Tilting Archives - About C.P. - Respond

October 1998 - Volume 30 Issue 10

The Folly of Impeachment... Lee's Miserables... Shortchanging Students... The Booze Boys... When in Doubt, Reorganize.

The Year 2000 problem seemed so remote, but now the costs are beginning to be alarming. The latest estimates of the cost to the taxpayer of fixing government computers is $5.4 billion. The OMB reports that the State and Defense departments as well as Education, Energy, Transportation, Health and Human Services, and the Agency for International Development are seriously behind. And it's not just the OMB that is worried. This summer Rep. Stephen Horn, who is chairman of the House Government Reform and Oversight technology subcommittee, gave all these agencies and the EPA a grade of "F" on Year 2000 readiness.

Some real political heat may finally be brought to bear on this problem when my fellow geezers learn that a Year 2000 computer bug could cost them $570 million in Medicare payments.

If you've doubted our contention that too many American universities are shortchanging their students, consider the example of Virginia Tech. According to Ian Zack of the Roanoke Times, Tech professors "teach as many as 50 classes each year with 300 students, 140 classes of 150 to 300 students, and 170 classes of 100 to 150 students." These monster classes mean little of the kind of interaction that makes students - and their teachers - think. Most teachers, even good ones, can't handle large classes. Lionel Trilling was exciting in a small class but boring in a big lecture hall. Only a handful of brilliant law professors seem to know the secret of how to stimulate a room crowded with 150 students. It's Socratic questioning with the victims randomly selected so that every student's mind is alive to the possibility that he may be on the griddle next.

We could train college teachers in this approach. But we don't. Primary and secondary teachers get too much methodology in their training, college teachers typically get none. And this is too bad. A little methodology - if it's smart - could help.

If Ken Starr succeeds in bringing Bill Clinton down, I wonder if history will remember the significance of the following, which is from a Sept. 6 story by Susan Schmidt in The Washington Post:

"Starr is almost certain to limit his report to the Lewinsky investigation, sources said. His office considered but decided against including Š other aspects of the four-year investigation. Starr was originally appointed to investigate the Whitewater land venture and a defunct savings and loan in Arkansas. Š Under the independent counsel law, Starr is required to report to the House when he finds 'substantial and credible information' that may constitute grounds for impeachment, but the Whitewater material does not meet that standard, sources said." (Italics supplied.)

In other words, the first four years of the Fiske-Starr inquiry had not been able to lay a glove on Bill or Hillary Clinton. Not with Whitewater, not with Vince Foster, not with the FBI files, and not with the White House travel office. Indeed, if Linda Tripp had not taped a friend, Starr would not have an impeachment case.

And what does the case consist of? Evidence that the president tried to cover up an adulterous relationship. That's it. How can anyone be serious about impeaching a president for a sin that is not related to his public duties? Why are the media, as Russell Baker puts it, "now in cahoots with Kenneth Starr to destroy the president"? My guess is it's because they've devoted five years to asserting that there's some kind of major Clinton scandal - and they can't let themselves turn out to have been wrong. They're so desperate that they have turned the inadequacy of Clinton's apology into a federal offense.

I was not for Clinton in the 1992 primaries, as this column made clear. I also wrote a piece for The Washington Post which was among the first to take the Flowers tapes seriously, and another for The New York Times imploring Paul Tsongas not to to drop out of the race. And there is much that I have not admired about Clinton in office, but I continue to think historians will place him in the mid rank of American presidents - if Starr and the press don't destroy him. So to me he's far from being a candidate for impeachment. Rather, he's someone who deserves criticism, but criticism that is directed toward making him a better president, not toward bringing him down.

If you sometimes suspect the motive behind Paula Jones' lawsuit, you will be interested in this report in the Greensboro North Carolina News and Record: "Paula Jones, whose sexual harassment suit against Bill Clinton spawned the investigation that threatens his presidency, is coming to Guilford County for a Republican fund-raiser."

When things go wrong, government loves to reorganize. It sounds like action is being taken, and it's much easier than identifying the real cause of the problem, especially when the cause may be incompetent employees where firing would involve a lot of trouble for the boss. The latest example is in the Homicide Unit of the District of Columbia's police force, which is infamous for its inability to apprehend any culprit who does not wear a sign saying "I Did It." Instead of firing the inept, here's what a series of police chiefs have done.

