For the Record

What follows Coelho-Wright show? Fred Wertheimer of Common Cause, which early on called for investigation of Jim Wright, says “we clearly have our best chance since the Watergate days to make major institutional reforms in Congress.” Those reforms, says Rep. Vic Fazio (D., Calif.), of Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, must include “a realistic pay raise to make up for the loss of honoraria.” . . . Roger Craver, a Democratic direct-mail man, warns that members of Congress cannot afford to, and hence will not, adopt legislation that will reduce their income. . . . “Why do I take honoraria?” asks Sen. Tim Wirth (D., Colo.). He answers: “To send to my two favorite charities, Harvard and Stanford [where his two children are enrolled].” . . . On the succession, the struggle within the Democratic Party is ideological as well as personal. Moderate-to-conservative Democrats called on Speaker-to-be Tom Foley last week to demand he include them in policy decisions more often than Wright did. After meeting, Mississippi’s G. V. (Sonny) Montgomery said his group was satisfied with Foley’s assurances. (Foley is ideologically to the left of Wright.) . . . Moderate Democrats are backing Rep. Ed Jenkins (Ga.) to succeed Foley as Majority Leader and Beryl Anthony (Ark.) to succeed Coelho as whip rather than Left liberals such as William Gray (Pa.) and Henry Waxman (Calif.). . . . Incidentally, Republican Rep. Mickey Edwards (Okla.) believes Foley will give Republicans “a fair break. He will give you a chance to offer your amendment.” . . . Republican tacticians are delighted that Coelho is gone. Says Republican consultant Eddie Mahe, “He was their [the House Democrats’] best strategist. He was their best political thinker.” . . . Coelho himself boasts: “The greatest role I played was to prevent the Reagan revolution from succeeding.” . . . Summing up the Democratic debacle, Lee Atwater of Republican National Committee commented: “There comes a time in politics when the best thing to do is follow the Napoleonic maxim: never interfere with the enemy while he is in the process of destroying himself.”

Not much emphasized in obituaries of the Ayatollah Khomeini, the 1987 UN Commission on Human Rights estimate that as many as seven thousand people were “shot, hanged, stoned, or burned to death” during and right after the 1979 revolution. In subsequent years, at least thirty thousand were jailed for political reasons and tens of thousands executed. . . . Khomeini’s justice was swift and harsh. On January 21, 1989, he decreed tough new anti-drug laws. By early May, 356 drug dealers had been shot. … In eight-year Iran-Iraq war, it’s estimated that over one million men (and boys) were killed. . . . One beneficiary of Khomeini’s rage: Salman Rushdie, 800,000 copies of whose novel The Satanic Verses have been published by Viking. That’s fifty thousand more hardcover copies than Tom Wolfe’s blockbusting Bonfire of the Vanities racked up. Rushdie’s earlier novels sold between seven and eight thousand copies. . . . Bad show: José NapoleÓn Duarte, whose Christian Democratic Party was voted out of office in Salvadoran elections, told AP at farewell party that “there may be differences between Cristiani [El Salvador’s new president] and d’Au- buisson [hard-line rightist leader of victorious Arena party], but they both support a totalitarian project.” This just as liberal Democrats on Hill are looking for an excuse to cut U.S. aid to El Salvador.

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What follows Coelho-Wright show? Fred Wertheimer of Common Cause, which early on called for investigation of Jim Wright, says “we clearly have our best chance since the Watergate days to make major institutional reforms in Congress.” Those reforms, says Rep. Vic Fazio (D., Calif.), of Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, must include “a realistic pay raise to make up for the loss of honoraria.” . . . Roger Craver, a Democratic direct-mail man, warns that members of Congress cannot afford to, and hence will not, adopt legislation that will reduce their income. . . . “Why do I take honoraria?” asks Sen. Tim Wirth (D., Colo.). He answers: “To send to my two favorite charities, Harvard and Stanford [where his two children are enrolled].” . . . On the succession, the struggle within the Democratic Party is ideological as well as personal. Moderate-to-conservative Democrats called on Speaker-to-be Tom Foley last week to demand he include them in policy decisions more often than Wright did. After meeting, Mississippi’s G. V. (Sonny) Montgomery said his group was satisfied with Foley’s assurances. (Foley is ideologically to the left of Wright.) . . . Moderate Democrats are backing Rep. Ed Jenkins (Ga.) to succeed Foley as Majority Leader and Beryl Anthony (Ark.) to succeed Coelho as whip rather than Left liberals such as William Gray (Pa.) and Henry Waxman (Calif.). . . . Incidentally, Republican Rep. Mickey Edwards (Okla.) believes Foley will give Republicans “a fair break. He will give you a chance to offer your amendment.” . . . Republican tacticians are delighted that Coelho is gone. Says Republican consultant Eddie Mahe, “He was their [the House Democrats’] best strategist. He was their best political thinker.” . . . Coelho himself boasts: “The greatest role I played was to prevent the Reagan revolution from succeeding.” . . . Summing up the Democratic debacle, Lee Atwater of Republican National Committee commented: “There comes a time in politics when the best thing to do is follow the Napoleonic maxim: never interfere with the enemy while he is in the process of destroying himself.”

Not much emphasized in obituaries of the Ayatollah Khomeini, the 1987 UN Commission on Human Rights estimate that as many as seven thousand people were “shot, hanged, stoned, or burned to death” during and right after the 1979 revolution. In subsequent years, at least thirty thousand were jailed for political reasons and tens of thousands executed. . . . Khomeini’s justice was swift and harsh. On January 21, 1989, he decreed tough new anti-drug laws. By early May, 356 drug dealers had been shot. … In eight-year Iran-Iraq war, it’s estimated that over one million men (and boys) were killed. . . . One beneficiary of Khomeini’s rage: Salman Rushdie, 800,000 copies of whose novel The Satanic Verses have been published by Viking. That’s fifty thousand more hardcover copies than Tom Wolfe’s blockbusting Bonfire of the Vanities racked up. Rushdie’s earlier novels sold between seven and eight thousand copies. . . . Bad show: José NapoleÓn Duarte, whose Christian Democratic Party was voted out of office in Salvadoran elections, told AP at farewell party that “there may be differences between Cristiani [El Salvador’s new president] and d’Au- buisson [hard-line rightist leader of victorious Arena party], but they both support a totalitarian project.” This just as liberal Democrats on Hill are looking for an excuse to cut U.S. aid to El Salvador.