THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 25, 1996 TAG: 9608250042
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: ELIZABETH SIMPSON
LENGTH: 60 lines
Packing for the Democratic National Convention?
Let's see, make sure you have your red-white-and-blue placards. Your ``I Love Bill'' banners, your Clinton-Gore buttons. Oh, and don't forget your children.
Bring as many as you can. Pick out the cutest of the batch. And make sure they can handle those hot camera lights and late-night politicking, because you're going to need them to wave around on the convention floor.
Do you have any that don't drool or spit up? Pack 'em up. The younger, the better, the wetter, the . . . well, better pack some extra diapers, too.
What, you didn't hear? Children - especially babies - are the hottest political tools to hit the convention floor.
You need only look back a few weeks to the Republican convention to see what I mean. Children were all over the place.
Little Susan Ruby, 3-month-old daughter of Rep. Susan Molinari, was practically smothered by TV cameras as her mother gave the keynote speech.
And her name was sprinkled liberally (oops, bad word - make that ``a bunch'') in her mother's speech: ``At the end of the day, when I'm rocking my daughter, Susan Ruby, to sleep, I look down and wonder what her life is going to be like,'' her mother said in one of many references to her young daughter.
Children are our future, we keep hearing, and in the meantime, they make great political props. Especially for the kinds of issues that have hit the campaign trail this year. Past elections may have focused on international trade, foreign wars and the space race, but this year's slate is focused on children and families.
Welfare reform. Tax breaks for middle-income families. School uniforms. Curfews. Teen-age smoking. Children's television. College tuition costs.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to see the spotlight turned to children and their parents. But I worry that in the zeal of a campaign, kids will be used as a weapon instead of a cause to unite us.
Bob Dole, for instance, waxes poetic about his hometown of Russell, Kan. But then he criticizes the African proverb ``it takes a village to raise a child'' to attack Hillary Clinton's book with the same title.
``It does not take a village to raise a child,'' Dole said during his acceptance speech. ``It takes a family.''
I think it takes both, and suspect the people of Russell, Kan., would agree. His twisting the phrase to make it sound like socialism was nothing more than playing politics.
President Clinton is not immune from flip-flopping to score political points, either. Clinton, who for years has championed the rights of the disadvantaged, last week signed welfare legislation that opponents say will plunge a million children into poverty.
I wonder: Was it sound policy judgment or a savvy political move?
Only time will tell.
Both candidates have asked us to think about our children's futures, to make sure the America of tomorrow will be a safe place for these warm bundles of joy we're holding in our arms.
But we have to remember the children of today as well. There are children who are suffering, who don't have health insurance, who are hungry.
Those children deserve a shot in front of the cameras as well, and maybe a sound bite or two. Not to mention an America that won't trade them in for a chance at creating a better tomorrow for others. by CNB