John Webster

The lawn has stopped growing. Bright yellow leaves cascade in crispy clouds from the trees. Campaign signs have begun to lean, fade and fall. It must be time to wax the skis.

If you think this has been a rough-and-tumble campaign year, you're right. Don't let that keep you away from the polls, however. Some countries wage their power struggles with machine guns. We Americans do it with words. Hard words. And we settle the struggle with votes. Hard votes. Those who complain about the force of the battle - none of us enjoys the sight of mud - risk forgetting what's at stake. There is good reason for the passion in politics. Elections test the values that shape our national character. They chart the course for government, which takes a third of our earnings, regulates our lives and businesses, and runs an array of services from defense to schools, welfare to federal judges.

If a member of your family dies in circumstances that may require an autopsy, you would want the situation handled with professional skill and sensitivity, wouldn't you? On Nov. 5, Spokane County voters can replace their 19th-century coroner system with a modern medical examiner. It's about time. For more than a decade, the local coroner's office has been dogged by well-founded charges of ineptitude, rudeness, eccentricity, intransigence and damaging conflicts with hospitals, doctors, police and the families of deceased persons.

If Spokane Valley voters want to go after wasteful government agencies we can think of a few targets, but their fire department isn't one of them. The Valley Fire Department provides urban-quality fire and paramedic service at a bargain price - $102 per capita, versus $121 in the city of Spokane, $142 in Seattle, $202 in Bellevue and $247 in Bellingham.

Even Chris Anderson, whose brazen conduct made reform necessary, supports the Spokane city charter amendment on the Nov. 5 ballot. It would deem a council member's seat vacant after four consecutive, unexcused absences from the meetings council members are paid to attend. Until Anderson came along it might have seemed unthinkable that a public servant would, or could, abscond from office for five months yet continue blithely to collect the job's salary. But Anderson has proved the need to tighten the city's laws and give the public a remedy in case those it elects later refuse to do their job.

What would the world be like without the kindly people who see the human faces of misfortune and open their checkbooks? What would the world be like without people of faith who leave behind middle-class comforts to serve the dying in Calcutta, the homeless in Mexico or the orphans in Romania? It would be like Romania - everywhere. This week, The Spokesman-Review published a special section about some area residents who had gone to Romania to help children who live in a decaying orphanage there.

Who'll it be for Washington state governor? Ellen Craswell, fiscal conservative? Or Gary Locke, education advocate? It's a tough call, because we don't agree completely with either candidate. As a legislator, Locke was too quick to tax and regulate, and too slow to trim the unionized bureaucracy. Craswell campaigns on a simplistic pledge to chop state government by a third and recast it as a theocracy, run by and for the religious right. Reluctantly, we endorse Locke.

Oh, dear. Americans are inventing, selling and (gasp) using do-it-yourself test kits that give them medical information in the privacy of their homes. And they're doing so without the permission of the federal government or the American Civil Liberties Union. One of the tests offers parents a last-ditch tool to use when their children are being sucked into drug abuse by the pro-drugs, pro-sex, anti-education youth culture which the entertainment media have worked so hard to glamorize.

When Jack Ward Thomas arrived as chief of the U.S. Forest Service, environmental groups celebrated. Last week when he resigned, they celebrated again. The story of his rise and fall raises a question: If this celebrated scientist couldn't break the deadlock over management of our national forests, who can? And if no one can, what should become of these lands, which have serious problems that only decisive management can address?

Where did Americans get the idea that it's rude to be frank, principled and confrontational in a political campaign? We got it from political correctness, by which the nation's liberal intelligentsia deem it socially impolite to dissent from their assaults on America's oldest values - moral rectitude, accountability, self-discipline, hard work, limited government, and freedom of speech.

What in the heck have the nation's public school administrators done with their common sense? Last month, a 6-year-old North Carolina boy kissed a female classmate and got suspended for sexual harassment. Days later, a 7-year-old New York boy also was suspended, for the very same reason.

Suppose you own a business and one of your employees is diagnosed with cancer. What do you do? Fire her? After all, she might become less productive while she's fighting the disease. And her medical bills might jack up the cost of your company's experience-rated group health insurance policy. It would take one hard-boiled number-cruncher to kick an ill employee while she's down.

