KINDER'S COMMENTARY: MEDIA LIBERALS SHOW VOTING STRIPES

The recent survey of national news media types in Washington, D.C., is one piece of eye-popping information that hasn't received nearly the amount of attention it deserves. In brief, the survey revealed these data on the 1992 election: 89 percent of the media mavens voted for President Bill Clinton versus 7 percent for then-President George Bush. That's an astonishing margin of 12 1/2 to one. How about party and philosophical or ideological orientation? A mere 4 percent are Republicans, while a miniscule 2 percent are self-identified conservatives.

Were this to be the other way around, with liberals outnumbered more than 12-1 by media conservatives, do you suppose we would be hearing from the Bryant Gumbels and the Peter Jennings? The most amazing thing is this: These same liberal media types are the ones who are constantly lecturing us on the need for affirmative action for minorities who haven't been included. If they really believed in affirmative action, though, they would spend the next year hiring nothing but conservatives for their newsrooms. That's the one kind of affirmative action you're unlikely ever to see.

With friends like these?

The Philadelphia Inquirer's Dick Polman quotes a top Democratic strategist on President Clinton's "flexibility":

"Hey, we (Democrats) know better than the Republicans do. We know he stands for nothing. But that doesn't mean he's a failed president."

That has to be the most astonishing statement about the president by a Democrat since the comment by the head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee last fall. Recall that Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey observed of the president that he is "an unusually good liar."

Is Bob Dole a Quitter?

A Clinton-Gore campaign television ad was surely one of the worst misfires of this or any other campaign. To air an ad -- on Memorial Day weekend, no less! -- alleging that Sen. Bob Dole is a quitter is surely evidence that someone in the Clinton high command isn't thinking straight. The ad drew fire from an unlikely source: a Senate Democratic leader. The ad slams Sen. Dole, who had a quarter of his body blown away at Anzio a few days before the end of World War II, for being a quitter in leaving the Senate to campaign for president.

"I don't like that ad," said Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticutt, chairman of the Senate Democratic Leadership Council and deputy minority whip. "I mean, nobody thinks Bob Dole is a quitter. A lot of things we disagree with him on, on the issues. He's obviously not. So it's a waste of money. It's a failure. It's wrong."

Brutal facts on taxes

Want to know why Mel Carnahan and Bill Clinton want to avoid the subject of taxes above all others? Consider this small news item from The Wall Street Journal of last Wednesday titled "Growing Tax Burden":

"Personal taxes as a percentage of personal income have surged to their highest level since 1980, says the ISI Group of New York."

No wonder the president went to Princeton University to plug a little $1,500 tax deduction for parents sending their children to college, or announced, the next day, a program to help first-time home buyers with a lousy $200 of their closing costs.

Small beer, indeed. The road is now open for Bob Dole to boldly propose deep marginal income tax cuts as the centerpiece of a reinvigorated campaign. Fortune favors the bold. If, as appears likely, Dole has the courage to do this, he'll yet surge to a Reaganesque victory.

~Peter Kinder is the associate publisher of the Southeast Missourian and a state senator from Cape Girardeau.