Newsgroups: bit.listserv.politics
Date:         Thu, 9 Apr 1992 15:29:00 EST
From:         "Peter J. Schledorn" <UNCPJS@UNC.BITNET>
Subject:      Thought you might be interested...

This is a column that appeared in Newsday in mid-March.  It's by Robert
Reno.  The flap over the House bank has pretty much died down, but Reno
makes enough good points about other matters to make wading through the
old news worthwhile.  Besides, I like the way this guy writes.

Best,
Peter



Rubbergate's no Watergate, or even a Big-Deal Gate

It has been many years since the chairman of the House Ways and Means
Committee was caught frolicking with an Argentine showgirl in the Tidal
Basin.

But not long enough for the country to come--as in its maturity it some
day surely must--to the conclusion that the Congress is pretty much what
it's supposed to be, not _L'Academie_Francaise_, not an assembly of
immortals, not the best and brightest of this nation, yet a place where
it is still realistic to hope that the percentage of fanny-pinchers,
bimbos, felons, windbags, posturers and twits is fairly constant and
never quite as high as in the general population.

Who do we suppose now runs the executive branch if not a former Texas
congressman who, campaigning on a record of marginal legislative
distinction, got the stuffing beat out of him when he ran for the Senate
but earned enough points with Richard Nixon to set him out on a
job-hopping career as party chairman, ambassador to China and CIA
director?  And who, if George Bush were to become demented and be put in
a straitjacket, would succeed him but the one member of the Senate who,
even when dusted off, handled by the best experts the party could find,
surrounded by bodyguards, assigned a limousine and elevated to the vice
leadership of the Free World, has yet to rise to a point where a
majority of Americans, when polled, find him qualified to be President?

Taken as a body, the accomplishments of the last two Congresses may seem
slight.  But if you took all the mildly progressive legislation
President Bush has vetoed or prevented by threat of veto, it makes quite
a package.  And let's face it, it's been ages since a Congress passed
anything as stupid as the Smoot-Hawley Tariff which helped cause the
Great Depression, as offensive as the Chinese Exclusion Act or the
McCarran-Walter Act, which created immigraiton policies that stained the
national honor.  Congressional inquisitions today are models of
constitutional propriety compared with the excesses of the McCarthy era.
And it's been a whole generation since a handful of Southern bigots
could derail a decent piece of civil rights legislation.  That,
curiously enough, is now thought to be the function of the White House.

No, on the whole, I'd stack this present bunch of rascals in Congress up
against their predecessors any day, far sooner than I'd suggest George
Bush or Dan Quayle are fit to sit in succession to Washington or
Jefferson or Frnaklin Roosevelt.  Yet the nation has been seized by some
kind of a moralistic fit about this cash club they had in the House.
Sounds to me like a fine idea.  A bunch of people get together, pool
their paychecks and escape having to deal with the banks that treat you
like dirt, kill you with service fees and charge you $20 for being
overdrawn no matter how good your credit is.  The club isn't Federally
insured, wasn't run by Al D'Amato, is not financed by lobbyists and
special interests like the campaigns of so many congressmen, involved no
public funds, never hired Neil Bush or financed an insolvent shopping
center, was not guilty of fraud or theft, did not represent the
acceptance of special favors from the Mafia or the defense contractors,
did not endanger the stability of the banking system and happened to be
more convenient to some members than others.  Good Lord, who in their
right mind cares?
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