Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 13, 1995 TAG: 9508110083
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARGIE FISHER EDITORIAL WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The Post specifically mentioned several groups - the American Automobile Association and the Parent-Teacher Association, for instance - as being advocates for mainstream issues and the interests of us regular folks. Swell. I'm an AAA member, and was a PTA member when my children were young, and I doubt that either of these organizations has had a corrupting influence on the federal government.
That leaves thousands of others, however, that are part of what's been called the Washington parasite structure by political commentator Kevin Phillips, author of ``The Politics of Rich and Poor,'' ``Arrogant Capital: Washington, Wall Street, and the Frustration of American Politics,'' and other books. By one estimate, the structure employs 91,000 people, or 160 lobbyists for each member of Congress. It has turned government into a bazaar: Public policy for sale. Make us an offer.
Meanwhile, President Clinton says it's not healthy for Americans to be so cynical about their government. He says it's still his goal to dislodge the ``high-priced lobbyists and Washington influence peddlers'' that pull elected leaders' strings. Just wait, please, until he collects enough donations from the ``cliques of $100,000 donors'' he denounces for his re-election campaign.
And House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who once described Congress as ``increasingly a system of corruption in which money politics is defeating and driving out citizen politics,'' says it's certainly still his intention to clean up the system. Just wait, please, until he gets more pressing matters - autographing his new book, looking for moose in New Hampshire - behind him.
Campaign-finance and lobbying reforms are, coincidentally, two signature issues of Common Cause, which was specifically founded to promote regular folks' interests in the halls of government. Passing strange, the Post article didn't even mention it among the groups ``working for us.''
Could that be because, even after 25 years and many significant victories as ``the citizens' lobby,'' its mission - moral, accountable and responsible government of, by and for the people - is still not taken seriously?
Maybe an attitude once shown by Virginia legislators toward Common Cause-Virginia still prevails: that its members are ``goo-goos,'' good-government types, idealistic but politically unrealistic. ``They see everything from a very righteous point of view and rarely understand the ramifications of their proposals,'' sniffed Norfolk Del. Tom Moss, now speaker of the House of Delegates, in 1979.
Or perhaps the rigidly nonpartisan watchdogs and whistle-blowers on graft and sleaze in government have adhered too closely to their motto: No permanent friends, no permanent enemies. A snapshot: In 1978, while some Common Cause officials posed with President Carter at the White House as he signed a government-ethics act they had lobbied for, other Common Cause officials were elsewhere in town filing a lawsuit charging the Carter administration with violating procedures for executive-branch appointments.
The group labeled by one Democratic congressman as ``Common Curse'' helped expose President Nixon's CREEP fund-raising tactics; prodded the exposure of the Keating Five savings-and-loan scandal; pushed for the congressional hearings on Iran-Contra that made Oliver North a household name; and initiated the ethics investigation that forced Democratic House Speaker Jim Wright's resignation.
(In Richmond, Common Cause helped write Virginia's comprehensive conflict-of-interest law, and has been a zealous guardian of freedom of public information and fair election practices, among other things.)
Idealistic? Well, it seems to me citizens expects more idealism in government. Every recent poll shows that the public is grumpy and sore about special-interest and selfish-interest politics. Confidence that the federal government can solve problems or will behave ethically is abysmally low. And by huge majorities, citizens wants campaign-finance and lobbying reforms.
Politically unrealistic? Seems so. As Common Cause Chairman Emeritus Archibald Cox wrote in 1990: ``Not only do problems go unsolved, but political leaders seem, for the most part to make no effort to solve them. ... The all-consuming inquiry [is] how do I get re-elected ... how do I raise even larger campaign contributions from lobbyists ....'' Indeed, both the White House and Congress seem much more intent on pleasing their big-buck buddies than the voters. And they seem to see integrity in government as irrelevant.
This is not to suggest that good roads, the AAA's mission, are unimportant. But the AAA has 34 million members nationwide supporting its lobbying efforts. Common Cause has 250,000 (about 8,000 in Virginia), which is not a whole lot more than in 1970 when it was founded by John Gardner, a moderate Republican and former U.S. secretary of health, education and welfare.
Perhaps if 34 million had heeded Gardner's 1970 call to join in Common Cause, ``not a third party but a third force in America which upholds the public interest against all comers, particularly the special interests that dominate our national life,'' there'd be less talk today of third parties - and we'd be worried less about militia and other extremists plotting revolution against a federal government they don't trust.
Maybe it's not too late. My $20 check is in the mail.
by CNB