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Sustainable agriculture or Shakespeare?
While protesters voice their resistance to globalization in the streets of Seattle, a reporter wonders if they really have the people's best interests at heart.
By Nina Shapiro
[12/03/99]

Send in the clowns
George W. Bush's presidential debate debut turns into a genuine snoozefest.
By Jake Tapper
[12/03/99]

The great straddler
Free trader President Clinton veers left in Seattle. But will his finesse be enough to keep Al Gore's Democratic Party intact?
By Todd Gitlin
[12/03/99]

The three horsemen of globalization
Critics fear increased cooperation between the World Trade Organization, World Bank and International Monetary Fund will spawn an 800-pound gorilla.
By Monte Paulsen
[12/02/99]

What's really at stake in Seattle
Economists speak out on the issues behind the World Trade Organization summit and the street protests.
By Alicia Montgomery, Daryl Lindsey and Fiona Morgan
[12/02/99]

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Baker denied making the comment, but for many Jews it was all too believable, and disconcertingly symbolic of the relationship between Jews and the Republican Party. Only a few months before Baker's alleged comments were leaked to the media by a GOP higher-up, President George Bush himself had made some questionable, vaguely conspiratorial allusions to the pro-Israel lobby.

If its members have anything to say about it, the Republican Jewish Coalition -- which held its 15th anniversary gala and presidential candidates forum on Wednesday -- will make sure that Texas Gov. George W. Bush doesn't experience the missteps of his father.

There's a checklist for candidates who want to garner the favor of Jewish groups. Pander point No. 1 is that a candidate must support Israel. Persecuted since the beginning of time, many Jews simply feel safer knowing that -- if worse comes to worst -- they can always move there without fear of pogroms. Pander point No. 1, Section B, is that a candidate considers Jerusalem the capital of Israel and believes the United States should move its embassy from Tel Aviv to the actual capital.

These and other pander points clearly weren't news to Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, commentator Alan Keyes, Arizona Sen. John McCain, Christian activist Gary Bauer, publisher Steve Forbes or George W. Bush, who all spoke at the forum and hit on most of them.

Founded in 1985, the RJC has toiled like the Pharaoh's Jewish slaves to build better relations between the Jewish community and the Republican party. And not without some successes. Likely Senate candidates Hillary Rodham Clinton and Mayor Rudy Giuliani are polling at equal numbers among New York's largely Democratic Jewish voters -- helped in no small part by the RJC's anti-Clinton TV ad, which featured footage of Clinton kissing Yasser Arafat's wife after she levied an outrageous charge against Israel (alleging that Israelis had used poison gas against Palestinians).

On Wednesday, the RJC forum was notable for getting all six GOP presidential hopefuls to come and pander -- an accomplishment many sponsors of other, more public, debate forums haven't been able to accomplish.

All the candidates had key RJC members introducing them, but leave it to the front-running Bush to walk up with the biggest macher of the RJC: the ancient Max Fisher, who has advised every Republican president since Eisenhower.

Bush proceeded to wow the crowd with a speech heavy on pre-packaged platitudes. He ripped into the tax speech he'd given earlier that day in Iowa, combined with a smattering of lines from his defense commercial ("We live in a world of madmen ... and terror ... and missiles") with a dose of pro-Israel rhetoric thrown in for good measure.

"Bush didn't speak to us like we were just 'Jews,'" said an attendee, "he gave us the same speech he gives to every group -- he spoke to us as Americans. Republican Americans who are Jewish. It's why he's such a successful politician, and why he'll be the next president of the United States."

The RJC, like every other establishment Republican organization, has been fairly supportive of Bush -- if unofficially so -- for some time now. A few members of the RJC even took Bush on his first trip to Israel last year, an experience he recounted for the crowd.

But there was more than a note of discord in the air before and after -- if not during -- Bush's speech. Most American Jews didn't vote for Bush's father; and though many of the RJC attendees seemed amenable to the son's inclusive message that what the world needs now is love sweet love, others voiced a wariness, largely of George W.'s own making.

Attendees voiced concern about Bush's refusal to decry the anti-Semitism of Pat Buchanan -- even after Buchanan's book "A Republic, Not an Empire" was published and resoundingly decried by McCain, Forbes and Elizabeth Dole, among others. While Buchanan was flirting with joining the Reform Party -- and various other Republicans were telling him not to let the door hit him on the ass on the way out -- Bush was pleading with Buchanan to stay in the GOP.

"Buchanan was a big moment and I think Bush made a mistake," said the Weekly Standard's Jewish editor and publisher, William Kristol. "I was struck by how many in that crowd -- and it was a fairly pro-Bush crowd -- were unhappy with Bush for asking Buchanan to stay in the party ... It was interesting how many Buchanan comments I heard."

Next page | Jerusalem, the indivisible capital of Utah?