Polls’ accuracy turns on turnout

Public opinion polls have dominated the 1996 election cycle. One reason: There are simply more polls. Example: According to the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, there were 10 presidential “trial heats” between September 1 and election day in 1968. This year that number will exceed 125. Even worse, the horse race aspect of the…

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Candidates ignore world to the south

The future of this hemisphere depends on decisions which governments are making today, and which governments — including the U.S. government — will be making in the next five years. Yet there is a virtual blackout in the current presidential contest on foreign and national security policy issues — and, unfortunately, no one seems to…

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Permissiveness starts at the top

“The children of today are out of control. They talk back to their parents, slobber their food, and annoy their teachers.” Does this sound familiar, like your local school principal or a disgruntled grandmother? Actually, it is a quote from Socrates, the Greek philosopher, uttered sometime around 425 B.C. In fact, each generation of kids…

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Hope, fear fuel Clinton campaign

With less than 50 days to go before the presidential election on November 5, the Dole campaign is in trouble. National polls continue to show President Clinton with a commanding lead — most around 15%. The outlook in the state-by-state electoral vote — the one that really counts, where it takes 270 out of 538…

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Mandates winning over marketplace

First in a three-part series. Cloaked as “reform,” the Democratic Congress and the Clinton administration are seeking to expand government control over four of America’s most successful and most globally competitive industries. The health care industry. In the old days, South American generalisimos nationalized an industry by deposing boards of directors and appointing their own.…

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Dole makes all the right moves

All of a sudden, this autumn’s presidential contest is looking more competitive. One reason is the reality of the broad foundation of core votes for any truly conservative candidate. Another is that voters are beginning to pay attention — and will really tune in after Labor Day. And, finally, Republican hopeful Bob Dole has made…

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Tried-and-true campaign themes

Former Colorado governor Dick Lamm’s race for the Reform Party’s presidential nomination adds a new thematic dimension to the 1996 presidential campaign. And, make no mistake about it, thematic coherence is important. Reason: Leaders communicate best by telling stories and by linking their messages to one or more of four dominant themes in American culture…

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Twixt mandarins and mainstream

Many Americans feel their government, the media and other major institutions of American society have been hijacked by aliens — by people who not only do not share their values but who are downright hostile to widely accepted ways of thinking about many of the critical issues of the day. Political, social and economic elites…

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It behooves us to be prayerful

On Thursday, millions of Americans will join together across racial, political and denominational lines to observe the annual National Day of Prayer. Purpose: To pray for our nation and its leaders and to give thanks for the bounty, beauty and blessings of our country. Just as earlier Congresses established Thanksgiving Day as a day to…

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Media don’t give it to us straight

National media practices and the conduct of journalists are in the limelight again. Example: A new study by the non-profit Center for Media and Public Affairs shows that the campaign news reports of the three major networks on the GOP primary season from January 1 to March 4 devoted more than five times more airtime…

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Immigrants help Golden State go

California’s “comeback economy” has been getting a lot of ink. But terms like “comeback” and “recovery” are grossly misleading. Examples: California’s construction industry has not recovered. Its aerospace industry has not recovered either — and isn’t likely to. Instead, the California “recovery” is more like a transformation — a molting or mutation. Reason: The California…

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Alexander has vision for us all

Republican presidential aspirant Lamar Alexander was in Denver this week, another in a string of visits to important post-New Hampshire Republican primary states. With the campaign of Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole collapsing in New Hampshire, Iowa and Arizona, where rookie Steve Forbes is already in first place or challenging Dole in most of the…

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Western issues loom over East

As the Clinton administration begins to focus on the domestic agenda, Western issues loom large — in part because the West is experiencing major changes. These changes include rapid urbanization (most of the states of the West are among the nation’s most urbanized, measured by the percentage of people living in communities over 15,000) and…

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Six key qualities of nation’s best

The American people will choose a president this year. They may re-elect William Jefferson Clinton or select a new president. Whatever happens between now and Election Day on Nov. 5, we are going to have many opportunities to think about what we want a president to be — and what we want him to do.…

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No revolution won without pain

Is Speaker Gingrich being unreasonable in the budget debate? Should the Republicans be more compromising? The answer, in my view, is a resounding “No!” It is important for the Republicans to stand firm because the current debate is about new choices, not variations on the theme of more government, more taxes and more spending. The…

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Principle-driven change a new idea

