History > 2006 > USA > Politics (I)

Optimistic, Democrats Debate

the Party's Vision

May 9, 2006
The New York Times
By ROBIN TONER

WASHINGTON, May 8 — With Democrats increasingly optimistic about this year's midterm elections and the landscape for 2008, intellectuals in the center and on the left are debating how to sharpen the party's identity and present a clear alternative to the conservatism that has dominated political thought for a generation.

Many of these analysts, both liberals and moderates, are convinced that the Democrats face a moment of historic opportunity. They say that the country is weary of war and division and ready — if given a compelling choice — to reject the Republicans and change the country's direction. They argue that the Democratic Party is showing signs of new health — intense party discipline on Capitol Hill, a host of policy proposals and an energized base.

But some of these analysts argue that the party needs something more than a pastiche of policy proposals. It needs a broader vision, a narrative, they say, to return to power and govern effectively — what some describe as an unapologetic appeal to the "common good," to big goals like expanding affordable health coverage and to occasional sacrifice for the sake of the nation as a whole.

This emerging critique reflects, for many, a hunger to move beyond the carefully calibrated centrism that marked the Clinton years, which was itself the product of the last big effort to redefine the Democratic Party.

This analysis is also, in large part, a rejection of the more tactical, consultant-driven politics that dominated the party's presidential and Congressional campaigns of the last six years — the emphasis on targeted issues like prescription drugs for retirees and careful, constituent-based appeals.

"What the Democrats still don't have is a philosophy, a big idea that unites their proposals and converts them from a hodgepodge of narrow and specific fixes into a vision for society," Michael Tomasky, editor of the liberal journal The American Prospect, wrote in a much-discussed essay in the May issue.

A broader vision, many of these analysts say, will help the Democratic Party counter the charge, so often advanced by Republicans, that the Democrats are merely a collection of interest groups — labor, civil rights, abortion rights and the like — each consumed with their own agenda, rather than the nation's.

John Podesta, who heads a center-left research group, the Center for American Progress, says an appeal to the common good "gets away from what we've sort of gotten used to in the last couple cycles — a pollster-driven niche idea framing — toward a larger vision of where you want to take the country."

Democrats and progressive intellectuals have a history of debating philosophies and world views. Sometimes those debates result in a consensus and even a winning campaign, like Mr. Clinton's; sometimes the results are irrelevant in the rush of real-world campaigning.

This discussion, still early, is bubbling up in journals like The American Prospect; research organizations like the Center for American Progress, The Third Way and the Democratic Leadership Council; a wave of new books; and — especially — among bloggers who are demanding that the party become more assertive in fighting for what it believes in.

The frustration with consultants — and their impact on Democratic politics — is widespread among the Internet pundits, and at the heart of several recent books, including "Crashing the Gate," co-written by Markos Moulitsas, founder of the blog the Daily Kos. In another, "Politics Lost," Joe Klein mourns the passing of a more authentic, preconsultant politics that he argues was embodied by Robert F. Kennedy's 1968 campaign.

Even the film industry recognizes the mood; "Bobby," an account of June 5, 1968, the day Kennedy won the California primary and was assassinated, is scheduled for release in November.

This discussion of first principles and big goals marks a psychological shift for many in the party; a frequent theme is that Democrats must stop being afraid, stop worrying that their core beliefs are out of step with the times, stop ceding so much ground to the conservatives.

Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, said, "One of the most successful right-wing ploys was to demonize any concern about the distribution of income in America as, quote, class warfare."

Many of these analysts argue that Republicans have pushed the ideological limits of the American people so far — notably, with Mr. Bush's tax cuts for the affluent and his effort to partly privatize Social Security — that Americans are ready for something different. Elaine Kamarck, a former top aide to former Vice President Al Gore, argues that the combination of the Sept. 11 attacks and Hurricane Katrina has driven home to Americans the need for strong and effective government, "and gets us back to our strengths — a government that can deliver."

William Kristol, a leading conservative thinker and editor of The Weekly Standard, counters that parties are ultimately defined not by big visions from intellectuals but by real positions on real issues.

"Foreign policy is critical," said Mr. Kristol, whose magazine was considered an important influence on the Bush administration's foreign policy. "Do they share a basic understanding that there is a global war on terror, and Iran is a threat that has to be dealt with? Is the next Democratic presidential nominee going to raise taxes or not?"

He added, "It needs to be brought down to earth."

Many of these Democratic and liberal analysts acknowledge as much; they have a huge challenge on foreign policy, with divisions over the war in Iraq hanging over every philosophical discussion. There is more of a broad consensus on domestic policy, like the need to expand access to college and health care, but Democrats can still muster a good internal fight over whether to raise taxes and on whom, or how to deal with trade and a globalized economy.

Moreover, any party, in the end, is essentially defined by its presidential nominee.

Potential Democratic presidential candidates are already getting pulled into this debate. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York drew fire from Mr. Moulitsas, in an essay in The Washington Post on Sunday, as being too careful, thinking too small, essentially being a throwback to an outmoded centrism.

But as Representative Rahm Emanuel, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, puts it, "The conversations we're having now are essential," in part, he argued, because the last two presidential elections "were more about biography than about a view of government or a vision of the future for this country."

Mr. Emanuel, a former Clinton White House adviser, plans to weigh into the debate with a book coming out this August called "The Plan — Big Ideas for America's Future," written with Bruce Reed, another former Clinton White House aide and president of the Democratic Leadership Council.

The debate begins with a diagnosis of the problem: 15 years ago, in the runup to the Clinton campaign, influential Democratic thinkers argued that the party had lost three presidential races in a row because it was too liberal and had lost touch with the middle class. These days, some analysts argue it has become so tactical and so prone to compromise that not enough Americans know what it stands for. John Halpin and Ruy Teixeira of the Center for American Progress recently described it as an "identity gap."

Mr. Tomasky argued in his article that "the party and the constellation of interests around it don't even think in philosophical terms and haven't for quite some time. There's a reason for this. They've all been trained to believe — by the media, by their pollsters — that their philosophy is an electoral loser."

Mr. Tomasky argues that the Democratic Party needs to stand for more than diversity and rights; it needs to return to its New Deal, New Frontier and Great Society roots and run as the party of the common good — the philosophy, he says, that brought the nation Social Security, the Marshall Plan, the Peace Corps and civil rights legislation. After years of what he calls "rapacious social Darwinism" under Mr. Bush, Mr. Tomasky argues that the country is ready for the idea that "we're all in this — postindustrial America, the globalized world and especially the post-9/11 world in which free peoples have to unite to fight new threats — together."

Peter Beinart, editor-at-large for The New Republic, argues for a new Democratic foreign policy in a new book, "The Good Fight," saying liberals need to reclaim the tough-minded approach they brought to the cold war — recognizing the need for strong engagement in the fight against totalitarianism and for democracy, but doing so through international institutions.

Mr. Beinart, who backed the war in Iraq but now says, "I was wrong," said there were "important cautionary lessons" for supporters of that war about the dangers of "apocalyptic thinking" and the conviction that quick action is essential. On the other hand, he said, "It was the wrong lessons of Vietnam that led the Democratic Party off the cliff into mass opposition to the gulf war" in 1991.

Optimistic, Democrats Debate the Party's Vision, NYT, 9.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/09/washington/09dems.html

Liberal of the 'Lost Generation'

Senses a Shift

May 9, 2006
The New York Times
By ROBIN TONER

WASHINGTON, May 8 — Michael Tomasky, 45, describes himself as part of the "lost generation of liberals," who came of age under Ronald Reagan and spent much of their adulthood under a conservative ascendancy.

Now, Mr. Tomasky says, he senses, "potentially," a shift in the paradigm — something more than a drop in the poll numbers for President Bush and the Republican Congress.

"For the first time, really, since Ronald Reagan came on the scene, elements of conservative philosophy are being discredited to larger numbers of Americans," Mr. Tomasky said in an interview at the offices of The American Prospect, the 16-year-old liberal monthly that he edits.

And that, Mr. Tomasky said, creates an opening for Democrats "to jump back into a debate they've avoided since Ronald Reagan about what they actually stand for at the end of the day."

All of which prompted Mr. Tomasky to write an essay for the May issue on the "common good," the liberal tradition that, he argues, is the perfect antidote to Mr. Bush's "ownership society." Since then, blogs on the left and the right have debated the ideas.

Mr. Tomasky is a native of Morgantown, W.Va., where his father was a lawyer (and a former shop steward for the United Mine Workers) and his mother was a schoolteacher. After West Virginia University, he worked briefly on Capitol Hill, then went to graduate school in political science at New York University. He worked at The New York Observer, The Village Voice and New York magazine — in addition to writing two books on politics — before coming to The American Prospect.

The magazine's office is just down the hall from another voice in the intellectual debate over the Democratic Party's redefinition — The Third Way, which argues for a more centrist effort to connect with middle-class voters on values and economics. The two groups are sponsoring a dinner series to run through 2008 that will bring together writers, academics and the like to discuss "the development of a 21st century progressive philosophy."

Mr. Tomasky clearly relishes the debate, but worries that the "common good" will ultimately become just another sound bite in a political speech. He said, "I'm just itching for the Democrats to be willing — even if they lose it — to have a fight with Republicans about first principles."

    Liberal of the 'Lost Generation' Senses a Shift, NYT, 9.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/09/washington/09tomasky.html

Early Intensity

Underlines Role of Races in Ohio

May 7, 2006
The New York Times
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and IAN URBINA

COLUMBUS, Ohio, May 6 — For the Democratic Party, the road back to power in Washington begins here in Ohio. But as long-dominant Ohio Republicans struggle with a corruption scandal, economic distress and rising voter unease, Democrats face a challenge in making the state a launching pad to seize control of Congress and the White House, leaders of both parties say.

