But the latest race-by-race data still portends a big day for Democrats tomorrow. For incumbents, the magic number in polling is supposedly 50 percent - the idea being that undecided voters overwhelmingly break for the challenger on Election Day.

One classic case study of this phenomenon was in New Jersey in 1993, when Jim Florio led Christie Whitman in poll after poll - sometimes by double digits - from June all the way until November. But he never surpassed 49 percent - which is exactly what he ended up with on Election Day, when he lost by 29,000 votes.

The rule is hardly universal, as George W. Bush's win over John Kerry proved. But for Republicans, it's a very ominous sign how many of their House and Senate incumbents - even in supposedly safe seats - continue to poll significantly below the 50 percent mark in independent polls. A good example of this can be found in the upstate 20th District, where a weekend Siena College poll placed Kristen Gillibrand three points ahead of Republican Rep. John Sweeney, 46 to 43 percent.

Granted, there are some extenuating circumstances, but in the national picture, this has not even been a top-tier Democratic target. And it's not an aberration. In New Hampshire, for instance, which last sent a Democrat to Congress 14 years ago, Charlie Bass, an exceedingly moderate Republican incumbent with a famous-in-his-home-state surname, now can't even crack 40 percent - this in a race that wasn't even in the Democrats' top 40 list of targets just two months ago.

And that's not even taking into account the completely unforeseen surprise results that always accompany national political waves. But look at Nebraska's dirt-poor Third District - now represented by the retiring Tom Osborne, who coached the state university to one national football title and a share of two others - and you may get the feeling something big is coming. The district gave George W. Bush 75 percent of the vote in 2004, making it one of the reddest in the nation. And yet in the race for its open seat, Democrat Scott Kleeb is within striking distance of Republican Adrian Smith - so much so that Kleeb's national party ponied up $100,000 last week for his cause and Bush himself campaigned for Smith over the weekend.

If the John Sweeneys and Charlie Basses of the world are actually trailing the day before the election - and if President Bush is being forced to spend his time in the heart of what is supposedly his party's firewall - well, that's why some Democrats privately believe they're on the verge of a 30 to 40 seat gain in the House tomorrow.

-- Steve Kornacki

Christie Whitman says Rudy Giuliani didn't do enough to protect 9/11 workers on the pile.

The New York Post endorsed Eliot Spitzer, saying, " Barring a seismic reversal of fortune, Eliot Spitzer will find himself a very, very lonely man come Jan. 1. On one side, there will be him. On the other, there will be the Albany establishment..."

Spitzer said he would close hospitals based on recommendations from a state report due in November. Which is unusual, since, as the Times notes in their news story, "Much of Mr. Spitzer's campaign up to now has been spent making costly promises to voters..."

The Daily News endorsed Mark Green, saying Andrew Cuomo's ambition brought him "success while also, at times, prompting him to place his own interests over a greater good."

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn is going to brief colleagues next week about that poll she conducted earlier on term limits.

State Senator Marty Connor and Assemblywoman Sylvia Friedman are put on the endangered incumbent list.

And the new buildings at Ground Zero are discussed here, here and here.

-- Azi Paybarah

Yes, it was a good idea, all right-just a little too good for the energy barons who run the Bush administration. When they heard that the report took global warming seriously and dared to suggest that human behavior, through the use of fossil fuels (that's oil to you), contributed to this potential catastrophe, the White House stepped in. There was a run at the White House stationery office on white-out, erasers, scissors and brightly colored pencils.

The E.P.A. report was censored by the guardians of American liberties in the Bush White House.

When the report is released, it will contain only tepid language about the interesting little fact that global temperatures are rising, that (despite the horrendous spring in the Northeast) the planet is getting far too sultry, and that many scientists think the junk pouring out of our smokestacks and tailpipes may contribute to this problem. Actually, instead of science, the report now contains propaganda. The White House inserted "studies" by the American Petroleum Institute-now there's an unbiased source-designed to make us think that global warming is a fantasy designed to subvert the sales of sport utility vehicles.

This is outrageous and corrupt behavior, but also about what we've come to expect from a White House that believes what's good for the oil industry is good for America-or at least that portion of America fortunate enough to sit on the boards of oil companies.

Making this episode even more infuriating is the behavior of Ms. Whitman. She should be offended. She should be angry. Instead, she assures us that she is "perfectly comfortable" with the censors in the White House.

Actually, her choice of words tells us why Ms. Whitman has been a disaster at the E.P.A. She is, in fact, "perfectly comfortable" with her bosses. After all, they got her out of a mess in Trenton, gave her a cabinet-level job and raised her profile as the model Republican woman. All she had to do, in return, was remain "perfectly comfortable."

Several weeks ago, Ms. Whitman announced that she would step down as E.P.A. administrator to become "perfectly comfortable" somewhere else. Wherever she goes, she should remember to bring along lots of light clothes.

It's hot out there, Ms. Whitman. Not that your agency will be allowed to say anything about it.

No Silver Lining In Aide's Arrest

Two years ago, Michael Boxley, a top aide to Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, was accused of sexual assault. Mr. Silver did nothing, and no official charges were filed. Just a few days ago, Mr. Boxley, who worked as Mr. Silver's $130,000-a-year chief counsel, was taken away in handcuffs, formally charged with raping another young woman. Mr. Silver called the arrest "unfortunate for everybody involved."

One could argue that the arrest of an accused rapist is fortunate, indeed. Given the previous accusation against Mr. Boxley, it's especially hard to see why we should regard his arrest as "unfortunate." It sounds as though young women in Albany are safer today than they were before Mr. Boxley's arrest.

Perhaps Mr. Silver was talking about himself. There's no question that Mr. Boxley's arrest is "unfortunate" for the Speaker-after all, he offered nothing but support for Mr. Boxley when the previous accusations surfaced. In fact, Mr. Silver said he had the "utmost personal confidence" in Mr. Boxley at the time.

Apparently, that confidence was misplaced. On June 11, Albany police arrested Mr. Boxley and charged him with raping a fellow Assembly employee. Several days later (although not immediately), Mr. Silver placed Mr. Boxley on unpaid leave-but, as the New York Post reported, the suspect has accumulated nearly 1,500 hours in vacation and personal time. The paper noted that he'll be collecting his full-time salary-courtesy of you, the taxpayer-for about nine months.

Amazingly, Mr. Silver apparently can still show his face in polite company. Nobody has demanded an accounting from him, never mind his resignation.

