The Week

District of Columbia Mayor Marion Barry spent a week at a Maryland retreat to “engage in a program of spiritual and physical renewal.” He was not missed. During the Barry years, taxes soared while services plummeted (except insofar as patronage, divvied among the mayor’s numerous supporters, was a service). Congress finally had to put the District’s affairs under a financial control board. Barry, a recovering drug addict, said his vacation was necessary to prevent a relapse. More likely, the District’s relapse into some honest government has been too stressful.

In the shadowy world of spin and furtive self-promotion that is the race to be Bob Dole’s running-mate, Ohio Gov. George Voinovich has until recently been on the upswing. Voinovich is popular, Catholic, and from a state rich in electoral votes. Just one problem: he is lacking in conservative hormones. Voinovich recently confessed he just didn’t understand why Republicans would try to repeal Clinton’s gas-tax increase (“If the deficit is such a problem, how can you be arguing to reduce the gas tax . . . ?”) There’s a lot Voinovich doesn’t get: he recently proposed re-instating a one-cent tax on soft drinks even after Ohio voters had repealed it; he floated a gas-tax increase after his 1994 re-election; he defends racial preferences, and doggedly resists attempts to require a super majority in the legislature for passing tax increases. Dole would do better to look to California, where both Attorney General Dan Lungren and Rep. Chris Cox are intelligent, energetic, and conservative. Go West, mature man.

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District of Columbia Mayor Marion Barry spent a week at a Maryland retreat to “engage in a program of spiritual and physical renewal.” He was not missed. During the Barry years, taxes soared while services plummeted (except insofar as patronage, divvied among the mayor’s numerous supporters, was a service). Congress finally had to put the District’s affairs under a financial control board. Barry, a recovering drug addict, said his vacation was necessary to prevent a relapse. More likely, the District’s relapse into some honest government has been too stressful.

In the shadowy world of spin and furtive self-promotion that is the race to be Bob Dole’s running-mate, Ohio Gov. George Voinovich has until recently been on the upswing. Voinovich is popular, Catholic, and from a state rich in electoral votes. Just one problem: he is lacking in conservative hormones. Voinovich recently confessed he just didn’t understand why Republicans would try to repeal Clinton’s gas-tax increase (“If the deficit is such a problem, how can you be arguing to reduce the gas tax . . . ?”) There’s a lot Voinovich doesn’t get: he recently proposed re-instating a one-cent tax on soft drinks even after Ohio voters had repealed it; he floated a gas-tax increase after his 1994 re-election; he defends racial preferences, and doggedly resists attempts to require a super majority in the legislature for passing tax increases. Dole would do better to look to California, where both Attorney General Dan Lungren and Rep. Chris Cox are intelligent, energetic, and conservative. Go West, mature man.