If all the politicians who oppose crime this fall actually could make it go away, utopia is just around the corner. Bob Dole opposes crime, Bill Clinton opposes crime, candidates for Congress oppose crime, the would-be governors oppose crime, and you can't open a brochure for a state legislature candidate without encountering great gusts of anti-crime rhetoric. Voters need to think about what these caped crusaders actually could achieve with the powers they seek. It certainly wouldn't hurt to look at past performance. And it would be wise, frankly, to ask what we really can afford since we also want lower taxes and better schools.

Sometime next year the U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether you have a right to have your doctor kill you. Advocates of assisted suicide like to tell scary stories about ugly deaths.

Nearly every one of the inmates in Washington's prison system will be released someday. During the final six months of their prison stay, all but the worst offenders will go to a work-release facility. They'll get a real-world job, undergo counseling and urinalysis for drug and alcohol abuse, and spend their non-working hours under guard. Where should work-release facilities go? Near the communities inmates are about to rejoin, of course.

Voters can learn a great deal about political campaigns by finding out who's paying for them. However, voters can't "follow the money" unless candidates and special interest groups comply with campaign finance laws.

What do Pat Buchanan, Ross Perot, Joe Lunchbucket and two famous Philadelphia reporters have in common? They gripe about the economy. And the first place they look for scapegoats and cures is government. These have become national traits here at the close of a century in which the opportunities of freedom and capitalism made the United States the envy of the world. But now, as competition toughens, Americans must sound to foreign ears like the world's richest bellyachers. Capitalism is spreading manufacturing jobs and economic growth to the Third World. Reporters Donald Barlett and James Steele of the Philadelphia Inquirer have documented the trend's dark side.

The Pacific Northwest pours hundreds of millions of dollars a year into unsuccessful programs aimed at restoring wild salmon runs on the Snake and Columbia rivers. In spite of these programs - and to no small extent because of them - the salmon runs in recent years have spiraled toward extinction. On Tuesday, the federal government unveiled an interagency agreement that is supposed to place salmon restoration on a budget. Better yet, the agreement calls on salmon programs to establish measurable goals, report on their progress every year, monitor their spending and look to impartial scientists for guidance.

With all due respect for Ross Perot's long campaign to buy his way into the White House, he does not belong there, and he does not belong in the presidential debates, either. Paul Kirk, co-chair of the Commission on Presidential Debates, put the matter in perspective the other day. He said: "This is not candidates' night in D.C. This is the endgame. This is the Super Bowl. And in order to get to the Super Bowl, you have to obtain certain victories along the way."

Would you buy a used car without checking beneath the hood? How about a different form of city government? On Sept. 17, Spokane voters will decide whether to switch City Hall from the council/manager system to a strong-mayor form. Steve Eugster, a local critic, wrote this version of a strong-mayor charter - and wrote it largely on his own, without a public process to collect suggestions for refinement. He contends Spokane would find needed leadership in a stronger mayor and a weaker city council.

If students find history a bore, literature mysterious and the arts unmoving, maybe it's because public schools have sucked these subjects dry of a universal force that stirs human hearts and shakes the world. Namely, religion. People slaughter and revile one another in the name of religion, and inspired by their religious values, people also have built hospitals, freed slaves and fed the starving.

Spokane does have a few air-quality problems, as those of us who cough and wheeze during grass-smoke season can attest. But it would be ridiculous, as well as damaging, to rank our very occasional pollution difficulties in the same category as the chemical cocktail that hangs over Los Angeles. Nevertheless, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been pondering whether to change our air-quality classification from "moderate" to "serious." Within the next few weeks, EPA will decide whether to postpone a reclassification so it can examine some serious questions about its assessment of Spokane's air.

It's no fun when the refrigerator burns out or the furnace dies. As consumer products go, they're as dull as they are expensive. Yet a household can't function without them. They're a necessity. Same goes for city streets.

Wal-Mart, the chain that made a fortune paving suburban fields and draining the vitality from local business all over the nation, wants to bestow its blessings on the Spokane economy, as well. If consumers here respond as they have elsewhere, they'll pile into cars and drive for miles to save a few bucks on a toaster oven, leaving empty the parking lots outside existing businesses closer to their homes. It's the trend in retailing. And it's a big contributor to urban decay, suburban sprawl, crowded arterials and air pollution.