Perhaps we've simply gotten used to poor judgment and bad behavior from public servants.

It's the Economy , Stupid

John R. Talbott, a onetime investment banker for Goldman Sachs, predicts a real-estate crackup in his new book, The Coming Crash in the Housing Market. The title alone is enough to send some people screaming into the night. After all, the housing market's performance has been the one bright spot in the gloomy economic news of the last two years or so.

The problem with Mr. Talbott's analysis is that it didn't go far enough-he focused only on housing. In fact, it's simply part of a larger, depressing picture. The housing crash, when and if it comes, will follow larger downturns in the national economy.

Despite interest-rate and tax cuts, the economy is stalled and shows little signs of revival. There's not much reason to believe that we will see an uptick any time soon. While the market has rebounded sharply in recent months, government at every level is struggling. The city is broke, the state is broke and Washington is running up record deficits.

Unfortunately, we have problems that go well beyond a crash in the housing sector.

What took her so long?

Under George W. Bush, the job of E.P.A. administrator became little more than a make-work job for a high-profile female Republican with a suburban, swing-state constituency. Ms. Whitman was undermined, and found herself defending policies she opposed while she was governor of New Jersey. To make matters worse, she watched from the sidelines while the likes of Vice President Dick Cheney and others bulldozed the ideals of conservation and stewardship.

The fossil-fuel barons who run Washington these days never had much use for Ms. Whitman, who gained a green reputation during her seven-plus years in Trenton. And Ms. Whitman seemed unwilling to challenge the administration's hostility toward environmentalists and their issues. In fact, had she been made of sterner stuff, she would have quit almost two years ago, after she told European leaders that the President would abide by the Kyoto treaty to reduced global warming. The President quickly stated that he would not be bound by any such thing, embarrassing both Ms. Whitman in particular and the nation in general.

Ms. Whitman should have resigned on principle over Kyoto. Instead, she played the loyal soldier. Not long afterward, she announced that the White House would postpone the enactment of new drinking-water standards. The macho gang that really runs environmental policy in the Bush White House thought these new standards were too tough on business-and besides, they said, only wimps would care about a little arsenic in their tap water. A public outcry forced the administration to reconsider, and Ms. Whitman was given the unenviable job of announcing a major policy reversal.

The Bush administration has been relentless in its promotion of mindless deregulation and absurd assaults on the environment, like the plan to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, delaying the much-needed cleanup of General Electric's mess in the Hudson River, rolling back fuel-efficiency standards and permitting logging in protected forests. Christine Todd Whitman would have performed an admirable public service by calling out the White House on these policies, instead of swallowing her pride and holding onto her job long after it became clear that her agenda meant nothing to this President.

The Bush White House proudly identifies itself as conservative. But there is nothing conservative about its environmental policies. It does not seek to "conserve" the nation's rivers, lakes, forests and open spaces. Instead, it sees corporate profits where the rest of us see the glories of nature.

These Republicans have reversed the priorities of one of their heroes, Theodore Roosevelt. He was a conservative in the truest sense: He sought to conserve nature and was a steward of the environment.

The Bush White House, by contrast, instinctively sides with the despoilers of nature, with those who desecrate rather than preserve. And few know that better than Christine Todd Whitman. She's leaving the E.P.A., but none too soon.

It's the Mayor's Call On Firehouse Closings

New York is in the throes of its worst fiscal crisis in a generation. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the businessman turned politician, finds himself confronting an array of choices, none of them good. He must cut this program, raise that tax, lay off workers and not hire bright new people to replace retirees.

And, he believes, he must close some firehouses. With the number of fires steadily decreasing and the number of fire stations based on the needs of the early 20th century, Mr. Bloomberg selected six houses for closing: four in Brooklyn, one in Queens and one in upper Manhattan. All are small, single-company houses-that is, they serve as quarters for engine companies only.

The closings took effect on Sunday, May 25, and will save the city more than $6 million a year. Bear in mind that the Mayor is cutting facilities, but is ordering no layoffs of firefighters. This is not a battle over manpower or work rules, but about buildings considered out-of-date and engine companies that are hardly among the city's busiest. Residents, however, believe that the value of a firehouse nearby simply can't be measured in mere dollars, and many were arrested as they protested the Mayor's decision.

Their despair is understandable, and it surely is sad to see companies with decades of service and tradition disbanded. But the Mayor didn't make this decision lightly-no Mayor would, considering the strong feelings involved.

Even so, the decision is Mr. Bloomberg's to make, and he has made it. Although City Council members threatened legal action to block the closings, their efforts thus far have failed, and rightly so. As bad as these closings might be, it would be inappropriate if a judge stepped in to tell the Mayor how to manage his budget.

Mr. Bloomberg made a tough and unpopular decision, but the times call for tough and unpopular measures, and the Mayor deserves credit for not looking for easy answers.

The E.P.A. had sent up a draft order, saying the General Electric Company had to spend half a billion dollars to dredge the Hudson River of hazardous PCB's. It was a plan that G.E.--and Congressman Sweeney--had vehemently opposed.

"And contained in that order was a full endorsement of the E.P.A. plan that was originally crafted under Carol Browner in the Clinton administration," Mr. Madden complained the next day.

Up to that very moment, Mr. Madden said, the Congressman's office, had been discussing a vastly scaled-back proposal with the E.P.A. In fact, the widespread impression among both pro-dredging and anti-dredging forces alike in the days leading up to the Aug. 1 announcement was that the ambitious clean-up of the Hudson River ordered in the waning days of the Clinton administration was about to be radically diminished under the pro-business agenda of George W. Bush.

The congressman wasn't the only one who was taken aback by the decision of E.P.A. Administrator Christine Todd Whitman to issue the draft order for the full project. Darren Dopp, Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's communications director, said he received a call after 10 p.m. from his counterpart in Governor Pataki's office, inquiring about what he had heard. He had heard nothing.

But most surprised was a group of environmentalists who had just days earlier met with Ms. Whitman in her ornate conference room just blocks from the White House. The environmentalists had been seeking such a meeting, they said, since January.

About three-quarters into the meeting, Ms. Whitman's chief of staff, Eileen McGinnis, spoke up. "We have sat around this table half a dozen times with people from upriver communities," Ms. McGinnis said, according to six sources who were present. The upstaters had expressed grave doubts about dredging. "Is anyone here from upriver?"