As Ohio turned from the primaries last Tuesday to its competitive thicket of contests this fall, party officials and analysts said one of the Democrats' most alluring targets, Senator Mike DeWine, seemed less vulnerable than he had earlier this year.

And Democrats said that while they were hopeful they would be able to elect the first Democratic governor in 16 years — filling the seat of Bob Taft, who is leaving office after a corruption scandal — the fight will not be easy.

The intensity of political activity here underlies Ohio's status as the most contested political battleground in the nation, where nearly all of the forces shaping American politics today are on display.

Currently, Republicans control the governor's mansion and both houses of the legislature. The two United States senators are Republican, and the party has a 12-to-6 edge in the Congressional delegation. And President Bush won Ohio in 2000 and 2004, in both cases helping tip the balance for his victories.

Nevertheless, Democrats hope to make substantial gains here because of mounting displeasure with Mr. Bush over the economy, the war in Iraq and distress with the Republican leadership in the state.

In one welcome turn for Democrats, two Republican members of Congress are vulnerable, victims of the curdled political environment, analysts said.

But Democratic hopes of knocking out a third Republican, Representative Bob Ney, who has been linked to the Jack Abramoff corruption investigation, were set back when the Democrats' favored candidate, Mayor Joe Sulzer of Chillicothe, lost to a lesser-known and politically inexperienced challenger, Zack Space.

Further, those potential gains could be offset if Democrats fail to hold two Democratic seats that opened up when Representative Sherrod Brown decided to run for the Senate and Representative Ted Strickland entered the race for governor. "The fall election is not going to be a cakewalk," said State Senator Charlie Wilson, the Democratic candidate to succeed Mr. Strickland.

Nonetheless, Republicans are in as bad shape in Ohio as they are in anyplace in the United States, presenting the Democrats with their best opportunity this year. The major question is whether Democrats will be able to emerge from Ohio with incremental gains, or the kind of sweeping victories that could produce long-lasting changes in the national political landscape.

Of the 18 Ohio Congressional districts, five seats are considered in play. Ideally, Democratic Party leaders said, they will gain at least three Congressional seats in Ohio — Democrats need 15 nationally to take back the House — along with a Senate seat and the governorship.

In many ways, the political environment here mirrors the national one, with its brew of economic anxiety, corruption and voter weariness with one-party dominance. Beyond corruption and worry about Iraq, the contests in Ohio are shaping up as a face-off between two powerful forces in American politics: economic issues, led by job loss, trade and health care worries; and social issues, notably abortion, same-sex marriage and gun control.

The Ohio Democratic chairman, Chris Redfern, said in an interview that national Democrats needed to "focus on the governor's race above all" to lay the groundwork for the 2008 presidential election and suggested that this was where the party had its best hope of success.

But Mr. Redfern warned that Mr. Strickland's contest with J. Kenneth Blackwell, the hard-hitting Ohio secretary of state, could prove tougher than many Washington Democrats think.

"I'm cautiously optimistic about the governor's race, but I also really think this is going to be much more difficult than Democrats believe it will be," Mr. Redfern said. "Huge resources will be poured into this race, and Ken Blackwell is going to come at Congressman Strickland with rhetoric that will be totally unlike anything we've ever seen."

There is no party registration in Ohio, but 40 percent of voters in 2004 said they were Republican, compared with 35 percent who said they were Democrat, according to a survey of people leaving the polls. Conservative Christians, who make up an estimated quarter of the voting population, proved critical to Mr. Bush's 120,0000-vote victory here in 2004.

With seven highly-charged races being played against the ever-present backdrop of past and future presidential races, parts of Ohio are in the grip of the kind of political fury normally not seen until the final days of a campaign, with all the social and political cleavages on full display.

On Thursday, Mr. Blackwell — a leading advocate of the state ban on same-sex marriage who opposes abortion in every instance, including to save the life of the pregnant woman — led a crowd in prayer at an outdoor National Day of Prayer vigil. As those gathered bowed their heads and murmured chants of "Thank you, Jesus" in a light spring drizzle, Mr. Blackwell was forced to raise his voice to be heard over the din of banging pots and pans and chants by workers who had been forced out of their jobs demonstrating across High Street.

The Democratic campaign to unseat Senator DeWine has been pivotal to the party's ambition for capturing the Senate. But those hopes have been dampened as Republicans began a barrage of attacks on Mr. Brown's positions on taxes, military appropriations and social issues. The attacks have been pressed by Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's chief political adviser, who flew here last month to urge the mild-mannered Mr. DeWine to adopt the strategy to avoid defeat, Ohio Republicans said.

Senator Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina, the head of the Republican Senate campaign committee, said attacks on Mr. Brown's ideology would compensate for what she acknowledged was a difficult atmosphere for Republicans.

Mr. Brown is considered one of the more liberal members of the state's Congressional delegation; he supports abortion rights, opposed the constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex marriage and voted against the war in Iraq.

"Sherrod Brown is out of the mainstream," Mrs. Dole said. "I don't think his kind of liberalism will sell across the state. Drawing the contrast is the key here: it's the choice between the two candidates, despite the environment."

Mr. DeWine said he would wait until later in the year before drawing such distinctions himself. "I am in the mainstream of the state, and I don't think he is," he said. "I'm not going to spend a lot of time, at this point in the campaign, getting into this. It's a little early."

Mr. Brown, handing out leaflets at a coffee shop in Columbus on Monday, said Republicans were trying to take attention away from his focus on economic issues.

"Republicans are going to try to shift attention away from these economic issues and move the focus to social issues like abortion and gay marriage to fire up their base, but I don't think its going to work like it did in 2004," he said. "People in Ohio are seeing now how corruption affects their pocketbook and how gas prices go up when a party corruptly allows oil companies to set policy, and how Medicare becomes impossible when you allow the pharmaceutical companies to dictate policy."

Democrats and analysts said here that in the governor's race Mr. Strickland was less vulnerable to that kind of attack — he opposes gun control and represents one of the most conservative districts in the state — but Mr. Blackwell said that would not deter him.

"We will both be asked to defend our positions on abortion, on marriage, on a whole host of issues, and people will be able to see how he measures up to their values," Mr. Blackwell said. "Strickland will probably underestimate and underappreciate the degree to which my vision connects with a broad base of Ohioans."

Mr. Strickland said he would prefer to talk about economic issues. "That would be wonderful," he said.

But, he said: "I am prepared to respond to whatever attacks come from him in these areas. I don't think most people in Ohio believe these are the issues that are central to the responsibilities of being governor."

State officials estimate that Ohio has lost more than 175,000 manufacturing jobs in the last decade and the number of adults in the state without health care has risen by 45 percent; a result is a decidedly anxious electorate where over 70 percent of respondents in some polls say the state is heading in the wrong directions.

"Things have really headed downhill in the country between the war and jobs and all these scandals," said Rachel Jackson, 36, a "diehard Republican."

The political environment here has put two once-safe Republican members of Congress in jeopardy: Representatives Steve Chabot and Deborah Pryce.

Mrs. Pryce been the target of nearly $100,000 worth of advertisements paid for by Moveon.org, a liberal group, attacking her for taking money from pharmaceutical companies. In a sign of White House concern about her prospects, Laura Bush, the first lady, came here this week to campaign for her.

The corruption issue has given Democrats hope, though Mr. Ney said he was not worried. "Let me be candid, in my race Abramoff is an issue," he said. "But it is not the top issue. Voters in my district are focused on jobs, health care, gas prices and immigration."

    Early Intensity Underlines Role of Races in Ohio, NYT, 7.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/07/washington/07ohio.html

Dean slams Bush on Katrina

Fri Apr 21, 2006 6:41 PM ET
Reuters
By John Whitesides, Political Correspondent

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Democratic Party chief Howard Dean, pitching in to help clean up hurricane-ravaged New Orleans, said on Friday the area's slow recovery was a failure of national leadership that would cost Republicans in November's elections.

"This is why Republicans are going to be out of business," Dean said outside a badly damaged house in New Orleans' devastated Ninth Ward, where whole streets remain vacant and debris from Hurricane Katrina chokes yards and roads more than seven months after the storm.

"This is ridiculous. This is not the America we grew up in," Dean said, gazing at the mounds of mud and water-soaked debris. Flooding caused by Katrina last year killed more than 1,300 people and displaced hundreds of thousands. President George W. Bush's administration has been criticized for a slow initial response and the lack of a clear recovery plan since.

Dean and about 20 Democratic National Committee members and staff, in New Orleans for the DNC's spring meeting, helped a crew of volunteers gut, scrape and clear debris from a brick house slated for rebuilding.

Other teams of DNC members fanned out across New Orleans to perform other acts of community service on Friday, helping rebuild houses, sort clothes and distribute food for hurricane victims.

The effort, and the Democrats' decision to hold their meeting in New Orleans, is a way to pledge support for the city while reminding voters of the Bush administration's slow response to the disaster.

Dean, dressed in a white protective suit, said after pushing wheelbarrows of debris to a pile in the front yard that Bush's "incredible failure" in New Orleans would tar his presidency.

If Democrat Bill Clinton was still president, he said, the neighborhoods would have been cleaned up.

"This is a searing, burning issue and I think it's going to cost George Bush his legacy and it's going to cost the Republicans the House, the Senate and maybe very well the presidency in the next election," he said. "People will never forget this."

In response, the White House said it had made a "firm commitment" to the region's recovery.

"Unlike some who participate in one-stop photo ops to point fingers and wave their arms, President Bush has made a firm commitment to providing the Gulf Coast region relief and rebuilding effort they require," said spokesman Ken Lisaius.

