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

DATE: THURSDAY, December 29, 1994                   TAG: 9412300074
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: NELSON WIKSTROM
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

MEMO TO DEMOS

GIVEN THE Republican political steamroller that rolled across this nation in November, with Virginia somewhat of an ironic exception, it has become more fashionable than ever before among our political soothsayers to criticize the concept of government and predict for it a distinctly more limited role.

According to this line of thought, government is inept, unresponsive and wasteful, and should be cut down in size. I believe that this perspective eventually will be found by the populace, if not the experts, to be premature and a touch faulty, with the obvious message to the Democrats, given their historical alignment with government, that they need not fear being forever doomed to the political wilderness.

For a number of interrelated reasons, the concept of government has traveled a difficult and tortuous road in the United States. First, American political culture, profoundly shaped by the classical liberal writings of John Locke, is distinctly anti-government in its bias. We are taught early on to distrust government and be suspicious of those who enjoy the trappings of political power.

In addition, a good share of our political leaders have reminded us in the most strident tones that the problem of government is government itself and we need to get the culprit off our backs.

Third, we have handed over to government our most intractable, long-standing problems, like poverty and racism, and when it failed to adequately "produce" on these problems ,we have, in a rather self-congratulatory style, pronounced government and governmental strategies a failure.

Finally, in a contrary sort of vein, on occasion government has unwittingly been the victim of its own bellicose and lofty promises that it failed to keep, like engendering a war on poverty that ended up an embarrassing skirmish.

Despite it all, I would argue, and fully cognizant of its limitations, that government has been more of a force of good than bane in the United States, and that we should hold in high esteem the vast majority of our dedicated public servants.

Examples of governmental success are not difficult to find. In this category, our national government has "stood down" and proven superior to totalitarian antagonists of the political left and right, and through a system of social security has assured our senior citizens a minimal standard of living in their golden years. The national government, in cooperation with the states, has built and maintains the best highway system in the world, allowing us to traverse throughout the country with remarkable speed.

Each of the states provides its citizenry with an excellent level and variety of public institutions of higher education, which now enroll the bulk of our college students. Some of our public institutions of higher education in Virginia - namely the University of Virginia, the College of William and Mary, and Virginia Tech - have been consistently rated among the best in the country, and our urban public universities, such as Old Dominion and Virginia Commonwealth, play an important role in providing an educational opportunity for an inordinate number of students from a somewhat less advantaged environment, as well as those more academically and economically gifted. And local governments, day in and day out, reliably deliver to us vital and life-sustaining services, such as public safety, elementary and secondary education, mass transportation, water, sewer, and trash collection.

The message for the Democrats is not to stampede to the Republican side of the hall and join in the chorus of voices that sings that government is inherently bad, but rather to exercise strong political leadership and defend the utility of government in dealing with our array of socioeconomic problems; with the recognition, of course, that governmental operations, similar to any other human enterprise, can always be improved. Democrats need to educate and remind the voters that the continuation of our fundamentally good society depends, to a substantial degree, upon governmental action rather than upon the supposed virtue of governmental restraint.

Nelson Wikstrom of Richmond is an associate professor of political science at Virginia Commonwealth University.

by CNB