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

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

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

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

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

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Revealing to the crowd that for 15 years he's worn a mezuza (a Jewish religious object containing Biblical text) around his neck in honor of Israel, Hatch told the crowd about his work and friendship with Irving Brown, a Jewish international labor leader. And in a happy, revealing, gaffe, Hatch declared his support for a "united and indivisible Jerusalem as the capital of Utah."

"I love you," Hatch told the crowd. "We in Utah feel very deeply about Israel. We in Utah feel very deeply about you."

Keyes, speaking off the cuff as always, channeled the subject at hand through his "this country is going to hell in a handbasket" meat grinder. Israel, through this worldview, is a possible victim of the United States' downward swirl into the sewer of immorality. For, if we live in a country that honors money and sleaze over courage and integrity, Keyes asked, how much longer will this country continue to respect its alliance with Israel -- the Middle East's beacon of the very virtues American culture is flushing away like so much human waste?

It was interesting, insightful and illuminating, and many members of the audience seemed impressed. Then, of course, as is his modus operandi, Keyes proceeded to squander away this hard-earned attention by riffing on abortion before the largely pro-choice crowd. Abortion is the absolute measure of our decline, he said. Robert Bork had it wrong -- we're not "slouching toward Gomorrah. We're galloping toward Gomorrah!" In fact, we're "galloping through the town square in Gomorrah!" he cried. He then decried the existence of gays and lesbians.

McCain used the forum to remind everyone again of his leadership on foreign policy by outlining the five points of the McCain world order. He touched on security in the Middle East, but generally he chose to use the forum to introduce his latest endorser -- Reagan's U.N. ambassador, Jeane Kirkpatrick -- and wave his internationalist sword.

After a lunch break featuring speakers like Giuliani, Missouri Sen. John Ashcroft, Michigan Sen. Spence Abraham, and Nevada senatorial candidate John Ensign, participants sat in on a seminar in which GOP pollster Frank Luntz counseled candidates on the language to use to woo Jews -- as well as suburban swing voters (examples: "cooperation," not "compromise"; "plan," not "agenda").

"Two issues stand in the way of Republicans gaining a significant percentage of the Jewish vote: abortion and the 'religious right,'" noted Luntz . "But here we have an answer. The magic word is 'Israel.'" While Jews tend to support abortion rights and are wary of the influence of Christian conservatives in the Republican party, Luntz argues that "pro-life Republican candidates, if they use less divisive social language, can win a significant portion of Jewish support if they are vocally and unconditionally pro-Israel."

And while Israel is paramount in importance, Luntz noted, Jews -- with the Holocaust looming large in their minds -- also "are more concerned about defense and foreign policy issues than virtually any other segment of the electorate."

Luntz, like many of the day's speakers, took the opportunity to slam Hillary Clinton for various campaign missteps, including her supposed claim to be Jewish.

"When was her bas mitzvah?" Luntz joked.

"You mean, 'When was her bris?'" a member of the audience shouted.

Christian activist Gary Bauer spoke when the candidates forum reconvened -- regurgitating some of the very same anti-Hillary Clinton jokes Luntz had used just hours earlier. Better that than his comments that Pat Buchanan "is a great guy," which he says repeatedly when standing before Iowa and New Hampshire gentiles. The RJC itself recently characterized Buchanan as having a message of "intolerance ... and a disdain for those who are 'different,' especially recent immigrants and Jews."

Bauer went so far as to decry the Nazi salutes Columbine shooters Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris routinely gave one another. He acted as if he's been fighting for years for the right of public schools to recite excerpts from the Bill of Rights, instead of to praise Jesus.

If nothing else, Bauer's presence provided the crowd with a living, breathing definition of chutzpah.

Steve Forbes was up next. After giving his standard pro-flat-tax stump speech, and hitting the standard pander points, he demonstrated a breadth of understanding of certain key -- if arcane -- issues important to many members of the Jewish community. He asserted that "blood libels have no place in diplomacy today" -- an allusion to the belief of some Jews that Yasir Arafat's claim that Israelis have poisoned Palestinians with "toxic gas" is just the latest of a centuries-old, anti-Semitic canard that Jews routinely get their jollies by poisoning gentiles. Forbes went on to decry the circulation of another hate-filled anachronism, "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," an anti-Semitic tract widely disseminated among Arab youth. "We can't have a true peace with that kind of hatred distributed to young people."

Forbes, like all of the candidates, was received warmly, though the crowd seemed to be split between Bush and, to a lesser extent, McCain.

Next page | More Jews should vote Republican