SLOW RECOVERY

The balance of power in the House and Senate will be at stake in November's congressional elections, with Democrats needing to pick up six Senate seats and 15 House seats to reclaim majorities.

The owner of the house, 68-year-old Vincent Copper, thanked Dean for his help. He said he had lived there since 1971 and was determined to rebuild, but was temporarily staying near the airport.

"It's been slow," he said of the pace of recovery. "They have been moving, but it's not as fast as I would like it to be."

Water in the neighborhood had been 12-feet (3.7-meter) deep after the storm, and many of the other wooden houses along Copper's street had been knocked from their foundations and were likely to be torn down.

Dean told volunteers working on the house from ACORN, a grass-roots group that works on behalf of low-income and minority families, they were performing a valuable service.

"We don't have a federal government that wants to help, so I'm glad you're doing this. This is all we've got," Dean said.

"We need different kind of folks in Washington who will put the ordinary people of New Orleans in front of bureaucracy and paperwork and politics," he said.

    Dean slams Bush on Katrina, R, 21.4.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyid=2006-04-21T224133Z_01_N21387310_RTRUKOC_0_US-DEMOCRATS.xml

Democrats Eager to Exploit Anger

Over Gas Prices

April 21, 2006
The New York Times
By MICHAEL JANOFSKY

WASHINGTON, April 20 — Democrats running for Congress are moving quickly to use the most recent surge in oil and gasoline prices to bash Republicans over energy policy, and more broadly, the direction of the country.

With oil prices hitting a high this week and prices at the pump topping $3 a gallon in many places, Amy Klobuchar, a Democratic Senate candidate in Minnesota, is making the issue the centerpiece of her campaign. Ms. Klobuchar says it "is one of the first things people bring up" at her campaign stops.

To varying degrees, Democrats around the country are following a similar script that touches on economic anxiety and populist resentment against oil companies.

"It's a metaphor for an economy that keeps biting people despite overall good numbers," said Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Mr. Schumer said Democratic candidates in 10 of the 34 Senate races this year had scheduled campaign events this week focusing on gasoline prices.

Officials at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which advises House candidates, said they sent a memorandum to candidates on Thursday offering guidance on using the issue to their advantage. The memorandum includes a "sample statement" that recommends telling voters, "Americans are tired of giving billion-dollar tax subsidies to energy companies and foreign countries while paying record prices at the pump."

Increasing gasoline prices have put Republicans on the defensive at a time when they are counting on the economy to help offset the myriad other problems they face, starting with the Iraq war.

Republicans say they have spent years advocating policies that would reduce the reliance on imported oil, largely by promoting more domestic energy production, and they point to the energy bill that President Bush signed last August as a step in that direction. They said that the law encouraged conservation and greater use of ethanol in gasoline and that it would have done more for domestic oil supplies if Democrats had not fought so hard against drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Mr. Bush tried to get ahead of the issue in January in his State of the Union address, saying that the nation is addicted to oil and urging steps to reduce reliance on energy imports.

The White House and Republicans on Capitol Hill have worked closely together for months on a campaign to highlight what they say is the strength of the economy, partly to offset what administration officials acknowledge are the negative psychological effects of high oil and gasoline prices on consumers. A Washington Post/ABC News poll this week found that 59 percent of Americans rated the economy "not good" or "poor," despite solid economic growth and declining unemployment.

"The better we are at getting out the overall message that the economy is growing and the reasons behind it, the better we'll be able to deflect the silly political attacks from the Democrats," said Brian Nick, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Democrats are tailoring campaign messages to pierce any economic good news by focusing on other aspects of the energy law, chiefly the subsidies worth nearly $15 billion for gas and oil companies and the bill's lack of a more muscular approach to conserve energy and reduce the dependence on foreign oil.

While Democrats are eagerly laying blame for the situation on the Republicans, they did little to advance energy measures in eight years under President Bill Clinton. Democrats remain split to some degree over how to proceed, but in general favor greater investment in "clean fuel" technologies, more incentives for driving fuel-efficient vehicles and stronger steps toward reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. Those positions were included in a measure sponsored last year by more than 30 Democratic House members who opposed the Republican version of the energy bill. Even so, 75 Democrats in the House and 25 in the Senate voted with the Republicans to pass Mr. Bush's bill.

The recommendations of the memorandum to Democratic candidates include holding a campaign event at a gas station "where you call for a real commitment to bringing down gas prices and pledge that, as a member of Congress, you will fight for families in your district, not the oil and gas executives for which the Republican Congress has fought so hard."

A survey by Public Agenda, a nonpartisan research organization, in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs magazine suggests that the message could not be more timely. The survey said voters now believed that fears over energy independence rivaled the Iraq war as the leading foreign policy issue for the nation.

Daniel Yankelovich, chairman of Public Agenda, said the survey found that 90 percent of Americans viewed the lack of energy independence as a risk to security, that 88 percent said problems abroad were endangering supplies and increasing prices and that 85 percent believed that the federal government could do something if it tried.

In a similar survey six months earlier, Mr. Yankelovich said, just Iraq generated those levels of concern.

"If Democrats can make an explicit connection that Senator So-and-so could have done more but didn't, the message will resonate among voters," he said. "This has really become a hot-button issue."

If voter anger stays high, Democrats, as the minority party, stand to benefit most, said Amy Walter, a political analyst for The Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan newsletter.

"Angry voters are motivated voters," Ms. Walter said. "If the message in November is one of change, this is helping to make the case for Democrats."

The spotlight on energy also provides environmentalists and liberals generally opportunities to make broader points. Amid a blaze of publicity, former Vice President Al Gore is about to release a documentary about global warming that urges, among other points, more aggressive steps to cut tailpipe emissions.

Even as high gasoline prices create an incentive to conserve — something environmentalists have sought to achieve through proposals like higher taxes on energy — the impact of high-priced gas hits hard in suburban and rural districts, where families are forced to drive greater distances for routine needs. Many of those regions are predominantly Republican.

In Minnesota, the leading Republican candidate for the open Senate seat, Representative Mark Kennedy, a three-term congressman, said he also heard voters' anger and frustration.

Reflecting the dangers facing his party over fuel costs, Mr. Kennedy said he told voters that the energy bill was not enough and pointed out that he is a co-sponsor, with Representative Mark Udall, Democrat of Colorado, of a bill that calls for taking back tax credits from energy companies and doubling investments in ethanol and other renewable fuels.

    Democrats Eager to Exploit Anger Over Gas Prices, NYT, 21.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/21/washington/21gas.html?hp&ex=1145678400&en=3bfc82d18e86a132&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Kerry Sharply Criticizes Bush on Several Fronts

April 8, 2006
The New York Times
By PATRICK HEALY

Senator John Kerry made a slashing attack on the Bush administration yesterday, comparing it to the faltering government in Iraq and equating its war strategy with its planning for Hurricane Katrina, while also invoking Jesus as he criticized federal Medicaid policy.

Mr. Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat and his party's nominee for president in 2004, has been on a political and media blitz as he considers running for the White House again in 2008. In an Op-Ed article in The New York Times on Wednesday, Mr. Kerry proposed telling Iraqi leaders to form a unity government by May 15 or the United States military would withdraw.

He spoke by telephone yesterday to a political conference in New York City that was organized by the Rev. Al Sharpton, his friend from when they both ran for president in 2004.

Mr. Kerry, who voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq, repeated his deadline proposal and spoke of civil war there as a certainty that will be worse with no effective government.

Iraq served as a thematic framework for the speech, which challenged the administration's ability to manage crises on domestic and international fronts.

"The Bush administration is wondering when Iraq will have a functioning government. I want to know when we're going to have a functioning government," Mr. Kerry said, according to a transcript of his remarks.

Mr. Kerry, who was sometimes criticized as stiff and dour during the 2004 campaign, got several laughs, Mr. Sharpton said. At one point, Mr. Kerry, who has had his verbose moments, offered "a little 10-point plan" in response to complaints that neither Democrats nor Republicans have an agenda for the nation.

"Tell the truth. Fire the incompetents. Find Osama bin Laden and secure our ports and our homeland. Bring our troops home from Iraq. Obey the law and protect our civil rights," Mr. Kerry said in ticking off his list, which also included supporting health care, education, lobbying reform and alternatives to oil, as well as reducing the deficit.

A Roman Catholic who has struggled at times to talk about his own faith, Mr. Kerry also told the group that he believed "deeply in my faith" and that the Koran, the Torah, the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles had influenced a social conscience that he exercised in politics.

"I will tell you, nowhere in there, nowhere, not in one page, not in one phrase uttered and reported by the Lord Jesus Christ, can you find anything that suggests that there is a virtue in cutting children from Medicaid and taking money from the poor and giving it to the rich," Mr. Kerry said.

A spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, which skewered Mr. Kerry's speeches relentlessly during 2004, responded with a verbal shrug yesterday.

"John Kerry deserves credit for continuing to take himself so seriously, despite the fact that no one else does," said the spokeswoman, Tracey Schmitt.

    Kerry Sharply Criticizes Bush on Several Fronts, NYT, 8.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/08/washington/08kerry.html

News Analysis

A Partisan Leaves; Will an Era Follow Suit?

April 5, 2006
The New York Times
By ROBIN TONER

WASHINGTON, April 4 — Representative Tom DeLay was the last man standing among the top three Republicans who took control of the House after the 1994 Republican landslide, and he leaves, in many ways, the most complex and contentious legacy from their conservative reign on Capitol Hill.

Mr. DeLay, who stepped down as majority leader last fall after being indicted in Texas, told his constituents on Tuesday that he would not run for re-election and would resign from Congress in the next few months.

He acknowledged that the criminal inquiries into former aides and his own activities had affected his re-election prospects and said he did not want to give Democrats "an opportunity to steal this seat with a negative, personal campaign." [Page A15.]