The question was met with stony silence--partly because the group realized it had erred by failing to bring along anyone from the Upper Hudson River Valley, reinforcing the perception that dredging is an upriver-versus-downriver dispute.

But the group was also silent for another reason. The E.P.A. had admitted to speaking to dredging opponents six times while a decision was being made, yet only once--now--with the environmentalists

To the enviros, these six meetings, which had never before been disclosed, were proof of the Bush administration's favoritism towards pro-industry lobbyists. When they left their meeting, the environmentalists--12 of them, from Scenic Hudson, Riverkeep, Environmental Advocates, NYPIRG, Hudson Sloop Clearwater, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility--were all but certain they had lost.

Certainly, G.E. had done everything within the power of its vast and influential resources to affect the outcome in their favor. For months, upriver residents had been subjected to an unprecedented G.E.-funded advertising campaign. (The enviros had also run some ads, but their spending had been in the thousands, not the millions.) The G.E. ads argued that dredging would economic disruption and harmful resuspension of the PCB's, and that the Clinton E.P.A. proposal was radical and untested.

Those were the very arguments the upriver groups had brought to the E.P.A., and the very ones Mrs. Whitman had pitched back to the greenies at their July 26 meeting..

The environmentalists knew that Ms. Whitman had met with Mr. Sweeney, of upstate Halfmoon, back in May. Ms. Whitman would admit in the July 27 Washington Post that General Electric chief executive Jack Welch also had a chance to bend her ear, and that she'd met with company officials.

Meanwhile, pro-dredging members of Congress had to wait until late July for their sit-down with the E.P.A.--and that only occurred after a planned July 12 meeting was canceled, reporters were notified and the White House, apparently embarrassed, intervened.

"I had been trying to schedule a meeting with her since she was appointed," said Democratic Representative Maurice Hinchey, who represents a large swath of the lower Hudson Valley and is a leader of the pro-dredging faction.

Ms. Whitman did meet with two pro-dredging representatives early on--Democratic Assemblymen Richard Brodsky of Westchester County and John McEneny of Albany--but only to discuss the specific issue of a possible E.P.A. television response to G.E.'s massive anti-dredging ad campaign.(No E.P.A. ads were ever placed.)

Even Governor Pataki, a dredging supporter and fellow Republican, did not lobby Ms. Whitman until July 24--and then by phone. Mr. Pataki later told reporters he supported the full dredging plan.

Democratic Congressional staff members who were supporters of the dredging plan were so concerned about the frequent contact between the E.P.A. and the anti-dredging forces that they invoked a provision of the federal Superfund law, which requires the E.P.A. to keep a public file of all meetings it holds on an issue after the required public-comment period ends. But in the dredging case, no such file has been maintained. Finally, after two weeks of effort, Democratic Representative John Dingell of Michigan, the ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, was given records of four meetings in May. But the records don't mention the meeting with G.E. officials, or all the visits by the anti-dredging groups. An E.P.A. spokesman, Chris Paulitz, could not explain why the records did not match the acknowledged meetings.

Of the meetings held, Representative Sweeney had a hand in arranging many of them. Though only in his second term, Mr. Sweeney has quickly risen in the Republican Party, cementing his power position by organizing the demonstration that halted the recount of presidential votes in Miami-Dade County last December--a protest that proved to be a turning point in the post-election fight.

It was Mr. Sweeney, said Merrilyn Pulver, the town supervisor of upstate Fort Edward and a dredging opponent, who helped set up the E.P.A. meetings. Though the group didn't meet with Ms. Whitman herself, Ms. Pulver was unconcerned. "I know the Congressman is working closely with [Ms. McGinnis], so we felt quite confident our message was heard."

Mr. Sweeney's spokesman, Mr. Madden, confirmed that Mr. Sweeney had been in close contact with Ms. Whitman and the E.P.A., speaking with her several times on the phone after their May meeting. "And there is daily contact on a senior staff level,² Mr. Madden said, just a day before Ms. Whitman issued the full dredging order.

There was also contact with the White House. Mr. Madden said Mr. Sweeney speaks frequently with White House chief of staff Andrew Card (the brother of Mr. Sweeney's own former chief of staff), though not, Mr. Madden said, about dredging. Still, he had added, "we¹re plenty sure the White House knows our position."

By contrast, Governor Pataki--dredging's most prominent Republican proponent--has not made his views known to the White House. "We've been making our case to the E.P.A.," said spokesman Mike McKeon.

General Electric did have Mr. Bush's ear, though. Mr. Welch sat next to Mr. Bush at his January business summit, though the White House would not comment on whether they had discussed PCB's. Mr. Welch even tried to persuade the pro-dredgers, speaking with Governor Pataki, Senator Charles Schumer and New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, among others.

"G.E. has a tremendous amount of schwack with the White House," said one high-level Republican political consultant, "and Mr. Welch made this an issue personally, which is extremely unusual."

Mr. Welch's powers of persuasion--and business acumen--are well known, making him a modern-day capitalist icon with a fat $7 million book contract to prove it. "He can look you in the eye, and you hear him out and think he has the most reasonable position in the world," said a Republican official who has been lobbied by Mr. Welch. "Until you check the facts and you see it was all lies."

"There is no stronger advocate for the company," added Mr. Dopp, Mr. Spitzer's spokesman. "He has real style. He's graceful in person but vehement, and he really believes this stuff. Would he drink a glass of PCB's? It was pretty clear that he would."

General Electric did not return several calls for comment.

Even so, G.E. didn't rely on Mr. Welch's prodigious powers of persuasion. In Washington, in 1999 (the last year for which data are available), the company had 96 lobbyists on retainer, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. They include former Democratic Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell and former Upper Hudson Valley Republican Representative Gerald Solomon (who was referred to as "the Congressman from G.E.").

Mr. Solomon spoke to a reporter for a half-hour about why dredging is bad, but downplayed his role, insisting that he hadn't lobbied on dredging and that his $120,000-a-year retainer is "only 2 percent of my income."

In 2000, as the E.P.A. was putting together its final proposal, G.E. spent $16.02 million on lobbying, more than double the $7.9 million it spent in 1999, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. In 2000, it was the third-most-generous lobbying spender, behind only the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Medical Association. Part of the effort apparently went toward G.E.'s attempt to merge with Honeywell, said the center's Bill Shingleton. But he noted that AOL and Time Warner's lobbying expenses jumped only about 10 percent before their merger. And even Microsoft, under threat of a government-imposed breakup, spent $6.4 million in 2000, compared to $4.9 million in 1999.

In Albany, G.E.'s lobbyists include James Featherstonhaugh, one of the most influential Republicans in Albany. In 2000, his firm was paid $150,000 by G.E.

And even the New York City Council was courted by G.E. As the Council, in April, was preparing to pass a pro-dredging resolution, NBC President Robert C. Wright was dispatched to lobby members. Council members described the meeting as "very unusual." Said A. Gifford Miller of Manhattan's East Side at the time, "As a City Council member, it's not often the president of a major network comes to see you."

But G.E. was most diligent at the grassroots. The company admits to spending $10 million to $12 million in anti-dredging advertising, though environmentalists say it's many times more than that. With its radio and TV ads saturating the Hudson Valley, its full-page ads supplementing newspaper income and a half-hour infomercial running during prime time, it has persuaded many upriver residents that dredging will bring disruption, noise, traffic--and won't do the job.

Broadcast ads also have run in Washington, D.C., and advertisements have appeared on The New York Times editorial page and in Roll Call.

The environmentalists have run their own ads, but fewer. The group Citizens to Cleanup G.E., a Ralph Nader offshoot, bought three New York Times editorial-page advertisements.

Local groups who are opposed to dredging insist they are completely independent. "You know what General Electric does and what we do are entirely separate," said Ms. Pulver, the Fort Edward town supervisor. "Our interests are mutual in that we both see the river as being cleaner than it's ever been, but we do our own thing."

Still, the green-and-black anti-dredging signs that dot lawns along the Upper Hudson were supplied by G.E. and available on its Web site. Signs for some demonstrations have even contained the lettering "paid for by the General Electric Company."

The company also freely disseminated data culled from its own $200 million in research, in a campaign-style press-rebuttal operation that responded to environmentalists' claims.

But even with all this, G.E. lost, though it continued its resistance to the very end. At the 11th hour, both Republicans and Democrats said, the White House caught on that it could not sustain another environmental loss, given the President's recent European trip and the administration's position, alone among the major nations, to walk away from the Kyoto Protocol on global warming. In Congress, Republican moderates embarrassed Mr. Bush by voting to restore Clinton-era regulations on arsenic in drinking water.

Soon after, Mrs. Whitman was summoned to the White House, New York officials said. (Neither the E.P.A. nor the White House would confirm the meeting.)

"The President needed to show that he was prepared to take a strong pro-environmental position on something and do it soon because seen as reflexively anti-environment is not a good place to be," said Kieran Mahoney, Governor Pataki's consultant, who, like most observers, was taken completely by surprise by the outcome of the issue.

In the end, something proved more powerful than Jack Welch and all the clout he could muster: Votes in the center of the spectrum. Votes that appeared to be slipping away.

Gary Condit and the disappearance of Chandra Levy, The Wall Street Journal published a glowing article on Senator

William Frist, Republican of Tennessee, writing that he was shining proof that

Congress was not composed entirely of "lowlifes." It seems that Journal columnist Al Hunt had dinner at

Mr. Frist's home, where he was treated to tales of the Senator's

extracurricular work as a medical doctor "in war-ravaged southern Sudan, in a

makeshift operating room with no electricity or running water." Mr. Hunt raced

home and typed up his column, titled "Senator, Surgeon and Samaritan," in which

he described Mr. Frist as a kind of swashbuckling Harrison Ford with a medical

degree and declared him one of the 

"best people in politics." Given that Mr. Frist, a staunch ally of

George W. Bush, is mentioned as a Republican Presidential contender in 2008,

Mr. Hunt's column was money in the bank.

But the facts of the Senator's moonlighting medical travels

are somewhat less exotic than Mr. Hunt's enthralled account, and somewhat

troubling. It's true that, before being

elected to the Senate in 1994, Mr. Frist was a reputable surgeon with a Harvard Medical School degree who

specialized in heart and lung transplants and founded a transplant

center at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He stopped practicing heart

surgery when he was elected because, he said, "You have to keep your hands

nimble." But he hasn't stopped scrubbing up altogether: As Mr. Hunt wrote, the Senator has traveled to

Africa annually for the past three years, staying a week and performing a few

surgeries, such as a hip replacement, a goiter removal and a hernia

operation. About the hernia operation, the Senator told Mr. Hunt, "It's a

simple operation, but without it, they die"-a curious assessment, given that untreated hernias are not regarded as

fatal by those in the medical profession.

One must assume that Mr. Frist has the best of intentions,

but one must also ask if a doctor who performs only a handful of operations a

year, in between his duties as a U.S.

Senator, is able to keep his medical skills sharp enough to benefit

those he's treating. It's hard to imagine that the chief of any hospital would

allow a surgeon with such infrequent operating-room time to just pop in

whenever he pleases and operate on patients. Would Mr. Hunt, or his editors at The Wall Street Journal , go to Mr. Frist

if they needed an operation? Of course not-they would be up at Presbyterian

Hospital, attended by the best surgeons available. And who can really say what

the outcome is of Mr. Frist's activities in the Sudan?  He's on a plane back to Washington within a

week, having done just enough surgery to win the adulation of The Journal , but leaving the follow-up

procedures to the doctors who work there full-time.

Only a cynic would suggest that Mr. Frist's trips to Africa

are nothing but clever public relations. In his youth, he clearly had the

motivation to undertake a full-time medical career, and chances are that he

still wants to put those skills to good use. And there is no question that he

is of a different caliber than the evasive

Gary Condit. But there is something unseemly about the mythology being

stoked by Mr. Hunt and others. If Mr. Frist wants to go back to being a doctor,

he should resign his seat and start practicing medicine. If he wants to be a

Senator, he should ask himself if picking up a scalpel a few times a year

qualifies him to hold the well-being of others in his hands.

Will Bush Welch on Hudson?

It's beginning to look likely that the Bush administration

and its oft-humiliated head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Christie

Whitman, are going to let Jack Welch and

General Electric off the hook. Reports indicate that Ms. Whitman, acting

on behalf of the administration, will support a watered-down plan to clean up

the PCB's that G.E. dumped in the upper Hudson River.

