Debate Camp
President Bartlet prepares for the one and only presidential debate (1). A question about racial profiling (2) leads to flashbacks covering the Bartlet administration's first days in office, when a Cabinet nomination was withdrawn (3), an evangelical Christian urged C.J. to re-consider school prayer (4), and Donna and then Josh were the victims of hoaxes. Back in the present, Israel (5) attacks its neighbor Kumar for its support of a terrorist organization, Bartlet learns he will lose New Hampshire (6), and Toby announces that his ex-wife is pregnant (7)with twins.
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Presidential Debates (last updated September 26, 2002) (back to top)
Beginning with the 1988 election, debates between presidential candidates have been sponsored by the non-profit, bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates, which aims to institutionalize such debates as a regular part of the election season. However, candidates have still argued every four years over the format and timing of such debates, and third-party candidates have arguably had even more difficulty participating.
Presidential debates are not required by law, and the most recent streak of continuous elections with debates only began in 1976. There were no debates in the 1952, 1956, 1964, 1968, or 1972 elections, in part because sitting presidents then felt they had little to gain by going head-to-head with their challengers; Vice-President Spiro Agnew once told reporters that debating was "poor tactics when you're running so far ahead."
Debate over Debates
Despite the Commission's efforts to set up debates more easily and regularly, each presidential election it has been involved with has seen some public disputes long before the candidates face off. Candidates and their campaigns have argued over how many debates, what days, what kind of format (one moderator, a panel of moderators, or a town-hall format), whether the candidates should stand or sit, and even how tall each candidate's rostrum should be (in 1988, Dukakis wanted the much taller George H. Bush to use a lower lectern; Bush agreed to use one lower than he normally would, but not as low as Dukakis wanted).
In recent years, the most vociferous fights over debates probably were those in 1992 and 2000, the first involving then-Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton and then-President George H. Bush, the second involving then-Vice President Al Gore and then-Texas Governor George W. Bush. (The 1996 debates raised a different kind of controversy as to whether Ross Perot was properly excluded from them.)
In 1992, the Commission proposed three televised debates in prime time, each lasting 90 minutes and each with a single moderator. Clinton accepted the proposal, but George H. Bush, who preferred the panel format, refused to accept the proposal and let the Commission's first scheduled debate pass without accepting. Clinton accused the sitting president of cowardice, and George H. Bush then countered with his own proposal for four debates on the four consecutive Sundays leading up to the election, with two before a panel and two before a single moderator.
Finally, the two campaigns negotiated independent of the Commission and finally reached agreement on three presidential debates and one vice-presidential debate within a tight nine-day period. One debate was before a panel of journalists, one before half-moderator, half-panel, and the third followed a "town hall" format; the one vice-presidential debate had a single moderator. All three debates included independent candidate Ross Perot.
Eight years later, George W. Bush followed his father's precedent and initially rejected the Commission's proposal for three 90-minute debates which would be broadcast on all major networks in prime-time. Instead, the Texas governor made a Sept. 3 proposal to have two of the three debates be only 60 minutes long and sponsored not by the Commission but by specific networks, namely, NBC and CNN. Al Gore criticized George W. Bush's proposal for trying to reduce the debates' prominence, saying that networks would not air a debate specifically hosted by another, and that viewers would watch more popular shows instead of the debates if non-debate programming was available on some major channels.
As in the 1992 situation, campaign officials from the Bush and Gore campaigns met to negotiate a resolution. But unlike 1992, the result this time was that Bush, who began receiving criticism from his own party for his handling of the debates, withdrew all his objections and accepted the Commission's schedule without any change.
Third-Party Candidates
Third-party candidates have often had difficulty getting the major-party candidates to debate them. President Jimmy Carter refused to debate Independent candidate John Anderson in the 1980 campaign, though Ronald Reagan did debate Anderson with some success. More recently, Ross Perot was invited by the major-party candidates to participate in the three presidential debates in 1992, but not to the Commission's 1996 debates.
Now that it does have some formal role in the process and does extend invitations to the debates, the Commission has tried formulating criteria for which presidential candidates should be invited to participate in its debates. There were at least 23 candidates in the 1996 election and at least 17 candidates in the 2000 election (though none but the major-party candidates, Ross Perot and Ralph Nader ever got more than 1 percent of the popular vote), which would make for unwieldy - and probably useless - debates if all were to participate.
