Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, June 5, 1990 TAG: 9006050444
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Under Virginia law, Wilder is ineligible to succeed himself when his gubernatorial term expires in early 1994; Terry, elected this past November to her second term as attorney general, is widely thought to be a leading candidate to succeed him. But also, by virtue of his unexpected election in November, is Lt. Gov. Don Beyer.
All these folks are Democrats, so Terry's removal from the drug-abuse council isn't a matter of interparty maneuvering. The speculation centers on other kinds of questions: Does Doug like Don better than Mary Sue? Does Mary Sue not like Doug? Whom does Don like?
Maybe those are the wrong questions. Maybe the affair is about Wilder's future, not Terry's.
Officially, Wilder removed Terry from the council because the statute calls for the council's chairman to be a member of the general public. The governor also noted his campaign pledge to be his own drug-war czar: By naming his own chairman (Martinsville lawyer Robert A. Williams) to the anti-drug council, Wilder is firming up that pledge.
Curiously, the reconstituted council lacks any representation at all from the attorney general's office. If not Terry as chairman, why not Terry as a member? And if not Terry as a member, why not a representative of her office as a member?
Apart from that, however, Wilder's explanation makes a great deal of sense.
True, Wilder's predecessor, former Gov. Gerald Baliles, found the general-public requirement to be elastic enough - after all, is anyone not a member of the general public? - to make Terry the council's chairman. But the naming of a non-official to the chairmanship is more in keeping with the spirit of the law.
Moreover, carrying out a campaign vow and accepting accountability for trying to solve a problem aren't things for which politicians should be deplored.
Above all, though, this may be a case where political virtue and political calculation coincide.
Some experts believe the drug epidemic has peaked. The epidemic won't vanish tomorrow. But it may be reced- [T]his may be a case where political virtue and political calculation coincide. ing more or less of its own accord, as middle-class America grows increasingly aware of the personal toll exacted by drug abuse.
If so, politicians most identified with the drug issue are those who'll get the most credit for solving the problem. President Bush, via drug czar William Bennett, seems eager to establish such an identification. It's hardly out of the question that Wilder, who is not without ambition for national office, would try the same.
But under this scenario there also is a danger of declaring victory prematurely. Reducing the appeal of drug abuse among the middle class is worthwhile, but it would not be enough. There would remain the even harder tasks of weaning from drug dependency those already addicted, and of reducing drug abuse and drug-associated violence among America's alienated underclass.
Those tasks are tough because they are tied to complex social, economic and medical issues: How, for example, do you cut through the cycle that has made poverty for millions not a temporary condition but a way of life? The answers are less than clear. But almost certainly they involve more than moralizing and anti-drug cheerleading.
Moralizing and cheerleading may have made drug abuse unchic among the reasonably affluent. That's better than nothing.
But let the high praise be reserved for those leaders who are not content to claim credit for solving the relatively easy part of the problem. Let the high praise be reserved for those - be they Bush or Bennett or Wilder or someone else - who look for ways to tackle the hard part, too.
by CNB