We Can’t Afford All This Rhetoric

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.

Start with the presidential race. The most important thing a president can do - if he’s so inclined - is appoint conservative federal judges who’ll look out for victims of crime rather than inventing new rights for the poor, put-upon perpetrators.

As for the gap between rhetoric and performance, there aren’t many illustrations better than the nation’s most popular politician, Bill Clinton.

The president boasts that he’s put 100,000 new cops on the street. In fact only 20,000 have been hired. Another 26,000 have been budgeted. But as the city of Spokane has discovered, this federal gift is so expensive to accept we may not be able to afford it. Federal dollars cover only a fraction of the cost of each new officer, and after three years or so, the grant ends. Then, local taxpayers have to shoulder the entire load. Thanks, Bill.

This year, Clinton signed a good law limiting the taxpayer-funded lawsuits in which prison inmates combat such injustices as melted ice cream desserts and athletic facilities that disappoint their personal tastes. But as the Wall Street Journal recently reported, Clinton’s Justice Department began undercutting efforts to enforce this law as soon as it took effect.

And just a few days ago, the White House invoked “executive privilege” to keep secret a 1995 memo in which directors of the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration blistered inadequacies of Clinton’s anti-narcotics strategy. Pollsters, can you say “coverup”?

In truth, most crime fighting is done at the expense of county, city and state governments. Clinton has rivals, for hypocrisy, in candidates for state legislature who want longer sentences for crime but customarily neglect to provide cities and counties money to enlarge local jails.

Further, every new dollar spent to enlarge our already growing and very comfortable state prison system is a dollar that perpetuates the underfunding of vocational and higher education. Washington ranks worst in the nation in access to these essential tools for a noncriminal career.

When you hear candidates lambaste crime, check your wallet and consult your common sense. It’s no accident Americans have one of the biggest prison systems, and weakest education systems, in the industrialized world.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Webster/For the editorial board