For the 1996 election, the Commission used a combination of objective and subjective criteria such as evidence of national organization, national newsworthiness and competitiveness, and indicators of national public enthusiasm or concern in order to invite only those candidates who it deemed had a "realistic (i.e. more than theoretical) chance of being elected." It thus invited only Bill Clinton and Bob Dole, the two major-party candidates that year.
Perot (along with John Hagelin of the Natural Law Party) challenged the Commission's selection criteria and petitioned a federal judge to allow them to participate, arguing that the Federal Election Commission had wrongly delegated its authority to the bipartisan Commission. The judge rejected the third-party candidates' challenge as non-judicial; there was no legal right for any candidate to participate in the debates, the FEC had no authority over setting up the debates, and there was no need to hold up the debates or require Perot's participation since any harm he might suffer by not participating could be rectified by holding more debates later.
Neither Perot nor Hagelin ended up debating and neither ultimately had much success at the polls. Perot ultimately took third-place with 8.40 percent of the popular vote, and Hagelin won 0.12 percent of the vote, coming in seventh.
In any event, the Commission adopted new selection criteria for the 2000 election, this time looking to whether a candidate met the Constitution's eligibility requirements (see here), whether the candidate was on enough states' ballots to have a "mathematical" chance of winning the electoral college, and whether the candidate had at least 15 percent support according to an average of five national polls at the time of determination.
Although the Commission had dropped subjective criteria this time, some still challenged its criteria as unfair. Some noted that the Presidential Public Funding Program only requires a third-party presidential candidate to win five percent of the popular vote in order to receive some post-election reimbursement as well as some public funding for his party in the next election (which is what Ralph Nader of the Green Party was aiming for in the 2000 election, though he ultimately won only 2.74 percent of the popular vote).
On a separate but related issue, both Perot in 1996 and Nader in 2000 challenged the Federal Election Commission's regulations that permit the Commission on Presidential Debates to receive corporate contributions to help cover the costs of the debates. Perot did not long pursue the argument in 1996, but Nader pressed it through several courts, arguing that that the FEC's regulation improperly allowed corporate money to aid the major parties at the expense of minor parties and should be struck down. The First Circuit Court of Appeals noted in November 2000 that Nader's argument was not "unreasonable," but upheld the Federal Election Commission's regulation as a different, also reasonable choice that warranted deference.
For more on elections, go here. For more on third-party candidates, go here.
Sources: The Commission on Presidential Debates is on-line here. Stephen Bates, The Future of Presidential Debates (The Annenberg Washington Program in Communication Policy Studies of Northwestern University, 1993), is on-line here. The Federal Election Commission, on-line here, has information on all the presidential candidates in the 1996 and 2000 elections, and has information on the presidential public funding program here. Richard L. Berke, Bush shifts stand, saying he's ready to hold 4 debates, New York Times, September 30, 1992. Richard L. Berke, Bush and Clinton agree on debates; plan to ask Perot, New York Times, October 3, 1992. Peter Marks, Dropping all of his objections, Bush agrees to panel's debates, September 15, 2000. An appellate court decision regarding Perot's 1996 challenge is on-line here and one regarding Nader's 2000 challenge to the FEC regulations is on-line here.
Racial Profiling (last updated October 13, 2002) (back to top)
Racial profiling describes police and quasi-police tactics that target individuals for searches and more intense scrutiny based on their racial or ethnic identity, rather than on other factors that could give rise to the belief that one is involved in criminal activity. National attention to racial profiling as it related to black and Hispanic motorists reached new heights in the late 1990s and took on a new dimension after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Racial profiling, if and when it can be proved to exist, violates federal anti-discrimination laws, whether committed by law-enforcement or by private institutions such as airlines. The difficulty in enforcing restrictions on racial profiling lies in proving that racial profiling actually does exist. Not only would someone have to show that certain racial or ethnic groups are indeed being treated differently than others, but also that such treatment is not justified because of legitimate factors. For example, if blacks do drive faster than whites or if Sikhs do carry more weapons than other groups, then these groups should expect to be stopped by police or security more frequently.
