The Week

■ Our sources in Vancouver tell us that Boris Yeltsin strongly urged Bill Clinton to move toward a market economy.

■ While Senate Republicans have been in a pitched battle with their Democratic colleagues and the White House over Mr. Clinton’s economic proposals, their new party chairman has been absent from view. But it now appears that Haley Barbour is a man with a plan. Mr. Barbour has created a “think tank” at the Republican National Committee to help Republicans figure out what they believe in. He intends to spend $3.5 million to commune with party leaders in some two hundred forums around the country. Given that the GOP already has a platform that is tough on government spending, crime, and Congress, and in favor of capital-gains and family tax relief, school choice, and free trade, it’s not clear what the party elders need to talk about. Maybe they just like talking—or maybe Mr. Barbour is hoping to talk his way out of the above platform. This expensive soul-searching is particularly bizarre as the party currently enjoys extraordinary unity in the face of a Democratic-controlled White House and Congress. Mr. Barbour might leave the $3.5 million in the bank, and instead spend a few hundred dollars taking freshman Republican congressmen to lunch, where he’ll learn that they didn’t win their campaigns by running away from their party’s platform.

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William F. Buckley Jr.

George H. W. Bush

■ Our sources in Vancouver tell us that Boris Yeltsin strongly urged Bill Clinton to move toward a market economy.

■ While Senate Republicans have been in a pitched battle with their Democratic colleagues and the White House over Mr. Clinton’s economic proposals, their new party chairman has been absent from view. But it now appears that Haley Barbour is a man with a plan. Mr. Barbour has created a “think tank” at the Republican National Committee to help Republicans figure out what they believe in. He intends to spend $3.5 million to commune with party leaders in some two hundred forums around the country. Given that the GOP already has a platform that is tough on government spending, crime, and Congress, and in favor of capital-gains and family tax relief, school choice, and free trade, it’s not clear what the party elders need to talk about. Maybe they just like talking—or maybe Mr. Barbour is hoping to talk his way out of the above platform. This expensive soul-searching is particularly bizarre as the party currently enjoys extraordinary unity in the face of a Democratic-controlled White House and Congress. Mr. Barbour might leave the $3.5 million in the bank, and instead spend a few hundred dollars taking freshman Republican congressmen to lunch, where he’ll learn that they didn’t win their campaigns by running away from their party’s platform.