Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.natrev From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: On the Right Date: Fri, 30 Oct 92 13:09:31 EST Message-ID: On the Right The Second Debate: Dull NEW YORK, OCTOBER 16 The second presidential debate was the most boring ninety minutes of tel- evision of the year. And one reason for it is that the candidates appeared to have no alternative but to talk about their singular qualifications. Now this is seriously difficult to do. When a junior employee goes to his boss and recites his accomplishments, putting in for a raise or for a promo- tion, it is a private conference, and the solicitor can speak about his ac- complishments without the embarrassment of being heard other than by the person he is addressing. The presidential debates, as they have evolved, haven't taken stock of the human reluctance to hear John praise John. How wonderful and unique was John's family and John's training, how dizzying John's escape from conventional life and obligations, how striking his devotion to the welfare of others, how unique John's vision. Now . . . Have you ever stood up and addressed a party of more than one person, about your singular attributes? If so, you were probably drunk; and almost certainly the people you addressed wished they had been elsewhere. Ross Perot homed in on his own wealth and on the skills he obviously disposed of to accumulate those billions a half-dozen times. He, Ross Perot, knew something about how to create jobs. He, Ross Perot, was spending his own money to get to the people. He, Ross Perot, wasn't using any spin doctors or any speechwriters. And, yes, he Ross Perot isn't going to get elected. The contrast with alternative arrangements is very easy to consider be- cause such arrangements are offered almost every day, specifically on the MacNeil/Lehrer program, where a representative of the Bush camp will argue with a representative of the Clinton camp over the desirability or feasibility of that day's proposal. If it is my job as an advocate to describe situations in which the character of George Bush irradiated from the ac- tion he took or the words he spoke, I can do this without generating that queasy feeling. Yes, the second debate would have engaged the attention of the viewer if three eloquent lawyers, representing the three candidates, had answered the questions on their behalf: free of that awkward encum- brance of singing one's own praises. Such a formula would also permit the person being addressed to deal appropriately with questions from the floor that are not very bright. One questioner wanted to know whether any one of the three candidates had suffered personally from the size of the national deficit, and inasmuch as manifestly this was not the case, how could the candidates know what such deficits imposed on lesser people? She should have been told that the question was silly: most people on earth spend most of their time dealing with the problems of others, whether it's doctors or electricians or teach- ers. An undertaker can understand his business without dying. But al- though George Bush did blurt out that you don't have to have cancer in order to understand the problems of cancer, a whole lot of time was spent trying to cope with the question in such a way as not to hurt the feelings of the questioner, and so appear to be brusque and unfeeling. There are some things one would not get, if one's case were represented by an advocate. H. Ross Perot's charm comes across primarily through the vehicle of his accent. ''Wen all those bihgg ahdeeas ahrrived 'n Washinton, they ahrrived daid!'' is a line that can bring down the house when spoken by a Ross Perot or an Andy Devine, but just imagine how the line would sound if spoken by George Plimpton (or me)? But this is not a plea to do away with the candidates themselves. Let them come on to give an oration or two, spoken as though from the Oval Office, giving a fireside chat to the people. This would permit the public to pass judgment on whether the candidate was ''presidential.'' But a keener judgment would be had on whether the candidates' ideas on how to approach the deficit, gun control, health costs, and free trade were convincing. Who Won? NEW YORK, OCTOBER 4 The exchange between Mr. Quayle and Mr. Gore (Admiral Stockdale was sadly out of place) was interesting in what it told us about the partici- pants and their relative skills, and interesting in what it tells us about the lamentable shape of political debate. 1. Dan Quayle is considerably transformed from the Quayle who took on Lloyd Bentsen four years ago. He was fast on his feet, aggressive, re- sourceful. 2. But the public was steered by Mr. Quayle into a very sticky corner, and it is just possible that the majority of those who listened to his prin- cipal argument are not going to like its implications, not at all. What the Vice President said not once but four times was that Bill Clinton has not established that he is fit to serve as President of the United States. Now there are problems with taking that position. The first of them is that Mr. Clinton has the Democratic nomination. His infelicitous personal record has been inspected more often than a space shuttle, and whatever loose nuts and bolts the people found there, they nevertheless declared first in the primaries, then at the convention in New York City, then to the pollsters, that Clinton is the man they want as President. So what Mr. Quayle found himself having to say is that the person a majority of the American people as of this moment desire to see move into the White House isn't qualified to serve there. And then in making his case for the disqualifications of Clinton, Mr. Quayle relies on preposterous historical arguments. He told the public that when a President deals with foreign leaders, they have to trust that President, and how is this possible, given that Mr. Clinton has lied or dis- sembled about his draft record, his activities as a student demonstrator in England, etc. etc? But a kindergarten knowledge of history teaches us that foreign leaders only occasionally keep their promises. There are twenty broken treaties for every treaty that has survived. Roosevelt broke his word with the American people about staying out of the war, Kennedy broke his word to the Cuban people, Nixon broke promises made by JFK, LBJ, and Nixon to stand by the people of Vietnam. George Bush broke his implicit and ex- plicit word to Iraqis whom he urged to rise up against Saddam Hussein -- the record of broken promises takes us past de Gaulle and the Algeri- ans, to the Allied Powers and Poland . . . and nobody ever said that Rich- elieu made his reputation by keeping his word. Anyway, at a level Mr. Quayle has to live with, the word of George Bush on the matter of taxes was never bankable. 