Environmentalists and

elected officials have demanded that the contaminated riverbed be dredged at

G.E.'s expense. The Clinton administration supported a plan that would cost the

company about $480 million. G.E. has run a massive publicity campaign against

the plan, but it will be very happy if Ms. Whitman decides on a compromise that

would call for dredging only a small part of the riverbed, at a cost of $100

million. Governor George Pataki, who likes to be thought of as a green

Republican, says he favors dredging, but he hasn't taken a strong position on

the dueling dredging plans. Ms. Whitman's position isn't quite clear, although

it's worth noting that she has been putting off meeting with environmentalists.

That this matter is even under discussion is a disgrace;

that G.E. and the Bush administration seem prepared to undertake a token

cleanup is a scandal. Mr. Welch's legacy at G.E. will be tainted if this

short-sighted plan is put into effect. As for Ms. Whitman, she will deserve the

scorn of those who accuse her of being a gutless tool of the Bush administration.

If she is truly a steward of the environment, Ms. Whitman

will recommend full dredging; and if her boss, the President, resists, she will

resign.

Teach for America

New York City's students can only be as good as their

teachers, and the failure of the education

bureaucracy to uphold its end of the bargain is legendary. Fortunately,

there are brilliant people outside that bureaucracy who understand that, just

as students can only be as good as their teachers, a city like New York can

only be as good as the promise it offers its young people. That promise has

been honored by Teach for America, a

national nonprofit founded by Princeton University alumna Wendy Kopp, whose thesis as an undergraduate was

the blueprint for this program. In the past 10 years, 6,000 college

grads who might otherwise have shunned teaching have been trained by Teach for

America. Nearly 600 recruits have taught in Harlem, Washington Heights and the

South Bronx.  Ninety-one percent of

principals rate Teach for America teachers as good or excellent.

The success of Teach for America will not only result in

more motivated students, but may also have a profound effect on public

education, as Teach for America alumni become involved in education policy. Two

respected charter schools, the Knowledge Is

Power Program Academy and the Bronx Preparatory Academy, both in the

South Bronx, are run by Teach for America alumni.

New Yorkers interested in

helping may call 212-279-2080 or visit www.teach

It is also a toxic-waste dump. Some 200,000poundsof polychlorinated biphenyls, better known as PCB's, cling to the murky sediment of the river's bottom, left there decades ago by General Electric. Indeed, the Hudson River is the nation's largest Superfund site. The river's fish are unsafe to eat.

In about a month's time, President George W. Bush and his Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Christine Todd Whitman, will have to decide what to do about the Hudson River PCB's–either dredge the contaminated soil at G.E.'s expense or, as G.E. dearly wishes, leave the PCB's there. It's a decision that could have a far-reaching impact on Governor George Pataki and the state's Republican Congressional delegation, the relationship between the G.O.P. and the environmental movement, and Mr. Bush's own tattered environmental bona fides.

Mr. Pataki has always played the part of a Republican environmentalist, and he supports the dredging plan announced last December, in the waning days of the Clinton administration. But if he knows whether the Bush administration will abide by that decision, he isn't saying.

Publicly, "we're always optimistic," said Mike McKeon, the Governor's spokesman. And yet, Mr. Pataki is taking a low profile on the issue. He has not met with Ms. Whitman, instead sending his newly appointed environmental conservation commissioner, Erin Crotty. He has not called Mr. Bush or lobbied White House officials, Mr. McKeon said. By contrast, the Governor did both to urge the President to end the bombing of Vieques.

"We're very happy that Governor Pataki came out in favor of dredging last November," said Alex Matthiessen, the executive director of Riverkeeper, an organization pledged to cleaning up the Hudson River. "But we're disappointed he hasn't done more since then to promote the plan."

Some environmentalists believe Mr. Pataki may be trying to distance himself from the issue to avoid taking a political hit if Mr. Bush doesn't order the dredging. "They think they have the green vote wrapped up no matter what happens," one environmentalist said of the Governor's allies. "But if the President doesn't follow through on dredging, Pataki will be held responsible."

And there are two New York Democrats running for Governor, Andrew Cuomo and H. Carl McCall, who are poised to make the cleanup an issue next year.

"If they don't do dredging, it will become a major symbol," said one Republican consultant. "They have to be extremely careful that the next couple of actions are pro-environment."

Careful indeed, because the public apparently is wary of Mr. Bush's green credentials. A June 21 New York Times -CBS News poll found that 46 percent of the respondents disapprove of Mr. Bush's environmental policy, compared to 39 percent who approve. More startling still for the administration: 55 percent say that protecting the environment is more important than producing energy. And fully 71 percent think that producing energy is Mr. Bush's priority.

Mr. Bush's approval ratings are as low as they were in April 2000, after the divisive primary season. The primary campaign ended for all intents and purposes on March 7, 2000, when Mr. Bush won both California and New York, a victory spurred in part by an ad campaign launched by the group Republicans for Clean Air, which turned out to be a shell set up by a Bush ally.

"He has never had a sense of these issues," said one Republican who has discussed the environment with Mr. Bush. "He just doesn't comprehend them."

But now, he may have to. "The Hudson River is the poster child of the Superfund movement," said Marion Trieste, a consultant to Scenic Hudson, an environmental group. The Hudson River cleanup has become the test case of sorts for the Superfund law, a bill designed to protect human health by forcing polluters to pay for the cleanup of their messes.

What to do with the Hudson River PCB's has confounded more than one President, and more than one Governor, in the almost 30 years since the chemicals were first found in the river. PCB's, a class of 209 chlorinated hydrocarbons known to cause cancer in animals and linked to cancer, reproductive problems and neurological impairment in humans, were dumped into the river by two G.E. plants from the 1940's until they were banned in 1977. And there they've remained, as G.E. stared down Governors Hugh Carey and Mario Cuomo, and the E.P.A. under Presidents Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George Bush–until December 2000, just days before the Supreme Court issued its decision in Bush v. Gore , when Clinton E.P.A. administrator Carol Browner recommended that G.E. be forced to dredge 100,000 pounds of the toxic contaminants, at a cost of $460 million.

"This river needs to be cleaned up," she said at the time. And yet, Ms. Browner herself acknowledged that the recommendation was something of a Hail Mary pass. Her voice quavering, the soon-to-be lame duck said, "Look, this is 10 years of work. And I have to say, I would be very disappointed if any administration walked away from the volume of science–unprecedented–[and] the volume of work in this proposal."