For 11 tumultuous years, Mr. DeLay proved remarkably effective in pushing the Republican agenda through the House — tax cuts, budget cuts, an overhaul of Medicare and energy bills — pulling the necessary 218 votes together from often narrow and fractious Republican majorities.

But he was also a man who, perhaps more than any other, embodied the fierce partisanship of his era — a prime mover behind the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, a practitioner of take-no-prisoners electoral politics and a legislative strategist who many Democrats asserted saw no real role for the minority in the legislative process.

Scholars and analysts disagree over the extent to which Mr. DeLay created — or reflected — the intense polarization of his times.

But his decision to resign under fire clearly ends an era that began in 1995, with Newt Gingrich as House speaker, Dick Armey as majority leader and Tom DeLay as majority whip. Regardless of whether Republicans retain or lose their majority in November, politics in the post-DeLay era will be different, lawmakers in both parties say.

Mr. DeLay tested the limits — of ideological change, of partisan politics and of the use of money and interest groups in the service of maintaining power. He departs as his party scrambles to find a new formula for an increasingly dissatisfied electorate that gives low marks in the polls to Congress and to President Bush.

In some ways, the national political mood is similar to the one in 1994, when voters turned out the Democratic majorities in the House and the Senate. Vin Weber, a former Republican House member and lobbyist, said of Mr. DeLay: "He was the leader of the Republican Party at a time of maximum ideological polarization between the parties, and he was successful in that era. I think that era is coming to an end. What will replace it, I don't know."

At his peak, Mr. DeLay enforced iron party discipline, built on loyalty, political assistance and, critics said, a heavy dose of fear. For much of his time in the leadership, though he was never in the top position, he was arguably the most powerful member of the House.

Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma, a Republican strategist, said, "He was enormously important in creating the Republican majority, sustaining that majority and determining to some degree who the leadership of that majority would be."

Julian E. Zelizer, a history professor at Boston University who is an expert on Congress, credited Mr. DeLay with giving the conservative movement "Congressional muscle and a Congressional presence," helping to turn it, in fact, into a "congressionally based movement that he was at the center of."

His drive to harness the power of lobbyists and political money to help the Republican Party and its agenda became the most powerful symbol of what Democrats invariably called "the culture of corruption."

Mr. DeLay was indicted last fall by a Texas grand jury that accused him of breaking campaign finance laws, a spinoff of what critics asserted was an extraordinarily partisan maneuver in Texas redistricting.

In separate corruption cases, Jack Abramoff, a former lobbyist and onetime ally, and two of Mr. DeLay's former aides have pleaded guilty and are cooperating with federal prosecutors.

Mr. DeLay has insisted that he has done nothing wrong. He repeated that on Tuesday, saying, "I have no fear whatsoever about any investigation into me or my personal or professional activities."

In a measure of how polarizing a figure Mr. DeLay has become, many conservatives expressed a belief that he was being hounded by political enemies.

"It's driven by hatred and politics far more than substance," said Representative Jack Kingston of Georgia, vice chairman of the Republican conference.

But the old order was cracking. Paul Weyrich, a longtime conservative activist, said Mr. DeLay was "the one member in the leadership who absolutely put the movement ahead of everything else."

Mr. Weyrich added that although most Republican leaders these days "vote right on social issues, DeLay actually cared about them."

With Mr. DeLay's departure, he added, "there is a vacuum."

Many Democrats said Mr. DeLay left a different legacy, a House whose rules and civilities will need to be painfully restored. They cited the roll-call votes held open way beyond the normal time limits and quickly closed when Republicans formed majorities, and the conference committees where Democratic participation was in name only.

Martin Frost, a longtime Democratic member who lost his seat after his district was dismantled in the Texas redistricting that Mr. DeLay pushed through, said: "The means he used damaged the House as an institution. And it will take some time to restore democracy to the House."

Democrats remember, bitterly, that the Republicans took power promising a more open, democratic House. John J. Pitney, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College, said Mr. DeLay continued trends that began in the 80's: polarization between the parties and aggressive fund-raising.

"He's part of an action-reaction cycle," Professor Pitney said. "Polarization on one side prompts polarization on the other. Tom Delay is one reason why Nancy Pelosi is leader of the Democrats."

Many Republicans up for re-election have little stomach for such politics and are more concerned about their districts and political survival than the broader ideological agenda. The party unity in Mr. DeLay's glory days is no longer the norm. At one time, said Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, Republicans worried more about primary challenges than re-election.

To some Republicans, 1994 seems a long time ago. Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the majority leader, noted at a news conference on Tuesday that he was chairman of the House Republican conference in that first leadership team.

"I am the last man standing," Mr. Boehner said after taking questions on ethics, the Republicans' prospects and the voting on a budget this week.

    A Partisan Leaves; Will an Era Follow Suit?, NYT, 5.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/05/us/05assess.html?hp&ex=1144296000&en=bae95ba8cc986bed&ei=5094&partner=homepage

G.O.P. Risking Hispanic Votes on Immigration        NYT        30.3.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/30/politics/30hispanics.html?hp&ex=
1143694800&en=446070eeb7ea8e69&ei=5094&partner=homepage

G.O.P. Risking Hispanic Votes on Immigration

March 30, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

WASHINGTON, March 29 — The battle among Republicans over immigration policy and border security is threatening to undercut a decade-long effort by President Bush and his party to court Hispanic voters, just as both parties are gearing up for the 2006 elections.

"I believe the Republican Party has hurt itself already," said the Rev. Luis Cortes, a Philadelphia pastor close to President Bush and the leader of a national organization of Hispanic Protestant clergy members, saying he delivered that message to the president last week in a meeting at the White House.

To underscore the contested allegiance of Hispanic voters, Mr. Cortes said, he also took a delegation of 50 Hispanic ministers to meet with the leaders of both parties last week, including what he called a productive discussion with Howard Dean, the Democratic chairman.

The immigration and security debate, which has sparked huge demonstrations in recent days by Hispanic residents of cities around the country, comes at an important moment for both parties.

Over the last three national elections, persistent appeals by George Bush and other Republican leaders have helped double their party's share of the Hispanic vote, to about 40 percent in 2004 from about 20 percent in 1996. As a result, Democrats can no longer rely on the country's 42 million Hispanic residents as a natural part of their base.

In a lunch meeting of Senate Republicans earlier this week, Senator Mel Martinez of Florida, the only Republican Hispanic in the Senate, gave his colleagues a stern warning. "This is the first issue that, in my mind, has absolutely galvanized the Latino community in America like no other," Mr. Martinez said he told them.

The anger among Hispanics has continued even as the Senate Judiciary Committee proposed a bill this week that would allow illegal immigrants a way to become citizens. The backlash was aggravated, Mr. Martinez said in an interview, by a Republican plan to crack down on illegal immigrants that the House approved last year.

The outcome remains to be seen. Speaker J. Dennis Hastert said on Wednesday that he recognized the need for a guest-worker program, opening the door to a possible compromise on fiercely debated immigration legislation.

Democrats see an opportunity to "show Hispanics who their real friends are," as Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, put it.

But the issue is a delicate matter for Democrats as well. Polls show large majorities of public support for tighter borders as a matter of national security, and opposition to amnesty for illegal immigrants. Many working-class voters in the Democratic base resent what they see as a continuing influx of cheap labor.

The stakes are enormous because Hispanics now account for one of every eight United States residents, and about half the recent growth in the country's population. Although Hispanics cast just 6 percent of the votes in the 2004 elections, birth rates promise an imminent explosion in the number of eligible voters.

"There is a big demographic wave of Hispanic kids who are native born who will be turning 18 in even greater numbers over the next three, four and five election cycles," Roberto Suro, director of the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center, said.

Nowhere is the immigration debate more heated than Arizona, where about 28 percent of the population is Hispanic and where Senator Jon Kyl, a Republican sponsor of an immigration bill, faces what could be a difficult race for re-election. Both Mr. Kyl and his Democratic challenger, Jim Pederson, have hired Hispanics or Hispanic-dominated firms to manage their campaigns.

A mostly Hispanic crowd of about 20,000 gathered outside Mr. Kyl's office last weekend to protest criminal penalties against illegal immigrants that were in the House Republican bill, even though Mr. Kyl's proposal does not include the measure.

Mario E. Diaz, the campaign manager for Mr. Pederson, faulted Mr. Kyl's proposal, which would require illegal immigrants or future temporary workers to return to their countries before becoming eligible for legal status in the United States.

"Speaking the language that Kyl does, which is round them up and deport them, is offensive and disgusting to the Latino community," Mr. Diaz said.

Mr. Kyl, for his part, accused Democrats of race-baiting by painting all Republicans as anti-Hispanic, a practice he said most Hispanics resent. But the senator also acknowledged some fears that the immigration debate could repel Hispanic voters. He said he had urged his Republican colleagues to discuss the issue with more sensitivity "to the feelings of a lot of Hispanics."

He added, "I would hope that some of our colleagues who don't have much of a Hispanic population would at least defer to those of us who do."

Pollsters from each party say Hispanics, like other groups, typically rank immigration lower in importance than other issues, especially education. But they respond strongly when they believe the rhetoric surrounding the debate demonizes immigrants or Hispanics, as they did when Gov. Pete Wilson of California, a Republican, backed a 1994 initiative to exclude illegal immigrants from public schools and services.

Many analysts say the backlash from Hispanics wrecked the California Republican party for a decade.

When Mr. Bush was governor of Texas, he opposed such measures, and pushed the Republican Party to woo Hispanics.

