Best of the Web Today - April 4, 2005
By James Taranto
History's Second Draft
If journalism is the first draft of history, maybe obituaries are the second draft. We had this thought over the weekend as we watched the coverage of the pope's death. John Paul II was the second Cold War giant to die during the past year, and, just as in June when Ronald Reagan breathed his last, even his critics were almost unanimous in giving him a large part of the credit for bringing down the Soviet empire.
A look back at that weathervane of conventional wisdom, Time magazine's "Man of the Year" (renamed "Person of the Year" in 1999, since Time's editors apparently had some doubts about Jeff Bezos's manhood), shows that journalists in the 1980s were much more eager to credit Mikhail Gorbachev, the man who ended up presiding over the Soviet Union's demise. Time named Gorbachev Man of the Year in 1987, which was plausible enough, but two years later it dubbed him "Man of the Decade." With 15 years hindsight, it is clear to everyone that either Reagan or the pope would have been a better candidate for the man who defined the 1980s.
To be sure, Time's premature designation of the Man of the Decade--in December 1989, a year before the decade's actual end--came at a time when Gorbachev's star was particularly high. The country he ruled had still existed, and freedom had just broken out in Eastern Europe, with Gorbachev's inaction (i.e., his decision not to send in tanks to defend Soviet puppet regimes) a proximate cause. But Gorbachev's aim was to save communism, not to destroy it, so on his own terms his tenure was a failure. If Gorbachev dies, as seems likely, it's hard to imagine that there will be anything like the fanfare that followed the demise of Reagan and John Paul.
Also to be sure, it's not as if the Man of the Year people ignored Reagan or the pope. Reagan was Man of the Year in 1980, but then so was almost every other recent president-elect in the year he won office. Reagan was also Man of the Year in 1983, but he shared the distinction with Yuri Andropov, whoever that was. John Paul wasn't Man of the Year until 1994 (which meant, in turn, that Newt Gingrich wasn't until 1995).
As we were browsing the old Time covers, though, we came upon an even better example of how fleeting these journalistic enthusiasms turn out to be: the 1988 "Planet of the Year" issue, featuring "Endangered Earth." More than 16 years later, we stood up, checked under our feet, and Earth was still there. Whew!
Bush to Rome
The pope's funeral has been set for Friday morning, and President Bush is expected to attend. The New York Times reports this trip has been long planned:
For months, as the health of Pope John Paul II declined, White House officials have developed plans for President Bush to become the first sitting U.S. president to attend the funeral services of a pope.
Along with being the first president to attend a papal funeral, Bush has embraced the "culture of life," much in the news of late, which owes a great deal to Catholic theology. Perhaps just as Bill Clinton has been called the "first black president," George W. Bush will one day earn the honorary title of "first Catholic president."
'Oh Yeah, He Was That Guy With the Hat'
"President, First Lady Remember Pope"--headline, Associated Press, April 4
Vatican Cloture
The American Spectator's Prowler column reports that Democratic congressional leaders Nancy Reid and Harry Pelosi "refused to adapt the party's weekly radio address to the breaking news that Pope John Paul II was on his death bed":
"We had a plan in place for a national radio address that would have highlighted the Pope's stand on social justice and equality for all," says a Democratic National Committee staffer. "They wouldn't do it. They said it would look like pandering, that it wasn't helpful to their agenda."
Instead the Dems went with an odd radio address by former Democratic Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, in which he attacked Republicans for mulling use of a parliamentary rule that would allow the majority party to get judicial nominees approved by a mere majority of the Senate, instead of the 60 votes now required.
Reuters quotes the Mitchell speech: "All Americans should be concerned about the effort by Republican leaders in the Senate to unilaterally change the rules." The definition of unilateral keeps expanding; now it means at least 51 senators acting in concert. Since the Democrats have only 45 Senate seats, their filibusters aren't even unilateral, by Mitchell's definition. We guess you'd call them "fractionalateral."
In at least one case--that of Judge William Pryor--Democrats have cited a nominee's Catholic faith as a reason for using the filibuster to block a vote on his confirmation. And the New York Times notes that the pope reformed the rules under which cardinals will choose his own successor:
It used to take a two-thirds vote to elect a pope. But under rules instituted by John Paul, if the process becomes stalemated, a simple majority of the cardinals could vote to waive the rule and permit a simple majority to choose the new pope.
Why not honor his legacy by bringing similar reforms to the U.S. Senate?
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