Tilting at Windmills - possible presidential campaign strategies, opinions on other news items

Washington Monthly, Dec, 1999 by Charles Peters

Brand Name Schools * Freeh's Favorites * The Missing Macintosh * The Gym Teacher's Desk * The Two Dozen Harleys * Bits and Pieces of a Democratic Manifesto

"BRAND-NAME SCHOOLS AREN'T always better," was the headline above Michelle Singletary's article in The Washington Post. I thought I had found a soulmate! As regular readers know, I always urge students to look not at the name of the school but to the strength of the departments in the area of study they are interested in. Do they have good professors? Do the professors actually teach? But this is not what Singletary was interested in. Her concern was that "pricey schools aren't necessarily the deciding factor in helping students make big bucks after graduation." Isn't one purpose of a good education that it helps the student see that some things are more important than the big bucks?

FOR MOST OF HIS PRESIDENCY, I could not be counted among Ronald Reagan's fans. But sometimes his speeches, like the one he made in Normandy on the 40th anniversary of D-Day, or something he said--like calling the Soviet Union "the evil empire"--struck me as just right. The most thrilling moment for me came when he stood in Berlin and said, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." I was thus dismayed to find Edmund Morris' Dutch saying of that moment, "What a rhetorical opportunity missed. He could have read Robert Frost's poem on the subject."

TOBY NEEDS A BOOSTER SHOT and a heartworm test, The Washington Post's Colbert King was recently reminded by his dog's veterinarian. "It hit me then and there," writes King. "In more than 40 years of uninterrupted participation in America's health care system--a period during which I never missed a premium payment, always paid my deductibles and co-payments on time, unfailingly presented myself for examination in clean underwear and with all teeth brushed, always received whatever treatment was dispensed with gratitude bordering on obsequiousness--no doctor's office has ever initiated contact with me about anything remotely related to the maintenance of my health and general well-being."

My experience has been the same. I've had some calls from dentists reminding me that I'm due for a check-up or a cleaning, but to the best of my recollection never from a physician.

Sometimes I've been just as happy that they didn't call and ask if I was sticking to my diet or cutting down on my drinking--but part of me wondered why they didn't. More important, why didn't they call to say "It's time for a flu shot" or to say "At your age you really should have your heart checked or better still, come in for a complete physical"?

CALVIN S. KINNEY, A GYM teacher in the D.C. schools, recently got a 12 to 36 year sentence for having sex with several 14-year old girls. Opinions may vary about the sentence, but what is beyond understanding is the judgment of the school authorities who assigned Kinney a desk. It was located in the girls' locker room.

DID YOU SEE KEN STARR'S PIECE in The Wall Street Journal trying to explain his disastrous investigation? He points out that 75 percent of Whitewater cases ended in hung juries compared to a 5 percent hung jury rate in criminal trials generally. This he attributes to "some people entered the jury room with agendas" and "judges sometimes appear to be swayed by politics." Couldn't another explanation be that Starr presented unconvincing evidence?

Start does concede that he should not have taken on Monicagate, Travelgate or Filegate: "Moving beyond Whitewater/Madison slowed our progress, increased our costs and fostered a damaging perception of empire building."

It is incredible to me that all of this investigation--Whitewater, Filegate, Travelgate and Monicagate--produced no indictment against Bill or Hillary Clinton other than that he had lied about a personal matter, having nothing to do with his public duty. And that indictment--which is what impeachment by the House constituted--produced no conviction. Nor did any of the investigations by four other independent counsels of Clinton cabinet members produce a conviction, except on a lie by Henry Cisneros, also about a personal matter having nothing to do with his public duties.

Yet the Clinton administration is depicted again and again by the Republicans and by a large part --probably a majority--of the media as "scandal-plagued" or "scandal-ridden."

I don't think the Democrats can win if they don't fight back--if they accept that Bill Clinton is a corrupt president who sold the Lincoln Bedroom. Democrats should answer Thank God for the Lincoln Bedroom. Decent politicians get down on their knees and pray for innocent favors they can do for their contributors. How much better to offer a night's sleep at the White House than a change of administration policy on an important issue. Bill Clinton hasn't sold out to the bad guys--the gun lobby or the tobacco lobby. How many Republicans can say the same!

SPEAKING OF THE GUN LOBBY, The Wall Street Journal's Paul Barrett and Vanessa O'Connell have recently written about evidence that its power is declining. One fact in their report that fascinated me is that the gun lobby's constituency is shrinking. "Hunters and target shooters--the industry's core market--are gradually walking away from those sports ... Most ominously, gun companies' efforts to cultivate new buyers among women and teenagers have failed to stem the erosion."