WOULD YOU PREFER DUKAKIS TO BE COMMANDER IN CHIEF?

And will someone tell me just exactly where would we be today if, last weekend, Congress had voted against President Bush's authority to use force in the Persian Gulf?

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Laudable Gesture of the Week:

Yelena Bonner, widow of Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Soviet physicist and dissident Andrei Sakharov, is seeking to return the prestigious peace prize her husband earned, saying she doesn't want his name linked with that of fellow Nobelist Mikhail Gorbachev. Yelena Bonner is having none of the pathetic lies of Gorbachev and his associates who head the Soviet army and the dreaded KGB.

"I deem it impossible that (Sakharov's name) be ranked alongside the name of the Soviet Communist Party General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, who as head of state is responsible for the bloodshed in this country," Bonner wrote to the Nobel committee.

And what of the $750,000 prize money that accompanies the award? Bonner plans to return that, too. "No problem," Bonner said of her readiness to give up the huge sum of money. "I will make it up ..."

This example will go down in history as the definitive rebuke to a dying ideology. It's an ideology that now, reverting to its true nature, adds still more to the many millions its devotees have slaughtered in this century. The moral force of Yelena Bonner's example stands out like a ten-fold beacon in the night.

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Footnote on the Soviets' bloody crackdown on the Baltic states:

Zbiegniew Brzezinski was National Security Adviser in the administration of former President Jimmy Carter. He has for months predicted the Soviets would use the diversion of world attention occasioned by the Persian Gulf crisis to crush the independent, democratically elected governments of the Baltic states. Brzezinski, remember, broke with past associates to endorse President Bush in the '88 election.

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Recall that Michael Dukakis spent much of the 1988 campaign year suing the federal government to assert a governor's power to block his state's national guard units from a presidential order for training in Central America. Dukakis is an honors graduate of Harvard Law School, and believes something called the Rio Treaty tied our hands against helping the Nicaraguan Contras, or intervening to liberate Panama or Grenada. But he got the law wrong, and was laughed out of court by a Jimmy Carter-appointed judge, who vindicated the power of our Commander in Chief.

This transpired only after we were treated to the incredible spectacle of a candidate for America's highest office Dukakis using the federal courts to diminish the powers of the office he was seeking.

Quick: Everybody who'd rather see Michael Dukakis as our Commander in Chief during the present crisis please stand up.

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It was the boldest prediction by any panelist I've heard in all the years I've been watching the amusing and highly stimulating "McLaughlin Group". (Channel 8, each Sunday at 12 noon). At the conclusion of this past Sunday's program, commentator Fred Barnes of the liberal New Republic offered the following prediction:

"No member of the House or Senate who voted against authorizing President Bush to use force in the Persian Gulf will ever be elected president."

"That includes," Barnes continued, "Senators Sam Nunn (Georgia), Lloyd Bentsen (Texas), and Bill Bradley (New Jersey), as well as House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt (Missouri)." And to Barnes's list one might add one-time presidential candidate Patricia Schroeder, the liberal CongressPerson from Colorado, and Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell of Maine, among many others.

Agree or disagree, it's an interesting prediction, and one I'm comfortable in associating myself with. It's also worth noting the most interesting omission from this list of former or possible future presidential candidates. Perhaps the most surprising vote for authorizing force from a 100-proof liberal was Tennessee Senator Albert Gore, a Vietnam veteran and presidential candidate during the '88 primaries. (Only nine Senate Democrats voted "aye", most from south of the Mason-Dixon line). Speaking eloquently and thoughtfully during the Senate debate, standing up to the cliches offered by Nunn, Gephardt and so many others, Gore revealed formidable analytical powers and no small amount of courage.