Both Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have condemned racial profiling. In 1999, Clinton called it a "morally indefensible, deeply corrosive practice" and said it "is in the fact the opposite of good-police work, where actions are based on hard facts, not stereotypes. It is wrong, it is destructive, and it must stop." Bush called for an end to racial profiling in his first State of the Union address, and he then directed Attorney General John Ashcroft to study the problem.
Muslims and People of Middle Eastern Descent
Federal authorities have on several occasions criticized what "appears to have been a rash of improper and insensitive searches and other improper treatment of Sikhs and Arab Americans by airport and air carrier security personnel" in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks. Just 10 days after the attacks, in response to reports that airlines were apparently removing passengers who appeared to be Middle Eastern or Muslim, a Department of Transportation attorney e-mailed airlines to remind them not to engage in such discrimination.
Since then, federal agencies have provided more guidance to aircraft and airport personnel on how to comply with their legal obligations. For example, according to some memos available on-line, aircraft and airport personnel should not select people for inspection based on their racial, ethnic or religious background, or on appearance or dress that is associated with a particular national origin or religion, and should be sensitive to inspection procedures that could be offensive, such as asking a veiled woman to unveil in public. At the same time, aircraft and airport personnel can ask a veiled woman to remove her veil in order to confirm her identity, and can confiscate a Sikh's kirpan, which is a sheathed ceremonial sword.
Blacks and Hispanics
Addressing the racial profiling problem regarding blacks and Hispanics has been more difficult and contentious. Despite the new attention brought to the problem via a confluence of events, lawsuits, and legislative proposals, the existence and the magnitude of the problem is still unclear and much debated, largely due to a lack of comprehensive data.
To help understand the problem better, more state police agencies are being required in recent years to collect racial and ethnic data for traffic stops; 16 of 49 state law-enforcement agencies were so required as of March 2001, with another 23 agencies collecting such information in some circumstances. Bills were also introduced in the Senate in 2001 and in 2002 to require such data-collection programs on a wider basis.
One recent nation-wide effort to study the problem was the 1999 Police-Public Contact Survey conducted by the Department of Justice. According to that study, blacks were overrepresented among those stopped, searched, and arrested, and Hispanics were overrepresented among those searched and arrested. Blacks represented 9.8 percent of licensed drivers, but represented 11.6 percent of those stopped at least once and 13.7 percent of those stopped more than once, 21.6 percent of those physically searched by police during a traffic stop, and 19.9 percent of those arrested. Hispanics represented 9.8 percent of licensed drivers and represented only 8.4 percent of those stopped, but represented 13.6 percent of those physically searched and 11.7 percent of those arrested.
However, the study warned that such data cannot be taken to prove or disprove the existence of racial profiling. "[T]he analysis cannot determine whether racial differences in the breaking of traffic laws rather than racial profiling is the reason for the higher rates at which black drivers were stopped by police," the report said at one point.
Legally, a police officer may not order a person to halt or remain in a particular place unless the officer has a reasonable, articulable suspicion to believe that a crime has been or is being committed. A traffic violation can serve as such sufficient grounds, even if police are using the traffic violation as a pretext to justify a stop (as the United States Supreme Court approved in its 1996 decision in Whren v United States). Once police stop someone, they can seize contraband that is in plain sight and can ask a motorist to allow them to search the car, a request to which many people surprisingly do consent.
The problem of racial profiling arises in the application of these procedures, when police use their discretion in making such stops to target blacks and Hispanics. Some have said the problem stems from the war on drugs, in which federal and state law enforcement authorities were allegedly trained to single out such minorities as potential drug couriers.
Sources: The Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division has collected resources relating to airline profiling of Muslims and people of Middle Eastern descent on-line here, including the FAA memo quoted above. The Bureau of Justice Statistics has published several reports based on the 1999 National Survey, including Contacts between Police and the Public, on-line here, and Characteristics of Drivers Stopped by Police, 1999, on-line here. David A. Harris, Driving while Black: Racial profiling on our nation's highways, American Civil Liberties Union, June 1999, available on-line here. Deborah Ramirez, Jack McDevitt, Amy Farrell, A resource guide on racial profiling data collection systems, Department of Justice, November 2000.
