Two Parties

An Anne Arundel County judge yesterday barred two scheduled weekend parties and temporarily banned any other events from taking place at the Gambrills Mansion - the scene of a 400-guest party last weekend that was hosted by two National Football League players and ended with an early morning shooting. The 10-day restraining order sought by county officials and issued by Circuit Judge Ronald A. Silkworth prevents the owner or anyone else from living in or hosting events at the 18,000- square-foot house.

The commentary regarding challenges facing the U.S. in the global economy ("Corvette economics," March 2) contained the most succinct and clear descriptions of our two chaotic political parties in the last 30 years that I have ever read. It is a shame those paragraphs can't be plastered across America to wake up the average, inattentive citizen as to the inefficiencies of our current parties and the lack of caring displayed by the politicians. Raymond Daniel Burke is correct - politicians of both parties are displaying unbelievable inadequacies serving the issues facing us nationally and globally.

ASKED WHICH party he would join if he decided to run for president, Colin Powell said, "I've checked the Constitution very carefully, and you do not have to belong to a political party.''Not only is there nothing in the Constitution requiring partisanship, a lot that's in it was intended to prevent the growth of parties. For instance, two houses of Congress elected differently, election of president by state electors rather than popular vote, balance of power in the federal government, states' rights.

Perhaps it's time for our nation to look long and hard at our faltering, staid conventional two-party system. It has pathetically morphed into a churlish, immature tug of war between the Democrats and Republicans (" Under federal shutdown, many Marylanders face an uncertain work week," Oct. 1). When the country's leadership has devolved into immature, garrulous factions of both parties whose intentions are unequivocally self-serving, it's high time to reconsider our tradition-based system of governance.

Get ready for the mother of all train wrecks. Washington is fascinated by speculation that the Clinton administration and the Republican-controlled Congress are on a collision course that could shut down the government and even lead to economy-damaging defaults on the national debt.Paul Tsongas likens the situation to the big league baseball strike, with "true blood lust" prevailing over the true interests of the contending factions -- and, of course, the country as a whole. He warns that a real fiasco could confirm popular distrust of the present political system and bolster third-party sentiment throughout the land.

FROM Murray Kempton's assessment of Richard Nixon, which appeared recently in the New York Review of Books:"No politician can look to change any country but his own. And that Nixon profoundly did."Television commenced to press its now unbounded command over our politics in the 1952 presidential campaign. Variety kept an eye on this experimental stage of revolution and found just two examples of the technique that deserves professional attention. They were both Nixon broadcasts, one immortalizing his cocker spaniel, the other excavating the Hiss case.

CHICAGO -- When Republicans shocked the country by winning a majority in both houses of Congress in 1994, you could almost hear the tune that British troops reputedly played after their surrender at Yorktown: "The World Turned Upside Down." The GOP had a mandate for Newt Gingrich's "Contract with America," which called for a balanced budget, term limits and tax cuts. The Republicans talked about abolishing Cabinet departments. They proposed constitutional amendments. The takeover was dubbed the "Republican revolution," because dramatic change was plainly on the way. This year, they have upended expectations once again, giving them an even stronger position in Washington than eight years ago. They recaptured the Senate, they increased their majority in the House in defiance of historical odds -- and this time, they have an incumbent president whose claim to govern is now firmer than when he came into office as the runner-up in the 2000 popular vote.

IT HAPPENED in 1968, although we were not aware of it then. Coincident with the death of its two great crusading leaders -- King and Kennedy -- the most destructive conflict since the Civil War, and the election of Richard Nixon, American liberalism had suffered a fatal blow. It was to linger, brain-dead, for a quarter of a century until the reality of death was pronounced by the election of Newt Gingrich & Co. It was long overdue. The delusion of vitality, of imminent resurrection, had become a burden to the country and rendered impotent some of its most vigorous political men and women.

Stephen Robinson, who will be 2 next month, dashed for the giant inflatable monster truck as soon as his shoes were off. After four months of visits to AIRMania Fun Zone, he knew the play space well. His favorite, he indicated with a shy point of the finger, is the firetruck. AIRMania, which opened in late January on Red Branch Road in Columbia, is owned by Alan Harry, his son, Chris Harry, and a third partner, Ed Sharkey. It offers 6,000 square feet of carpeted space for kids like Stephen to play, and eight enormous inflatable devices for them to play on. Most of the inflatables are more than 20 feet tall and have features such as slides and basketball hoops inside them.

