Gender bender
Just because she is supportive of women in politics does not mean first lady Laura Bush would vote for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, New York Democrat, for president.
“You have supported qualified women for big jobs — secretary of state, Supreme Court justice. Are you at all torn by Senator Clinton’s candidacy?” Chris Wallace, host of “Fox News Sunday,” asked the first lady yesterday.
“No,” Mrs. Bush replied. “I’m looking forward to voting for a Republican woman, whenever that is. But I’ll be supporting the Republican.”
Why would Mr. Wallace ask such a question?
Mark Penn, a senior strategist and pollster for the Clinton campaign, recently suggested Mrs. Clinton could snag up to 24 percent of the votes of Republican women intrigued by the concept of people saying “Madame President.” Well, perhaps.
Another pollster has crunched the numbers to reveal a different political dynamic.
“Recent Rasmussen Reports polling data from matchups against top Republican candidates offers some support for that claim — it shows Clinton attracting an average of 18 percent support from Republican women,” Scott Rasmussen reported yesterday.
“However, there is another side to the gender-gap story. The same survey shows that while Clinton is attracting 18 percent of Republican women, she is losing an average of 20 percent of Democratic men to the Republicans.”
A different firestorm
Illegal aliens were not rounded up or harassed at California fire-evacuation shelters by immigration authorities, San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders said yesterday.
Reports were afoot among the locals that U.S. Border Patrol agents were patrolling rescue centers and asking for identification from Hispanics, prompting the American Civil Liberties Union and groups such as the Border Angels to claim “a climate of intimidation” had been created.
Immigration and Custom Enforcement spokeswoman Lauren Mack called the idea “ludicrous,” according to the Los Angeles Times. Federal agents had been deployed to lend assistance to firefighters and rescue workers during the emergency. Mexican Consulate officials also could find no evidence to support the claims.
No one was required to show identification to get into a shelter, said Fred Sainz, the mayor’s spokesman.
“The mayor has bent over backwards to help the migrant population,” he added.
Behind Bill’s mask
Just in time for Halloween, old skeletons are haunting the presidential campaign of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, New York Democrat.
Former President Gerald R. Ford was upset over the womanizing ways of another one-time White House denizen. Former President Bill Clinton, Mr. Ford said, was an honest-to-goodness sex addict who needed some therapy.
A new book on the late 38th president reveals Mr. Ford had pronounced views about the Clintons as a couple, according to the New York Daily News yesterday.
“He’s sick. He’s got an addiction. He needs treatment,” Mr. Ford told Thomas M. DeFrank, Washington bureau chief for the paper, during a 1999 conversation. Mr. DeFrank’s new book, “Write It When I’m Gone: Remarkable Off-the-Record Conversations with Gerald R. Ford,” has just hit the shelves.
Betty Ford, herself a veteran of alcohol and drug abuse and addiction, agreed.
“You know, there’s treatment for that kind of addiction,” she told Mr. DeFrank. “A lot of men have gone through the treatment with a lot of success. But he won’t do it, because he’s in denial.”
Spokesman Howard Wolfson declined on behalf of the Clintons to comment to the Daily News about the book.
California dreamin’
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is slipping in the polls, apparently because of a perception among California Democrats that she has not done enough to shake up Capitol Hill, according to a new Field Poll of 1,201 registered voters.
The poll showed 40 percent disapproved of the San Francisco Democrat’s performance, against 35 percent approval and 25 having no opinion — the first time the ongoing poll showed more voters disapproving than approving.
Both Mrs. Pelosi and Congress as a whole have fallen short of California voters’ expectations since taking over both houses of Congress, poll director Mark DiCamillo said.
“I think the reason for her decline and the low ratings Congress is getting is that voters here are not seeing any change,” he told the Sacramento Bee newspaper.
Only 22 percent of voters approve of the job Congress is doing, while 64 percent disapprove. The six other times that congressional approval fell below 30 percent can be tied to specific events, such as President Clinton’s impeachment hearings or the economic downturn of the early 1990s, Mr. DiCamillo said.
Not quite yet
Republican presidential candidate Rudolph W. Giuliani yesterday blasted Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton for talking about what she would do on the diplomatic front between her possible election and inauguration, the Associated Press reports.
The former first lady has told crowds she would send “distinguished Americans of both political parties to travel around the world on my behalf with a very simple message to the governments and the people alike: ’The era of cowboy diplomacy is over.’ ”
Mr. Giuliani, pointing to an article yesterday in the Des Moines Register in Iowa about Mrs. Clinton’s words, said such comments hurt the U.S. and undermine the remainder of President Bush’s term, which ends Jan. 20, 2009.
“I think that it’s important that we conduct this debate in a way that we don’t interfere with the ability of the country to function in a proper way, between the now and [the election],” Mr. Giuliani said at the start of a town hall-style meeting in Peterborough, N.H.
“The president of the United States is president of the United States. He’s going to be president of the United States from now until the time a new president takes over. Until then, he’s the only one conducting foreign policy of this country,” the former New York mayor said. “We can have our political debate in this country. … But nobody should be creating the specter that we’re sending emissaries out around the world before someone is actually sworn in as president of the United States.”
• Contact Jennifer Harper at 202/636-3085 or jharper@washingtontimes .com
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