Presidential Appointments (last updated October 16, 2002) (back to top)
Each president must fill hundreds of top-level executive branch positions, not only when he first takes office, but as positions open up during the course of his term. Many of a president's nominations must then be confirmed by the Senate, and this two-step process of presidential appointments has become increasingly politicized and unwieldy in recent decades, most visibly at the Cabinet level, but arguably with more lasting consequences at lower levels.
Some of the more notable Cabinet-level nominations that faced difficulties in the U.S. Senate in the past two decades include John Tower, George H. Bush's unsuccessful first nominee as secretary of defense, Zoe Baird, Clinton's unsuccessful first nominee for attorney general, and John Ashcroft, George W. Bush's successful nominee as attorney general.
Still, one way or another, Cabinet-level appointments are resolved relatively quickly. Nominees to lower-level executive posts, on the other hand, can languish for months and years without resolution, sometimes crippling the work of such governmental bodies. For example, the U.S. Sentencing Commission had all seven seats vacant by the end of 1998, which Chief Justice William Rehnquist of the Supreme Court called a "political impasse … of stunning proportions." In response, presidents have occasionally sidestepped the process by making recess appointments and by putting nominees into their posts on an acting basis.
According to Professor G. Calvin Mackenzie, the resulting process of Senate-White House conflict is "a national disgrace. It encourages bullies and emboldens demagogues. It silences the voices of responsibility and nourishes the lowest forms of partisan combat … Republicans and Democrats, legislators and chief executives, journalists and special interests all share responsibility for allowing one of the rare and genuine inventions of American political creativity to fall into a state of malignancy."
Some have called for broad reforms to the system. Congress, for example, could designate fewer positions as requiring Senate confirmation or the Senate could change its rule so that all nominees must be voted on within a set period of time. The Constitution could also be changed to establish wholly different procedures that could change the role of the Senate, which is seen by some as an increasingly unrepresentative institution because each state has the same representation, regardless of actual population.
Selecting a Cabinet
Traditionally, first-term presidents try to name their Cabinet nominees by Christmas, which gives them less than two months from Election Day and almost a month before Inauguration Day to choose the people who will lead the departments of the executive branch. Bill Clinton's transition into office is widely regarded as one of the more chaotic, and provides a stark and useful contrast with that of George W. Bush.
Clinton set out a goal of trying to create a cabinet that "looks like America," which complicated his search and which led to charges of tokenism. His most problematic nomination proved to be that of attorney general, the head of the Department of Justice. Under pressure from women's groups to name a woman as head of one of the most prominent Cabinet departments, Clinton initially nominated Zoe Baird as attorney general, but withdrew her nomination after it was revealed that she and her husband had hired illegal aliens to care for their child and had not paid their employees' Social Security taxes. Clinton then nominated Kimba Wood, who had a similar "nanny problem." Finally, in the middle of February 1993, Clinton nominated Janet Reno, who was confirmed.
Ultimately, Clinton's Cabinet included four women, four blacks, two Hispanic Americans, and no Republicans.
By contrast, George W. Bush had a relatively smooth transition, despite having a shorter transition period due to the problems resolving the 2000 election. Even so, Bush's nominee for the Department of Labor, Linda Chavez, was revealed to have failed to pay taxes for a domestic worker, and her nomination was withdrawn in favor of Elaine Chao.
Unlike Clinton, Bush did not make diversity an overriding goal of his selection process, but his cabinet nonetheless showed comparable results. His Cabinet included four women, two blacks, two Asian-Americans, one Hispanic-American, and one Arab-American, as well as one Democrat (Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta, who is also Asian-American). For more on the Bush Cabinet, go here.
Still, Richard Nixon's may have been even smoother. Nixon introduced all 12 of his nominees at the same time on live, prime-time television on December 11, 1968, two weeks before the traditional Christmas deadline, and all but one were approved on the same day in mid-January. Nixon had tried to create a diverse Cabinet, but had failed to get a Democrat nominee, any women, or any minorities; all 12 nominees were white male Republicans.