Reporting and commentary on the budget standoff between the Republican-controlled Congress and President Clinton have been interesting to watch — in the sense that it is interesting to watch a three-year-old try to tie his shoes. Reason: reporting on principle-centered people who are pursuing principle-centered objectives — such as the House Republican freshmen, who ran…

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Story-telling great Christmas tradition

Three years ago, while standing in line to pay for Christmas decorations at a local nursery, a book calledChristmas in My Heart: A Treasury of Old-Fashioned Christmas Stories caught my eye. The book was compiled and edited by Joe Wheeler, chair of the English Department at Maryland’s Columbia Union College. I have always liked stories –…

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Sydney: West’s gateway to Asia

SYDNEY, Australia — Viewed from the U.S. or Europe the rapidly growing economies of the Asian Rim are attractive but often bewildering markets. Asia-Pacific markets are attractive because, taken together, their economies are nearly as large as the U.S. — and they are growing very rapidly. According to a report released this week, the 10…

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Family tales tell us who we are

Thanksgiving time is here again. Thanksgiving is important because, along with Christmas, it’s a holiday when families come together. That’s important because family gatherings are a time when people tell stories, family stories, morality tales that give young people cues about right and wrong, and about struggles where there are winners and losers. Family stories…

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States hoping to restore order

The concept of federalism is one of the major and original contributions of Americans — both to political theory and to the practice of government. But federalism is not working in America. State and local governments are increasingly viewed as administrative agents of an overreaching federal government. As Nebraska Gov. Ben Nelson said this week,…

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Race relations are now on trial

Should defense attorney Johnnie Cochran have played the “race card” in winning the acquittal of O.J. Simpson? Did O.J. literally get away with murder? These kinds of questions suggest that national media mavens seem, once again, to have missed the story, and the implications are far-reaching and ominous. One is the rise of black racism.…

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Entrepreneurs driven by vision

The Windows 95 hoopla included a lot of media attention on Microsoft founders Bill Gates (net worth $13.5 billion) and Paul Allen ($6 billion) and how the software products of their 20-year-old, $53.6 billion company are changing the way we live and work. Tucked away in these stories are keen and instructive insights about the…

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Women break ground in the West

For the past month the nation has been commemorating the 75th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, passed in 1920, granting women the right to vote. Since that time, the status and impact of women have soared in business, politics, community life and the professions. Men and women sympathetic to women’s suffrage began agitating to end…

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Americans still believe in Dream

“The rich get richer. The poor get poorer. Personal incomes are stagnant. The American Dream is dead.” This is now the mantra of Democratic leadership in Congress and the White House — and of many media mavens. But there’s a problem. None of it is true. Census data clearly show the rich are getting richer,…

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Bomb did what had to be done

Hiroshima and Nagasaki are in the news, and for good reason: They mark the first use of nuclear weapons — to bring an end to World War II — and the dawn of the nuclear age. I was 6 years old when the bomb was dropped and the war ended. Five of my uncles and…

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Congress has duty to clear the smoke

As the U.S. House of Representatives begins hearings on “what happened in Waco”, hypocrisy is thick in the Washington air — not unlike the smoke over the Branch Davidian compound two years ago. Democrats and the mainstream media are already charging the hearings are simply a cynical Republican ploy to embarrass the Clinton administration. Republicans…

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Candidates likely to broker a deal

Seven presidential hopefuls lined up in Denver on Saturday night to win the hearts and minds of Colorado’s GOP activists. Here we are, eight months before the first primary in New Hampshire (or Louisiana or Delaware, depending on how things work out) and nearly all the GOP candidates have fully developed messages and several (Bob…

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President takes dangerous spin

Bill Clinton was at his presidential best in the hours immediately following the tragic bombing in Oklahoma City, as he expressed the sympathy of the nation and pledged to hunt down and bring to justice those who committed this brutal and cowardly act. But the president didn’t stay on the high road for long. By…

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The New West: Mild and wild, it’s the region for the next century

Various descriptions are used to characterize the major changes sweeping the United States and the world: revolution, a new civilization, the third Wave, the new Information Age. Whatever the label, these forces are responsible for five fundamental shifts that are creating a “New West” in America. They are: migration, urbanization, diversification, globalization and gentrification. Migration. Since…

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Wyoming tends to its ‘gardening’

CASPER, Wyo. — Sixty years ago, Mississippi governor Hugh White established a program called Balance Agriculture with Industry. Purpose: To couple Mississippi’s low taxes, cheap land, unskilled labor and low wages with tax abatements and other subsidies — called “incentives” — to entice Northern industries to expand or relocate in the South. With this program,…

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