THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, November 23, 1994 TAG: 9411230029
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Short : 42 lines
One clear message voters sent when they swept Republicans into unaccustomed power in Congress was a disgust with politics as usual. Voters may have hit Democrats hard because they were in charge, but polling shows a desire for bipartisan problem-solving, not endless bickering.
Yet here comes Senate Majority Leader-to-be Bob Dole playing a game worthy of arrogant old bulls like Dan Rostenkowski. Dole is threatening to hold GATT hostage and to refuse to deliver enough votes to pass it in the Senate unless the Clinton administration agrees to a capital-gains tax cut.
This may be tactically clever, and no one is a better legislative mechanic than Dole. But it is likely to strike voters as the kind of cynical and hypocritical behavior that poisons the well of cooperative endeavor in Washington and that turned the stomach of voters when a Democratic majority did it.
After all, GATT and the whole free-trade issue is a Republican accomplishment. It began under Reagan and Bush. It is only happenstance that it is coming to fruition under a Democratic president. In effect, Dole is trying to blackmail Clinton into acquiescence on capital gains by threatening to destroy a free-trade agreement that ought to be one of the Republican Party's proudest achievements.
Clinton should call Dole's bluff and tell him to quit playing games with the life of what is, after all, a Republican brainchild. If GATT is the best policy for America, as Republicans have long claimed, then threatening to sink it as part of a political ploy is irresponsible.
And if capital-gains tax cuts are such a sterling idea, it ought to be possible to sell them on the merits without having to resort to chicanery. And if a Democratic minority blocks them, let the voters inflict the appropriate punishment - another drubbing at the polls. by CNB