ROANOKE TIMES 

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

DATE: MONDAY, August 14, 1995                   TAG: 9508140045
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

WILDER, ET AL., DEBTS

FORMER Gov. Douglas Wilder's abortive 1992 presidential bid may have been a quixotic quest. But the $140,000 debt left from that campaign - the debt for which President Clinton hosted a Northern Virginia fund-raiser a few days ago - is far from the largest or longest in presidential politics.

That distinction, reports The Christian Science Monitor, goes to the $3.3 million still owed by Ohio Sen. John Glenn's 1984 campaign for the Democratic nomination.

Presidential candidates are not personally liable for the bills run up by their campaigns, which is one reason for the increasing insistence by potential creditors for cash up front for their goods and services.

Nevertheless, Glenn is trying to work out a settlement with creditors that would include $500,000 of his own money. "[T]he political pressure to pay ... off [a campaign loan]," reports the Monitor, "can be intense."

Another big debtor - $2 million - is Ross Perot's independent campaign of 1992. That seems strange, given that Perot is a bona fide billionaire: To a man of a billion bucks, $2 million is the equivalent of a measly $20 to a man with $10,000 in the bank.

Or maybe it's not so surprising. Maybe keeping a close eye on every million is how you get to be a billionaire. We also recall that Perot in his off-again, on-again '92 campaign was better at talking the balanced-budget talk than walking the balanced-budget walk.

Kidding aside, all this - whether we're talking about Glenn, Perot, Wilder or any of the others with leftover campaign debts - raises a couple of serious points.

First, the current campaign-finance system puts a premium on a candidate's skill for raising - or, as with Perot, having - great sums of money. Neither trait necessarily bears much connection to fitness for the office.

Second, the cheering may stop once the campaign is over, but the begging doesn't. It's losers, not the winners, who have trouble raising the money to pay off campaign debts - which reinforces the view that campaign contributions are generally not made with only a desire for good government in mind.

Keywords:
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