Category: Pete du Pont

George W. Bush gets credit for a very good year as president. His vision has been clear; his commitment to fight terrorism has not wavered; and his redefinition of America's foreign policy doctrines will change the way the world thinks about international aggression. The Cheney-Rumsfeld-Powell-Rice team has helped Mr. Bush in just two years in office join a small group of outstanding foreign-policy leaders–Churchill, Reagan and Thatcher–in leading the world to a better understanding of what it means to be free, and how freedom must be defended.

No doubt the White House had big plans for the week of Dec. 9. President Bush would reveal the members of his new economic team, announce his smallpox vaccination plans and refocus Americans and global allies on Hans "See No Evil" Blix on ongoing weapons inspections. That was all before Trent Lott opened his mouth.

Now that President Bush has nominated a new economic team, it is time to start talking about a new tax cut package for his team to sell.

It's time to look at alternatives to the safety net in America. Our system has changed little since the 1930s when most workers were male, in industrial occupations and part-time work was not common. Surprisingly, a new study by the National Center for Policy Analysis shows that the best place to look for changes in the antiquated U.S. system is Chile.

Not only must the world meet increasing energy demands, but to maintain a clean environment it must do so, in Stanford's words, with "an energy system that has much lower emissions of CO2"–carbon dioxide–"and other greenhouse materials to the atmosphere."

America's income tax is disliked by everyone who pays it. Its complexity is beyond comprehension, its rules unintelligible to ordinary and extraordinary people–and to the IRS which often cannot correctly answer tax questions. It is a drag on the economy because complying with it consumes 5.4 billion hours of our time each year that could better be spent on making the country, the economy or our families lives better. And most people feel it is a corrupt system that is politically rigged to unfairly benefit someone else.

The debate over economic stimulus is heating up. Republicans and Democrats are both crafting plans to get the economy out of the gutter and back on track. One of the proposals that has sprouted legs both in Congress and in the private sector is the idea of a short-term payroll tax "holiday."

Ken Alibek, author of "Biohazard" and once the colonel in charge of the Soviet bioterrorism program, reminded us at a Hudson Institute conference on terrorism and weapons of mass destruction that "bioweapons . . . are cheap, easy to make and easy to use. In the coming years they will become very much a part of our lives."

As Democrats inside the beltway dust themselves off from their Election Day shellacking, they began an inevitable tug of war about the ideological direction of the party.

So the first step to recovery is the election of a far-left leader, Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco. Her congressional district gave Al Gore a 61-point margin over President Bush in 2000, and the president outpolled Ralph Nader by a mere six points. Ms. Pelosi is articulate and telegenic, and she represents the beliefs of her district as elected officials are supposed to do.

What happened on Tuesday? A popular president, a Democratic Party without a message, and a continuing resurgence of Republicans in rural states turned what was supposed to be an even election into a significant Republican win.

When Lenin took control of Russia in 1918, his goal was to replace the market economy with government control of prices, wages and industry. Lenin said he would rather have the people of Russia starve than allow a private market in grain, and of course millions of them did starve for exactly that reason. The Soviet dream came to a disastrous end–famine, shortages, a lack of everything needed for life from food and freedom to employment and opportunity.

In less than two weeks Americans will go to the polls to decide whether to change the political balance of our government. Historically the party controlling the White House usually loses legislative seats in its first midterm election; the political parties of the last six presidents (LBJ through Bill Clinton) have lost an average of 27 House and two Senate seats. In their first midterm elections the three Democratic presidents averaged a loss of 38 House and five Senate seats; the three Republicans averaged minus 15 House seats and plus one Senate seat. In only one of the 14 midterm elections since World War II–in 1998–has the party of an incumbent president gained seats in the House.

On November 5, America will be asked to decide whether Members of the 107th Congress should be allowed to continue their careers representing us in the 108th, or be replaced by someone else. As an anonymous collective, it's hard to argue for another term based solely on their accomplishments.

Five times in the last century America made substantial international military commitments to rid the world of serious threats to civilization: World War I, World War II, 1947 (when President Truman began to resist communist expansion in southern Europe), Korea and Vietnam. They were long-term commitments.

Late last year, President Bush's Social Security reform commission released its recommendations for fixing Social Security. Even before its final report, the commission was the target of an incessant campaign of attacks, which has only intensified as we near Election Day.

In an election-year rush to satisfy impatient voters, politicians of both parties are endorsing ill-considered schemes to add a prescription drug benefit to Medicare. Fortunately, with Election Day fast approaching, Congress will not be able to actually enact any of their proposals. While the problems with the program are bad, most of the proposed solutions are worse.

Politics in America is never uninteresting; just look at the past week. The New Jersey Supreme Court creates a candidate selection rule, the Democratic Party gives up on its 30-year-old opposition to military action, and the bellwether of liberal economic thinking offers an old economic plan to help new post-multilateralist Democrats focus the fall campaign on the economy.

Today a new set of television commercials will begin to run in the first of 20 congressional districts where the race is too close to call and control of the House hangs in the balance.

Some observers claim the U.S. economy is recovering; others say we are in recession. Both are describing the same economy, yet their perspectives are polar opposites.

There's a lot we don't know about Saddam Hussein's Iraq. But there's a lot we do know, too. Since promising to dispose of all his weapons of mass destruction in 1991, Saddam has ignored 16 United Nations Security Council resolutions. The dictator's defiance goes well beyond international resolutions. The Butcher of Baghdad has done nearly everything in his power to lead his nation to a violent confrontation with the West.

As the election season heats up, opponents of reforming Social Security with personal retirement accounts are painting them as reckless, untested and dangerous. Experience from around the world, however, indicates that this just isn't the case.

One year ago today, America suffered its worst day since Dec. 7, 1941. Reeling from an attack by an unknown and unseen enemy, we were suddenly feeling at risk in ways we didn't expect or understand. With airliners smacking into towers and bodies falling a hundred stories to the ground, everything seemed to have fallen apart. But one thing was clear: America was at war. Pessimists quickly assumed that this was it for America. The prosperity, independence and dominance it had known in the world since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 were over. And, now, everything would be worse.

President Calvin Coolidge said that the business of America is business. If that's true, America is in bad shape. American business values have dropped considerably in the past year. Industries with fertile balance sheets and flush income statements today clamber for market share, while residual industries, suppliers and vendors simply try to survive.

Statism has proved itself a failure for more than three-quarters of a century in every sort of nation around the world. Soviet and Chinese statist policies failed. Statist policies failed in India, Tanzania and Chile. And now they are failing in Zimbabwe, Kenya and most of Africa. One would think that repeated failures would have discredited the idea of state power at the expense of individual liberty.