The 62nd chairman of the Republican National Committee, Ken Mehlman, greeted an overflow crowd in Midtown on Wednesday as he spoke before the New York Lawyers chapter of the Federalist Society.

His topic was “The Republican Legal and Policy Agenda: A View From Washington.”

Nicholas Stathis welcomed the audience and introduced John Shu of Simpson Thacher, who in turn introduced the youthful-looking RNC chairman. Mr. Shu said Mr. Mehlman was a Harvard Law School graduate who practiced environmental law in Washington, D.C., was White House political director from 2001 to 2003, and was campaign manager for the Bush-Cheney ticket in 2004. “Most importantly,” Mr. Shu said to audience mirth, “He’s one of us: a Federalist Society member.”

Mr. Mehlman said that while in law school he had been articles editor of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, a leading forum for conservative and libertarian legal scholarship. “I was a member of the vast right-wing conspiracy before it was vast,” he quipped. He described how 50 years ago William F. Buckley Jr. founded the National Review. He said Mr. Buckley and other editors at the time sought to “stand athwart the course of history, shouting, ‘Halt!'” Times are different, Mr. Mehlman said, and the Democrats are the ones who are seeking to shout “Halt!” to history’s course. He described the Democratic chorus of “just say no” to ideas such as tax relief.

Mr. Mehlman compared Senator Kennedy’s 1980 convention speech, in which he said, “The party of the people must always be the party of full employment,” with Senator Kerry’s statement that he was an entrepreneurial Democrat who did not want to “lead a party that loves jobs but hates the people who create them.” The audience roared when Mr. Mehlman added, “No one is going to mistake John Kerry for Milton Friedman.”

Mr. Mehlman spoke of the “defeatist language of Moveon.org” as opposed to the party of Lincoln, which trusts the people. He recalled how the late Pauline Kael was shocked at Nixon’s landslide election in 1972, since she didn’t know anyone who voted for him. He said, to audience laughter, that those like Kael and her friends “would be well advised to get to know more and different people.”

He also outlined the Republican view that judges should interpret the law rather than legislate from the bench. Mr. Mehlman criticized the recent Supreme Court Kelo decision, which he said rivaled “Orwellian doublespeak” in ruling that “private property can be taken for private use.”

Before taking questions from the audience, Mr. Shu encouraged the audience to have “more pitch and less windup,” that is, that they not make speeches in asking their questions. John Oldham McGinnis, a professor at Northwestern University School of Law, asked about the uneasy coalition of social and economic conservatives. Mr. Mehlman said the traditional fault lines have been eliminated by focusing on the various issues both have in common, such as limited government.

One questioner asked Mr. Mehlman to name some blogs he reads. He mentioned InstaPundit, RealClearPolitics.com, Patrick-Ruffini.com, and GOP.com.

In the audience were RNC press secretary Tracey Schmitt; attorney Stephen King of Hunton & Williams; JoLinda Ruth Cogen, a Manhattan district leader of the New York Republican County Committee; Deroy Murdock, president of Loud & Clear Communications; Kevin Hanratty, deputy counsel of New York State Office of Homeland Security; Donald Rosenberg of the National Traditionalist Caucus; Susan Rowe of Junto, a monthly group that meets in the city to discuss issues relating to libertarianism and investing; and Albert Zevelev, an undergraduate at Brandeis University who is working this summer at the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America.

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LEAPING LIST!

We love lists, whether they are best-selling books, top-grossing films, or most home runs per baseball season. Unusual for this genre is “America’s Irreplaceable Dance Treasures: The First 100,” an exhibition running through August 20 at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Why? “Dance is pretty intangible,” said Douglas Sonntag, who serves as director of the office of national initiatives at the National Endowment for the Arts. He was speaking at a panel last month at the Bruno Walter Auditorium with the executive director of the Dance Heritage Coalition, Elizabeth Aldrich, and the co-curators of the exhibition Lynn Garafola, and Norton Owen.

As Ms. Aldrich explained, the exhibition was inspired by the Dance Heritage Coalition’s plans for the millennium. They compiled a list of dance treasures – sending questionnaires to 12,000 to 15,000 people whose names were drawn from sources such as dance lists, the YMCA, and grassroots outreach. More than 900 responses came in, which were vetted by expert panelists.

Among the many film clips included in the exhibition are “Incense,” choreographed and performed by Ruth St. Denis; “Lamentation,” choreographed and performed by Martha Graham; and Savion Glover performing at Jacob’s Pillow.

Mr. Owen gave a humorous example of people’s hunger for this material. He said at the exhibition’s opening reception, the film clips that run continuously in the gallery were muted. Attendees were seen happily watching them, even before the sound was turned on again. The audience laughed when Mr. Sonntag explained that the year 2000 was key in generating such projects: “You need millennia a little more often.”

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NEW JOB, SIMILAR SKILLS

Michael Bailey has been well known as maitre d’ at Lever House and Michael’s restaurant in Midtown. He has now become director of new sales for Troy, whose retail store on Greene Street in SoHo features European and American furniture by designers such as Hans J. Wegner, Carl Hansen, and Arne Jacobsen. Mr. Bailey informed friends and acquaintances: “I can still get you a great table … or a chair for that matter!”