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July 14, 2003, Issue

Spending with the Best of 'Em
By Kevin A. Hassett

Under the current Bush budget, federal spending will have increased by 19.6 percent over the first three years of the administration. Since government spending is growing much faster than the economy as a whole, the share of our national income devoted to Leviathan has increased markedly, from 18.4 percent to 19.9 percent. Cato Institute economist Veronique de Rugy notes that this dramatic surge is virtually unprecedented in the history of government spending in the U.S. According to de Rugy's research, three of the five biggest increases in government spending in history have all occurred during the first three years of the Bush administration; the other two occurred during the Second World War. That sounds pretty bad, but even these numbers undoubtedly understate the problem, since they do not account for the huge prescription-drug benefit President Bush is working hard to push through Congress.

Cain Is Able
By Kate O'Beirne

A candidate recently kicked off his very first race for public office — and within days, conservatives were buzzing about his potential as a vice-presidential nominee. Novice candidates don't typically generate such ambitious speculation, but Herman Cain, 57, is not the typical Republican candidate. The latest addition to Georgia's GOP primary field for the U.S. Senate is a descendant of slaves and sharecroppers who has returned home to Atlanta, in the hope of being sent to Washington, after a successful career as an entrepreneur, national business leader, and motivational speaker. While conservatives delight at the prospect of a black senator on the national stage skillfully making the case for fundamental conservative reform, liberals face a different prospect: One newspaper declared that the former CEO of Godfather's Pizza "may be the national Democratic Party's worst nightmare."

Restless in Havana
By Jay Nordlinger

Castro has found himself unusually harassed lately. He has embarrassed his friends. He is fighting off criticism from unaccustomed quarters. He finds in Washington an administration baldly hostile to him. The ouster of Saddam Hussein seems to have rattled him. He sits on the State Department's list of only six states that support terror — and the world is less tolerant of that sort of thing. People have died waiting for Castro to die, but he may, in fact, have entered his end-game. Consider the unexpected words of Felipe González. He is the ex-prime minister of Spain, a Socialist, and a one-time ally of Castro. Said González recently, "Fidel is pathetic. He is now like Franco when he was dying."

Thievery, Treachery, Treason…
By S. Frederick Starr

Inside the government, the minister of defense, Mohammed Fahim, is leading an unlikely Red-Green coalition of former Communists and jihadists from the Northern Alliance. Before the Karzai government could take power, Russia egged on the Northern Alliance to defy President Bush's orders — which it did, moving its forces into Kabul and immediately starting to pack the government with its own people. The Americans accepted this fait accompli, naively assuming that they could gradually shift power to Karzai. But Fahim's coalition has extended its power very effectively, and these Red-Greens may be able to neutralize Karzai in next year's elections. Fahim, as defense minister, reports to Karzai — but he also commands his own armed forces. Worse, he controls a huge and largely invisible network that extends throughout the government and the economy. So extensive is this Mafia-like web of alliances that Fahim is said to have recently bragged, "Who is Karzai? This is my country."

Babylon Comes to Sparta
By John J. Miller

Earlier this year, the history faculty on a Maryland campus met to hear a young colleague discuss a paper he was writing on the invasion of Iwo Jima. The junior professor argued that the battle, in which nearly 7,000 Marines lost their lives, was a strategic mistake. Moreover, he said, it was predicated on racial hatred: American soldiers struck at the island not because it was home to an important air base, but because they wanted to kill a bunch of Nips. This was nonsense. Iwo Jima was a necessary target whose capture served U.S. interests if only because it became a vital landing strip for B-29 bombers. The fact that a professor would make such a claim should startle nobody — the modern academy places a premium on revisionism. The surprising part is that this paper was delivered at the U.S. Naval Academy, and its author was a captain in the Marines.

Hearing America Singing…
By Rob Long

Say what you like about Pol Pot — and I'm not suggesting that the guy didn't have issues — but his idea about emptying the cities and driving the hipster urban elites out into the country does hold a certain attraction. It would be nice to see Katie Couric outside the Sonic Burger in Colby, Kan.; it would be useful for — oh, I don't know, off the top of my head I'm gonna say John Kerry, centimillionaire presidential candidate — to cool his heels on the steps of the Senatobia, Miss., city hall, as I did recently, waiting for the gal in the office to come back from lunch so he can pay his $60 speeding ticket, get his driver's license back, and be on his way; and what could be more richly satisfying than watching a glossy-haired Hollywood sharpie discover that everything on the menu can be filed under Carbohydrate, Brown?

Party Hearty
By Ramesh Ponnuru

As they head into the 2004 elections, the Democrats are in a position similar to that of the Republicans in 1964. They're the out party, facing a popular incumbent who is doing a lot of things they can't stand. Many liberals appear to be reacting to this situation as conservatives did then: by effectively writing off the next election, using it to better define their party rather than to win the White House. Liberal activists who see Washington Democrats as sellouts are rallying to Howard Dean in order to "send them a message." Which is not the same thing as sending them a president. The Democrats are divided by what unites them: Hostility to Bush impels some of them to seek the candidate most likely to beat him, and others the candidate most unlike him.

All Smoke, No Fire
By Byron York

On March 24, Halliburton, the giant energy-services company once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, announced that a subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root, had signed a contract with the Army Corps of Engineers to put out oil fires in Iraq, as well as to evaluate and repair the Iraqi oil infrastructure. California Democratic representative Henry Waxman promptly wrote a letter to the Corps demanding to know why the contract was signed "without any competition or even notice to Congress." The New York Times editorialized that the contract "looks like naked favoritism" and "undermines the Bush administration's portrayal of the war as a campaign for disarmament and democracy, not lucre." One element missing from all the criticism was a serious examination of what the Halliburton contract actually involved and how it came to be signed. As it turns out, the evidence that is publicly available suggests that Waxman's accusations are misleading at best and flat wrong at worst.

It Takes a (Well-Planned) Village
By Catesby Leigh

Bowman's approach to real estate is profoundly countercultural, accounting for only a tiny fraction of the property development currently underway in the United States. But the New Urbanism is only two decades old, and it is gaining momentum. It forms part of a broad recovery of tradition in civic design now taking place in the United States — a recovery that will reach into the heart of our major metropolitan centers. Classical visions of the rebuilt World Trade Center site are emerging that differ sharply from the expressionistic mayhem offered by Daniel Libeskind, the city's officially anointed architect. Such visions may not be realized at Ground Zero, but their time will come.

BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS
The Dancing Mind — Jeffrey Hart . . . Emerson, by Lawrence Buell

False Dawn — David Pryce-Jones . . . Shattered Dreams: The Failure of the Peace Process in the Middle East, 1995-2002, by Charles Enderlin

Against the Gene Genies — Dean Clancy . . . Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age, by Bill McKibben

Supreme Command — Mackubin Thomas Owens . . . Armed Servants: Agency, Oversight, and Civil-Military Relations, by Peter D. Feaver

Shelf Life: Guns & Other Freedoms — Michael Potemra on heroes John Lott and Richard Epstein.

The Straggler: Name That Tune — John Derbyshire on climbing the classical mountain.