Last week, Sergio Bendixen, a pollster for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, released a rare multilingual poll in which 76 percent of legal Latin American immigrants said they believed anti-immigrant sentiment was on the rise. A majority of immigrants said they believed the immigration debate was unfair and misinformed.

But Ken Mehlman, chairman of the Republican National Committee, dismissed concerns about the party's image with Hispanics. Mr. Mehlman said President Bush, who supports a temporary worker program, had warned repeatedly against antagonizing immigrants.

"In an emotional debate like this," Mr. Mehlman said, "people need to lower their energy and remember that ultimately the goal is something that is consistent with being a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants." .

Danny Diaz, a spokesman for the Republican Party, said it had pushed ahead on recruitment of Hispanic candidates and voters. He noted that Mr. Mehlman had appeared at events with Hispanic groups 23 times since becoming party chairman after the last election, hitting classic Republican themes about lower taxes, Medicare and traditional values. A particular focus has been Hispanic churchgoers and pastors like Mr. Cortes, whose church receives money from Mr. Bush's religion-based social services initiative.

Democrats say that Mr. Bush's success with Hispanics has not gone unnoticed. Democratic leaders in Congress have expanded their Spanish-language communications, and after 2004 the Democratic Party vowed to stop relying on payments to Hispanic groups and organizations to help turn out Hispanic voters.

"How can you spend your money on get-out-the-vote when you are beginning to lose your market share?" Mr. Bendixen said. "But Democrats had no experience in campaigning for the hearts and minds of Hispanic voters. They treated them like black voters who they just needed to get out to the polls."

Both sides say it is the tenor and ultimate outcome of the immigration debate that may give the Democrats their best opportunity to attract Hispanic voters.

Senator Martinez, a Cuban immigrant who delivered part of a speech in the Senate in Spanish a few months ago, alluded to the nervousness among Hispanics when he was asked whether he would do the same again in the debate on immigration. "I am about to be sent back as it is," he said, joking. "I better be careful."

    G.O.P. Risking Hispanic Votes on Immigration, NYT, 30.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/30/politics/30hispanics.html?hp&ex=1143694800&en=446070eeb7ea8e69&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Public Comments by Justices Veer Toward the Political

March 19, 2006
The New York Times
By ADAM LIPTAK

Speeches by Supreme Court justices are usually sleepy civics lessons studded with references to the Federalist Papers and the majesty of the law. That seems to be changing.

This month, former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor told an audience at Georgetown University that a judiciary afraid to stand up to elected officials can lead to dictatorship. Last month, speaking in South Africa, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that the courts were a safeguard "against oppressive government and stirred-up majorities."

Justice Ginsburg also revealed that she and Justice O'Connor, who retired in January, had been the targets of an Internet death threat over their practice of citing the decisions of foreign courts in their rulings.

The justices' speeches were mostly a reaction, students of the court said, to attacks on judicial independence in Congress. "The volume is being turned up on both sides," said David J. Garrow, the legal historian, "both in the attacks on the court and in the justices' response."

The recent speeches, said Kermit L. Hall, the editor of "The Oxford Companion to the United States Supreme Court," may be breaking ground in judicial decorum.

"What's going on," Mr. Hall said, "is that Ginsburg and O'Connor are using their position — and it is striking that both are women — to state a position in favor of the judiciary that comes real, real close to taking a political position."

The O'Connor and Ginsburg speeches, variations on basic speeches they had given often before, were sharper and more topical than what many expect from Supreme Court justices. Justice O'Connor's Georgetown speech was apparently neither recorded nor transcribed, but Nina Totenberg, the legal affairs correspondent for National Public Radio, reported on it the next day.

In the speech, Justice O'Connor seemed to address comments made by two Texas Republicans, Representative Tom DeLay and Senator John Cornyn, concerning Terry Schiavo, a brain-damaged woman whose feeding tube was removed by court order.

Ms. Schiavo was the subject of a confrontation between Congress and the courts last year. Congress lost.

Senator Cornyn said afterward that political rulings from judges had fueled public frustration. "It builds up and builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in violence," he said. "Certainly without any justification, but a concern that I have."

Justice O'Connor said that interference with an independent judiciary had allowed dictatorship to flourish in developing and Communist countries, Ms. Totenberg reported. "It takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship," Justice O'Connor said, according to Ms. Totenberg, "but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings."

Justice Ginsburg's speech, posted on the Supreme Court's Web site, focused on the citation of foreign law. She said that no one on the court contended that foreign decisions were binding precedents, only that they could illuminate common problems. Judges consult and cite all sorts of materials in making decisions, and she said she was perplexed that one category of potentially valuable information should be out of bounds.

She also discussed what she called "dynamic versus static, frozen-in-time constitutional interpretation," suggesting a preference for the former.

Mr. Hall, who is also the president of the State University of New York at Albany, said Justice Ginsburg's statements were "really quite remarkable in the history of the court."

"She is pressing for a view of the Constitution that is quite cosmopolitan, and she is using an out-of-country venue to make her point," Mr. Hall said.

Justice Ginsburg's comments may have been a response to Justice Antonin Scalia, who, in opinions and speeches, has rejected the view that the Constitution is a living document.

"You would have to be an idiot to believe that," Justice Scalia said in a speech in Puerto Rico last month, The Associated Press reported. "The Constitution is not a living organism. It is a legal document. It says some things and doesn't say others."

The dueling speeches, Mr. Hall said, represented "two Supreme Court justices arguing with each other off the bench."

Justice Ginsburg seemed to blame stalled Congressional measures that would have prohibited the citation of foreign law for the Internet death threat.

"Although I doubt the current measures will garner sufficient votes to pass, it is disquieting that they have attracted sizable support," she said. "And one not-so-small concern — they fuel the irrational fringe."

The threat, passed to the justices by a court security officer, was a February 2005 posting on an Internet chat site addressing unnamed "commandos."

"Here is your first patriotic assignment," the message said. "Supreme Court Justices Ginsburg and O'Connor have publicly stated that they use foreign laws and rulings to decide how to rule on American cases. This is a huge threat to our Republic and constitutional freedom. If you are what you say you are, and NOT armchair patriots, then those two justices will not live another week."

Mr. Garrow said the threat was all the stranger because the stakes were trivial. "The odd thing is," he said, "that Justices Ginsburg and O'Connor are being attacked for their footnoting practices."

The death threat went nowhere, Justice Ginsburg said last month. Justice O'Connor, who will turn 76 this month, "remains alive and well," Justice Ginsburg, 73, said.

"As for me," she added, "you can judge for yourself."

    Public Comments by Justices Veer Toward the Political, NYT, 19.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/19/politics/19scotus.html

'American Theocracy,' by Kevin Phillips

Clear and Present Dangers

March 19, 2006
The New York Times
Review by ALAN BRINKLEY

Four decades ago, Kevin Phillips, a young political strategist for the Republican Party, began work on what became a remarkable book. In writing "The Emerging Republican Majority" (published in 1969), he asked a very big question about American politics: How would the demographic and economic changes of postwar America shape the long-term future of the two major parties? His answer, startling at the time but now largely unquestioned, is that the movement of people and resources from the old Northern industrial states into the South and the West (an area he enduringly labeled the "Sun Belt") would produce a new and more conservative Republican majority that would dominate American politics for decades. Phillips viewed the changes he predicted with optimism. A stronger Republican Party, he believed, would restore stability and order to a society experiencing disorienting and at times violent change. Shortly before publishing his book, he joined the Nixon administration to help advance the changes he had foreseen.

Phillips has remained a prolific and important political commentator in the decades since, but he long ago abandoned his enthusiasm for the Republican coalition he helped to build. His latest book (his 13th) looks broadly and historically at the political world the conservative coalition has painstakingly constructed over the last several decades. No longer does he see Republican government as a source of stability and order. Instead, he presents a nightmarish vision of ideological extremism, catastrophic fiscal irresponsibility, rampant greed and dangerous shortsightedness. (His final chapter is entitled "The Erring Republican Majority.") In an era of best-selling jeremiads on both sides of the political divide, "American Theocracy" may be the most alarming analysis of where we are and where we may be going to have appeared in many years. It is not without polemic, but unlike many of the more glib and strident political commentaries of recent years, it is extensively researched and for the most part frighteningly persuasive.

Although Phillips is scathingly critical of what he considers the dangerous policies of the Bush administration, he does not spend much time examining the ideas and behavior of the president and his advisers. Instead, he identifies three broad and related trends — none of them new to the Bush years but all of them, he believes, exacerbated by this administration's policies — that together threaten the future of the United States and the world. One is the role of oil in defining and, as Phillips sees it, distorting American foreign and domestic policy. The second is the ominous intrusion of radical Christianity into politics and government. And the third is the astonishing levels of debt — current and prospective — that both the government and the American people have been heedlessly accumulating. If there is a single, if implicit, theme running through the three linked essays that form this book, it is the failure of leaders to look beyond their own and the country's immediate ambitions and desires so as to plan prudently for a darkening future.

The American press in the first days of the Iraq war reported extensively on the Pentagon's failure to post American troops in front of the National Museum in Baghdad, which, as a result, was looted of many of its great archaeological treasures. Less widely reported, but to Phillips far more meaningful, was the immediate posting of troops around the Iraqi Oil Ministry, which held the maps and charts that were the key to effective oil production. Phillips fully supports an explanation of the Iraq war that the Bush administration dismisses as conspiracy theory — that its principal purpose was to secure vast oil reserves that would enable the United States to control production and to lower prices. ("Think of Iraq as a military base with a very large oil reserve underneath," an oil analyst said a couple of years ago. "You can't ask for better than that.") Terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, tyranny, democracy and other public rationales were, Phillips says, simply ruses to disguise the real motivation for the invasion.

