Bully Pulpit

Attorney General Janet Reno's challenge to the entertainment industry to clean up its act regarding gratuitous television violence is exactly the kind of principled stand a public official ought to take on an issue that affects her department.Former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop used his office as a similar bully pulpit to proselytize against cigarette smoking and to speak out forthrightly about the steps needed to combat the spread of AIDS. He was roundly criticized for his views but his message came through loud and clear.

Connoisseurs of political buffoonery give two thumbs up to the election season just ended, with Republican candidates for the U.S. Senate posing as evangelical gynecologists, and Karl Rove melting down after Fox News called Ohio for the president. But, here in Maryland, totally underrated nationally as a breeding ground of buffoons, we have great local resources. The Chesapeake crab population might rise and fall; the shad run might be robust in some years, slow in others. But you can always count on seeing bright new political stars rising to entertain us. So here comes John Grasso, Glen Burnie's biggest noisemaker.

It was always there, perhaps hidden behind some obscure corner of the White House, but President Clinton seems at last to have found the bully pulpit that comes with his office.In August, shortly after Leon Panetta was appointed chief of staff, he put aside fleeting remarks to shouted questions that were demeaning both to him and the press corps and said he would try to have formal news conferences about every two weeks. The latest was yesterday afternoon, and reporters who watched his performance thought this was the old Bill Clinton -- the articulate, knowledgeable politician they covered in his successful run for the presidency.

How sad that Del. Patrick McDonough chooses to use his bully pulpit to frighten tourists away from Baltimore City ("Baltimore and bigotry," May 18) - and how said that the media lets him get away with it by using race-baiting headlines. Yes, a lot of teenagers came down to the harbor just like a hundreds of other people to enjoy the weather, and yes, the police need to be more prepared to handle the few troublemakers who show up. But those of us who live here and enjoy all of the wonderful things the city has to offer would appreciate it if those who want to destroy Baltimore would keep their negativity to themselves.

On the eve of Good Friday, President Clinton was searching for a message to console residents of Oklahoma City as they prepared to mark the first anniversary of the bombing there. He turned to a minister and a gospel hymn."The president told me, 'I want to be more to them than the president of the United States. I want to serve as a pastor to them in the midst of their suffering,' " recalls evangelical minister Tony Campolo. "He asked me to help him find the words."A Southern Baptist who can recall Bible verses from memory, Clinton embraces the bully pulpit of the White House.

How sad that Del. Patrick McDonough chooses to use his bully pulpit to frighten tourists away from Baltimore City ("Baltimore and bigotry," May 18) - and how said that the media lets him get away with it by using race-baiting headlines. Yes, a lot of teenagers came down to the harbor just like a hundreds of other people to enjoy the weather, and yes, the police need to be more prepared to handle the few troublemakers who show up. But those of us who live here and enjoy all of the wonderful things the city has to offer would appreciate it if those who want to destroy Baltimore would keep their negativity to themselves.

It was a sure-fire applause line when President Clinton condemned Hollywood's "incessant, repetitive, mindless violence" during his State of the Union address, and it worked. Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike exploded into applause.But that easy one-line sound bite apparently was it for Mr. Clinton; aides said he has no plans to follow through on his call with any sustained pressure on Hollywood.However, he will appear in public service videos decrying drugs and crime that movie theater chains recently agreed to show after their features.

GUILTY VERDICTS against three Whitewater associates, a foreign policy setback of momentous proportions in Israel, national ridicule on an issue that brought both his draft avoidance and sexual background to the fore, the reluctant surrender of another 1,000 pages of Travelgate documents -- all in all, not a triumphant week for President Clinton.Yet through it all, the White House re-election machine purred smoothly as Mr. Clinton beat Sen. Bob Dole to the punch in proposing teen-age curfews and as House Republicans retreated in disarray from their revolutionary attacks on federal programs.

It was a sure-fire applause line when President Clinton condemned Hollywood's "incessant, repetitive, mindless violence" during his State of the Union address, and it worked. Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike exploded into applause.But that easy one-line sound bite apparently was it for Mr. Clinton; aides said he has no plans to follow through on his call with any sustained pressure on Hollywood.However, he will appear in public service videos decrying drugs and crime that movie theater chains recently agreed to show after their features.