3. The public was left to decide as between the platitudes exchanged -- which were the most shallow? Gore is in love with the denunciation of ''trickle-down economics.'' Why? Seven blocks from where I live there is a store whose florid markings are now tatterdemalion, but you can still make them out: ''TCBY,'' The Country's Best Yogurt. Two years ago a cou- ple financed the lease of the space, and bought a license to sell TCBY fro- zen yogurt. The investment (a conjecture) was in the neighborhood of $120,000. Four employees were hired. Fourteen months later, it closed down. If the volume of business had been 20 per cent higher than it was, the entrepreneurs would have made enough money to pay the rent and to pay the bank and to maintain their license: and if they had succeeded, their four employees would still be at work. And our Democratic friends call that, disdainfully, ''trickle-down.'' It would have been refreshing if Mr. Quayle had asked Mr. Gore to give us an example of ''trickle-up'' econom- ics. It can only be defined as the government getting into the business of selling frozen yogurt. If Mr. Quayle wants to pin Mr. Clinton to the wall, why doesn't he talk about Clinton's miserable record on the matter of Supreme Court Justices, whom he is on record as believing should be free of litmus-test selection, but believes now must be consecrated to the cause of free abortions, for those babies that slip by the free condoms that must be provided in those free schools to which Americans must send their children because they would not under a Clinton Administration be permitted to put in for a voucher to go to a private school? The one thing poor Mr. Quayle couldn't say is what the logic of his argu- ment leads him to: Bill Clinton is a mess, and the American people are about to vote in a mess as President of the United States. What Happened to Federalism? NEW YORK, OCTOBER 19 It defies understanding why Mr. Bush hasn't resurrected the idea of the federal system, brilliantly relevant at this moment, when a) the country is broke, and b) people are wanting a whole lot of extra government serv- ices. I have in mind the state of Hawaii. You have probably heard that in Hawaii they have an all but universal health-care system (97 per cent coverage) which went into effect what seems like back around the time of the Civil War, though the actual date is 1975. Under the law passed at that time, everyone who works more than twenty hours a week for anybody has to have health insurance, paid one-half by the employer, one-half by the employee. The question naturally arises, If it is a good idea (and it is popular in Hawaii), why don't other states do the same kind of thing? The first objection is that Hawaii is relatively rich and can afford amen- ities other states can't. Let us put a final answer to that question in abey- ance while we survey some relevant figures. Last November, what one might call the counter-Bush revolution started. It was in Pennsylvania, when a relative unknown (though Harris Wofford has been in politics almost forever) beat Pennsylvania crown prince Dick Thornburgh in the special election to choose a successor to the late Senator Heinz. Mr. Wofford ran a one-theme campaign: He wanted federal health insurance. And indeed, three months ago, Bill Clinton was nominated for President on the promise that he would instigate such a system, from sea to shining sea. Now, Hawaii ranks 13th among the states in wealth, with per-capita in- come of $16,898. Pennsylvania is not quite up there, at #20, but not very far away, with its per-capita wealth of $16,168. The idea that Pennsylva- nia could not afford what Hawaii can afford is not easy to maintain, at least, not outside Pennsylvania. Because, of course, the general impres- sion is that any extra federal measure means that federal dollars, rather than state dollars, are going to come in to finance that measure. Hawaii sends 95 cents to Washington for every dollar it takes in from Washing- ton; and Pennsylvania sends 91 cents for every dollar. Unless the planted axiom is that the entire cost of federal health insurance is going to be borne by those few states that send in more to Washington than they get back, what we are really talking about is self-financing health plans, and that leaves us wondering why Senator Wofford didn't propose to the voters of Pennsylvania that they do exactly what the voters in Hawaii did: set up their own system. It would not have to be exactly the same in detail -- that is the purpose of the federal system, to permit individual states to experiment with refer- ence to the exact nature of their own problems, their own dispositions, and their own priorities. It remains the case that Hawaii is administering uni- versal health care at a cost lower than that in much-admired health plans such as Canada's. And because employees recognize that a rise in health- care costs will mean that their own premiums will rise, there is a certain caution in the use of services. ''You are not seeing people missing immuni- zations,'' was how one pediatrician recently put it. ''We are seeing kids al- most every two months, and it's these kinds of visits that will prevent ill- ness and accidents.'' In Hawaii, if a hospital or a clinic wants to add beds or high-tech equip- ment, it must first get permission to do so from state boards that watch carefully as the dollars go out. The result, according to a story in the Washington Post, is that ''hospital and emergency room use is one-third lower than the national average, and during peak flu season it is not unusual to have week-waits for elective surgery.'' Nurse-practitioners are used ''to treat minor illness and to manage patients with chronic but stabilized maladies. Nurse practitioners typically earn one-third of a doctor's salary.'' There are complaints (of course there are complaints. There are always complaints. You shoulda seen the service we got the other day on that flight to Houston!). Why should the plan finance in vitro fertilization? Why shouldn't the plan finance visits to psychiatrists? And so on. The quarrel between Bush and Clinton should be over whether the Fed- eral Government should chip in to help the 10 poorest states, or the 15 poorest states. At least we would be talking in realistic terms, and taking advantage of the fleeted flexibilities of a federal system. (Universal Press Syndicate) This article is copyright 1992 National Review. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM