The Long Goodbye

THE last week in July, President Clinton treated an audience at an education conference in Washington, D.C., to a full-throated denunciation of the Republicans who are blocking his education and training agenda. “Some would deny Head Start opportunities to as many as 25,000 of our disadvantaged children,” the President intoned as part of a long litany of charges. A few days later, he was back atitinan even harsher speech at a hospital in Maryland where kids work in a summer-jobs program. According to the President, if the GOP Congress has its way, kids working this summer “would not have a job next year.”

Both speeches were broadsides against the GOP, rehearsing Democratic campaign themes on an issue on which Republicans have traditionally been vulnerable. Both were also totally ignored. They came, respectively, the day after Monica Lewinsky cut her immunity deal with Ken Starr and the day the White House tried to revive the claim of attorney-client privilege in connection with Bruce Lindsey. On CNN, footage from the hospital event was used as a backdrop for reports about the latest developments in the Lewinsky scandal.

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Rich Lowry

Rich Lowry is the editor in chief of National Review.

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THE last week in July, President Clinton treated an audience at an education conference in Washington, D.C., to a full-throated denunciation of the Republicans who are blocking his education and training agenda. “Some would deny Head Start opportunities to as many as 25,000 of our disadvantaged children,” the President intoned as part of a long litany of charges. A few days later, he was back atitinan even harsher speech at a hospital in Maryland where kids work in a summer-jobs program. According to the President, if the GOP Congress has its way, kids working this summer “would not have a job next year.”

Both speeches were broadsides against the GOP, rehearsing Democratic campaign themes on an issue on which Republicans have traditionally been vulnerable. Both were also totally ignored. They came, respectively, the day after Monica Lewinsky cut her immunity deal with Ken Starr and the day the White House tried to revive the claim of attorney-client privilege in connection with Bruce Lindsey. On CNN, footage from the hospital event was used as a backdrop for reports about the latest developments in the Lewinsky scandal.