He’s at Outs With Inner Circle

John Kenneth Galbraith, a lifelong Democrat, was an unlikely recipient of an embossed invitation to join the “exclusive” Senatorial Inner Circle, a GOP group whose annual dues go toward getting Republicans elected to the Senate. Even so, Galbraith quickly responded with an acceptance and then went on to give Vice President Dan Quayle a lecture on the ethics of offering dues-payers access to privileged “closed-door” briefings. “Thus far we’ve not received his check for $1,000, so his acceptance sounds a little hollow,” Quayle’s press secretary, David Beckwith, said. In fact, when about a third of the Inner Circle’s 6,000 members were in Washington for various briefings and a cocktail party at the vice president’s residence, Galbraith, who supported Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis’ 1988 presidential bid, was absent. Still, the group does not regret its invitation to the economist. “We don’t really consider his invitation a mistake in that a number of very prominent Republicans were once Democrats,” said Wendy DeMocker, a spokeswoman for the Republican Party group. “Look at Ronald Reagan.”

--Johns Hopkins University trustees have renamed the international studies school The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. Dean George R. Packard said the vote was not sought by Nitze, a co-founder of the school in 1943. The school, located in Washington, is a graduate school of international affairs affiliated with the Johns Hopkins Foreign Policy Institute, conceived by Nitze in 1957. Nitze, 81, headed arms negotiating teams from 1981 to 1984 and for five years was an arms negotiations adviser to former Secretary of State George P. Shultz.

--Officials in Baton Rouge, La., are looking for someone to make rhyme or reason out of events in the state. And they have high standards. “We are looking for someone like a (Carl) Sandburg, a T.S. Eliot or a Robert Frost” to be poet laureate, Ray Beasley of the Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism said. The state Arts Council is looking for a poet to serve as the state’s chief balladeer, extolling the virtues of Louisiana and the state’s “literary excellence and understanding of the literary arts,” Beasley said. The position, created in 1942, has been empty since Jean M. Boese of Alexandria left office last year. Gov. Buddy Roemer will name the poet after receiving recommendations from the arts panel.