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Subject: How About We Chuck the Don Hewitt<
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 92 04:42:06 EST
Message-ID: <38.1992Nov12.044207@AmeriCast.com>

How About We Chuck the Parties?<By Don Hewitt<

 Of all the presidents I have covered, from Harry Truman to
George Bush, I don't remember one of them ever being more
delighted than when he could brag about "bipartisan support" or
tell Congress that what he was asking for was "a nonpartisan is-
sue." Mostly, that particular situation arose when a president
wanted to go to war.

  But how about when he wants to give the people who went to war
some of what they went to war about - a job, a home, decent air
to breathe, a good school and a good teacher for his children and
an adequate, if not excellent, health care system? Are those
"partisan" issues, or do they deserve the same "bipartisan" sup-
port that going to war always gets? Isn't it about time we took
our troubles as seriously as we take our wars?

 If this year's operative phrase is "mandate for change," how
about a real change? How about we go "bipartisan" one better and
go "nonpartisan." If giving both Congress and the White House to
the same party is the way to end the gridlock for the next four
years, how about we do it for keeps and give Congress and the
White House to neither party ... ever again!

 As a New York Post headline said when the Communists called it
quits in Moscow, "The Party's Over." Maybe ours is too and
nobody's noticed. Can anybody name one issue facing theTry giving
committee chairmanships for reasons other than political
patronage.country this year that you can't find Republicans and
Democrats on either side of ... abortion, health care, education,
capital gains taxes, gasoline taxes ... you name it.  Except as a
way to hand out patronage, "the political party" went out with
the icebox and the running board. Just look at Jack Kemp and Jer-
ry Brown. You can't get farther apart than those two, and they're
both for a flat tax. Barry Goldwater is pro-choice. Guys like
John Connally and Strom Thurmond are no different as Republicans
than they were as Democrats.

Wouldn't we put a permanent crimp in the Washington gridlock if
it were decreed that you can run as a Democrat or a Republican
(nobody would deny you that), but once you're elected you're nei-
ther. You're not the Democratic senator from West Virginia.
You're the United States senator from West Virginia. Remove the
middle aisle in the House and Senate and you ipso facto remove
the roadblock. Senators and representatives would be seated al-
phabetically, not by party, because once you're elected you don't
belong to a party, you belong to the Senate or the House. When
it's time to run again, be my guest, pick a party, any party, and
run as its standard bearer or favorite son or whatever. But if
you're lucky enough to get reelected, you leave your campaign
buttons and bows back home in Indiana or North Dakota or Minneso-
ta or wherever you came from and come to Washington as a member
of the legislative branch of the federal government.  And that
would go double for a president. No more Democrats or Republicans
in the Oval Office - just presidents, and an executive branch
that reflects the population as a whole and not just those who
marched under the same banner the president marched under to get
elected.

Can the government be organized except along party lines? Of
course it can. Try it. You'll like it. Try giving committee
chairmanships to congressmen and senators for reasons other than
political patronage. Let the body as a whole elect a speaker of
the House and a president of the Senate. Decide issues on their
merits, not on narrow political concerns. Act as a Congress of
all the people, not just of the party in power and watch the
gridlock break.<The writer is executive producer of "60
Minutes."<02:30 11-12C9999-----

Copyright 1992, The Washington Post.  This story is from the
Washington Post's Capitol Edition On-Line and is not to be ar-
chived or redistributed.

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