THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 15, 1996 TAG: 9609120017
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J5 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: PERRY MORGAN
LENGTH: 72 lines
Some random notes regarding the ongoing saga of the Warners of Virginia, making tax cuts seem very sincere, and not picking on Chelsea Clinton. . . .
Mark Warner, the Democrat seeking to unseat incumbent U.S. Sen. John Warner, recently pointed out he is no political neophyte. He was, at the time, doing something that made him look like one.
When John twitted Mark (born in Indiana, raised in Connecticut) for being a come-here rather than a native-born Virginian, the challenger got hopping mad or, at least, so appeared in the empurpled text of a press release.
How, asked Mark, does John, himself born in Washington, D.C., get off calling him a Connecticut Yankee and, unspokenly, a carpetbagger? Huffed Mark: ``It's absurd. It's wrong and John Warner knows it's wrong.'' And it's also, perhaps, a small matter?
Among 16 of Virginia's top elected officials in the Statehouse and Congress, only four were native-born; almost half of Virginia residents, compared with 20 percent of Pennsylvanians, were born elsewhere. So there's no need for an outlander to doff his lid and tug his forelock in the presence of a natural-born Virginian.
John Warner is guilty of an impertinence and is no stranger to the lordly phrase. He obviously enjoys the luxury of being able to taunt his big-spending opponent. But when the senator needs deflation, a needle may work better than a bludgeon.
Far behind in the polls, Mark Warner has been trying to get John Warner to come out and debate differences on eight separate issues including abortion, Medicare, tax policy and the environment. His barrage of commercials link Warner with Newt Gingrich and reduced federal benefits. But the senator is fed up. His sly dig has changed the subject, if only briefly, and lured the challenger into trying to magnify a molehill.
* * * *
Voters are not yet agog over Bob Dole's promise to whack taxes and balance the budget. But they'll come around, The Wall Street Journal advises, if: (1) Dole promises often enough and (2) infuses the promise with his ``personal integrity.''
Journal editors don't beat around the bush. ``(H)aving committed to the tax-cut idea,'' they vow, ``Mr. Dole's task is to convince voters that he really means it.'' But what, as common sense and his life's work suggest, if he doesn't mean it - never did and never will? What if he has already tried to put his integrity behind the pledge but his integrity has dug in its heels?
Goodness knows Dole promises the tax cut often enough, but the repetitions sound memorized and mechanical. It's awfully hard for a sober and serious man to convince citizens - or himself - that the laws of arithmetic and compound interest don't apply to the federal budget and the national debt of $5 trillion.
As Ross Perot advises, asking for a pay cut is not a wise way to begin balancing a budget.
* * * *
Can't Chelsea Clinton be kept out of the campaign? Playing to the ``school choice'' movement, Bob Dole keeps pulling her in, saying every American child should have the same choice as Chelsea to attend a private school.
But, of course, America's children already have the same choice. If they can pass the entrance tests and pay the tuition, they can attend a school of their choice. What Dole supports is choice augmented by tax-paid tuition - a subsidy for parochial and other private school.
The concept has merit. Whether in practice education would be improved by forcing schools to compete for students and by undermining teachers unions is another matter. So are constitutional questions that cluster around the proposition - one being how much government control would follow government dollars into the private schools.
The issues are too fundamental to be hidden in rhetoric that caricatures a teen-ager living in the White House and that suggests school choice is a simple matter of equality and fair play. MEMO: Mr. Morgan is a former publisher of The Virginian-Pilot. by CNB