And while this argument may be somewhat too simplistic to explain the complicated mix of motives behind the war, it is hard to dismiss Phillips's larger argument: that the pursuit of oil has for at least 30 years been one of the defining elements of American policy in the world; and that the Bush administration — unusually dominated by oilmen — has taken what the president deplored recently as the nation's addiction to oil to new and terrifying levels. The United States has embraced a kind of "petro-imperialism," Phillips writes, "the key aspect of which is the U.S. military's transformation into a global oil-protection force," and which "puts up a democratic facade, emphasizes freedom of the seas (or pipeline routes) and seeks to secure, protect, drill and ship oil, not administer everyday affairs."

Phillips is especially passionate in his discussion of the second great force that he sees shaping contemporary American life — radical Christianity and its growing intrusion into government and politics. The political rise of evangelical Christian groups is hardly a secret to most Americans after the 2004 election, but Phillips brings together an enormous range of information from scholars and journalists and presents a remarkably comprehensive and chilling picture of the goals and achievements of the religious right.

He points in particular to the Southern Baptist Convention, once a scorned seceding minority of the American Baptist Church but now so large that it dominates not just Baptism itself but American Protestantism generally. The Southern Baptist Convention does not speak with one voice, but almost all of its voices, Phillips argues, are to one degree or another highly conservative. On the far right is a still obscure but, Phillips says, rapidly growing group of "Christian Reconstructionists" who believe in a "Taliban-like" reversal of women's rights, who describe the separation of church and state as a "myth" and who call openly for a theocratic government shaped by Christian doctrine. A much larger group of Protestants, perhaps as many as a third of the population, claims to believe in the supposed biblical prophecies of an imminent "rapture" — the return of Jesus to the world and the elevation of believers to heaven.

Prophetic Christians, Phillips writes, often shape their view of politics and the world around signs that charlatan biblical scholars have identified as predictors of the apocalypse — among them a war in Iraq, the Jewish settlement of the whole of biblical Israel, even the rise of terrorism. He convincingly demonstrates that the Bush administration has calculatedly reached out to such believers and encouraged them to see the president's policies as a response to premillennialist thought. He also suggests that the president and other members of his administration may actually believe these things themselves, that religious belief is the basis of policy, not just a tactic for selling it to the public. Phillips's evidence for this disturbing claim is significant, but not conclusive.

THE third great impending crisis that Phillips identifies is also, perhaps, the best known — the astonishing rise of debt as the precarious underpinning of the American economy. He is not, of course, the only observer who has noted the dangers of indebtedness. The New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, for example, frequently writes about the looming catastrophe. So do many more-conservative economists, who point especially to future debt — particularly the enormous obligation, which Phillips estimates at between $30 trillion and $40 trillion, that Social Security and health care demands will create in the coming decades. The most familiar debt is that of the United States government, fueled by soaring federal budget deficits that have continued (with a brief pause in the late 1990's) for more than two decades. But the national debt — currently over $8 trillion — is only the tip of the iceberg. There has also been an explosion of corporate debt, state and local bonded debt, international debt through huge trade imbalances, and consumer debt (mostly in the form of credit-card balances and aggressively marketed home-mortgage packages). Taken together, this present and future debt may exceed $70 trillion.

The creation of a national-debt culture, Phillips argues, although exacerbated by the policies of the Bush administration, has been the work of many people over many decades — among them Alan Greenspan, who, he acidly notes, blithely and irresponsibly ignored the rising debt to avoid pricking the stock-market bubble it helped produce. It is most of all a product of the "financialization" of the American economy — the turn away from manufacturing and toward an economy based on moving and managing money, a trend encouraged, Phillips argues persuasively, by the preoccupation with oil and (somewhat less persuasively) with evangelical belief in the imminent rapture, which makes planning for the future unnecessary.

There is little in "American Theocracy" that is wholly original to Phillips, as he frankly admits by his frequent reference to the work of other writers and scholars. What makes this book powerful in spite of the familiarity of many of its arguments is his rare gift for looking broadly and structurally at social and political change. By describing a series of major transformations, by demonstrating the relationships among them and by discussing them with passionate restraint, Phillips has created a harrowing picture of national danger that no American reader will welcome, but that none should ignore.

Alan Brinkley is the Allan Nevins professor of history and the provost at Columbia University.

    Clear and Present Dangers, NYT, 19.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/19/books/review/19brink.html?incamp=article_popular

News Analysis

G.O.P. Ranks in Congress Show Widening Cracks

March 9, 2006
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, March 8 — After more than five years of allowing President Bush relatively free rein to set their course, Republicans in Congress are suddenly, if selectively, in rebellion, a mutiny all the more surprising since it centers on the party's signature issue of national security.

In a rebuke to the White House, House Republicans are moving aggressively to put the brakes on the takeover by a Dubai company of some port terminal operations in several large American cities, an effort that moved forward on Wednesday with broad bipartisan support.

At the same time, Republicans in the Senate are wrestling with how hard to press the White House for more authority over Mr. Bush's eavesdropping program, seeking a middle ground between Democratic calls for an investigation of the program and White House demands to keep hands off. [Page A16.]

In the case of the port deal, the political considerations are clearly paramount for Republicans and are compelling. Public opinion appears to be strongly against allowing an Arab company to manage some port terminals in the United States, Democrats are hammering Republicans on the issue, and the White House has been unable to provide much political cover to its allies on Capitol Hill.

When it comes to the debate over how and whether to allow eavesdropping without warrants on terror suspects, the politics are more muddled. The White House has had considerable success defining that issue on its terms, as antiterrorist surveillance, and there has been no broad public outcry against it. Republicans on Capitol Hill have been left grappling with how to balance their concerns about granting the president wide wartime powers against the perception that they might weaken a program that the administration says protects Americans from attack.

Still, even a limited move to place a check on the eavesdropping program, like the one contained in a deal worked out by the White House with Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, contributes to a sense that Mr. Bush's own party is edging away from him — or, in the case of the port deal, abandoning him and his dismal poll numbers with the greatest possible haste. A perception that conditions in Iraq show little improvement is not helping the relationship.

The president and his Congressional allies have been at cross-purposes before, but it has never reached the level of the port confrontation. The conflict reflects a view held by many Republicans that the White House has asked a lot of them over the years, but has responded with dismissive and occasionally arrogant treatment — a style crystallized in Mr. Bush's quick threat, with little or no consultation, to veto any effort to hold up the port deal legislatively.

Intramural fights in politics often have an element of calculation if not orchestration, and the White House's political shop is no doubt aware that allowing Congressional Republicans to put some distance between themselves and Mr. Bush in an election year could serve the party's long-term interest.

Whether theatrics or something more fundamental, some Republicans say that the port fight and scrutiny of the surveillance program show a new willingness to confront the White House and that it is a fitting moment for Congress to declare its independence.

"If there was ever a good time for Congress to figure out oversight, it would be in the sixth year of a presidency," said Representative Roy Blunt of Missouri, the No. 3 House Republican, well aware that the party in power typically loses seats at the midpoint of a president's second term.

That instinct for political survival is helping to stiffen the Congressional spine. Republicans have held a significant political advantage over Democrats on the issue of national security, offsetting Democratic strength on social policy. Given the uproar at home over the port deal and nervousness about the implications of eavesdropping without warrants, Republicans are worried about losing their edge. Democrats say they should be.

In a memorandum to Senate Democrats that quickly made its way to reporters, a pollster reported Wednesday that the opposition to the port proposal and uncertainty over Iraq have significantly eroded Republican advantages among voters when it comes to security concerns.

"With huge majorities opposing the president's proposal to sell control of U.S. ports to Dubai and the failure of the president's Iraq policy, Republicans' once-yawning advantage on security issues has been largely neutralized," said the pollster, Mark Mellman.

Democrats tried to press their advantage Wednesday in the Senate. Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York surprised Republicans with an amendment to a lobbying bill that would ban any company "wholly owned or controlled by any foreign government that recognized the Taliban" from managing port facilities. The company at issue, DP World of Dubai, fits that description.

Senate Republican leaders, trying to buy the administration some time on the port fight as their counterparts in the House deserted Mr. Bush, blocked a vote. But a showdown appeared inevitable.

"We know what the people of America think," said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate. "This is a very bad idea."

There was no hesitation on the part of House Republicans, as the Appropriations Committee voted 62 to 2 to bar DP World from taking over any port operations, adding the ban to a $92 billion spending measure for Iraq and Hurricane Katrina recovery that could reach the floor next week.

Speaker J. Dennis Hastert said the House opposition to the deal was less about politics than national security. "We will continue to use our best judgment on how to protect the American people," he told reporters.

While the ruptures over national security have been striking, the administration and Congressional Republicans are likely to be parting ways on other issues waiting in the wings. They include immigration policy, spending cuts, trade and perhaps a stem cell research proposal that many Republicans believe is crucial to winning moderate voters.

The rifts reflect different strains of ideology within the party, many of which have been tamped down until now by Mr. Bush's ability to hold Republicans together, a degree of clout that seems to be ebbing.

Mr. Bush's strength has largely been anchored in his standing on national security. And in elections since the attacks of 2001, that has been good politics as Republicans have claimed the mantle of the party best able to prevent another terror strike.

In the Senate, this week's maneuvering over the surveillance program showed a more cautious approach to confronting the administration. Republicans feared being accused of tampering with an antiterror technique, but some were genuinely troubled by the eavesdropping and refused to reject Democratic calls for an inquiry without taking some action.

The result was a proposal for close oversight by a new subcommittee. But what was most striking was how hard Republicans involved in the negotiations sought to make clear that the agreement was a concession by the White House, not a victory for Mr. Bush.

"They wanted the status quo," said Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas and chairman of the Intelligence Committee.

