ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, October 13, 1996 TAG: 9610120012
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Margie Fisher
SOURCE: MARGIE FISHER EDITORIAL WRITER
WITH LESS than a month before the Nov. 5 election, I hesitate to recommend that anyone read ``Dirty Little Secrets: The Persistence of Corruption in American Politics,'' by Larry Sabato and Glenn Simpson. If voter turnout is not depressed by lopsided opinion polls, it could well be by this political expose.
The book is apt to bolster many Americans' worst suspicions that:
When it comes to issues of integrity, there's not a dime's worth of difference between Democrats and Republicans.
Both parties' candidates and their minions will stoop to incredible lows to manipulate public opinion and to win elections.
Special-interest money controls the political system and public policy to an extent that it's a wasted effort for average citizens to express their concerns or try to change the course of government with their votes.
As one who occasionally writes editorials pooh-poohing such cynical views, I'd like to tell you to pay the book no mind, that it grossly exaggerates the extent of modern-day political corruption.
But Sabato, a University of Virginia political scientist of national prominence, and Simpson, an investigative reporter for The Wall Street Journal, have exhaustively researched and documented the system's dirty little secrets. And of all the recent political exposes, this one is probably the most reliable and instructional.
To be sure, it contains no juicy new stories about bimbo eruptions or Hillary. Rather than titillating, it's infuriating, and may raise the level of public distrust for the political process. Still, if people really care about good government and want to get the sleaze out of it, they first have to know how common (and bipartisan) sleazy practices have become.
This books catalogs the the sleaze.
It tells, for example, how members of Congress, able to get the slightest toehold on power as, say, subcommittee chairs shake down the special interests they regulate for the funds that give them a re-election advantage over challengers.
It tells how members of Congress use the franking privilege (free mail) and government-paid staffers to solidify the advantages of incumbency.
It tells how congressional incumbents use taxpayer-supported computer technology to talk out of both sides of their mouths - ``targeting'' special folks for special communications strokes.
It tells how campaign-finance and other election laws have been bent, if not actually broken, by candidates and by nominally independent organizations ranging from labor unions to the Christian Coalition.
(Incidentally, concerning the Christian Coalition, some Virginians may not know that Pat Robertson conceived it at the Virginia Democratic Party convention in 1978. That historical tidbit is reported in the Sabato-Simpson book.)
As a journalist, I was particularly interested in what the authors had to say about the Democrats' use of ``walking-around money'' - that is, big money dropped into the black community supposedly to help community leaders get out the vote.
Sabato and Simpson contend that the funds, usually disguised on spending reports, are basically cash bonuses for votes. That didn't surprise me - but I was surprised to learn it's apparently become an extortion racket for many black leaders. The practice has mostly remained a dirty little secret, the authors contend, because reporters are reluctant to criticize anything that goes on in the black community.
Many voters, of course, will insist they're too savvy to be suckered in by campaign fraud and deception, including new-wave ``push polling.'' Here, simplified, is how that works:
Hundreds of technology-assisted telephone calls are generated by operatives claiming to be independents doing ``research.'' The person receiving a call is asked: If the election were held today, would you be more likely to vote for Candidate A or Candidate B. Say the person says B. The person might then be asked: Would it make any difference to you to know that B is a lesbian? Or a wife-beater, or an atheist, or was once accused of shoplifting a pack of Tutti-Frutti chewing gum?
Never mind the answer. Never mind that Candidate B is not now and never has been a lesbian or a gum chewer. The caller, actually working for A, has planted a lie intended to sabotage B and fix the election for A.
Sabato and Simpson propose a shake-up in campaign-finance and disclosure laws. But without a drumbeat of public demand, enactment of these or any other reforms seems unlikely to me. It's too much in the interest of incumbent lawmakers to keep the current system they can so easily exploit.
A shame it is, too, that ``Dirty Little Secrets'' will probably never make the best-seller lists. For one thing, its primary colors are gray and grayer. The corruption it documents falls a shade short, in most instances, of the illegal or indictable. Also, it provides more details about the underbelly of politics than most people care to know.
Sigh. I don't know Simpson personally. But I have known and respected Sabato since the early 1970s, and still have a lapel button he once gave me, saying ``Politics is a good thing.'' Now Sabato gives details, details, details. And we know what they say about the devil and details.
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