The unit was, according to The Washington Posts's Cheryl W. Thompson, "decentralized in 1994 by Chief Fred Thomas. [Chief Larry] Soulsby brought detectives back to headquarters and later, at Booz-Allen's suggestion, sent the detectives back to the seven district stations. Earlier this year, the interim police chief, Sonya T. Proctor, brought the detectives back to headquarters. Under [new police chief Charles] Ramsey's reorganization the 300 detectives now assigned to specialized squads will be moved to the existing seven police districts."

Needless to say, none of these moves appear to have led to the solution of a single murder.

The booze boys have a new target: senior citizens. People over 50 represent a "growth opportunity," Budweiser's August A. Busch IV told The Wall Street Journal recently. Wineries like Ernest & Julio Gallo, and distilleries likeUnited Distillers Vintners North America, the company that makes Gordon's Gin, are joining in the push to persuade seniors to drink more. Since so many of the health problems of age are exacerbated by excessive booze, this seems like a really terrible idea, almost as bad as peddling cigarettes to teenagers.

"New York City has cultivated an 'in crowd' millions strong," writes Ann Powers in The New York Times. "From the City Hall insider to the merchant at the corner bodega, New Yorkers believe that they are tougher, cleverer and more worldly than anyone." If you've ever lived in New York, you know how true this is. Often it's engaging. But sometimes it annoys. "Feeling smugly in the know," words used in the headline over the Powers article, defines those occasions. There is in fact a New York laugh designed to say "I get it and I'm delighted to know that a lot of people won't." The last time I heard the laugh was during a visit to New York when I went to the movies. The Woody Allen movie was playing that contains a dismissive remark about Albert Shanker, the late head of the American Federation of Teachers, that was designed to elicit just this laugh, a laugh that showed awareness that Shanker was at the time despised by the New York elite. Shanker was actually a pretty good fellow. So the laughter was both cruel and wrong.

For a number of years now it has been fashionable for the big shots of journalism to affect an air of worldly-wise cynicism. Now even the little guys are doing it. A few weeks ago an anchor at Channel 8, a local cable news station in Washington, turned to a reporter who had been giving news about a presidential speech and asked, "Do you expect the White House will be parading their spin doctors all over TV?"

Next to cynicism, the most conspicuous trait of today's journalists is their love of scandal. Consider their insistence on paying more attention to Bill Clinton's sex life than to his performance of his public duties as president. On a day when The Washington Post ran "Lieberman, a Senate Ally, Blasts Clinton's Behavior" as the lead story on its front page, you had to search until page 33 to find "Clinton Lauds Peace as Northern Ireland Lauds Him." The next day The New York Times ran "Clinton Affirms He Is Very Sorry" on its front page, relegating to the bottom of page three "Neither Rain nor Traffic Dampens Irish Warmth for Clinton."

More importantly, The Washington Post of Sept. 6 made us search to page 19 to find a report of a presidential speech about the world economy at the end of a week when the United States and the world were shaken by a severe case of economic anxiety. The Times reported another presidential address proclaiming new rules for HMOs on page 21, even though it offered important new protections to 120 million Americans. The Times thought this story was worth three paragraphs at the end of a week when it devoted at least 200 to Monicagate.

Speaking of smugness, how about the response of Joan McKown, chief counsel of the SEC's enforcement division, that her agency had let securities law violators escape paying half the fines levied against them: "We're not a collection agency."

I'm curious about how Ms. McKown thinks that the SEC's penalties will be effective if Wall Street's racketeers know they have a 50-50 chance of not having to pay up.

Robert Calvert Jr., an old friend of mine from my days as a bureaucrat, recently sent a letter to The Washington Post protesting the uncritical acceptance by a Post reporter of the statistic that federal workers are paid 22.6 percent less than private-sector workers in comparable jobs. Bob pointed out, as I often have in this column, that the federal job descriptions on which the comparison is based are often exaggerated to make the jobs sound considerably more impressive than they really are:

"As a federal GS-15 employee my job description was so inflated that you'd assume I spent most of my day in intense consultation with key members of the ruling party on Capitol Hill and that I'd have very little time left to talk with governors of the various states - particularly those from small ones."

Some federal jobs are underpaid, but for the most part, the pay gap issue is a phony. What we really need is a careful study of jobs that will make the distinction between those that are truly underpaid and those that aren't - on the basis not of fictitious job descriptions, but on what the employee really does.

The fashion industry has found a new target - "tweens." They are the almost 10 million girls between the ages of five and nine. "The majority of little girls want to look grown up and fashion conscious - it's a trend," the editor of a children's fashion magazine recently told Ruth La Ferla of The New York Times. Not only is this absurd, it puts a considerable dent in their parents' pocketbooks. Little black dresses by Nicole Miller go for $90 to $120; a Hermes jacket for $400.

In mid-September I had lunch with Matthew Miller, a brilliant young former OMB official who is now trying to launch a column with the Los Angeles Times syndicate. When I congratulated him on being among the few not to succumb to get-Clintonitis, he replied, "It's a little scary, though. An awful lot of editors are passionately pro-impeachment. They aren't likely to take on a columnist who disagrees with them on an issue they feel so strongly about."

Few journalists who want to get ahead are going to stand up against the media's frenzy to get the president. The same is true of politicians who want these editors to say good things about them, especially at election time. It isn't lost on them when they see editorial after editorial heaping praise on Joe Lieberman for speaking out against the president.

Last month Robert Worth discussed the failure of Al Gore and his reinventors to focus on the quality of the people who work for the federal government. Worth's concerns are supported by a recent report by John M. Palguta, the director of policy and evaluation for the Merit Systems Protection Board. Five years ago he found that half of the government's personnel specialists "lacked sufficient skill." After five years of reinvention, are things any better? "There is no evidence that overall competence Š has improved. If anything, skill levels may actually have declined in some agencies."

The city of New York now plans to spend $52 billion over the next 10 years on infrastructure repairs. But a new study by the city comptroller finds that the repairs will cost $90 billion. This is not for frivolous purposes but to keep things like bridges, streets, water mains, and public schools in decent shape.

If this is the figure for just New York, one wonders what the cost will be for the entire country. Shouldn't the tax-cutters consider these costs before they reduce revenues further?

Adults over the age of 80 have higher fatality rates (per miles driven) than any other age group except for 16 year olds, reports a recent study. So, as we've noted before, making it harder for them to renew their licenses would seem to be the right idea. The problem, according to Reuters news service, is that some states are making it easier. Nebraska, Wisconsin, and Louisiana have increased the length of time you can drive without renewing. In Florida, the state with the highest percentage of senior citizens, any driver who hasn't been caught committing a driving offense during the last three years can renew his license by mail and only appear in person every 12 years. In Oklahoma a license can be renewed with no test of ability and requires no medical information. Illinois has the most sensible policy. Beginning at age 75 all drivers must renew their licenses in person and take vision and road tests.

When I was a boy and first saw the title of Victor Hugo's novel about Jean Valjean displayed on the marquee of a local movie theater, I assumed, to my parents' great amusement, that it was about the Civil War. Now I learn from a new book by J. Tracy Power that some Confederate soldiers in the Army of Northern Virginia actually called themselves "Lee's Miserables."

Have you seen these ads on TV offering a mortgage loan that exceeds the value of your home? Not only are these ads frightening reminders of the kind of banking practice that has contributed to financial disasters in the past - if the loan is for a greater amount than the value of the home securing it, the chances of default, especially in an era of deflation, are greatly increased - but the institutions peddling the loans seldom mention that the interest is non-deductible on the portion of the loan that exceeds the value of the house.

So, say you now have an $80,000 mortgage on a home worth $100,000. That makes sense for a responsible borrower and a responsible lender, leaving a cushion in the event real estate values go down. But if you are seduced by the ads and take out a second mortgage for $40,000, you're entering risky fiscal territory. And if you try to deduct the interest on your $80,000 first loan and the $40,000 second one, you'll get in trouble with the IRS. All you can deduct is the interest on $100,000, the value of your home. Not on the $120,000 combined value of the two loans.

One of my complaints against the media is that they devote too little attention to stories about government. Brill's Content recently reported a study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism that supports my case. The project studied five network TV shows - "20/20," "48 Hours," "60 Minutes," "Prime Time Live" and "Dateline NBC" for six weeks last fall. Only one devoted any time to a story about government. None, by the way, had stories on the economy. One doubts that that will be true this fall.

Some facts about federal employees you may not know. They get from 13 days to 26 days of vacation a year. These are working days, meaning you really get, with weekends included, 17 to 36 days off. Only academics have a better deal. Civil servants can retire with full pension at age 55 if they have 30 years service. Only about 15 percent of private plans are so generous, reports the Congressional Budget Office. And the CBO adds, the inflation protection that goes with federal pensions is provided by only 8 percent of private plans. And we're talking about private companies that have retirement plans. Half of them don't offer any retirement plans. Unfortunately, only a handful of insiders and friends of insiders know these facts. They are not known by the bright young outsiders whose new blood might revitalize the civil service.

Money buys a college education. No, you say, you've heard about need-blind admissions that are supposed to equalize educational opportunity. But they don't do the trick. A recent study found that students who had high test scores but came from families earning less than $25,000 a year were less likely to attend college than all students, regardless of their scores, from families with incomes over $50,000.

One of the most striking aspects of the Clinton scandal for me is that I find myself disagreeing with a lot of old friends whose opinions I respect. For instance, Tim Noah, who has not been one of the media's Clinton haters, says, "But, Charlie, he committed perjury!" Of course, the minute he said he'd only done it once with Gennifer Flowers, you had to know he was lying.

And I knew why. Men who commit adultery lie to protect the feelings of their wives and to protect themselves from the anger of their wives. They often ask friends to lie for them. The Washington media community is full of people who have done this but now seem unable to forgive Bill Clinton. For me, his Flowers-Jones-Lewinsky-related sins are not nearly as important as his good deeds as president such as on Northern Ireland, Haiti, Bosnia, welfare reform, deficit reduction - or as worthy of condemnation as his official failures, such as his inability to take responsibility for the government under him, from Waco to the IRS. I admired the noble purpose behind his failed health plan but deplored the arrogant complexity that was just as much a factor in its demise as Harry and Louise. These are the things we should focus our criticism on, not his sex life and his lies about it. They deserve an "ugh" from us all. No more.

"I remember feeling that soft spot in the northeast corner of your mouth against my lips." These words appear near the beginning of a letter from Lorena Hickok to Eleanor Roosevelt, a letter that closes "I want to put my arms around you and kiss the corner of your mouth." Roosevelt's letters that followed included such expressions as "All my love," "I love you deeply and tenderly." Anticipating Hickok's return to Washington, she wrote: "Dear one, it's getting nearer and nearer and I am half afraid to be too happy. It's the way I felt as a child when I dreaded disappointment. A world of love, E.R."*

What would have happened to one of the most important First Ladies in American history if the scandalmongering media of today had existed in the 1930s and had gotten hold of these letters?

Or suppose Ken Starr had been around in the summer of 1962 to subpoena the White House logs. On just one day, August 6, the day after Marilyn Monroe's suicide, they would have shown that the president got two calls from a "Judith Campbell," and one from "Mrs. Mary Myer." Judith Campbell, better known as Judith Exner, and Mary Meyer (the correct spelling) were mistresses of John Kennedy. "That evening, while Mary was with Kennedy at the White House," writes Nina Burleigh in A Very Private Woman, "Mrs. Kennedy called and was told the president was out. Peter Lawford, who was in the thick of the [Marilyn Monroe] suicide by virtue of having spoken with Marilyn just before she died, called Kennedy from from Beverly Hills and got through. At 11:28 Kennedy called for a car to be sent to the South Gate, presumably to take Mary home."

If all that had come out at the time, would Kennedy have been forced to resign? Maybe. Maybe not. But he certainly would have been crippled during the nation's gravest moment since World War II, the Cuban Missile Crisis, which began just six weeks later.

~Charles Peters