"Very disappointed" has come to be the environmentalists' refrain as they've watched Mr. Bush back off from tougher standards on acid rain, global warming and arsenic levels in drinking water. Privately, some Republicans think that the Bushies–when they think about it at all–abhor the plan to dredge the Hudson, seeing it as a cave-in to alarmist environmentalists and based on bad science.

And G.E. has certainly given that wing of the Republican Party cover, spending between $10 million and $12 million upstate on an advertising campaign–an astounding amount in one of the nation's tiniest media markets. The ads contain two arguments: There's no proof that PCB's are bad for you, and the river is cleaning itself.

The advertising campaign has certainly taken hold. In the small town of Fort Edward, N.Y., the location of one of the G.E. plants, townspeople have posted green-and-black "We oppose dredging" signs on their lawns; the signs are supplied by G.E. A sampling of public opinion in the Fort Edward Diner finds vocal opposition to dredging. "We grew up swimming in that river, and nothing's the matter with us!" is a typical comment. To some locals, the dredging plan is all a plot by downstaters so they can fish in the Hudson while their poorer brethren upstate have to live through a "disruptive" dredging process.

Still, with the notable exception of Congressman John Sweeney, powerful New York Republicans, including Mr. Pataki, support the dredging plan.

State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, a Democrat, recently met with Ms. Whitman and said that he, too, remained optimistic. He was asked why. "I think the Clinton administration position was correct," Mr. Spitzer said. "And the Bush administration's failure [on environmental issues] is exacting a political cost. It may not be the science that motivates them; it may be the politics."

Mr. Sweeney, who opposes dredging, said of the political controversy: "This is not really about my seat." Indeed, it is not–his seat is safe. Yet Mr. Sweeney is not without influence in the Bush administration. He has bragged about organizing the disruption that led to the end of the recount in Miami-Dade County last November, and until recently his chief of staff was Brad Card, brother to White House chief of staff Andrew Card.

Still, it's numbers that the Bush administration cares about, argued one Hudson Valley Republican. "If President Bush doesn't support dredging, what does [Republican U.S. Representative] Sue Kelly do? What does [Representative] Ben Gilman do?" Ms. Kelly represents much of Westchester–exactly the kind of independent-minded, environmentally conscious voters that Mr. Bush seems to have teed off these first few months of his tenure. Mr. Gilman also has Hudson Valley constituents. There is also concern about the U.S. Senate: Some believe that Rhode Island's Lincoln Chafee is poised to defect after one more anti-environmental edict from Mr. Bush.

The Whitman Factor

Bush administration officials are remaining tight-lipped, though as governor of New Jersey, Ms. Whitman supported the dredging. In a 1998 letter to the E.P.A., the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection said that "the debate over whether it is wiser to remove PCB's from the bottom of the Hudson or leave the PCB's in place should not continue. It is clear to see that the only responsible course of action is to safely dredge the contaminated river bottom."

Even President Bush, announcing U.S. support for the Persistent Organic Pollutants Treaty last April, said: "Concerns over the hazards of PCB's, DDT and the other toxic chemicals covered by the agreement are based on solid scientific information. These pollutants are linked to developmental defects, cancer and other grave problems in humans and animals."

Still, neither Mr. Sweeney nor Mr. Spitzer left their meetings with Ms. Whitman with any sense of where the E.P.A. was headed. (And even if Ms. Whitman had her own recommendations, as she did on carbon-dioxide emissions, it's not clear that her advice would be followed.) Publicly, Ms. Whitman will only say that the E.P.A. is on track to make a decision whether to go forward on Aug. 17.

That offered some comfort to environmentalists, who had expected a delay. Now they have a different worry: that the decision will be watered down. "We just can't see how George W. Bush, given his record, is going to be willing to embarrass G.E. that way," said Riverkeeper's Mr. Matthiessen. Despite their appeals, Ms. Whitman has not met with a coalition of environmentalists, fueling their worst fears.

But they have continued, undaunted. On June 26, Riverkeeper released a new report showing elevated levels of PCB's in the blood of Hudson River anglers, as well as a billboard designed to keep the focus on the human-health effects of PCB's during this crucial month before the Bush E.P.A. makes its decision.

The billboard shows PCB's as neon-green blobs on the river bottom, in a striped bass, and encircling a human fetus in its mother's belly.

"This is the last chance to get PCB's out of the Hudson," said Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is Riverkeeper's attorney. "If they do it now, the fish will be safe to eat two years after dredging is completed. Otherwise, it will be 100 years."

pollutants sounds like common sense to most people. No doubt that is why, after

George W. Bush rescinded a Clinton regulation mandating lower levels of arsenic

in drinking water, opinion polls showed a spike of citizen outrage and prompted

a promise of "further study" by his abject environmental administrator,

Christine Todd Whitman.

The results of her studies, of course, will depend quite

heavily on who does the studying. When Mr. Bush announced his original foolish

decision to nullify the arsenic cleanup, he dishonestly implied that his

predecessor had imposed a hasty, "last-minute" decision that wasn't based on

"sound science." Never mind that the Clinton regulation was the result of one

of the longest, most exhaustive research efforts in the history of the

Environmental Protection Agency, beginning almost two decades ago. In Mr.

Bush's parlance, "sound science" means anything that will please the lobbyists

and contributors from the mining and water industries.

Despite Ms. Whitman's earnest pledges, the pressure from corporate

interests may well prevail over public health in the long run. Reducing the

permissible level of arsenic in public reservoirs from 50 parts per billion to

10 parts per billion, as the Clinton regulation would have mandated, will be

expensive to those same interests. Once public attention is successfully

diverted from the issue, the lobbyists will remain hard at work.

Even before the White House flip-flop, various voices could

be heard arguing that the benefits of reducing arsenic in the reservoirs wouldn't

be worth the cost. A Wall Street Journal

editorialist pointed out that arsenic is a "naturally occurring" substance and

thus nothing to be too worried about. A Slate

columnist cited a think-tank report as proof that Mr. Bush had made a "heroic

and correct" decision by voiding the Clinton regulation. The tiny number of

lives saved would simply not be worth the enormous amount of money involved, he

wrote.

It may not be necessary to mention that such happy talk

emanates from well-to-do journalists whose bottled water is unlikely to contain

any taint of arsenic. It is necessary to point out that they are all wet.

