August 21, 1992

Facing a bruising re-election battle in New York, Senator Alfonse M. D'Amato took a swipe at the G.O.P., saying it had focused too intensely on "family values."

Three months after Olympia & York Developments Ltd., the world's biggest property manager, filed for bankruptcy protection in Canada, it is asking its biggest creditors to back a five-year moratorium on debt payments to allow the company to stay in business. The battle has been uphill all the way. Under a proposal Olympia says it will file in a bankruptcy court here on Friday, bank lenders, bondholders and holders of short-term Olympia i.o.u.'s are being asked to postpone the payments on Canadian debts totaling $8.6 billion in return for various forms of equity.

Family values, the 1990's version of apple pie and motherhood, has taken on a far more ominous meaning this week at the Republican National Convention. Republicans have tried to define family values by suggesting that they have them and that Bill and Hillary Clinton do not. But by painting Mrs. Clinton as an unwifely feminist with undue influence on her husband's policy-making -- Gloria Steinem with the claws of Madame Nhu -- Bush strategists may have unleashed an issue that is dividing members of their own party at the same time it is distinguishing their party from the Democrats.

When the Republicans arrived in Houston last weekend, the salient issue of the 1992 Presidential campaign was the economy, and when they leave town this weekend, it will still be the economy. But President Bush reframed the debate tonight, promising across-the-board tax cuts next year if the new Congress agrees to spending cuts to offset them. It was a bold attempt to persuade the American people to forgive him for the increases he accepted in June 1990, and give him another chance. It was also a brisk challenge to the Democrats -- the Democrats who control the House and Senate as well as Mr. Bush's Democratic opponents this fall.

Some people say that Syracuse's proud old downtown began to die when Interstate 81 was built in the 1960's. Others think the suburban malls did it, each more grandiose than the one before, sucking stores and people from the city like so many vampires. Whatever the cause, Doris Smith now finds that her modest office building in the heart of downtown is half-empty and eerily quiet. "It is very sad and very depressing," said Mrs. Smith, a receptionist for an advertising agency where the ground floor was vacated by yet another failed store just two weeks ago. "It's hard to bring any visitors into this city, because it doesn't look very good anymore."