The Week

■ Get tough with the Japanese, Mr. President. Tell them we’ll resist any effort on their part to buy Pearl Harbor.

■ Back when George Bush was at least forthright about “voodoo economics,” the central idea he was pushing was that people really didn’t change their behavior according to tax laws. Maybe Dick Darman should take a look at his boss’s tax return. Money magazine reports that by declaring a hotel room in Houston to be his official residence (he spent three nights there in 1991, for $264 per night), he avoided some $29,000 in state and local taxes he would have had to pay if he declared himself a resident of either the District of Columbia or Kennebunkport, Maine. (Texas has no state income tax.) In other words, by using a hotel front George Bush managed to pay $3,596 in state and local taxes on a net income of $452,732, less than your average Ralph Kramden pays on a bus driver’s salary and something that is likely to end up in a Bill Clinton commercial if we know campaign consultant James Carville. So maybe we read Bush wrong. Maybe “No New Taxes” wasn’t a campaign pledge he broke but a New Year’s resolution he kept.

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William F. Buckley Jr.

■ Get tough with the Japanese, Mr. President. Tell them we’ll resist any effort on their part to buy Pearl Harbor.

■ Back when George Bush was at least forthright about “voodoo economics,” the central idea he was pushing was that people really didn’t change their behavior according to tax laws. Maybe Dick Darman should take a look at his boss’s tax return. Money magazine reports that by declaring a hotel room in Houston to be his official residence (he spent three nights there in 1991, for $264 per night), he avoided some $29,000 in state and local taxes he would have had to pay if he declared himself a resident of either the District of Columbia or Kennebunkport, Maine. (Texas has no state income tax.) In other words, by using a hotel front George Bush managed to pay $3,596 in state and local taxes on a net income of $452,732, less than your average Ralph Kramden pays on a bus driver’s salary and something that is likely to end up in a Bill Clinton commercial if we know campaign consultant James Carville. So maybe we read Bush wrong. Maybe “No New Taxes” wasn’t a campaign pledge he broke but a New Year’s resolution he kept.