THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 25, 1996 TAG: 9608250060
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY WARREN FISKE AND ROBERT LITTLE, STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: CHICAGO LENGTH: 97 lines
Compassion, says Marionette Wiggins, a lifelong Democrat from Martinsville, is the key to governing. And Republicans, she says, just don't seem to have any.
``The conservatives are turning this country into a mean place where the underprivileged will be trampled on,'' said Wiggins, a 67-year-old semiretired secretary who is a delegate to this week's Democratic National Convention.
Comments such as Wiggins' really frost Bob Barlow, a 37-year-old lawyer from King William County who was a delegate earlier this month at the Republican National Convention in San Diego. Barlow ticks off a list of his volunteer activities for the mentally retarded and foster children.
``They're content to pay their 40 percent tax to buy bureaucratic compassion,'' he says. ``Conservatives are saying, `Let's take these programs out of the hands of bureaucrats and put them into the hands of volunteers and communities.' We know that a bureaucrat never cares like a volunteer will.''
Compassion will be a major theme this week as Democrats convene in Chicago. Interviews last week with Virginia's delegates to the Democratic and Republican national conventions exposed clear differences in the perceived role government should play in people's lives.
And the choice between Bill Clinton and Bob Dole, they added, boils down to a referendum on those contrasts.
The differences should play out this week, as Democrats return for the first time to a city that erupted into a generational riot during the Vietnam-era convention of 1968.
The grainy television images of bloodied yippies and club-wielding police have been revived to pepper the airwaves. Several demonstrations are planned in memory of the 1968 melee, including a weeklong vigil at Balbo and Michigan avenues, ground zero for much of the violence.
But this year's Democratic National Convention promises to be more of a well-scripted stump speech than the rumpus to which it will be compared.
Chicago officials held a lottery to dole out parade and protest times to anyone who wanted one. The city that turned on young protesters 28 years ago has erected soap boxes and sound systems, and has blocked traffic to accommodate them.
The government, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley promised, will be everyone's friend.
Democrat Dana Martin, a 50-year-old insurance company executive from Roanoke, sees government more as a referee.
``I think the government needs to play an active role at the times when nobody else does,'' Martin said. ``When anyone gets too much power - be it large corporations or labor unions or any other group - it's appropriate for the government to step in and level the playing field.
``It's a feeling I've had since the civil rights movement, when `states' rights' was really the code word for segregation,'' he said. ``The states not only abdicated the responsibility they had to protect people's rights, but aggressively made second-class citizens out of a large segment of the population.''
But Republicans such as Walter Barbee of Fairfax County, an influential lobbyist for conservative Christian causes, compare government to an overzealous umpire who never lets the teams play.
``It's just too pervasive. It's too much in our knickers and too much on our backs,'' said Barbee, who believes government should be restricted to providing for common needs such as transportation and national defense.
``It should get out of education and they should get out of regulating every aspect of our lives,'' Barbee said. ``It overflows. It's like dough in the oven. It just keeps rising, and there's no force that mitigates against it.''
In this fall's campaign, debate over the scope of government will take the form of competing tax proposals by Republican Dole and Democrat Clinton.
Dole is proposing a variety of tax cuts, arguing they will stimulate economic growth by giving people more money to spend and invest. He has called for a 15 percent across-the-board cut in federal income tax, a 50 percent reduction in the capital gains tax and a $500-per-child tax credit for low- and middle-income families.
Clinton is expected to unveil his economic program calling for far more modest tax cuts. He argues that the deeper reductions endorsed by Dole will expand the national deficit and cause interest rates to rise.
The issue is expected to be central to this fall's campaign and provokes an emotional debate between Democrats and Republicans.
``I just don't think Republicans are being very far-sighted,'' said Gloria Haislip, a 66-year-old Democratic delegate from Fancy Gap in Carroll County. ``They seem too prone to just say, `He should just get himself up and get a job.' The problems we have aren't that simple.
``They want to cut taxes and then cut every service the government provides, but there are a lot of old people who are scared to death. They need the government. They live off Social Security and health benefits.''
Republican Kathy Hayden, a Roanoke political consultant with three children, needs the tax break. ``I'm not a rich person, I'm barely even middle class,'' she said. The tax cut ``would encourage me to save some. I don't have any money to save or invest.''
Barlow, with six children of his own, said the tax cuts won't work unless they are accompanied by unpopular reductions in federal spending. ``Medicaid, Social Security - we need to reform them because they're going bankrupt,'' he said.
``I think we need to keep our commitment to those who have spent a lifetime contributing to the programs. But for younger people, we need to encourage individual savings and personal responsibility. That's the problem with Bill Clinton. I don't see him taking personal responsibility for anything.''
KEYWORDS: DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION 1996 by CNB