Some Controversial Nominations
Most Cabinet nominees are given deference by the U.S. Senate, particularly when the nominee is a former senator or representative to whom some form of senatorial courtesy is usually given. Still, several have been the center of much controversy in recent years, some of which are discussed below:
- John Tower for Secretary of Defense. A Republican senator for 24 years before retiring in 1985, Tower was nominated to head the Defense Department in 1988. Even though the Senate rarely fails to confirm Cabinet appointments, and former Congressmen are usually provided deference, Tower faced a difficult confirmation hearing and was accused of womanizing, drinking, and having unusual financial dealings with defense contractors. The Senate rejected his nomination 47-53 in March 1989.
- Zoe Baird for Attorney General. At the time a general counsel of Aetna Life and Casualty Company, Baird was nominated. Baird and her husband had hired undocumented aliens to care for their child and not paid Social Security taxes on their wages. Kimba Wood had a similar "nanny problem." Came badly because of Clinton's promise that cabinet nominees would be held to highest ethical standards. Clinton withdrew her name from consideration before it came to a Senate vote.
- John Ashcroft, attorney general. The former senator was much criticized for his conservative views, but the Senate still confirmed him, 58-42.
Some non-Cabinet positions that have been controversial include :
- Lani Guinier as assistant attorney general for civil rights. Clinton nominated her in April 1993, but withdrew her nomination in June 1993 after widespread controversy over Guinier's academic writings. Guinier was accused of wanting to strengthen minority voting strength, and was labeled the "quota queen."
- Anthony Lake as head of the Central Intelligence Agency. Republican leaders opposed Lake's nomination and delayed confirmation with a long, drawn-out process that made Lake eventually give up in 1997.
- Bill Lann Lee as assistant attorney general for civil rights. Clinton ultimately sidestepped the Senate by naming Lee to the post on an acting basis after the Senate failed to vote act on the nomination in 1997.
Sources: G. Calvin Mackenzie, editor, Innocent until Nominated: The breakdown of the presidential appointments process (Brookings Institution Press, 2001). Michael J. Gerhardt, The Federal Appointments Process: A Constitutional and Historical Analysis (Duke University Press, 2000).
School Prayer (updated August 15, 2002) (back to top)
Under the First Amendment's Establishment Clause ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion"; see full text here), the government's ability to endorse or support religious activities is limited. Still, the Establishment Clause does not prohibit purely religious activities or speech by individuals, it does not eliminate religion from schools and other public settings, and courts generally do not enforce the Establishment Clause in all instances where government and religion simply interact.
In the education setting, for example, students can pray or read their Bibles in school as long as they are not engaged in school activities or instruction. Teachers can still teach about religion and the Bible or the Koran, as long as they do not provide religious instruction or tell their students to believe a particular way. In fact, the Clinton administration released a set of guidelines in 1995 and a revised set in 1998 to help schools know the limits of the First Amendment and to set proper policies before any problems arose.
The United States Supreme Court first dealt with the issue of school prayer in the 1962 case of Engel v. Vitale, 370 US 431 (1962). At that time, a school board in New York required students to recite daily a "non-denominational" prayer, which was prepared by the New York Board of Regents and which read: "Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers, and our country." The Supreme Court struck down this practice, calling it a religious activity that the government could not promote. Similarly, in 1963, the Supreme Court struck down a Pennsylvania law that required students to attend a reading of Bible verses each day and to recite the Lord's Prayer unless the students were exempted by their parents.
Schools can still allow their students to pray during their free time, and can even provide moments of silence in which students can choose to pray or meditate. An Alabama law set out a one-minute period of silence "for meditation," but then changed the law so that the period of silence would be "for meditation or voluntary prayer." The Supreme Court ruled that this particular change violated the Establishment Clause because the change had no secular purpose and must have been enacted "to convey a message of State endorsement and promotion of prayer." Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 US 38 (1985).
Finally, school officials cannot allow or organize prayer at graduation ceremonies without violating the Establishment Clause, according to the Supreme Court's 1992 ruling in the case of Lee v. Weisman, 505 US 577. Graduation ceremonies are virtually obligatory for all students, and so they cannot be compelled to attend and participate in a religious exercise.
For more on the Establishment Clause, go here.
Sources: Religious Expression in Public Schools (revised May 1998), a useful guideline for what public schools can do within the limits of the Establishment Clause, was published by the U.S. Department of Education and is on-line here. Cases are available on-line via Findlaw.com. Gerald Gunther and Kathleen M. Sullivan, Constitutional Law (13th edition, Foundation Press, 1997).
