doesn't care that you're too tired or have too little time to help with the kids' homework. It doesn't care that you don't know how to use a computer. The global economy isn't worrying about you at all." But Bill Bradley is.

Not Affirmed
The Florida Supreme Court threw out four potential ballot initiatives on racial preferences on Thursday. None of the referenda, modeled on California's Prop. 209 and offered by Ward Connerly, would have gone before voters this year anyway, in part because the court took so long to make its ruling. But now it's an open question whether Connerly will try Florida again in 2002 or look to another state.

Lots O' Links
NR ran an article recently criticizing two reporters from Time magazine, Donald Barlett and James Steele. They have a pathetic non-response. . . . Jacob Weisberg has written a piece for Slate on his mind-shattering insight that "the phenomenon of a mass, share-owning middle class" might "affect American politics in all sorts of ways." It's a superficial take, but it's nice to see that the new investor class is being noticed. . . . Sure, the X-Men can beat mutant super-villains. But can they defeat America's legacy of racism? Find out.