One thing is clear: Republicans on Capitol Hill are no longer entrusting security issues solely to Mr. Bush. They now realize that in some cases, they must protect themselves.

    G.O.P. Ranks in Congress Show Widening Cracks, NYT, 9.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/09/politics/09assess.html?hp&ex=1141880400&en=63bf2918d563ea39&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Bush, on Campaign Trial, Raises Money for Midterm Races

February 24, 2006
The New York Times
By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ

CINCINNATI, Feb. 23 — President Bush plunged into the 2006 midterm elections on Thursday, headlining back-to-back fund-raising events for Republican candidates in states where his party is vulnerable.

Mr. Bush's sprint through Indiana and Ohio brought in at least $1.6 million, party officials said, underscoring his standing as a major fund-raising draw, even as his job-approval rating suffers.

The Republican National Committee said that Mr. Bush was kicking off a year of fund-raising for candidates in the 2006 elections and that the president's schedule would accelerate over the next months.

Mr. Bush's entry into the campaign season does entail some risks for his party: While Republican candidates are eager for his help raising money, some have been distancing themselves from him politically, mindful of his lackluster standing in the polls.

Mr. Bush's first stop was in Mishawaka, Ind., just east of South Bend, where he appeared at a reception on behalf of Representative Chris Chocola, who faces the prospect of a tough re-election fight this fall.

In a roughly 30-minute speech in an auditorium at Bethel College, Mr. Bush returned to a theme that has been one of his greatest strengths — that he is protecting the nation from terrorist attacks. "I told you September the 11th changed my frame of reference, changed my thinking," Mr. Bush told several hundred supporters at an event that raised at least $625,000 for the Chocola campaign.

"I am never going to give any quarter whatsoever to the enemy," the president continued, praising Mr. Chocola as a partner in his effort to protect the nation. "We will stay on the hunt. We will be on the offense, and we will protect the American people by defeating them overseas, so we do not have to face them here at home."

He made no reference to the bipartisan criticism his administration has been facing this week on the national security front for approving a $6.8 billion deal that would let a state-owned Dubai company manage six American ports.

Democrats immediately tried to exploit the growing uneasiness among some Republicans over Mr. Bush's poll numbers, essentially daring Republicans they regard as vulnerable to make campaign appearances with the president. On Thursday, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee released a memorandum listing Republicans who they claimed had avoided appearing on the campaign trail with Mr. Bush.

Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, who is heading the Democrats' campaign committee, said: "The president is still popular with his base, and so he can raise a lot of money. But all the money in the world isn't going to help candidates who support policies that are unpopular with the people in their state."

Even one Republican Party official in Washington acknowledged that Mr. Bush is sometimes viewed as a potential liability on the campaign trail. "There will be some candidates and some races where it won't be beneficial for the president to come into their districts," said the official, who asked for anonymity because he did not want to be identified as implicitly criticizing Mr. Bush.

In his appearance with Mr. Bush, however, Mr. Chocola praised the president, describing him as someone "who is willing to stand up for their beliefs with action."

The Republican ambivalence toward Mr. Bush has been particularly evident in Ohio, where he attended a fund-raising event for one of the state's most prominent Republicans, Senator Mike DeWine.

Mr. DeWine, who is facing a tough re-election race this fall, has sought to portray himself as independent of Mr. Bush. Only about week ago, for example, he did not accompany Mr. Bush when he made an appearance in the state.

At the time, the White House said Mr. DeWine had a previous commitment. But Democrats claimed that he wanted to keep his distance from the president, whose approval rating is at 38 percent among Ohio voters. Mr. DeWine is facing a challenge from Representative Sherrod Brown, a fixture in Ohio politics who has $2.5 million in his campaign treasury.

On Thursday, Mr. DeWine and Mr. Bush attended a private gathering in a Cincinnati suburb at the home of Mark Hauser, the chief executive of the Hauser Group, an insurance company, and his wife, Margie Hauser. The event was expected to raise at least $1 million for the re-election campaign of Mr. DeWine, who had $4.29 million at the end of December.

    Bush, on Campaign Trial, Raises Money for Midterm Races, NYT, 24.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/24/politics/24bush.html

New Homes Sought for Machines Rendered Useless by Voting Law

January 30, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

CLEVELAND, Jan. 29 (AP) — Election boards around the country have been trying to sell, recycle or dispose of countless voting machines rendered obsolete by federal law. But it has not been easy.

"There is not a secondary market for used equipment at this point," said Keith Cunningham, director of the Allen County Board of Elections in northwest Ohio.

His county's voting machines, bought in 1995 for $500,000, are collecting dust in a county-owned building because they did not meet handicapped accessibility requirements.

The scene is similar across the country where outdated punch-card and lever voting machines predate the federal Help America Vote Act, which passed in 2002 in response to the tumultuous 2000 election.

"Everywhere that they had punch cards and lever machines they are getting rid of them," said Richard Smolka, who writes the Election Administration Reports newsletter in Washington.

The growing pile of outdated machines has led to some creative thinking on what to do with the equipment. Mr. Smolka has heard of election boards offering machines to schools for student elections.

Mr. Cunningham has toyed with leasing equipment for elections involving unions or community groups.

In Muncie, Ind., County Clerk Karen D. Wenger has discussed sending old machines overseas.

But Doug Lewis, executive director of the nonpartisan Election Center in Houston said he was skeptical that the machines would have a future overseas because some less-developed countries were moving faster than the United States in terms of electronic voting.

In Columbus, touch-pad machines from 1992 will not have a new home. The county is grinding up the cases of the machines and trashing them.

    New Homes Sought for Machines Rendered Useless by Voting Law, NYT, 30.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/30/national/30vote.html

Editorial Observer

Democracy in America, Then and Now, a Struggle Against Majority Tyranny

January 23, 2006
The New York Times
By ADAM COHEN

During the War of 1812, an angry mob smashed the printing presses of a Baltimore newspaper that dared to come out against the war. When the mob surrounded the paper's editors, and the state militia refused to protect them, the journalists were taken to prison for their own protection. That night, the mob broke into the prison, killed one journalist and left the others for dead. When the mob leaders were brought before a jury, they were acquitted.

Alexis de Tocqueville tells this chilling story in "Democracy in America," and warns that the greatest threat the United States faces is the tyranny of the majority, a phrase he is credited with coining. His account of his travels through America in the 1830's, which is often called the greatest book ever written about America, is both an appreciation of American democracy, and a cautionary tale about its fragility.

Bernard-Henri Lévy, the well-known French intellectual, has just written "American Vertigo," about his own travels along Tocqueville's route. It is an entertaining trip, as much in the tradition of Jack Kerouac as Tocqueville. Mr. Lévy visited Rikers Island and a Dallas gun show, and interviewed Americans ranging from Richard Perle to Sharon Stone. His outsider's perspective sometimes lends insight, as with his reflections on the sad plight of Detroit and Buffalo. At other times, it just leads to odd advice. (He puts surprising faith in Warren Beatty as a political leader.)

Unfortunately, Mr. Lévy, who is most passionate about American foreign policy, pays little attention to the issue Tocqueville was most intent on: how closely even a thriving democracy like America borders on tyranny. It is a subject that is particularly relevant today, with the president claiming he can wiretap ordinary Americans without a warrant, insisting on his right to imprison without trial anyone he labels an "enemy combatant," and warning critics of the Iraq war against "emboldening" the enemy. Entertaining as Mr. Lévy's book is, "Democracy in America" - 170 years old, and notoriously difficult to distill - still provides far greater insight into contemporary American democracy.

Tocqueville, who was born into the French aristocracy, was just 25 years old when he landed in Newport, R.I., in 1831 with the professed aim of studying the American penal system. In his travels, he visited prisons, but he also interviewed important personages, including President Andrew Jackson, former president John Quincy Adams and Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story.

The book Tocqueville produced - a first volume published in 1835, and a more somber one five years later - is full of keen observations about America. Many are highly quotable. ("There is hardly a political question in the United States which does not sooner or later turn into a judicial one.") Some are merely durably accurate. ("The most outstanding Americans are seldom summoned to public office.")

Tocqueville is hard to place on the modern political spectrum. He was raised in a royalist family that suffered mightily in the French Revolution: his grandfather and an aunt were guillotined, and his parents nearly suffered the same fate. He brought to his study of American democracy - which he was transmitting back to Europe, where democracy was on the march - the fear that democracy combined with a strong central power could lead to tyranny.

It was a very different America that Tocqueville was writing about in the Jacksonian Age, but the concerns he raised still resonate strongly. He worried that the state's power would end up concentrated in a single authority, until its citizens were "reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd." He feared the majority would trample on minorities, like the mob that attacked the Baltimore editors, or the whites of Pennsylvania who intimidated blacks into not voting. And he was concerned about tyranny of opinion, saying he knew of no country with "less independence of mind and true freedom of discussion" than America.

Tocqueville pointed to some bulwarks against tyranny. He was a firm supporter of checks and balances. He believed in the power of American law to limit the excesses of the ruler - the exact issue in today's debate over the warrantless wiretapping of American citizens. He had great hopes for the judiciary. "The courts correct the aberrations of democracy," he wrote, and "though they can never stop the movements of the majority, they do succeed in checking and directing them." Tocqueville would not be surprised that the Supreme Court has limited the Bush administration's excesses in the war on terror - or that the administration has been eager to nominate justices with an expansive view of presidential power.

Tocqueville would not have been distracted by all the talk that warrantless wiretaps, indefinite detainment of enemy combatants and other civil liberties incursions are serving the cause of freedom. He understood that the newest incarnation of despotism was likely to be ushered in by the "avowed lover of liberty" who is a "hidden servant of tyranny."

