Capital Comment -- Daily news notes, political rumors, and important events that shape politics and public policy in Washington and the world from United Press International.
A costly endorsement -- In the 2000 president election, Pine Bluff, Ark., Commercial publisher Charles A. Berry and Tom McDonald could not agree on who the better president would be. Berry wanted Bush while McDonald was for Gore -- so the paper made no endorsement. "I'm fortunate enough to have a publisher who will allow me my view and won't force me to write editorials I don't believe in," McDonald later said.
Well, it looks like his good luck has run out because, last week, McDonald resigned from his job rather than follow the dictate of the paper's ownership to endorse the bid by former U.S. Rep. Jay Dickey, R-Ark., to return to office.
According to published reports, a representative of the Stephens Media Group, which owns the paper, insisted Dickey be endorsed instead of Rep. Mike Ross, D-Ark., in the campaign to represent the residents of the state's 4th Congressional District. In the 2000 election, Ross defeated Dickey by just over 4,000 votes.
"I understand that he who owns the newspaper can dictate the editorials," McDonald is quoted as saying, "but I don't think they necessarily had the ethical right to do it."
In the cards? -- The speculation that White House Chief of Staff Andy Card is soon due to depart from the White House for a job in the private sector was ratcheted up several notches Friday on the news that Carol Hallett, the head of the Air Transport Association, would be stepping down effective next April 30.
Hallett, a longtime Republican, has been a member of the California State Assembly, the GOP's candidate for lieutenant governor in 1982, U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas under President Ronald Reagan and U.S. Customs commissioner in the administration of Bush the elder. As head of the ATA, she is one of the highest paid association executives in Washington. As the thinking goes, Card, whose last government job was as U.S. secretary of transportation under Bush 41, is the obvious choice to replace Hallett.
Card, who began his career in public life in the Massachusetts Legislature and is the brother-in-law of well-connected GOP lobbyist and former Bush 41 White House aide Ron Kaufman, would likely find the ATA post to be a well-compensated capstone to a distinguished career in public life. As the chief representative of the commercial airline industry in Washington, Card would also continue to play an important role in the president's plan to increase the level of homeland security, especially where airports were concerned.
Gallup-ing forward -- The Gallup Poll, taken June 17 to 19 of 1,005 adults, shows President Bush's job approval rating at 74 percent -- down three points from 77 percent at the end of May. The polls also shows that 61 percent of those surveyed are in favor of sending U.S. ground troops overseas to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. The poll, which has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, says 83 percent of those surveyed think removing Hussein from power should be "a very important" or "somewhat important" goal of U.S. foreign policy.
And we thought we had seen everything -- The Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a Michigan-based nonprofit center-right think tank, is being sued by the Michigan Education Association and its president, Luigi Battaglieri, alleged Mackinac had "misappropriated his likeness" by quoting him in a fund-raising letter.
At a Sept. 27, 2001, news conference, Battaglieri said of Mackinac, "I admire what they have done" in reference to the way their research has shaped education reform in Michigan, a quote center President Lawrence Reed repeated in a fund-raising letter. The MEA, the state's teacher's union, now says the use of the quote is in violation of the laws designed to protect celebrities from the misuse of their likeness for commercial purposes and is demanding that Mackinac surrender a list of anyone who has ever received a fund-raising solicitation from the center as well as all of the proceeds generated from the letter in question.
First Amendment advocates suggest the lawsuit is nothing more than political harassment, pointing out that Battaglieri's remark was made at a news conference, where comments from participants are supposed to be taken down and repeated in for-profit commercial venues -- like television news programs and newspapers -- as well as nonprofit publications.
In memoriam -- Justin Dart Jr., one of the nation's leading advocates for the rights of the disabled, has died in his sleep at age 71. A longtime activist, Dart is called by some the father of the Americans with Disabilities Act and was chairman of the President's Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities under Ronald Reagan. In one of his last public forays into politics, Dart joined a coalition of liberal organizations opposed to President George W. Bush's 2001 tax cut -- telling a news conference in Washington that, if the reductions were enacted, he would donate an amount equivalent to the value of the deduction to him to the other groups in the room.
Dart's father, a wealthy California industrialist, was a long time Reagan associate and member of the 40th president's informal "kitchen cabinet," going back to the days when he first ran for governor of the state.
Got a Capital Comment? E-mail [email protected].
