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Oct. 8, 2008

Rabbi Berel Wein: The day when the sane talk to themselves

Ana Veciana-Suarez: Many nonobservant Jews are finding religion

Oct. 7, 2008

Gary Rosenblatt: Of politics and prayer

Caroline B. Glick: The ironies of the West's collusion with the Arabs and Iran

Oct. 6, 2008

Rabbi Yitzchok R. Rubin: Mamma to the masses

Jonathan Tobin: Ahmadinejad Isn't Too Impressed

Oct. 3, 2008

Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: The 'living dead' are all around us

Caroline B. Glick: Olmert's parting blows

Oct. 2, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q: Often customers looking for our competitor accidentally enter our store. Can we just serve them without comment?

Jonathan Tobin: Jewish pundit quiz on next year's news

Sept. 29, 2008

Rabbi Eli Gewirtz: Lehman Brothers and the Day of Judgment

Rabbi Leiby Burnham: Apples, Honey and You

Sept. 26, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The shofar and the Echo of Sinai

Caroline B. Glick: A road paved on reality

Sept. 24, 2008

Greg Crosby: Home for the Holy Days

Ethel G. Hofman: Rosh Hashanah Favorites: Old-fashioned taste, reduced calories

Sept. 23, 2008

Caroline Glick: Liberalism or lives!?

Michael Ledeen: Dear President Ahmadinejad

Sept. 22, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q: I gave a check to a local merchant, but it hasn't been cashed in months. Probably they lost it. Do I have to tell them?

Diana West: We are losing Europe to Islam

Sept. 19, 2008

Rabbi Berel Wein: On harvesting success

Caroline B. Glick: It is time to act

Sept. 18, 2008

Rabbi Hillel Goldberg: Is camping the panacea to save Jewry from self-destruction?

Craig Gordon: Was SNL hilarity too much for Hillary?

Sept. 17, 2008

Jonathan Tobin: The Whole World Is Watching

The Kosher Gourmet By Linda Gassenheimer: East meets Southwest in this quick meal: MEXICAN-ASIAN TOSTADOS

Sept. 16, 2008

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. : Into the fire

Everything's Relative : Your Official Jewish Guide to the 2008 USA Presidential Election

Sept. 15, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Enabling risky behavior

Diana West: A day that will live in ... accommodating Islam

Sept. 11, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The skeleton in my closet

Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein: Persecution and systematic destruction of Christians in the Middle East must be stopped

Sept. 10, 2008

Jonathan Tobin: There's Something About Sarah

The Kosher Gourmet by Kathy Manweiler: Who needs Chili's when you have these? Recipes for Mexican that taste great and are dietetic! Our commitment to freedom

Sept. 9, 2008

Daniel Pipes: Must counterinsurgency wars fail?

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.:

Sept. 8, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: How far must one go to help somebody out of a contract?

Barry Rubin: Waiting For Something

Sept. 8, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : How far must one go to help somebody out of a contract?

Barry Rubin: Waiting For Something

March 22, 2007

J-Rhythms with Avraham Rosenblum: JWR's cutting-edge music program showcasing performers -- singers, song writers, musicians, and bands -- who learn and live the Torah lifestyle (OUR NEWEST IGODCAST !)

Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review May 8, 2008 / 3 Iyar 5768

The Mayor of London Who Would Be President

By Bob Tyrrell


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | The most momentous political story of the hour is not what you might think … whatever you might think. It has to do with an American politician now living in London and his aspiration to become president of the United States. His name is Boris Johnson. He, an exemplary conservative, has just beaten one of the most rebarbative left-wing reactionaries in the United Kingdom, to become mayor of London. Johnson ran a very fine campaign, an amalgam of high intelligence, sound principle, rollicking good humor, and energy that could be branded New Tory. Mind you, New Toryism will arrive on these shores in due course.


Presidential aspirants often are accused of pursuing office with the intent of using that office as a "steppingstone" to still higher office. The wife of a former Arkansas governor, when running for a Senate seat in New York in 2000, was accused of intending New York to be her "steppingstone" to the presidency. Her husband, too, was accused of using his re-election to the governor's mansion as a stepping stone to the White House; months after re-election, Boy Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign began. For that matter, the New York Senate seat that Hillary now holds is the same seat once held by Robert F. Kennedy, who also was presciently accused by opponents of intending the seat as his steppingstone to the highest office in the land. Incidentally, both Hillary Clinton and Robert Kennedy came to New York as outsiders — she from Arkansas, he from Massachusetts. Consequently, both suffered the charge of being called "carpetbaggers."


So using a governorship or a Senate seat as a steppingstone to the presidency is not new. Using City Hall in London is. Geographically speaking, Johnson's presidential campaign will make him the most ambitious carpetbagger in American history. He was born in New York General Hospital June 19, 1964 — the year remembered by American conservatives as the Goldwater Year.


It is now faintly circulating through American media that Johnson was born here, but so is the report that he gave up his citizenship in 2006 after encountering passport problems with fussy U.S. immigration authorities. The report is in error. I now can reveal that The American Spectator, in another of its world exclusives, has discovered (see the June issue) that the newly elected mayor of London never terminated his citizenship. He is as American as Barack Obama.


The confusion arises because of a comical piece Johnson wrote in the August 9, 2006, issue of The Spectator of London. In it, he reported his rude encounter with our immigration authorities and his vow to give up his American citizenship. But hold! Now I can report that when he presented himself at the U.S. Embassy to terminate his U.S. citizenship, he good-naturedly changed his mind. The procedure threatened to become too expensive in terms of tax liabilities alone. When Johnson sets out for the Republican nomination, there will be no doubt as to where he stands on tax cuts.


Already Johnson's presidential ambitions are being circulated in the British press. Apparently, he has joked about his plans for years. This week, Stuart Reid — a confidant of Johnson's at the British Spectator, which Johnson edited — has written that Johnson will not actually launch his campaign until 2016. Reid believes Sen. Obama will win the presidency this fall.


I doubt Obama will defeat Sen. John McCain, and readers of this column might recall that one year ago in "The Clinton Crack-Up," I predicted Sen. Clinton's faltering before a challenge from the Democratic Party's younger generation. My prediction came at a time when such political savants as Dick Morris were touting Clinton as the "inevitable" nominee and next president. Today I predict that Johnson, working from the City Hall of London, will have a salubrious influence on conservatives both in the U.K. and the U.S. His campaign for the American presidency will begin long before Reid speculates that it will, and it cannot begin too soon for me.


I say Johnson will be a salubrious force because I have known him since his tenure as editor of The Spectator. He brings to conservatism something it has lacked, at least on this side of the Atlantic, since the presidency of Ronald Reagan and the retirement of William F. Buckley. Frankly, it is my kind of conservatism: libertarian, admiring tradition, and employing government only in those areas where government is needed. After his stint in journalism (where he was superb), Johnson entered Parliament. There he was a Thatcherite, but with beneficent bacteria of skepticism, irony and subversion.


All of this comes together on the campaign trail, where he is a refreshing contrast to the solemn blowhards. Campaigning in upscale Henley, he joshed about his Conservative Party's excessively grim slogan — "You've paid your taxes. So where are the police?" — employing his own whimsical alternative: "You've paid your taxes. So where are the tennis courts?" Campaigning in 2004, he famously declared, "Voting Tory will cause your wife to have bigger breasts and increase your chances of owning a BMW M3." Now after all these months of Barack and Hillary's poppy and cock, imagine the heap Mayor Johnson would leave them in. It is only a matter of time before he returns to his native land and saves conservatism from Newt Gingrich.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

JWR contributor Bob Tyrrell is editor in chief of The American Spectator. Comment by clicking here.

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