He appears wishy-washy to me on the subject.........I still think it's a typical response from him as he'd been an avid supporter of the Clinton administration.
Paper: Houston Chronicle
Date: MON 01/01/01
Section: A
Page: 34
Edition: 3 STAR
And Alec Baldwin isn't leaving either
By BILL COULTER
Staff
FOR a few days there, Republicans had hoped that George W. Bush could get a lot of good things done for the country during his presidency.
Even with Bush's narrow vote margin and the Republicans' slight hold on the House and Senate, it would be possible to improve the lot of tens of millions of Americans with a little bipartisan help from Democrats.
For a start, Social Security could be rescued from bankruptcy and improved for future recipients through a program of partial privatization.
Medicare could be saved through massive restructuring and the introduction of various cost efficiencies.
Patently unfair taxes such as the penalties on marriage and dying could be eliminated.
All that would be nice and good for the country.
But in their hearts, Republicans now know that none of it is going to happen.
It's become clear that Democrat ideologues such as Dick Gephardt and Tom Daschle won't allow Bush to achieve anything positive.
Fixing Social Security alone would give Bush a successful presidency. That's the last thing Gephardt and Daschle want.
For one thing, partially privatizing Social Security would eventually destroy the success Democrats have had at promoting class envy over the years. Partial privatization would empower ordinary people with an opportunity to build wealth over a period of 20 or 30 years. Poor people, including many minorities, who had never had wealth before, could retire with $500,000 in savings - savings that would go entirely to their spouses and children when they died.
But Democrats aren't about to tolerate anything like that. Such retirees might become Republicans.
No. About all Republicans can hope for now is that certain members of Hollywood's greatest honor their word to leave the country. Departure from the United States by some of Hollywood's elite - stars such as Alec Baldwin , Barbra Streisand and director Robert Altman - would be of no great consequence to the republic. But knowing they had moved elsewhere, preferably to the comfort and safety of some Third World country, would at least give Republicans a little satisfaction. Empty-headed rhetoric even from the nation's most beautiful people is still empty-headed rhetoric.
But that's not going to happen either, based on information drawn from a Nexis search by ace Chronicle librarian Margaret Jamison.
A Dec. 24 Los Angeles Times roundup on Baldwin 's threat to depart if Bush were elected indicates the movie star has no intention of leaving this endangered nation. In fact, Baldwin 's position is that he was either misquoted or his comments about leaving were taken out of context.
Still, his purported threat appeared to have been reinforced earlier when his wife, actress Kim Basinger, was quoted in Focus, a German magazine, as saying: "Alex is the biggest moralist that I know. He stands completely behind what he says. . . . I can very well imagine that Alex makes good on his threat. And then I'd probably have to go, too," as reported by the New York Daily News (Aug. 18).
The next day Baldwin told the Daily News that "my wife and I never said unequivocally that we would leave the country if Bush won. Never."
On Sept. 20 the Daily News reported Baldwin as saying he would probably just take a long vacation under a Bush presidency.
Baldwin is a handsome guy and a fair actor. He would be smart to spend his time at rest reading the Constitution and some American history books published before the rule of political correctness. He might even have a change of mind about what the Founding Fathers envisioned for Americans and realize that real liberalism means individual freedom and responsibility rather than greater government intrusion and control of peoples' lives.
Streisand, of course, threatened in 1992 to leave the country if George H.W. Bush were re-elected. Well, he wasn't, and Barbra became a great friend of Bill Clinton's. It's unclear how she may react to George W.'s presidency, although at a recent White House dinner she said, "I don't think you'll see me around here for at least four years."
But at least one celebrity has been good to his word. Pierre Salinger, John Kennedy's cigar-smoking press secretary and former correspondent for ABC News, has moved to Le Thor in the south of France, honoring an earlier promise to leave the country if Bush won, according to a piece in The Washington Post by Lloyd Grove and Beth Berselli.
Robert Altman may be another matter. He allegedly told reporters at a film festival in France that, "If George Bush is elected president, I'm leaving for France."
Altman subsequently denied he said he would leave the country. "Here's what I really said. I said that if Bush gets elected, I'll move to Paris, Texas, because the state will be better off if he's out of it," reported the N.Y. Daily News Sept. 22.
Well, we trust the good folk in Paris, Texas, will receive Altman with the usual Texas warmth. Altman is a great director even if he is wrong about Bush. Maybe the director will gain some enlightenment in Paris. |