Nor, though, would he be likely to despair. One reason "Democracy in America" has remained so popular is that despite his fears, Tocqueville remained nervously optimistic about democracy. He knew that the kind of equality that had taken hold in America could lead to tyranny, but he also believed that it gave people a "taste for free institutions," which would lead them to resist. Equality "insinuates deep into the heart and mind of every man some vague notion and some instinctive inclination toward political freedom," he insisted, "thereby preparing the antidote for the ill which it has produced."

    Democracy in America, Then and Now, a Struggle Against Majority Tyranny, NYT, 24.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/23/opinion/23mon3.html?incamp=article_popular

Hundreds Honor McCarthy as Man Who Changed History

January 15, 2006
The New York Times
By JOHN FILES

WASHINGTON, Jan. 14 - Eugene J. McCarthy, the Minnesota senator who upended President Lyndon B. Johnson's re-election effort amid the Vietnam War tumult of 1968, was remembered at a service on Saturday as a man of sharp intellect, broad curiosity and a deep sense of justice and compassion.

An audience of about 800, including Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, Ralph Nader and John D. Podesta, President Bill Clinton's last chief of staff, gathered at the National Cathedral here, where lawmakers, relatives and friends spoke of a humble and independent-minded leader who opposed the Vietnam War and believed that politics could make a difference in the lives of ordinary citizens.

Mr. Clinton, who eulogized Mr. McCarthy, said he had been instrumental in building pressure to stop the war.

"It all began with Gene McCarthy's willingness to stand alone and turn the tide of history," Mr. Clinton said.

With the war taking thousands of American and Vietnamese lives, Mr. McCarthy, an unabashed liberal, stoked a national debate over the war and over the model of an all-powerful presidency. He challenged Johnson in the New Hampshire primary in 1968, and Johnson, facing almost certain defeat, withdrew from the race. The Democratic party machine then forced the nomination of Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey to face President Richard M. Nixon. But Mr. McCarthy became the quintessential candidate of the Vietnam War protest movement.

"We do not need presidents who are bigger than the country, but rather ones who speak for it and support it," Mr. McCarthy told his supporters, the "Clean for Gene" legions who embraced his candor.

On Saturday, Mr. Clinton spoke of Mr. McCarthy's central role in the upheaval that occurred in 1968, a year during which Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were assassinated. "One thing remained constant," Mr. Clinton said. "The country had turned against the war."

Mr. McCarthy died last month of complications related to Parkinson's disease at an assisted-living home in Washington's Georgetown neighborhood. He was 89.

Mr. McCarthy took on a contrarian role in the Democratic Party, even endorsing Ronald Reagan, the Republican candidate for president in 1980, rather than Jimmy Carter. Indeed, in 1998 Mr. McCarthy called for the resignation of President Clinton, who he said had "been running a pretty messy presidency in terms of constitutionality and tradition."

He was a habitual presidential campaigner, running in 1972, 1976, 1988 and 1992. Some of the audience wore McCarthy campaign buttons and nodded approvingly at the testimonials. Others were there for a bit of a history lesson.

Bill Gallery, 23, who lives in Washington and works at an international development firm in Bethesda, Md., said: "I had read about McCarthy, and I knew about his role in Democratic and progressive politics. But I thought it would be interesting and, well, educational to come and hear those who knew him."

Representative James L. Oberstar, Democrat of Minnesota, told the audience, "Gene McCarthy showed us moral force in politics without preaching."

Two of Mr. McCarthy's children, Michael and Ellen, also spoke at the service. Mr. McCarthy's son joked that his father had once suggested the Freedom of Information Act ought to afford people the right to review their obituaries before they die.

"He thought it would make reporters be more careful," he recalled his father saying.

    Hundreds Honor McCarthy as Man Who Changed History, NYT, 15.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/15/politics/15mccarthy.html

Frank Wilkinson, Defiant Figure of Red Scare, Dies at 91

January 4, 2006
The New York Times
By RICK LYMAN

Frank Wilkinson, a Los Angeles housing official who lost his job in the Red Scare of the early 1950's and later became one of the last two people jailed for refusing to tell the House Un-American Activities Committee whether he was a Communist, died Monday in Los Angeles. He was 91.

Mr. Wilkinson, whose experiences inspired a half-century campaign against government spying, had been ill for several months and was recovering from surgery and a fall, said Donna Wilkinson, his wife of 40 years. "It was just the complications of old age, " Mrs. Wilkinson said.

In 1952, when Mr. Wilkinson was head of the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, he spearheaded a project to replace the sprawling Mexican-American neighborhood of Chavez Ravine, home to 300 families and roamed by goats and other livestock, with thousands of public-housing units.

Real estate interests that viewed public housing as a form of socialism accused Mr. Wilkinson of being a Communist. When asked about this, under oath, he declined to answer, causing a furor.

After a City Council hearing, in which Mayor Fletcher Bowron punched a man in the audience who had called him a "servant of Stalin," Mr. Wilkinson was questioned by the California Anti-Subversive Committee. Mr. Wilkinson was fired along with four other housing officials and five schools employees, including his first wife, Jean.

The housing project was scuttled and much of the land eventually turned over to the city, after which it became the site of Dodger Stadium, new home to the former Brooklyn Dodgers.

The entire episode has inspired books, documentaries, a play and even a recently released album by Ry Cooder called "Chavez Ravine." "Every church has its prophets and its elders," one song goes. "God will love you if you just play ball."

Mr. Wilkinson consistently refused to testify about his political beliefs. He had, in fact, joined the Communist Party in 1942, according to "First Amendment Felon," a 2005 biography by Robert Sherrill. He left the party in 1975.

Mr. Wilkinson continued his antipoverty activities and, in 1955, was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee, which wanted to know whether he was a Communist. This time, Mr. Wilkinson used what he believed was a novel approach. Instead of claiming his Fifth Amendment right against compelled self-incrimination, he refused to answer on First Amendment grounds, saying the committee had no right to ask him.

The committee requested that Congress cite Mr. Wilkinson for contempt, but it was not until 1958 that he and a co-worker, Carl Braden, became the last men ordered to prison at the committee's behest. Mr. Wilkinson fought the contempt citation in the courts, but the Supreme Court, by a vote of 5 to 4, affirmed it.

At a press conference after the decision, Mr. Wilkinson said: "We will not save free speech if we are not prepared to go to jail in its defense. I am prepared to pay that price."

In 1961, the year construction began on Dodger Stadium, Mr. Wilkinson spent nine months at the federal prison in Lewisburg, Pa. He came out of prison, he said, determined to fight for the committee's abolition. For the next decade, he traveled the country, speaking and protesting, largely through his National Committee Against Repressive Legislation, based in Los Angeles.

On Jan. 14, 1975, when the committee was finally abolished, Representative Robert F. Drinan, Democrat of Massachusetts, paid tribute to Mr. Wilkinson, saying, "No account of the demise of the House Un-American Activities Committee would be complete without a notation of the extraordinary work done by the National Committee Against Repressive Legislation."

But Mr. Wilkinson was not finished with the federal government. When he discovered, in 1986, that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had been compiling files on him, he filed a Freedom of Information Act request for their release.

He was sent 4,500 documents. But he sued for more, and the next year the F.B.I. released an additional 30,000 documents, and then 70,000 two years later. Eventually, there were 132,000 documents covering 38 years of surveillance, including detailed reports of Mr. Wilkinson's travel arrangements and speaking schedules, and vague and mysterious accusations of an assassination attempt against Mr. Wilkinson in 1964.

A federal judge ordered the F.B.I. to stop spying on Mr. Wilkinson and to never do it again.

He is survived by his first wife, Jean, of Oakland, Calif.; their three children, Jeffry Wilkinson, of Albany, Calif., Tony Wilkinson, of Berkeley, Calif., and Jo Wilkinson of Tucson; and by his second wife, Donna; her three children from a previous marriage, John, William and Robert Childers; 19 grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.

Frank Wilkinson was born Aug. 16, 1914, in a cottage behind his family's lakeside retreat in Charlevoix, Mich. His father, a doctor, came from a family that had lived in America since colonial days. His mother was French Canadian. Mr. Wilkinson was the youngest of four children.

Mr. Wilkinson's father fell in love with Arizona while posted there in World War I and moved the family to Douglas, Ariz., after the war. The family lived there until Frank was 10, then moved to Hollywood for two years while their permanent home was being built in Beverly Hills.

They were a devout Methodist family and firm Republicans. "Every morning of my life, we had Bible readings and prayers at the breakfast table," Mr. Wilkinson once said.

He attended Beverly Hills High School and then the University of California, Los Angeles, graduating in 1936. He was active in the Methodist Youth Movement, president of the Hollywood Young People's chapter of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and an organizer for Youth for Herbert Hoover.

After college, considering a career in the ministry, he decided to tour the Holy Land. On the way, along Maxwell Street in Chicago, the Bowery in New York and later in the Middle East, he had his first glimpse at wrenching poverty, and he described it as a life-altering experience.

Mr. Wilkinson lost his faith and found himself adrift. "What do you do if you have no religion?" he said. "What is the basis of your ethics?" He chose to become active in efforts to eradicate the kind of poverty he had seen in his travels.

In later years, he would spend months on the road, speaking to whatever group would listen to him, usually telling his own story and answering questions.

In 1999, he received a lifetime achievement award from the American Civil Liberties Union. Four years earlier, the City of Los Angeles, which had once fired him, issued a citation praising Mr. Wilkinson for his "lifetime commitment to civil liberties and for making this community a better place in which to live."

    Frank Wilkinson, Defiant Figure of Red Scare, Dies at 91, NYT, 4.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/04/national/04wilkinson.html?hp&ex=1136437200&en=46144d49081f5b45&ei=5094&partner=homepage