The Arrogance of the Self-Indulgent

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Dec 13, 1999 | by Woody West

There may be no connection between these two recent news items beyond reflecting a galloping self-indulgence on the part of government officials and a segment of the public. Nothing startling in this, of course, the nature of the human creature being what it is: Self-indulgence is the folder in which the Seven Deadly Sins are filed.

The Washington item was barely a blip on the journalistic radar screen. During Senate budget debate recently, Sen. Daniel Inouye, a Democrat from Hawaii, proposed that two federal office buildings be named for colleagues -- Democrat Tom Harkin of Iowa and, for balance, Republican Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.

A departure from tradition? Not at all. Politicians historically have delighted in memorializing themselves in concrete. For distinguished public servants the practice can be deserved. Neither Specter nor Harkin, however, can be considered more notable than other distinguished solons who repeatedly convince voters to let them stay on Capitol Hill (though Harkin in his earlier political campaigns was notable, if that's the word, for claiming to have flown combat missions in Vietnam and then having to admit that he had not, as recorded in the book Stolen Valor, by B.G. Burkett and Glenna Whitley).

Nevertheless, the two senators' dear friend Dan, in exchange for a senatorial courtesy, perhaps, or a player to be named later, proposed that the buildings be named in his colleagues' honor -- the National Library of Medicine for Specter and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for Harkin. Maybe they should just name a disease for them.

It is preferable that one of these Capitol Hill strategies of swollen self-regard be executed with little attention. When the Specter/Harkin hubris hit the press, albeit as a journalistic zephyr, the pair quickly decided it would be as well if their names were not attached to the buildings. It's an odds-on bet, though, that in small type in a minor piece of legislation on a quiet congressional day this ego massage will be greased into law.

The other wonderful example of indulgence is in San Francisco. Voters in that gloriously goofy city on the Bay voted to ban banks from imposing surcharges on use of ATMs -- the very popular automated-teller machines that are everywhere now, possibly even on hotdog carts. Banks routinely add a surcharge of $1.50 or so for nonaccount holders using their ATMs.

Outrageous, declared 66 percent of the voters -- to dare charge for the convenience of using any ATM even when the user is not a customer of the bank providing the service! A similar revolt of the sansculottes occurred down the coast, in the the People's Republic of Santa Monica.

The banks were not overjoyed. "A grocery store doesn't give away milk to its customers," tartly declared a Bank of America flak. "We're a business." The comment was refreshing, as corporate mouthpieces tend toward the evasive and emollient in controversy.

The banks, principally Wells Fargo and Bank of America, told San Franciscans they would cut off ATM access to noncustomers. That restriction would seem a reasonable quid pro quo. It used to be an accepted notion in America that there ain't no free lunch and if you play you've got to pay.

A representative of the California cell of the Public Interest Research Group (a self-description, by the way) suggested darkly that the banks are in danger of violating U.S. antitrust law. Bank regulation, however, is a federal or state, rather than a local, function, and the financial institutions were granted a temporary injunction against the surcharge prohibition. Several battalions of lawyers will be able to buy new yachts before this is settled.

What is especially intriguing about this San Francisco fuss, though, is the implication that convenience has risen to the level of a right -- under the constitutional pursuit of happiness evidently. It is remarkable how every itch in this society now eventually gets levitated to the sacred status of a "right" -- no matter how undignified or corrosive to civil amity.

The ATM affair demonstrates, too, how imperative convenience has become in daily life. Fast-food franchises, as a wild instance, have instituted "express service" to satisfy customers for whom "fast" is unacceptably laggard. Ah well, it may be a weakness of our strength -- or the other way around.

If that restlessness can't be easily accommodated, it is possible to offer a solution to the horribly embarrassing self-regard of the two senators: To require that any federal building, new or existing, be named only for a member of the U.S. armed forces who died in active service. That would remove temptation from such shallow characters as Specter and Harkin.