The Week

□ Why doesn’t the President just say something like this: “We are opposed in principle to both Communism and apartheid. However, we will take action only against nations that seek to export these evils.”

□ Those rustling, fluttering, throat-clearing noises you hear are the sound of liberal editors trying to decide what to say about the latest economic statistics, which show unemployment and poverty both down sharply. The jobless rate dropped three-tenths of a point to 6.9 per cent, the lowest it has been in five years. The group that was . . . whatever the reverse is of “hardest hit” . . . was black teenagers, whose jobless rate showed a satisfying drop of more than nine points (from 43.3 to 34.1 per cent). The liberals would not be so discomfited if they had not made such extreme claims about the evils of Reaganomics, but they’ve really made it sound as if that policy would inevitably lead to ever-widening circles of misery. A more modest fall-back claim, better supported by the evidence, would be simply that Reaganomics did not succeed in its early years in abolishing the business cycle—but that is a claim that lacks emotional resonance, since nothing else has either.

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□ Why doesn’t the President just say something like this: “We are opposed in principle to both Communism and apartheid. However, we will take action only against nations that seek to export these evils.”

□ Those rustling, fluttering, throat-clearing noises you hear are the sound of liberal editors trying to decide what to say about the latest economic statistics, which show unemployment and poverty both down sharply. The jobless rate dropped three-tenths of a point to 6.9 per cent, the lowest it has been in five years. The group that was . . . whatever the reverse is of “hardest hit” . . . was black teenagers, whose jobless rate showed a satisfying drop of more than nine points (from 43.3 to 34.1 per cent). The liberals would not be so discomfited if they had not made such extreme claims about the evils of Reaganomics, but they’ve really made it sound as if that policy would inevitably lead to ever-widening circles of misery. A more modest fall-back claim, better supported by the evidence, would be simply that Reaganomics did not succeed in its early years in abolishing the business cycle—but that is a claim that lacks emotional resonance, since nothing else has either.