For the Record

What about the new Democratic House leadership team: Tom Foley, Richard Gephardt, William Gray? Columnists Evans & Novak see it as improvement. Foley, they say, is less partisan than Jim Wright, Gephardt less abrasive than Tony Coelho. They point out that Gephardt was an original backer of tax reform in Reagan years, and that Foley supported him. More important, say E&N, the loss of Wright and Coelho “means that Democratic efforts to run the government from Capitol Hill will be sharply diminished.” . . . Are the long knives back in their sheaths? Not so’s you’d notice. Rep. Beryl Anthony (Ark.), chairman of Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, hopes to drag out investigation of Republican Whip Newt Gingrich’s book-publishing deal as long as possible. “They [the GOP and Gingrich] have had fun. We’ve had to grimace and hunker down. They are now getting ready to see what it feels like. I think it will be very therapeutic for our members.” . . . Tony Podesta, a veteran Democratic political consultant, is delighted to see Republican National Committee chairman Lee Atwater in hot water over RNC memo that linked Foley with gay Rep. Barney Frank. “This may not be a mortal wound, but it’s going to be one that puts him [Atwater] in traction for a long time.” . . . At weekend meeting of Republican National Committee, Gingrich and Atwater, and their fighting tactics, were acclaimed by the troops. Said one official: “Forty per cent of these guys are new state chairmen, and they’re cutters . . . They all want to win. They believe in tough, aggressive politics.”

“You realize what a void he has left in our life,” commented David Broder, contrasting Ronald Reagan’s reaction to Tiananmen Square to pallid regrets of others. “You cannot massacre an idea,” said Reagan in London. “You cannot run tanks over hope. You cannot riddle people’s yearnings with bullets.” And he went on to warn China’s rulers that in an age in which “electronic beams blow through the Iron Curtain as if it were lace,” they cannot conceal their bloody repression. . . . The Voice of America beamed stories of the repression to two thousand satellite dishes in Mainland China, most of them controlled by units of the People’s Liberation Army, and increased its radio broadcasts to China by 25 per cent, switching to an all-news format. VOA Director Richard Carlson estimates that one hundred million Chinese were listening, despite efforts by Chinese authorities to jam broadcasts. . . . On night of massacre, one Radio Peking announcer was on the air briefly. “This is Radio Peking,” he said. “Please remember June 3, 1989. . . . Thousands of people, most of them innocent civilians, were killed by fully armed soldiers. . . . Among the killed are our colleagues at Radio Peking.” Shortly thereafter he was silenced. . . . In San Francisco, Stanley Lubman, whose law firm represents companies doing business in China, says they may feel that “a government that tells its people that there were no students fired on in the square could also mislead potential foreign investors.” . . . In Poland, Solidarity strategist Adam Michnik, urging Poles not to push the Communist government too fast or too hard, warned that “the alternative to the round table [at which the recent elections were negotiated] is what happened in Tbilisi and Peking.”

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What about the new Democratic House leadership team: Tom Foley, Richard Gephardt, William Gray? Columnists Evans & Novak see it as improvement. Foley, they say, is less partisan than Jim Wright, Gephardt less abrasive than Tony Coelho. They point out that Gephardt was an original backer of tax reform in Reagan years, and that Foley supported him. More important, say E&N, the loss of Wright and Coelho “means that Democratic efforts to run the government from Capitol Hill will be sharply diminished.” . . . Are the long knives back in their sheaths? Not so’s you’d notice. Rep. Beryl Anthony (Ark.), chairman of Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, hopes to drag out investigation of Republican Whip Newt Gingrich’s book-publishing deal as long as possible. “They [the GOP and Gingrich] have had fun. We’ve had to grimace and hunker down. They are now getting ready to see what it feels like. I think it will be very therapeutic for our members.” . . . Tony Podesta, a veteran Democratic political consultant, is delighted to see Republican National Committee chairman Lee Atwater in hot water over RNC memo that linked Foley with gay Rep. Barney Frank. “This may not be a mortal wound, but it’s going to be one that puts him [Atwater] in traction for a long time.” . . . At weekend meeting of Republican National Committee, Gingrich and Atwater, and their fighting tactics, were acclaimed by the troops. Said one official: “Forty per cent of these guys are new state chairmen, and they’re cutters . . . They all want to win. They believe in tough, aggressive politics.”

“You realize what a void he has left in our life,” commented David Broder, contrasting Ronald Reagan’s reaction to Tiananmen Square to pallid regrets of others. “You cannot massacre an idea,” said Reagan in London. “You cannot run tanks over hope. You cannot riddle people’s yearnings with bullets.” And he went on to warn China’s rulers that in an age in which “electronic beams blow through the Iron Curtain as if it were lace,” they cannot conceal their bloody repression. . . . The Voice of America beamed stories of the repression to two thousand satellite dishes in Mainland China, most of them controlled by units of the People’s Liberation Army, and increased its radio broadcasts to China by 25 per cent, switching to an all-news format. VOA Director Richard Carlson estimates that one hundred million Chinese were listening, despite efforts by Chinese authorities to jam broadcasts. . . . On night of massacre, one Radio Peking announcer was on the air briefly. “This is Radio Peking,” he said. “Please remember June 3, 1989. . . . Thousands of people, most of them innocent civilians, were killed by fully armed soldiers. . . . Among the killed are our colleagues at Radio Peking.” Shortly thereafter he was silenced. . . . In San Francisco, Stanley Lubman, whose law firm represents companies doing business in China, says they may feel that “a government that tells its people that there were no students fired on in the square could also mislead potential foreign investors.” . . . In Poland, Solidarity strategist Adam Michnik, urging Poles not to push the Communist government too fast or too hard, warned that “the alternative to the round table [at which the recent elections were negotiated] is what happened in Tbilisi and Peking.”