Israel-Palestinians : Overview (last updated May 3, 2002) (back to top)
For more than 50 years, the state of Israel has existed in uneasy tension with its Arab neighbors and with the Palestinians who originally occupied some of the same territory. This tension has erupted into wars such as the Six Days War of 1967 and into violent uprisings (aka intifadas) within Israeli-controlled territories such as the one that began in September 2000 and continues into 2002.
Beyond religious differences and historical enmities, some pressing political and economic issues dividing Israel and the Palestinians include:
- Terrorist actions by groups such as Hamas (Islamic Resistance Movement) and the Islamic Jihad. Since December 2001, Israel has sharply criticized Yasir Arafat for not doing more to stop terrorist actions by such groups, charging that he lacks either the power or the will to do so and thus has become irrelevant to the peace process. As part of its biannual review of foreign terrorist organizations, the United States recognized in October 2001 six terrorist organizations that directly oppose Israel’s involvement in Palestine, as opposed to Islamic separatist organizations such as al-Qaeda.
- Control of occupied territories. Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization agreed in 1993 to begin a transition process in which Palestinians would gradually be given self-government over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, two areas which Israel has occupied since its military successes in the Six Days War of 1967. This two-track process was broadened by the 1995 Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement. However, each side has accused the other of not living up to the conditions set forth in the agreements, and progress has stalled.
- Israeli settlements in the occupied territories. Israelis have created many settlements in the occupied territories, thus provoking Palestinians in such areas and complicating the resolution of who controls the land. As of August 2000, there were an estimated 231 settlements and civilian land-use sites in the West Bank, 42 in the Golan Heights, 25 in the Gaza Strip, and 29 in East Jerusalem. Israel says it has stopped creating new settlements, but is simply allowing currently-existing settlements to grow naturally. The United States has consistently opposed Israel’s settlement policy since the Carter administration, and has criticized growth patterns that seem to cover new territory while existing territory goes relatively unused.
- Control of Jerusalem. With both Israel and the Palestinians seeking to have Jerusalem as their capital, the status of this city has been constantly deferred from political negotiations. It was deliberately not resolved in the historic September 1995 Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement and was to be negotiated in future rounds.
- Poor economic conditions and massive unemployment in the occupied territories. Israel is a technologically advanced market economy, which had in 2000 an estimated gross domestic product of $110.2 billion, GDP per capita of $18,900, and a GDP growth rate of 5.9 percent, as reported in the CIA World Factbook. Israel’s unemployment rate was about 9 percent in 2000. By contrast, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have relatively undeveloped economies with only some small industry. Both areas saw declining economies and rising unemployment from 1992 to 1996 as a result of Israeli border closure policies that responded to security incidents but also disrupted market relationships. Both areas then began to recover when Israel used such policies less frequently from 1997 to 2000. Recovery has at best stalled since the uprisings beginning in late 2000 and continuing into 2002. Estimates for the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in 2000 showed a GDP of $3.1 billion and $1.11 billion respectively, GDPs per capita each less than one-tenth that of Israel, and a combined unemployment rate of 40 percent.
The Peace Process
The 1990s started off with the promise of successful – though difficult – negotiations towards the peaceful transfer of authority over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip from Israel occupation to Palestinian self-government. In the wake of the Gulf War, Israel met with Palestinian and other Arab leaders in the Madrid Conference and began talks. After a round of talks in Oslo, Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) signed a joint Declaration of Principles on September 13, 1993. That declaration called for a five-year transition period in which Israel would gradually withdraw its troops from major Palestinian centers and Palestinians would gradually govern themselves.
Several divisive issues, such as the status of Jerusalem and Jewish settlements in areas such as the West Bank and the Gaza strip, were officially set aside for a second stage of negotiations to begin no later than 1996.
Since 1993, negotiations have moved on two separate tracks, one towards Palestinian self-government as an interim step, and another towards a permanent adjustment. The interim track culminated with the Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat signed on September 28, 1995. This agreement was implemented in stages over the next few years.