The facts were detailed with damning effect on the front

page of The Wall Street Journal (not

exactly an organ of Greenpeace) on April 19. According to numerous studies

cited in the Journal article, arsenic

is a known human carcinogen, whether from man-made or natural sources, at

levels not much higher than 50 ppb. In countries like Taiwan and Chile, where

the problem has been carefully reviewed by epidemiologists, arsenic

contamination has been shown to cause cancer of the lung, kidney and bladder. A

prominent scientific expert told The Journal that "at the level of 50 parts

per billion, arsenic is killing a lot of people in Chile."

But the truly troubling news revealed by reporter Peter

Waldman was the ongoing effort by American corporations and their hired

academics to suppress the truth about arsenic's dangers. The Chilean scientist

quoted above said that he had been approached by representatives of ARCO, which

owned a huge copper mine in Montana. In 1996 the Americans wined and dined him

at a fancy Santiago hotel and, as he recalled, "They showed a lot of interest

in my work …. Then, in the middle of dinner, they offered me money to do research

for them. They said they had a lot of money and could create a center here to

do research to show the E.P.A. that the impact of arsenic is not as high as was

claimed. They were clearly saying they'd pay me for results that helped them."

The ARCO representatives

said they didn't recall making any such offer. But a Harvard scientist who

undertook a study of arsenic's effects for ARCO says that when his results

prompted him to urge an immediate reduction of the carcinogen's levels to 20

parts per billion, the company shut down his project and tried to suppress his

findings.

Opponents of strict industrial regulation frequently

complain about "junk science" causing environmental hysteria. What the Journal story shows is that the chief

instigators of "junk science" are corporate leaders who seek to frustrate the

public interest.

So far, the Bush administration's attitude toward scientific

integrity seems sufficiently elastic to please its biggest campaign

contributors. Last month Mr. Bush appointed as his new "regulation czar" a

Harvard professor named John Graham, who has earned a reputation for crusading

against fundamental health, safety and environmental regulations from his

academic perch. Although he advertises himself as a scientist, Mr. Graham is in

reality a "risk-analysis" expert with no degrees in hard science. His Harvard

Center for Risk Analysis is financed by scores of corporations and trade

associations, notably including the lobbying outfits sponsored by the

petroleum, chemical, automobile and food industries.

This is the man who will have the final word on Ms.

Whitman's "further studies" of arsenic. It seems safe to predict that her

humiliations have only just begun.

Yorkers' sense of outrage? Have her constituents already accepted that a

certain level of corruption, dishonesty and narcissism is the price of doing

business with the new junior Senator? In

the five short months since she was elected, Mrs. Clinton has accumulated

a string of unseemly dealings which would do former Senator Al D'Amato

proud-and which show in what low esteem Mrs. Clinton holds her adopted state. A

tainted $8 million book contract, the involvement of her brother in a clemency

deal for a drug trafficker, her own involvement in her husband's pardoning of

four men who stole $40 million of government money intended for schoolchildren-if

this is the honeymoon period, what can we expect from the next six years?

Now comes word that Slick Hilly has chosen a Manhattan

office which costs far more than that of any other U.S. Senator. The rent of

$514,149 is more than two and a half times what Senator Charles Schumer pays

for his office down the block. Why did Mrs. Clinton feel that taxpayers should

pony up $65 a square foot for her office at 780 Third Avenue, when most space

in that neighborhood rents for $53 a square

foot? And why did she need 7,900 square feet, when Senator Schumer is

doing just fine with 3,900 square feet? She already has a mini-castle in

Washington, D.C., and an empty million-dollar home in Westchester; now she is

using government money to establish a political base for future campaigns. It's

not a good sign when a new Senator blows 

a half-million dollars of taxpayers' money a year for her own sense of

status. An aide to Mrs. Clinton, Jim Kennedy, gave

a clue to his boss' priorities when he told the New York Post that the new office "lacks the views and the

prestige of the Chrysler Building." Apparently Mrs. Clinton feels her pricey

office-which includes use of a 154-seat auditorium-is actually a step down from

what she truly deserves.

And by the way, why does

Mrs. Clinton need an office in Manhattan, one of the most expensive real estate

markets in the world? Why not Brooklyn, or Queens, or Staten Island? Why does

she even need to be in the city? She's not "the Senator from New York City."

Nor, despite her behavior, was she appointed "Queen of Manhattan." What's wrong

with basing herself in Albany, or in one of the many struggling upstate cities

she championed so relentlessly during her campaign?

There is no mystery here. Mrs. Clinton's public career has

been defined by over-reaching and a condescending attitude even toward those

who support her. Hillary Clinton might want to note that New Yorkers judge our

Senators by what they do for voters, not by what they take for themselves.

W. and Christie's Dirty Water

During her seven years as governor of New Jersey, Christine

Todd Whitman crafted an image as a steward of the environment, a politician who

tried to counter her state's reputation as a hostage to petrochemical giants

and toxic-waste dumpers. Ms. Whitman left

Trenton earlier this year to become the Bush administration's

Environmental Protection Agency head. Now it seems that her new post may ruin

her reputation as an environmentally friendly Republican.

Ms. Whitman has announced

that the E.P.A. will abandon the Clinton administration's effort to cut the permissible level of arsenic, a known

carcinogen, in drinking water. Current regulations allow arsenic levels of 50

parts per billion; Mr. Clinton sought to reduce that to 10 parts per billion.

Such a wise reduction is just the sort of measure one would have expected

Governor Whitman, steward of nature, to support. But Ms. Whitman and

George W. Bush have chosen to cave in to the mining

interests that supported Mr. Bush's Presidential campaign. Mining produces

arsenic; if the safer rules were adopted, mining companies would have had to

spend money to reduce the arsenic that finds its way into our drinking water.

In defending her reckless

decision, Ms. Whitman absurdly said that the "scientific indicators" are

unclear regarding the benefits of reducing arsenic levels to 10 parts per

billion. Perhaps she should reread a study by the National Academy of Sciences,

which found that the current standard of 50 parts per billion could result in a

1-in-100 risk of cancer. That's why the European Union and World Health

Organization have adopted stricter regulation of arsenic.

But Mr. Bush and Ms.

Whitman have chosen to gamble with the public's health-all because of hefty

contributions. Ms. Whitman must surely know that the E.P.A. is wrong on this

issue. But given the Bush administration's attitude toward the environment,

she'd best get ready to implement similarly outrageous and damaging decisions

in the future. It must make her pine for the good old days in Trenton.

Marriage, the Grand Illusion?

