The right questions: what the candidates should be asked - questions to ask presidential and congressional candidates

Washington Monthly, July-August, 1996 by Morton Mintz

In November 1942, Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles learned authoritatively from the U.S. legation in Switzerland that Hitler had ordered the extermination of all Jews in Nazi-controlled Europe. Welles confided this information to Dr. Stephen Wise, the country's foremost Jewish leader, who in turn called a press conference in Washington. The horrifying news was widely reported, even if it was not a major story in any of 19 leading newspapers.

But, as David Wyman revealed in The Abandonment of the Jews, it apparently didn't occur to any White House correspondent to put a perfectly professional question like this one to Franklin D. Roosevelt: "Mr. President, Rabbi Wise says the government knows authoritatively that the Nazis intend to exterminate the Jews in the occupied countries. Is this true, and if it is, what will you do about it?" FDR normally held press conferences twice a week--an extraordinary frequency. Had he been forced to grapple publicly with such a question, many innocent lives could have been saved. After all, it was pressure from within his own administration that led him belatedly to create the War Refugee Board, which saved hundreds of thousands of Jewish lives. Instead, Wyman writes, "The first clear comment [from FDR] on the mass killing of Jews came on March 24, 1944." That was 16 months after Wise's press conference.

Notwithstanding their defects--growing concentration, shrinking staffs, celebrity mania, loony news judgments and the rest--publications and airwaves are filled with facts that could give rise to all manner of tough, essential questions for present and would-be officeholders. Particularly in the television age, merely posing a question can enlighten viewers. But reporters ask such questions all too rarely. President Bush, for example, was never asked if deregulation had contributed to the savings and loan debacle, even though Vice President Bush had led the President's Task Force on Deregulation for eight years. In May 1988, the surgeon general announced that cigarettes "are addicting in the same sense as are drugs such as heroin and cocaine." But neither then nor after the nominating conventions were the presidential candidates asked if they agreed with the report, and if they did, how they would justify taking campaign money from tobacco interests.

The 1996 election campaigns offer reporters priceless opportunities--in interviews, briefings, and press conferences--to serve the public by exploring a wide range of issues that matter greatly but are ignored nonetheless. To help ensure that these opportunities will not be squandered, here is a sampling of the kinds of questions, accompanied where necessary by brief summaries of the facts they spring from, that should be put to presidential, Senate, and House candidates.

For All Candidates

The principal rationale for continuing Cold War military budgets is that we must be able to fight two major regional wars at the same time. The Pentagon wants to spend $1 trillion for a new generation of jet fighters--about $10,000 for every household in America--although we already have the world's best.

Q. What is the threat that justifies continuing military spending at Cold War levels?

Q. On what basis do you accept or reject the two-wars-at-once rationale?

Q. How will the country be better served by spending the equivalent of six times the budget deficit on jet fighters, or $30 billion on B-2 bombers the Joint Chiefs of Staff say they do not need, rather than spending that money on, say, health care, infrastructure, or education?

The common law defines bribery as "a receipt of anything of value where the intent is to influence" someone "in his official capacity."

Q. Is it bribery to make campaign "contributions" intended to abort, procure, or defeat legislation?

Q. Does the existing system of campaign finance nourish bribery?

Q. Does the system favor the wealthy over the poor?

Last year, the two biggest contributors of "soft money" to the Republican and Democratic party committees were the cigarette companies Philip Morris and RJR Nabisco. Together, they invested more than $2 million. In the past 10 years, tobacco PACs invested nearly $10 million in congressional races. Meanwhile, tobacco-related diseases are the largest single cause of preventable death in America.

Q. Would you, or why do you, take money from the producers of these products?

Q. Given that our excise taxes on tobacco are the lowest imposed by any of 13 industrialized countries, and that experts predict a tax increase of $2 a pack would avoid 1.9 million premature deaths, do you favor or oppose increasing the federal excise tax on cigarettes?

The Congressional Budget Office says that Congress could cut federal spending sharply by denying the mortgage interest deduction to the wealthiest Americans. Limiting the deduction to loans of no more than $300,000 would save $34.8 billion in just five years.

Q. Should middle-class home-owners and renters who can't afford to buy a house in the first place continue to subsidize mortgage interest deductions for buyers of the most expensive homes?