From: athos@apple.com (Rick Eames)
Subject: George Will: Commentary on Herschensohn
Date: Sat, 3 Oct 1992 22:13:42 GMT
Organization: Apple Computer, Inc.
Followup-To: ca.politics,ba.politics


GEORGE WILL: At Least One of These, Please.

The finest words spoken so far in this political season were: "I don't 
want some poor guy in West Virginia, who works in a coal mine, to chip in 
for a subway he'll never see."  So spoke Bruce Herschensohn, a California 
Republican seeking a U.S. Senate seat.  His is this year's most 
interesting candidacy because of how his victory would improve Congress.

Asked in a public meeting to say what Congress does that he condones, 
Herschensohn said he supports programs that are pertinent to the duties 
of the federal government.  Right there is a hint of how radical 
Herschensohn is: he thinks not everything is pertinent.  He is as radical 
as our Founders, who favored a federal government of limited and 
enumerated powers.  For example, Herschensohn says the federal government 
is properly involved with airlines and other interstate transportation.  
But not with, say, urban mass transit.  He recalled a Los Angeles mayor 
returning from a foraging trip to Washington and boasting about how much 
federal money he had scooped up for his city's subway.  Then Herschensohn 
said those words about the coal miner.

Today a willingness to spend other people's money to please one's own 
constituents is taken to be the measure of a politician's moral stature.  
But Herschensohn's words about the West Virginian post this question: How 
can the compassion-mongers in Congress claim to have cornered the market 
on "caring"?  Who is more genuinely compassionate, Herschensohn or the 
moral grandstanders at the opposite end of the political spectrum?  
California, which is weighty enough to nudge the nation toward new 
thinking, can do so by answering in the affirmative this question: Does 
the nation need--and deserve--one senator who is alert to the moral 
ambiguities and constitutional dubiousness of much of what Washington now 
does?

Herschensohn's persona -- part basset hound, part pixie -- is a 
cartoonist's delight.  His sleepy eyes and bright smile are framed by a 
thick shock of gray hair -- a Marx brothers composite, bits of Chico and 
Harpo.  But his arrival in the Senate Republican cloakroom would increase 
by about 10 percent the ranks of the thoughtful people there, and would 
markedly increase the wisdom of the Senate as a whole.  He has made 
documentary movies, has worked in the White House and for 13 years has 
been a radio and television commentator.  He is a genuinely friendly and 
funny man, about as menacing as a chocolate eclair, but he is a 
Washington lobbyist's nightmare.  This is so because he wants much of 
Washington's power to go back where it came from -- to states, 
localities, voluntary associations, individuals.  Furthermore, he favors 
a flat tax.  His proposed tax form, the size of a postcard, would put out 
of business Washington's parasite class that makes money not by making 
anything for the marketplace but by manipulating the tax code for the 
convenience of clients.

Here the three items just from last week that demonstrate why at least 
one Herschensohn is needed in Washington to raise an eyebrow about 
routine goings-on:

The Senate overrode President Bush's veto of the "family leave" bill.  It 
would require businesses to give employees, for family reasons (illness, 
birth, adoptions), up to 12 weeks leave per year without pay but with 
continuing health care benefits and a right to return to the same job.  
The veto was for "competitiveness" reasons: family leave is a regulatory 
burden.  A better -- a Herschensohnean -- reason is that the bill 
reflects reasoning that is ruining American government.  The reasoning 
is: family leave is a nice idea; all nice ideas should either be enacted 
or mandated by government; the federal government is the first, not the 
last, recourse for social improvement.

Last week Congress passed a bill that addresses, with hot urgency, a 
national grievance.  Which one, you ask?  The deficit?  Children in 
poverty?  Exploding health care costs?  No.  What galvanized Congress is 
that people are paying more than they would prefer to pay for cable 
television.  So Congress wants the government to establish a "reasonable" 
price.  Once upon a time, price controls were extraordinary measures for 
essential goods (sugar, meat) made scarce by emergencies, such as war.  
Now Congress wants to control the price of an entertainment option.  The 
price controllers in Congress say most cable franchises to not have 
"direct competitors."  The Devil is the adjective "direct."  Over-the-air 
television, cinemas, bookstores -- there are lots of competitors for 
American's entertainment dollars.  But cable prices shall be controlled 
as Congress goes a-pandering.

Last week the University of California's Board of Regents accepted a 
bequest to fund scholarships for "Caucasian"  students.  The civil rights 
movement's original struggle was to make America colorblind.  But now in 
Berkeley, the Vatican City of liberalism, whites-only programs are 
approved.  Liberalism has become a pretzel-like persuasion, so twisted 
that it rationalizes racial, ethnic and sexual spoils systems as part of 
the "Identity politics" now Balkanizing America into grievance groups.  
Each group nourishes its unassuageable sense of victimization and demands 
that group rights supersede individual rights.

Fitting filigree: In opposing all such stuff, Herschensohn draws upon the 
Founders' thinking about limited government and federalism.  He stands in 
the noble tradition -- call it Jeffersonian -- that says that the federal 
government should do only what individuals can not do for themselves; and 
only what other institutions -- the family, voluntary associations, local 
and state governments -- can not do.  Herschensohn in the Senate would be 
a fitting filigree on next year's celebration of the 250th anniversary of 
Jefferson's birth.

His opponent, five-term Congresswoman Barbara Boxer, is a feisty 
hyperliberal from Marin County, the San Francisco suburb that even "San 
Francisco Democrats" consider a bit much.  She and he were invited to a 
meeting of elderly and mostly liberal San Franciscans to give yes or no 
answers to 10 questions.  She sent videotaped answers, all 10 exactly 
what the crowd wanted to hear.  He appeared in person and gave eight 
"wrong" answers.

It will not matter much if she joins the dozens like her in the Senate.  
However, the Senate will be a much better place if it has a Herschensohn 
there to give everyone a history lesson and an uneasy conscience almost 
every day.

--
Rick Eames                               My Opinions Are My Own (not
Apple's)
athos@apple.com

HERSCHENSOHN for US Senate.  Just say "No" to Barbara Boxer.
Newsgroups: ba.politics,ca.politics