Who's Who.

George W. Bush has been plowing new ground in English usage. To resolve disputes between patients and insurers, he has called for an "arbitrary panel" Describing the need for a strong defense, he replied, "there is madmen in the world and there are terror." On another occasion, he promised to "use our technology to enhance uncertainties abroad." When first asked by reporters why he hadn't denounced Bob Jones University's anti-Catholicism and its then-opposition to interracial dating, he said "I did denounce it ... I denounced interracial dating." Bush then reached for a new height in linguistic creativity by saying "I denounced anti-Catholic bigacy." The governor had coined a totally new word--"bigacy," but then perhaps awed by what he had done, he retreated to the conventional and corrected himself to say "bigotry."

There has been considerable comment in the media about Bill Clinton's loneliness since Hillary moved to New York. But she's been away from the White House before. In fact, not even counting all her domestic travel, she had by the end of last year taken 52 international trips according to Paul Bedard of U.S. News & World Report. Twenty-four of them, taking at least 121 days, were without her husband.

One reason that Jamie Rubin is leaving his job as State Department spokesman this month is that he wants to join his wife Christiane Amanpour in London. Another may be that, according to Jane Perlez of The New York Times, his boss Madeline Albright has lost the power struggle that secretaries of state traditionally have with national security advisors. Albright lost to Sandy Berger, not only because of the physical proximity to Bill Clinton that his West Wing office gives him, but because his personal relationship with the president is closer than Albright's.

When George W. Bush appeared on "Late Show with David Letterman," Jennifer Harper of the conservative Washington Times reported that "a grinning sure-footed Mr. Bush held his own with Mr. Letterman who told the governor he looked like `a million dollars."' The New York Times took a somewhat different tack. Its story, headlined "Bush Muffs Letterman's Late-Night Opportunity" and written by Caryn James said, "Imagine, then, what a comic flop he had to be to elicit groans and boos from the audience, as he did with jokes about Mr. Letterman's recent heart surgery." In case you missed it, here's what Bush said about the surgery: "I'm a uniter not a divider. That means when it comes time to sew up your chest cavity, we use stitches as opposed to opening it up."

As for the Democratic candidates, the columnist Mary McGrory says Al Gore tends "to lecture his audiences as if they were enrolled in an English-as-a-second-language class. He has the reflexes of a tin soldier--he turns his head carefully, and his arms seem to be taking signals from some other nerve center."

In a similar vein, comedian Bill Maher said that if the California debate between Gore and Bill Bradley had been on Fox, the title would have been "who Wants to Marry a Monotone?"

If you've been wondering what Linda Tripp has been doing since her $26,000 facelift, nose job, chin implant, and neck fat removal, Steve Vogel has the--dare we use the word--skinny. She's a public affairs specialist at DMDC, which stands for Defense Manpower Data Center. It is located, not at the Pentagon, but in a Rosslyn office building, which Washingtonians will recognize as the home of Red, Hot, & Blue, the late Lee Atwater's favorite restaurant. What is she doing to earn her $98,744 annual salary? She was, says her boss, the "primary person responsible" for mailing Department of Defense Military Funeral Honors kits to funeral directors, and is now developing a public affairs program for new Defense Department identification cards. And as any fool knows, nothing needs a public affairs program like an identification card does.

John M. Deutch, the former CIA director who seems to have confided too much to his computer, "was highly unpopular at the CIA" according to The Washington Post's Vernon Loeb. He may be held in even lower regard on Capitol Hill. During a recent speech at the Smithsonian, John Mills, the chief of staff of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, was asked to name the worst CIA directors. He answered that Deutch takes "first, second, and third prize."

Helen Dewar of The Washington Post recently wrote a column saying that "moderate senators of both parties are beginning to show new signs of life." But if you looked closely at the story, only seven senators were named. And five of them are Democrats: John Breaux, Evan Bayh, John Edwards, Blanche Lincoln, and Joseph Lieberman. Only two, George Voinovich and Olympia Snow, are Republicans.

Georgette Mosbacher, the former wife of Robert Mosbacher, the Secretary of Commerce under Daddy Bush, complains that her husband has stopped payment on the $32,064 monthly alimony she is supposed to get. One reason, according to a Reuters report relayed by Al Kamen, is that she was backing John McCain instead of her ex's friend, George W. Bush.

Arnold Beichman, a Cold War scholar and columnist, says that of the top 24 office holders appointed by Vladimir Putin, the former KGB spy who is acting president of Russia, "10 have secret police backgrounds?'

Slate's Timothy Noah picked up our January-February item about the Skull & Bones directive advising fellow members not to tattle on George W. Bush. Noah added something we hadn't known about Delta Kappa Epsilon, another fraternal organization to which W. belonged while at Yale. Dekes brand their members, a practice the Yale Daily News has described as "degrading, sadistic, and obscene?' W. was president of the Dekes. But, Noah also tells us, W. only joined Skull & Bones instead of a "less elite (and from the sound of its name more party-hearty) secret society called `Gin & Tonic"' because Daddy told him to.