Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 25, 1990 TAG: 9003222725
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RICHARD GEPHARDT
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
There have been a variety of reasons offered, most publicly by Sen. Alan Simpson of Wyoming, the aptly-titled Republican whip, and various White House staffers. Alan diagnosed me as deranged, saying: "Ol' Richard's going bananas." I think the condition he's referring to is Musa Sapientum Syndrome. This malady, named after the Latin for "banana," is not characterized by giving long, arcane speeches on foreign affairs but rather by giving short, savage speeches about Democrats.
Then Alan and the White House called me a "frustrated font of trivia," and "the Maxwell Smart of American politics." Of course if I were a font of trivia, I wouldn't have had to ask my staff who Maxwell Smart was.
Finally, the Whammy. I was accused of running for president. Whoever makes such an accusation obviously forgets that I exited the 1988 presidential contest so quickly that the few people who recognize me in airports and restaurants think I'm either Jack Kemp or Dan Quayle.
So if I'm not crazy, and I'm not running for president (and I assure you, I'm not), why did I give a speech criticizing the most popular president in the history of popularity polls?
The answer is: I criticized the president's foreign policy. I didn't try to get under his skin. I wanted to debate how best to advance democracy in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. This debate should be about policy, not personality.
But that's not the state of our discourse these days. Instead of refuting an idea on its merits, politicians too often do what works in campaigns - they shoot the messenger. Or better still, they have someone else shoot the messenger for them. (Which is why it's so hard to get people to work as messengers these days.)
We are living in a time when all the cliches have come true: We are at a crossroads of history, this is a turning point in the course of human events, and the choices we make now will determine the peace and prosperity of generations to come. So we had better discuss and debate those choices. If we conduct a serious debate about how to lead a world in which economic strength predominates over ideology, we can be the beneficiaries of change. But if we continue our ostrich approach, refusing even to debate important policies, we are doomed to be the victims of change.
In writing my speech, I thought of the rare courage of Lech Walsea and Vaclav Havel. I remembered the great sacrifices our parents' generation made for nearly a half-century in order to get us to this place - and how little we must do to realize the goals our parents did so much to achieve. With 400 million people on democracy's doorstep, the least we can do is welcome them in.
But what inspired me most was an afternoon I spent with 3,700 Chrysler workers in my district who are facing layoffs - not because they didn't work hard enough on the assembly line, but because our government didn't work hard enough when their jobs were on the line. And it angered me that our foreign policy happily sacrifices American jobs on the altar of ideology - that we fail our workers by refusing to pry open markets in Japan or develop new markets in Eastern Europe or the Soviet Union.
Instead of triggering a debate, I enraged the White House. But why? I think the reason the administration reacted with such vituperation is that it does not want to debate its vision-less foreign policy. My proposals - lifting unneeded trade restrictions that punish American workers and help our competitors; using food aid as an incentive for private agriculture; and sending executives to build markets through a Free Enterprise Corps - are ideas whose time have come.
Perhaps the reason the administration fears a debate on my proposals to pull Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union away from communism is that it cannot defend its policy of subsidizing the ruthlessly repressive Communist regime in the People's Republic of China. But that is precisely why we need such a debate. But the fact that the president doesn't want to debate these issues doesn't mean we in Congress, especially we in the loyal opposition, can only sit back and wish we had presidential leadership.
It is our job to raise important issues, to help spark the debate. We must ask questions: about how best to move the Soviet Union toward democracy, about the changing nature of European security and America's role in it, and about the challenge of shifting communities and industries away from a military economy and toward a more competitive posture.
As our foreign policy becomes less based on military options placed before the commander in chief and more focused on issues of economics and other areas in which Congress is better equipped to participate, the role of Congress in the formulation of foreign policy is bound to expand. Part of the debate I hope to initiate would be to address the institutional changes inherent in the challenges of the future.
We ignore such questions at great peril. If we don't address these issues and make some changes, then we'll be left attacking each other over who allowed America to slip into the position of a debt-ridden, economic also-ran. And that would be bananas.
by CNB