However, other issues continued to go unresolved. First, the status of Jerusalem, which both Israel and the Palestinians want for their capital city, was left for future negotiations. Second, though Israel stopped creating entirely new settlements in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, it continued to support the growth of existing settlements; this policy, which the United States has opposed continuously at least since the Carter administration, has been a particularly severe grievance to the Palestinians. On the other hand, Israel has complained that the Palestinians have been slow to implement their obligations under the Interim Agreement, including policing their own radicals.
Israel and the Palestinians began negotiating these issues in May 1996 and periodically since then, but without much success. One difficulty has been the frequent turnover in power between the Labor Party and the Likud Party. The Labor Party led by Yitzhak Rabin won national elections in 1992, Likud under Binyamin Netanyahu won in May 1996, and Labor took power again with Ehud Barak in 1999. Barak himself was replaced by Ariel Sharon in February 2001. Labor is generally more secular and favors giving land for peace to the Palestinians; Likud is more religious and conservative, and has greater concerns about security.
The Current Intifada Began in September 2000
In September 2000, a new wave of Israeli-Palestinian violence broke out with an intifada that seems to have set back the entire peace process. Events began with the September 28, 2000 visit of Israeli Parliament member Ariel Sharon (now the country’s prime minister) to the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Palestinians protested the visit the next day, and Israeli police reacted with violence to disperse the demonstrations, killing four and injuring hundreds. Violence then continued and escalated through the end of 2000 and into 2001, resulting in hundreds of deaths on both sides, though mostly Palestinians. Amnesty International has reported at least 300 Palestinians were killed in the first three months of the intifada and that more than 570 Palestinians and more than 150 Israelis (including 150 Palestinian and 30 Israeli children) were killed during its first year.
The Sharm el-Sheikh Fact Finding Committee, organized by the United States and chaired by former U.S. Senator George Mitchell, later reported in April 2001 that there was no evidence that Sharon’s visit had been anything more than "an internal political act," or that the Palestinians had any deliberate plan to incite violence. On the other hand, the committee found, the violence resulted because "each side assumed the worst about the other and acted accordingly."
The Committee had plenty of criticism for both sides. It criticized Israel’s use of military force, noting that Israel needed to differentiate better between terrorism and protests, and noting that two-thirds of the alleged "attacks" by Palestinians against Israelis did not involve firearms or explosives. The Committee also criticizes Israel’s settlement policy for instigating Palestinian ire. At the same time, the Committee found that the PLO needed to make more efforts to enforce a complete stop of violence and prevent anti-Israeli terrorism.
Tensions and the death toll on both Israeli and Palestinian sides increased over the course of 2001, and the Israel government began taking steps directly against Yasir Arafat. In December 2001, the Israeli government publicly called Arafat an enemy and said he had become irrelevant due to his inability to stop the actions of groups such as Hamas. In March 2002, the Israeli government moved to contain Arafat within his Ramallah headquarters or to force his exile, and began extensive military operations in the occupied territories.
Some Historical Background and Context
Territory that has been dominated by different empires for centuries, the land now known as Israel was previously known as Palestine and was controlled by the Ottoman Empire from the 1600s to the 20th century. Britain then controlled the land as a mandate from 1917 to 1948, at which time the state of Israel was created out of a United Nations partition plan supported by the United States.
From 1948 into the 1970s, Israel fought several wars with its Arab neighbors. However, Israel’s decisive military victory in the 1967 war (known as the Six Days War) and its success in repelling a 1973 attack by Egypt and Syria -- as well as the 1979 Camp David accords that brought peace between Israel and Egypt – have moved the conflict more or less from the military arena to the political. Instead, direct conflict has moved largely to terrorist attacks and internal fighting between Israel and the Palestinians in the occupied territories. Israel began establishing or renewing diplomatic relations with Arab states after the 1993 agreement with the Palestinians, and signed a peace treaty with Jordan in 1994.
Israel has historically received strong support from the United States, beginning first with the United States’ support for the very creation of a Jewish state in 1948. It bought about $8 billion worth of military equipment from the United States from FY 1991 to 2000, though Saudi Arabia and Egypt both bought more equipment over the same period. For more on arms sales, go here.
For a timeline and for more on developments in Israel and the Palestinians, go here.
