Washington Watch

Political analysts have made news of the fissures that have opened up within the Republican party. Pat Buchanan has not stopped rallying conservatives to challenge President Bush for allegedly “abandoning Reagan’s economic program,” and Republican women have become increasingly vocal in opposition to the party’s rejection of abortion. Added to...

The President’s continuing downward slide in the polls and the repeated errors made by his campaign in recent weeks have even his strongest supporter’s asking “What’s happening to George Bush?” The picture emerging from June’s polling data looks bleak for the President. Every major poll now shows Ross Perot leading...

It is becoming increasingly difficult to write about U.S. politics without focusing on Ross Perot. Once again, this week Perot dominated the media—winning a majority of support in exit polls in California and Ohio, qualifying for the ballot as an independent in two more states, conducting a television pep rally...

Whether he wins or loses, Ross Perot has already changed U.S. politics in this critical election year. The year began with Republicans confident of victory, gleeful over the final demise of the Democrats as a national party. The stagnant economy, the end of the Cold War, and the constant barrage...

This past week I had the opportunity to testify before the Democratic platform drafting committee. The platform process in both parties is important because it provides a forum for the nation’s key constituencies to debate and negotiate the political parties’ position on a broad range of issues. Being the only...

While incumbents have reason to be concerned about the wave of discontent being expressed by voters in the ongoing 1992 elections, the mood of the electorate also presents challengers with great opportunities. As the count now stands, more than 60 members of the U.S. House of Representatives and eight members...

The verdict in the Rodney King trial and the riots in Los Angeles that followed thrust the issues of race and the decline of urban America onto center stage of this year’s political debate. The judgment finding four white police officers innocent of the charge of brutality was a shock...

While America’s Presidential candidates bear party labels (Democrat or Republican), there is no national political party structure to speak of in the United States today. Local political parties, consisting of a few hundred activists, exist in a weakened condition in most communities, compared to their status years ago. The national...

Looming over the horizon of the 1992 Presidential campaigns of George Bush and his Democratic opponent (presumably Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton) is the threat of an independent campaign by Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot. At this moment, a virtual “Perot-mania” appears to be developing. Although two-thirds of all Americans say...

This past week more than 2,000 California Democratic delegates met for their 1992 state party convention. Twenty Arab American delegates were present at the convention. They held their annual caucus meeting (the Arab American Caucus is now an officially recognized branch of the California Democratic party). They also hosted a...