THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, July 12, 1996 TAG: 9607120015
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A19 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: KEITH MONROE
LENGTH: 70 lines
The 1996 race for president is shaping up as another huge embarrassment, but help may be on the way in the unexpected form of Richard Lamm.
Left to their own devices, the candidates for the major parties show a distressing tendency to run campaigns without content. The absolute nadir was the Bush-Dukakis brain death of 1988.
Bush rightly took a pounding for a campaign whose theme song was ``Don't Worry, Be Happy,'' whose poster boy was Willie Horton and whose big idea was a photo op at a flag factory.
But Dukakis did nothing to elevate the debate when he intoned like a mantra ``Good Jobs at Good Wages'' without a hint of how to achieve them and tooled around in a tank in a doomed attempt to appear macho.
The candidates were simply practicing Modern Politics 101, but it was ugly to behold. In the land of the Lincoln-Douglas debates and the Federalist Papers, voters no longer get an airing of vital issues like government spending, national security, public safety and taxation. Instead, we are treated to dueling soundbites, personal smears, shameless pork-a-thons and me-too candidates afraid to take a stand on anything for fear of alienating a special interest.
So far, this year's race has been awash in trivia and irrelevance. There's no question President Clinton has well-documented character flaws, but instead of letting the facts speak for themselves his attackers make up fantasies. As a result, legitimate concerns about the misuse of FBI data and incompetence on the White House staff get submerged in a sea of talk-radio delusions.
The president has supposedly had murders done in Arkansas. Hillary has been accused of acts that can't be described in a family newspaper. A former FBI agent has published allegations so wild that professional Clinton-bashers like David Brock have disowned them.
Let's face it, claims that the White House Christmas tree was decorated with pornographic ornaments raise more questions about the hiring process for FBI agents than for presidents. Such nonsense may even achieve the astonishing feat of winning sympathy for the Clintons.
The Democrats are far from blameless, of course. Is Bob Dole's age really an issue? Are his misguided remarks about tobacco really a big deal? Are Butt Man and Katie Couric really going to decide who becomes the next leader of the world's remaining superpower?
Luckily, it's not just voters who are fed up with campaigns that fail to address the problems the country faces. Whether motivated by patriotism, egomania or fiscal alarm, third-party candidates and nonpartisan kibitzers keep emerging to hold the feet of feckless Democrats and Republicans to the fire.
Ross Perot performed a public service in 1992 by forcing Clinton and Bush to quit promising handouts long enough to confront deficit spending and by calling attention to a system of campaign financing that encourages candidates to trade favors for votes.
Former Sens. Paul Tsongas and Warren Rudman through their Concord Coalition have continued to demand economically responsibly government. Now, three-term Democratic governor of Colorado, Dick Lamm, has announced he'll seek the nomination of Perot's Reform Party.
Perot is too quixotic to be taken seriously as a candidate, but Lamm is a considerable figure. He's a serious man who had the courage to confront fiscal reality, especially the country's unsustainable addiction to entitlements, long before it was fashionable. He could carry Perot's message without carrying so much baggage.
The odds against Lamm are astronomically long. No third-party candidate has ever come closer to the presidency than Perot's 19 percent. But that level of support did reveal that a large segment of the electorate is repulsed by politics as usual and hungry for campaigns that confront issues. At the least, a Lamm campaign might force Clinton and Dole to get real. MEMO: Mr. Monroe is editor of the editorial page of The Virginian-Pilot. by CNB