THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, October 26, 1994 TAG: 9410260397
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: Medium: 66 lines
Every time Oliver North strays from simple-minded proposals, such as term limits for Congress, he falls into a black hole of reality.
Why simple-minded? Because term limits would impose an automatic cut-off and deny voters the right to select representatives. It smacks of being unconstitutional.
The idea would be alluring if its advocates in Congress had the guts to apply it to themselves.
Thus we would be spared, at one swoop, the likes of vituperative cupid New Gingrich, doleful Dole and, on the other side, Bob bob-bobbing Byrd and rascal Rostenkowski.
North, ever disingenuous, has vowed, if he wins, to quit after two six-year terms. Why not one?
Since Monday, North has tried to link U.S Sen. Charles S. Robb to a White House memo that discusses the possibility of cuts in entitlements, such as social security.
President Clinton sought to dismiss the leaked memo as ``a list of options'' to prepare for the work of a congressional committee reviewing entitlement programs.
Declaring Robb would help Clinton ``carry out this radical scheme,'' North said, ``They want to go after our senior citizens. That ought to be, for all of us, a moral outrage.''
So saying at a news conference in a Vinton nursing home, North added that in the future social security should be made voluntary.
``I think you'd find a lot of people opting out of it,'' he said.
He said he was not proposing any changes that would affect current Social Security recipients. But he's willing to make Social Security voluntary for ``the next generation,'' which hasn't started to pay into the system.
If there is anything calculated to endanger social security, it would be to make it optional. Only the participation of the mass of the citizenry makes it possible.
And if people could opt out, many who chose to take their money and run would be of the sort who wouldn't lay any aside for the future, fated to wind up late in life among the indigent on the dole.
Evidently the outcry of protest at North's proposal stimulated some second thoughts in his camp.
Campaign spokesman Don McLagan said North would withdraw his idea for making Social Security voluntary for the next generation if it meant there wouldn't be enough Social Security taxes to pay for the people who stay in.
``If by them opting out would collapse the system, then they can't opt out,'' McLagan said.
What began as a bold statement from North wound up turning on itself and fading away.
It is a kind of Alice-in-Wonderland logic. The harder you look at it, the less it means. What happened to North's short-lived proposal resembles what occurred with the White House memo that President Clinton sought to disown.
A difference is that North tried to link Robb to what somebody else said, and in North's case the foolishness came from his own mouth. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
Oliver North
KEYWORDS: SENATE RACE CANDIDATE CAMPAIGN by CNB