Political Scientist

A few months ago, Margaret E. Keck couldn't even spell Grawemeyer. Now she's won one.The Johns Hopkins University political science professor, who once wanted to write the great American novel, instead co-wrote a book judged to be one of the great "Ideas for Improving World Order," as the prize is called.As a result, she gets $100,000, half of a little-known but lucrative award named after H. Charles Grawemeyer, the Louisville, Ky., businessman who endowed it with $9 million in 1987.Keck and Kathryn Sikkink of the University of Minnesota won the $200,000 prize for "Activists Beyond Borders," a look at how nongovernmental organizations -- advocacy groups of various kinds -- have ridden the information highway to an increasingly important role on the international political stage.

Where is Osama bin Laden when we need him? Don't get me wrong; in no way do I wish death and destruction on our country. But as I listen to the increasingly vitriolic and even seditious rhetoric coming from the political right, I can't help thinking that we need a threatening external enemy to help us cohere as a nation - a more looming threat than the almost-vanished al-Qaeda leader or even his recently arrested alleged minion from Denver. Oh please, don't be so shocked. From time immemorial, collections of people have leveraged the fear of an enemy to keep their clans, groups and, later, nations from coming undone.

For years, political scientist Morris Fiorina has been going against the tide of conventional political wisdom that points to the growing polarization of the nation's electorate. The Stanford faculty member says that voters are not all that polarized, that there is actually a broad consensus on many seemingly divisive issues. He blames the political system for forcing voters to stake out polarized positions. "I'm feeling really good today," Fiorina said after last week's elections. "I think it was the revenge of moderation, the revenge of the middle."

According to conventional wisdom, China is marching down a road that will eventually lead to democracy. The first steps are the economic ones that China is taking, opening up a centralized economy to market forces, letting free enterprise reign. Economic growth is expected to lead to popular pressure to change a totalitarian regime into a democratic one, complete with respect for human rights. "The idea is that as per capita GDP increases, that will basically bring about all types of structural changes - increasing education, urbanization, industrialization - which will create structural conditions more favorable to a transition to democracy," she says.

Roger Hewes Wells, 100, a political scientist and authority on Germany who taught for four decades at Bryn Mawr College, died on June 16 in Jacksonville, Ill. He served for a time as chairman of the college's political science department, and his writings on Germany include the book "The States in West German Federalism." In early post-World War II Germany, he was deputy director of civil administration in the U.S. military government.@

On Sunday, an unmanned CIA aircraft hovering far above the vast Yemeni desert fired a missile that incinerated a car carrying six men accused of plotting to kill Americans. The attack on Qaed Sinan Harithi, reputed to be the leader of al-Qaida in Yemen, and the five men riding with him was partly retaliation. Harithi is believed by U.S. intelligence to have organized the bombing of the USS Cole in the port of Aden, which killed 17 U.S. sailors in October 2000. But this attack was also partly prevention.

STOCKHOLM, Sweden - As thousands of Swedes continued to pay tribute to Anna Lindh, the foreign minister who was fatally stabbed at a Stockholm department store on Wednesday, the police said they might have a videotape showing her killer. The police had initially said that there was no closed-circuit television footage of the area where Lindh was attacked, but they acknowledged yesterday that they were studying a tape taken from the floor above. The store is made up of galleries around a central atrium.

WASHINGTON -- It seemed more befitting of a crime drama than a page from congressional history: $90,000 in allegedly ill-gotten $100 bills, wrapped in aluminum foil, stuffed in the freezer of the gentleman from Louisiana. The idea that Rep. William J. Jefferson, a Louisiana Democrat, might have been caught in a bribery scandal - he has not been charged with any crime, and he again denied any wrongdoing yesterday - is nothing new. Even the amount isn't extraordinary. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, the former Republican representative from California, was recently convicted of accepting almost 27 times as much in illegal gifts and graft.

JERUSALEM -- Israel -- alone in the region -- quickly applauded last night the U.S. bombings in Afghanistan and Sudan, but others in the Middle East predicted the attacks would only increase anti-American sentiment in the region.And the leader of the militant Islamic fundamentalist group Hamas threatened retaliation in Israel.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the U.S. decision to strike terrorist installations in Sudan and Afghanistan, according to statement from the prime minister's office.

HARARE, ZIMBABWE -- It's hard to image that in a country with the world's highest inflation rate, high unemployment and chronic food shortages, people are worried that the worst is yet to come. Yet after six years of a political and economic free-fall, many here believe that the bottom still isn't in sight, as least not as long as President Robert G. Mugabe remains in power. Most Zimbabweans have assumed that something would happen to rein in their country's precipitous decline. Instead, they have watched as conditions have gone from bad to worse.

