Give The ‘Goo-Goos’ A Hand
On the theory that positive reinforcement is important for politicians too, let us now praise the U.S. Senate, R’s and D’s alike, for having Done The Right Thing in cutting off their freebie vacations and wining and dining. Hal-le-lu-jah!
One after another, our Senate solons rose and voted against the Senate majority leadership - Bob Dole, Trent Lott and the ironically placed chair of the Senate Ethics Committee, Mitch McConnell. Good on ‘em. And good on all the goo-goos (good government crusaders - thank you, Common Cause) who have pushed for a gift ban for years. Among other things, this proves that we can get incumbents to vote for real reform. Next, the House.
House members, of course, can still accept paid vacations from lobbyists; Speaker Newt Gingrich helped kill off a gift ban in the House last year. But the Senate’s stellar action puts more pressure on the House, and if the goo-goos will keep up the drumbeat, even the House should move. Given the rank and open part lobbyists are now playing in writing the laws under the less-than-highly-ethical leadership of Gingrich, a gift ban should be a relatively painless way for Housies to retrieve some of their reputation.
As all goo-goos know, the real root of the rot in government is still campaign financing. Politicians still dance with them what brung ‘em, and in the case of the Republicans, they’re dancing cheek-to-cheek. Until that sewer is cleaned up, we’ll never have real representative democracy in this country. But let us not fail to rejoice when we have cause. Two cheers for the Senate and a hey-nonny-nonny, too.
Enough of the good news. Back to carping. The Bad Bill of the Week is in the House: telecommunications deregulation. Anyone who watched the Texas Legislature this past session is already familiar with the monopoly-protection-for-local-phone-companies called “deregulation.” The Capitol in Austin almost disappeared under the swarm of phone company lobbyists hired to get that piece of trash voted through. At one point, former President Bush came to visit His Son The Governor, and state Sen. Rodney Ellis gasped, “Oh my God, don’t tell me Southwestern Bell has hired him, too!”
When you hear politicians telling you that deregulation will produce “increased competition,” hold onto your wallet. Should you fall into an epistolary mood while on vacation, why not buy an extra postcard, send it to Your Representative, Washington, D.C., and tell the louse to vote against the phone bill. That’s what you can do for your country this week. Not to mention your own phone bill.
Meanwhile, on the summer reruns front, we got a direct conflict of testimony in the Whitewater hearings (which are not about Whitewater but about the suicide of Vincent Foster and how everyone in the White House behaved while in a state of shock) between Maggie Williams, who says she didn’t take anything out of Foster’s office, and a security guard who says she did.
Now I know I promised never to mention the O.J. trial, but this is only tangential. Think of all the peripheral people who popped up in the O.J. case declaring that they remembered something critical, only to have it turn out that whatever they remembered couldn’t possibly have happened at the time or place they said it did. Nonetheless, they all got their days in the sun, their 15 minutes of fame or their payoff from sleazy television tabloids.
One reason I am almost a doctrinaire anti-conspiracy theorist is because I have long observed how much chance, coincidence and human stupidity shape history. Another reason is human nature. And it seems to me that part of human nature is that “little people” associated with Great Events (you can include most journalists in this category) have a tendency to tell stories that enhance their own importance in whatever was going on. Their motivation is not evil or an intent to deceive but one of the oldest human motivations: the desire for attention.
I no more know whether Maggie Williams, who was grieving for a friend, carried something out of Foster’s office than I can fly. I just bring up the point.
Anyone who has ever known a suicide knows how shocking that event is, how strong and how futile the “if only this, if only that” reaction is. And how much those close to the person who is now dead are driven to wander into the bedroom or the office or any special place that belonged to the deceased to … what? Feel him again or somehow get a sense of what gnawed at him or how it had gotten so bad without his telling. It’s just some pathetic attempt to understand. Ask anyone who’s ever been there.
As Williams said, it would help if we did not approach Foster’s suicide with the assumption of conspiracy in mind.
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