Everyone knows that more than half the marriages in the

United States end in divorce. And yet, marriage endures as perhaps our

culture's most cherished and celebrated institution. How can this be? Several

psychologists recently asked why, given the high divorce rate, most couples

will still tell you that their marriage is terrific. As reported in the

American Psychological Association's Monitor,

the researchers spoke with people of various age groups, some married over 10

years, as well as a sampling of single people, and asked them to estimate their

chances of getting divorced. They found that almost all of the respondents

severely underestimated their own chances of getting divorced. At the same

time, they overestimated their own chances of experiencing other negative

events, such as physical disabilities or car accidents.

Most said their marriage had about a 10 percent chance of

ending up on the rocks-which, if it were true, would mean that 90 percent of

marriages in the U.S. would last a lifetime. The researchers concluded that

"positive illusions about marriage appear to be more powerful than illusions

about other aspects of life." But, they also admitted, without those positive

illusions, who knows whether even 50 percent of marriages would succeed?

observers who will shape and comment on the events of his administration ready

themselves with preliminary grappling.

The first to die in action, even before taking office, was

Linda Chavez, nominated for Secretary of Labor. She claimed that the

illegal-alien woman who lived in her house, did odd jobs and got walking-around

money was being battered by her boyfriend, and had been taken in as an act of charity. I am sorry to miss her

cross-examination in the Senate by such noted friends of the distressed

as Senator Clinton, who itemized her husband's old underwear (washed, one

hopes) as charitable donations. But Ms. Chavez committed a graver sin-not

telling those who nominated her absolutely everything in advance. So the

Bushies got cold feet, and she withdrew. The time will come when the only

person who can be nominated to public service is Madonna, about whom everything

is known, and photographed. Interestingly, the Portuguese couple employed by

Christine Todd Whitman, who was tapped to be head of the Environmental

Protection Agency, dropped from the news soon after they were first mentioned.

We expect what Michael Lind calls our overclass to have dusky help around the

house; only conservatives who are themselves dusky seem to get into trouble for

it. If Mrs. Whitman can get through the first cabinet meeting without frisking

Colin Powell, she should be home free.

Attention now turns to former Senator John Ashcroft,

nominated to be Attorney General. A speech he gave at Bob Jones University came

to light in which he said how lucky Americans were to live in a country where

there was "no king but Jesus." Bells went off at the cattle wire that separates

church and state. Literally, the phrase commits no one to any religious belief.

It is like the joke about Unitarians, that they believe in at most one God. If

you don't believe in Jesus, then you have no king at all; and since Jesus said

that His kingdom was not of this world, then, according to Mr. Ashcroft's

phrase, no one has an earthly king.

But the phrase is more interesting than that, for it has a

history. In the 1670's, radical Presbyterians in England and Scotland said, "No

king but Jesus!" This was at a time when the country was ruled by a king with

absolutist pretensions, and people who said such things risked their necks.

(These days, all anyone in my line of work risks for an inflammatory statement

is a dinner invitation.) The anti-monarchists did not win their case in the

1670's, but people like them came here, and ultimately had better luck. One

reason the United States has no king today is because Protestant radicals three

centuries ago said, "No king but Jesus."

Mr. Ashcroft has said that he is not trying to legislate

"spirituality," only "morality." This is simply axiomatic. All laws, except

those that prevent you from driving north on Lexington Avenue, legislate

someone's notion of morality. Because we think it is wrong to kill people

(except fetuses and, increasingly, old people), if you do it-or even try-you are

subject to arrest. The laws of contracts reflect, albeit dimly, the Eighth

Commandment. We think it is wrong to waste the gifts of nature, so we ask

Christie Whitman to look after them for us. We legitimately debate the notions

of morality that laws and proposed laws invoke, and how efficaciously the means

serve the ends. As a Senator, Mr. Ashcroft opposed needle-exchange programs on

the grounds that they "accomodat[e] the culture at its lowest denominator." But

suppose we want to keep addicts alive and AIDS-free while we raise their

denominator?

The left has waged war on Mr. Ashcroft not because of any

philosopher's quest to find laws untinged by systems of morality, but because

he is politically conservative; because he is so culturally "red country"; and,

most importantly, because they want to forestall any nomination of him-or

anyone like him-to the Supreme Court. He will be cut and bruised, but unless he

has a Guatemalan washing his underwear, he will probably make it, and do a

better job than Janet Reno, his predecessor, whose morality licensed

witch-hunts against alleged pedophiles and siege warfare against Branch

Davidians.

With or without his cabinet, Mr. Bush will be inaugurated on

Jan. 20, and demonstrations have been promised. This will be a foretaste of

four years of bad humor from the non-partisan left, energized by the Seattle

riots and the Nader campaign, and the Democratic Party, eager to keep the pot

boiling for 2002 and 2004. In facing these uproars, Mr. Bush should study the

example of John Quincy Adams, and do otherwise.

Mr. Bush and Adams are the only two sons of Presidents to

become President themselves. They also won office in famously turbulent

elections. John Quincy Adams won the four-man race of 1824 when it was thrown

to the House of Representatives. The fourth-place finisher, Henry Clay, threw

Adams his support, and Adams rewarded him by making him Secretary of State.

Andrew Jackson, who had finished first, resigned his Senate seat and spent the

next four years howling about the corrupt bargain that elected his enemy. When

he faced Adams one-on-one, he crushed him.

Adams had a miserable term, ending in failure, in part

because of how he won office. But Mr. Bush must realize that Adams failed

because he himself believed that his bargain with Clay was unseemly. John

Quincy Adams' father was a Founding Father; as a boy, he had heard the gunfire

at the Battle of Bunker Hill. He believed that he, and his family, were above

politics-and when it turned out that he wasn't, he punished himself. He froze;

he could not campaign for himself or fight his enemies; Andrew Jackson picked

him off because he made himself a sitting duck.

What beliefs of his enemies does George W. Bush risk

internalizing? Mr. Bush risks believing that he is unlovable-a fatal notion for

him, because he is a "compassionate conservative." He was going to put the

human face on the wax-museum dummies of Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey and Tom

DeLay. He was going to show how Republicans could help the poor and minorities.

Linda Chavez took them into her house; he was going to take them into America's

house.

When the new President drives down Pennsylvania Avenue, he

is going to hear a lot of people who don't like his face. He doesn't have to

surrender anything, in his program or his attitude. He just has to know, ahead

of time, that his enemies don't like him, and won't thank him.