Sources Report of the Sharm el-Sheikh Fact Finding Committee, April 30, 2001. The United States Department of State maintains a section on the Middle East, available here. The United States Embassy in Israel has collected historical documents (available here) and an ongoing collection of developments (available here). Ahron Bergman and Jihan El-Tahri, Israel and the Arabs: an eyewitness account of war and peace in the Middle East (TV Books 2000). The State Department has a country background report on-line via its website here. Economic information on Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as well as Israeli settlement estimates come from the CIA World Factbook 2001, on-line here. Amnesty International’s report on the first year of the intifada is on-line here.
New Hampshire (last updated October 16, 2002) (back to top)
New Hampshire has voted Republican in most presidential elections since the 1940s, with the only exceptions being in 1964 for John F. Kennedy and in 1992 and 1996 for Bill Clinton. It currently has 4 electoral votes due to the 2000 census count, making the state one of the least valuable battlegrounds on the electoral map, though it obviously would have sentimental appeal for President Bartlett.
In the 2000 election, New Hampshire voted narrowly in favor of George W. Bush; 273,559 voters voted for Bush, and 266,348 for Al Gore.
For a table showing how each state has voted in the presidential elections since World War II, go here. For information about the electoral college, including a graph showing how electoral votes are allocated, go here.
Sources: Election data taken from the National Archives and Records Administration has much information about the electoral college on-line here; tables and charts were developed from the data therein.
Fertility and Age (last updated May 19, 2002) (back to top)
At least 20 percent of women now wait to have their first child until after age 35, according to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. The median age for a woman having her first child has gradually gone up over recent decades and was 24.3 in 1998, compared to 22.0 in 1972.
Birth rates for women aged 30 have risen since the early 1980s. In 1998, women aged 30-34 had a birth rate of 87.4 births per 1,000 women, women aged 35-39 had a birth rate of 37.4, and women aged 40-44 had a birth rate of 7.3. About three-quarters of the births in 1998 were to mothers aged 15-29; 15.8 percent of the births that year were to mothers aged 30-34 and 5.9 percent were to mothers aged 35-39.
A recent book by economist Sylvia Ann Hewlett, "Creating a Life," has drawn new attention to women's decisions to delay pregnancy in order to establish more financial stability or careers before becoming mothers. Her book is based on a study conducted in January 2001 by the National Parenting Association, a non-profit group Hewlett founded in 1993.
According to the NPA study, 33 percent of "high-achieving" women are childless at ages 41-55, compared to 25 percent of "high-achieving" men. The figure rises to 42 percent in corporate America and 43 percent in academia. The study also showed that 60 percent of women in the older age group who were "high-achieving" are married, compared to 76 percent of men. (The study defined "high-achieving" as those earning over $55,000 or $65,000, depending on age.)
Younger women, according to the study, have misconceptions about their abilities to delay having a child. According to the survey, 89 percent of young "high-achieving" women believe they will be able to get pregnant into their forties, which is possible but with increasing risks.
The American Society for Reproductive Medicine warns that age may affect a woman's ability to conceive, even with the help of recent advanced infertility treatments. As a woman ages, her ovary may become less responsive to the hormones critical for developing the uterus to which an embryo must attach, the remaining eggs in her ovaries may become less capable of fertilization by sperm (women have about 300,000 eggs in their ovary at puberty and usually have only a few thousand remaining by menopause), and she has more time to develop gynecological disorders that may decrease fertility. According to the ASRM, about one-third of couples in which the woman is age 35 or older will have problems with fertility, and about two-thirds of women will not be able to get pregnant spontaneously by the age of 40.
Age can also affect a woman's ability to bring a healthy child to birth. With age, women have greater risks of miscarriages (spontaneous abortions) and of giving birth to a child with a chromosomal abnormality, according to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.
For information on teen pregnancies, go here. For information on general health topics, go here.
Sources: Statistics as to birth rates from 1970 to 1998, births in 1998, and the median age in 1998 for a woman having her first child are drawn from a National Vital Statistic Report published on March 28, 2000 by the Centers for Disease Control, "Births: Final Data for 1998," available on-line here. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine is on-line here; a 1996 fact sheet and a 1996 patient information booklet on the connection between age and fertility are available on-line here and here. The April 15, 2002 press release announcing the findings of the NPA survey that Hewlett's book is based on is on-line here.
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