PRESIDENT CLINTON kicked off his education crusade yesterday in the Annapolis State House, mounting the bully pulpit to preach a gospel of national standards in reading and mathematics as a way to improve student achievement. Without such measuring sticks, the president said, children and their parents have no way of knowing if they have mastered the basic skills needed to compete for jobs in an increasingly high-tech and highly competitive world.The president put it in stark terms. "Sooner or later," he told the Maryland General Assembly, "your children are going to have to face the fact that either they can read or they can't; they either can do math or they can't; they know algebra or they don't."

IN BASIC FORM and content, down to the quotes, the story has changed little since I began writing it in 1972 - and I was hardly the first. It is the story of sprawl development that is consuming Maryland's farms and forests, degrading our rural heritage, diminishing options for recreation, increasing pollution. Sprawl of course also forms perhaps the cornerstone of Maryland's economy, if one considers all the clearing, building, surveying, real estate, paving, subdividing, and other jobs in what I call the Land Industry.

With the 2005 legislative session behind him, Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. plans to escape the bruising arena of the State House and take his message on the road, where the down-home salesmanship of his tourism commercials and his family-guy presence in summer parades may help compensate for legislative frustrations. "We will be spending the next nine months doing the same thing we did the last two off-seasons, using the bully pulpit to impact policy in the state," Ehrlich, who is burnishing his political image in advance of a widely expected bid for re-election in 2006, said yesterday at a news conference.

WHAT COULD HAVE possessed 73-year-old John Chaney to do what he did? To send a student into a basketball game with instructions to give students from another school a lesson in how to act like a bully, a strong-arm enforcer, a thug. "I'm sending a message," Temple's coach said after a game last Tuesday night against Saint Joseph's, a rival Philadelphia university. "I'm going to send in what we used to do years ago ... send in the goon." Put yourself in the place of Nehemiah Ingram, a 22-year-old Temple senior.

"The Three Roosevelts," by James MacGregor Burns and Susan Dunn. Atlantic Monthly Press. 678 pages. $37.50. In an era of Bushes, Kennedys and Clintons, here's the gold standard. Theodore, Franklin D. and Eleanor Roosevelt -- two presidents and a first lady -- defined the liberal, humanitarian goals and political successes of the 20th century. The literature about them is vast, and there is nothing new in this group biography, but it is more than just an introduction to their vibrant lives for new readers.

THE GREATEST challenge to the new president is to keep the economy strong and productive. The next is to keep the world stable and secure. The United States has been blessed with prosperity outlasting the normal business cycle. People, wisely or unwisely, became accustomed. The most addicted are in Congress, appropriating as if the good times will never end. The world is stable in terms of broad global relationships. Within that sense of peace are ugly disturbances that grow in menace.

WASHINGTON -- Skeptics may be forgiven if they wonder about President Clinton's motives in his current tour of some of the nation's most poverty-stricken communities.If he is concerned about his legacy -- and those who know him say he is -- then it cannot hurt to be seen showing concern for the deprived in Appalachia, Watts or the Mississippi Delta.But, whatever the reason, the president is using the bully pulpit of the White House to perform a worthwhile service for Americans by calling their attention to the fact that not everyone is sharing in the extraordinary economic boom.

WASHINGTON -- Only hours after the latest schoolhouse massacre in Colorado, President Clinton, the man in search of a legacy to lift his scandal-scarred presidency, went on television to let the American people see him feel their pain.Haltingly, about the best he had to offer by way of addressing the tragedy was to say Americans have to reach out and tell their children "to express their anger with words and not actions."He declined to say much more then because, he said in the somber tones he always emits on such occasions, he did not want to intrude on the grief of the victimized families.

This week, after watching U.S. senators wipe the drool from their lips before appearing on television cameras to lecture the nation on grand issues of justice and foreplay - uh, fair play - I found myself in College Park, standing in front of my old dormitory, where it became the evening before my first day as a freshman a long time ago.There were about a dozen of us standing in front of Harford Hall that evening, the numbers giving us great masculine strength...