Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.natrev From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: FROM THE EDITOR Date: Mon, 16 Nov 92 11:57:05 EST Message-ID: FROM THE EDITOR ITYS, Number 453 President Bush's graciousness in accepting full responsibility for the Re- publican defeat should not obscure the fact that he was telling the truth. He inherited an impregnable fortress from Mr. Reagan and set assiduously about undermining the ramparts. All that Mr. Clinton did was lean on it. But in his task of demolition, Mr. Bush was very ably assisted. We iden- tify some of the villains in this special issue (modeled, I will concede, on the special ''Recriminations'' issue that The New Republic has been pub- lishing every four years since forever). Mr. Baker is more culpable than anyone else for the Republican cam- paign: there wasn't one. So I was amused to watch him dissociating him- self from something that didn't exist. We wish him a pleasant retirement and, in lieu of the usual gold watch, a framed copy of this cover. Insofar as the war was lost before the campaign, the chief credit goes to Richard Darman, who not only contrived the greatest blunder of the Bush years, namely the budget summit, but also managed to keep it the centerpiece of the Administration's domestic policy. As we wrote in March: ''Richard Darman's . . . presence prevents Mr. Bush from conceding that the 1990 budget summit was a colossal blunder. And Mr. Bush's reluc- tance to admit a mistake on this central issue . . . undermines his credibil- ity on every other issue.'' We hope you enjoy this magazine, and we shall return to these topics as the need arises. In the meantime, our qualified endorsement of Pat Bu- chanan in New Hampshire doesn't look so bad today, does it? Yesterday I had a letter blaming me for Mr. Bush's defeat. We had, of course, endorsed the President in our pre-election issue, and given him aid and comfort in several issues before that. But the writer's complaint was that Mr. Bush had already been irreparably weakened before the common enemy because NATIONAL REVIEW had criticized him sharply in the last year. Well, the responsibility for failure rests on those who persist in foolish decisions, not on those who point out their foolishness. Joe Sobran, when similarly taxed, replies that if his influence is so great as to defeat Mr. Bush, how come the candidate he endorsed got only ten thousand votes nationwide? But I don't think I'll offer that defense. Still, I was sorry to be right. My worst moment came with the news that California's Bruce Herschensohn, a potential conservative leader nation- ally, had been dragged down to defeat by the national ticket (and by a scurrilous smear from the Democrats). Bruce has since said that he will not run in 1994 against Dianne Fein- stein. Others deserve their turn. This modesty is all very well, but national conservative leaders are too thin on the ground for us to be persuaded by it. The voice of the people must force him back into politics. His address is: Herschensohn for Sena- tor, 1600 Dove Street, Suite 225, Newport Beach, California 92660. Bill McGurn contributes his last dispatch as NR's Washington bureau chief in this issue -- a melancholy retrospective on how the Bush Adminis- tration sealed its fate by degrees. Bill has been appointed a senior editor at the Far Eastern Economic Re- view in Hong Kong, where he is already famous. His Perfidious Albion el- oquently attacks Britain's failure to defend the Hong Kong Chinese against the encroachments of Peking (though he is favorably impressed by Chris Patten, the new governor). Bill was an outstanding Washington reporter and a very amiable col- league. We congratulate him on his new appointment, and hope to extort occasional reports from him on the economic suns rising in the East. -- JOHN O'SULLIVAN This article is copyright 1992 National Review. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM