Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, July 11, 1993                   TAG: 9307130343
SECTION: HORIZON                    PAGE: D-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By DAVE ADDIS LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SOME COUNTRY: THE LOWER YOU GO, THE HIGHER THE STANDARD

I'm still piecing a lot of things together. It's been tough, and it hasn't gotten any easier over the past couple of weeks.

But if I've followed this correctly, it seems we've somehow reached the point where the people riding the government bus are required to have a cleaner traffic record than the driver.

We've reached a level of political sophistication in America where Bill Clinton is deemed fit to be president of the United States even if, somewhere in his past, he might have smoked marijuana (without inhaling), evaded the draft in time of war, cheated on his wife, but still managed to do a half-decent job of running a hard-scrabble Southern state with a population about the size of Brooklyn.

Fair enough. After all, an enlightened electorate should be able to forgive a youthful indiscretion or two. Besides, the guys he beat had some baggage of their own: George Bush was so deep in the Iran-Contra arms deal that, to this day, just the sound of somebody speaking Spanish sets him to babbling: "I was out of the loop . . . didn't know a thing. Out of the loop, you see. No loop."

And Ross Perot became a billionaire by feeding from the same government spending trough and loophole-ridden tax codes that he said were destroying the nation's economy. And then, if I heard this right, he sent private eyes to spy on a bunch of his own friends and accused George Bush of trying to sabotage his daughter's wedding.

Well, all's fair in love, war and political hyperbole; so none of these issues should disqualify a guy from moving into the White House.

But then there's Lani Guinier. Her sin, if I understand this clearly, was having written thought-provoking articles for a couple of obscure scholarly journals on the mechanics of minority voting rights. That made her somehow unfit to hold a position down below the level of Cabinet secretary.

And then Judge Stephen C. Breyer was deemed unacceptable to serve on the Supreme Court. Most of the Democrats loved him; even as contrary a Republican opposition leader as Bob Dole was on board.

But Breyer was unceremoniously dumped because he failed to withhold Social Security taxes from the pay envelope of an 81-year-old Irish-American maid who worked in his household two days a week.

He paid the retirement tax last January when some other nominees tripped over the same violation, although their illegal employees were illegal aliens. And he paid up way before he had become a nominee for anything.

Technically bad form, I admit. But why in heaven's name should the government be socking away retirement money for an 81-year-old working woman who hit retirement age back when Dick Nixon was still in the Oval Office?

Probably, she was putting aside some money for a nice casket and a decent Christian burial so nobody else - the taxpayers, for example - would have to foot the bill.

Now, do I have all this right? You can commit about any sort of illegality or inanity and still be a fit candidate for president of the United States, commander-in-chief of its armed forces, and acknowledged leader of the free world.

But an academic article in a moldy law review can keep you from being an assistant attorney general, and paying pin money to an old woman to shine your silverware can knock you off the Supreme Court.

Can't be. I must have missed something. Some logical explanation, some little nuance that puts the whole thing in perspective, something that will give it a nice, clean, common-sense ring.

I spent much of the last eight months working and traveling in places like Russia, Moldova, Ukraine and Romania, where they're just beginning to grab onto the finer points of representative democracy. I tried to encourage them as much as I could. And I'm beginning to feel guilty.

The problem is, I'm going back this summer to visit a few of my friends and see how democracy's going over there. Maybe drink a little vodka, talk a little politics. And I'm frightened to death that one of my ex-Communist friends might ask me to explain this whole mess.

And I'm afraid they'll ask me to tell them once again, with a straight face, why ours is a political model to be admired and emulated.