New York. -- The old wisdom that the Supreme Court follows the election returns was validated again last week. In two civil-rights cases, one concerning government contracting and the other regarding school integration, the court scaled back race-conscious remedies. The 1994 electoral earthquake that put Newt Gingrich into the speakership and the Democrats into receivership continues to be felt.Much of the Republican establishment cheered the court's action. Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, called it ''a major step toward ending quotas and set-asides in America.

Maryland's House Republicans decided this week to jettison Del. Anthony J. O'Donnell from the leadership of their caucus on the grounds that a new messenger is needed to revitalize the party's prospects and pick up seats in the 2014 election. We wish new Minority Leader Nicholaus Kipke and new Minority Whip Kathy Szeliga the best of luck; Maryland is better when it has two functioning political parties. But color us skeptical that rearranging the deck chairs in the House GOP caucus is going to accomplish much.

In his recent commentary, "Too many Md. politicians have chalk on the shoes" (May 25), Douglas Schmidt gets points for originality for inventing a standard he can use to smear people who have committed no crime. However, he uses it mostly to smear innocent Democrats while not mentioning GOP officials who have done the same things. He neglected to mention that GOP candidate Ellen Sauerbrey not only maxed out donations from the Maryland Jockey Club to push for slots, but received donations from a scheme in which it traded contributions with a maxed-out contributor to New York Gov. George Pataki.

In Carroll County we keep alive the fiction of the two-party system. In fact, it's a three-party system, Democrats and the two wings of the Republican Party, the pro-growthers and the slow-growthers. Right now the pro-growthers are in the saddle, both in our local government and the legislative delegation. Politics is all about the tax rate and economy in government, right? Well, the tax rate is high because we keep building residential units. New or newish residential units attract families with children.

F or decades, political reform in the United States has largely meant campaign finance reform. It is a focus the political mainstream prefers, despite the fact that it is akin to addressing an engine with a design defect by regulating the fuel. Many of our current problems are either caused or magnified by the stranglehold the two parties have on our political system. Democrats and Republicans, despite their uniformly low popularity with voters, continue to exercise a virtual monopoly, and they have no intention of relinquishing control.

I hereby forfeit my claim to a right-wing conspiracy decoder ring by offering two cheers for the Democrats. I congratulate them on their victory Saturday night in the Senate, and while I can't quite wish them continued success on the course they are following, I'm beginning to make peace with the possibility that they'll win. For years, conservatives and liberals have flirted with disposing of the fool's errand of bipartisanship. Seeking compromise with partisans across the aisle is a recipe for getting nothing important done.

Del. Anthony J. O'Donnell, the minority leader from Southern Maryland, met recently with The Baltimore Sun's editorial board to discuss the future of the state Republican Party. There are plenty of issues on which he and the board have, historically, disagreed, but much of the talk was focused on one area in which we are on the same page: The need for a robust debate in the state over politics and policy. (In fact, we ran an editorial last week cheering the entry of Republican Michael Pappas in the gubernatorial race and encouraging others to follow suit for that very reason.

A major new collection of survey data gives us a striking profile of political alignments in the United States now as the 1992 campaigns are about to enter their final, decisive stage, and reminds us just how dramatically the two major party coalitions have been transformed.Much attention has centered on the presidential run of independent Ross Perot. But however that turns out, the vast preponderance of contests are once again two-way affairs between Democrats and Republicans. The new data show that little in the current makeup of the Republican and Democratic coalitions resembles that in the preceding era of party competition -- which began in the New Deal and continued into the 1960s.

WASHINGTON -- Although it may seem a bit premature -- the fat lady has not yet appeared on stage -- the political community is alive with speculation about the aftermath of Nov. 3 if, as the polls now suggest is likely, Democrat Bill Clinton defeats President Bush. For the Republicans, it is not a happy prospect.The most obvious effect of a Clinton victory, particularly one by a comfortable margin, would be on the makeup of Congress. The Republicans had reasonable hopes early this year of gaining 35 or more seats in the House of Representatives, thanks to both reapportionment and the fact there are so many more Democrats than Republicans in exposed positions as incumbents.