For years, political scientist Morris Fiorina has been going against the tide of conventional political wisdom that points to the growing polarization of the nation's electorate. The Stanford faculty member says that voters are not all that polarized, that there is actually a broad consensus on many seemingly divisive issues. He blames the political system for forcing voters to stake out polarized positions. "I'm feeling really good today," Fiorina said after last week's elections. "I think it was the revenge of moderation, the revenge of the middle."

This time of the year, there is a seamless flow on television as Sunday morning turns to afternoon, from the political talk shows to the NFL pre-game programs. Both feature pontificating pundits chosen as much for their personalities as their insight. Style is at least as important as substance. Most significantly, both are spectator sports. Professional football was designed as that. American politics was not. Even on the verge of an election that has energized the electorate more than most mid-term votes, it still seems that the citizens are on the sidelines of a game that was once famously said to be "of the people, by the people and for the people."

HOUSTON -- At a campaign stop last week, congressional candidate Shelley Sekula-Gibbs asked a group of women who own businesses to vote for her twice in November: once in a special election to fill the unexpired term of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and again in the general election as the Republican write-in candidate running for the full two-year term. The women, meeting for breakfast in a hotel banquet room, looked up from their scrambled eggs as Sekula-Gibbs launched into a jingle to drive home the point: "Vote twice for Shelley," she sang to the tune of "Roll Out the Barrel."

HARARE, ZIMBABWE -- It's hard to image that in a country with the world's highest inflation rate, high unemployment and chronic food shortages, people are worried that the worst is yet to come. Yet after six years of a political and economic free-fall, many here believe that the bottom still isn't in sight, as least not as long as President Robert G. Mugabe remains in power. Most Zimbabweans have assumed that something would happen to rein in their country's precipitous decline. Instead, they have watched as conditions have gone from bad to worse.

It will soon be a year since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. After that storm laid waste to that storied city, there was much talk of the greatest reconstruction effort in American history. President Bush famously addressed the nation from a floodlit downtown square. But New Orleans still sits in ruins, littered with abandoned houses and cars and debris. And despite the lofty rhetoric, there are few, if any, visionary plans for reconstruction even on the drawing board, much less at the construction phase.

WASHINGTON -- It seemed more befitting of a crime drama than a page from congressional history: $90,000 in allegedly ill-gotten $100 bills, wrapped in aluminum foil, stuffed in the freezer of the gentleman from Louisiana. The idea that Rep. William J. Jefferson, a Louisiana Democrat, might have been caught in a bribery scandal - he has not been charged with any crime, and he again denied any wrongdoing yesterday - is nothing new. Even the amount isn't extraordinary. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, the former Republican representative from California, was recently convicted of accepting almost 27 times as much in illegal gifts and graft.

There is perhaps no better time for ethical reform in the General Assembly than now, when voters are disillusioned with politics and politicians, and the fiscal vice is tightening. A good place to start is the General Assembly's Scholarship program.The program works this way: Each year, delegates and senators get a pot of cash to dole out to students who need assistance to go to college. In theory, that's fine. But politics has crept into the process. A 1988 study showed that lawmakers gave more than 2,000 grants to students from families with annual incomes over $50,000 -- sometimes to children of friends, relatives or the well-connected -- and overlooked 2,700 needy students, many of whom didn't even know about the scholarships.

"Dirty Little Secrets: The Persistence of Corruption in American Politics," by Larry J. Sabato and Glenn R. Simpson. Times Books. 430 pages, $25.Just in time for the United States' quadrennial orgy of presidential and congressional elections, a political scientist and journalist have teamed up to take a close look at how the electoral system is working.As their title suggests, Larry Sabato, a professor at the University of Virginia, and Wall Street Journal reporter Glenn Simpson conclude that the system isn't working well at all and is in immediate need of reform.

A group of local leaders led by a controversial campaign strategist launched a new organization yesterday aimed at supporting political candidates, assisting urban entrepreneurs and spurring debate on public education. In its state incorporation filings, Metro Political Organization Inc. describes itself as a "political pressure group" that will "support candidates for elected offices." But the city-based group, led by political consultant Julius C. Henson and Baltimore Circuit Court Clerk Frank M. Conaway Sr., issued a news release yesterday expressing goals "to promote public service and enlighten public policy to encourage positive change in the areas of politics, economics, education and multicultural opportunities."

To hear some tell it, God has had his hands full these past few months. Just ask the Rev. Pat Robertson. Or Indianapolis Colts kicker Mike Vanderjagt. Or New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin. The embattled chief executive of the storm-ravaged city became the latest leader to see the divine hand in earthly disaster this week when he said it was the wrath of God that sent "hurricane after hurricane after hurricane" to the Gulf Coast. "Surely, God is mad at America," Nagin said Monday during festivities to honor the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. "Surely he doesn't approve of us being in Iraq under false pretenses.