Service and Responsibility: Reasons for Optimism
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WMktagton
> In the first 24 hours after the Waco conflagration spread a pall of gloom over
Washington and the nation, two events
brought rays of hope.
The first was Attorney General Janet
Reno's stepping forward, without hesitation,
td say that she was responsible for the decision to force the issue at the Branch
Davidian compound and would accept the
consequences — even if it meant
she lost
0
her job. "I madeM the decision, she said
'I'm accountable
•; The power of those six words and the exapple she set to a city where buck-passing
and finger-pointing are the customary way
of life cannot be exaggerated. We have had
enormous public policy disasters, from the
lopting of the savings and loan industry to
Vietnam and the Iran-contra affair, in
which no high official came forward voluntarily to say, "I was in charge and I failed."
The instances of resignation on principle
are so rare they remain vividly in mind:
Elliott Richardson and William Ruckelshaus during the Nixon Watergate cover-up,
Cyrus Vance when the Iran hostage rescue
mission fatted.
Reno has set an example which one
hopes is not lost on her colleagues in the
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new administration, starting with President
Clinton. He allowed his spokesman to spend
the first 24 hours of the Waco tragedy distancing the president from the calamity,before he stepped forward himself to back the
attorney general and accept his own accountability.
The second event also celebrated the assertion of personal responsibility, not in
high government office but in everyday life,
and this time the Clinton role was unreservedly positive.
The story begins with a young woman
named Vanessa Kirsch. After the disappointment of the 1988 Dukakis campaign, in
which she was a low-paid field organizer,
Kirsch went to work for Dukakis' pollster,
Peter Hart. One of her projects for Hart's
firm was a survey of young people's atti-
J
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program."
tudes on civic responsibility, which concludBut the surprise guest had a surprise for
ed unhappily that for most of her 20-someKirsch, promising that If everything went
thing contemporaries, citizenship duty beright, "next year we'll have this in the Rose
gan and ended with voting — and not all of
Garden."
them lived up to that.
As it turned out, the Rose Garden was ocKirsch was convinced the stereotype of a
cupied by a "teacher of the year" ceremony
self-centered generation was wrong, so she
on the appointed day last week. But 106 of
left her job two years ago and began organthe new crop of Public Allies honorees lined
izing a group called Public Allies, whose
the South Portico of the White House and
aim was to support and recognize young
formed the centerpiece of the commemorapeople engaged in community service. The
tion of Youth Service Day, saluting an estitechnique was amazingly straightforward:
mated half-million young volunteers across
With a handful of volunteers, Kirsch walked
the neighborhoods of inner-city Washington, America and the organizations in which
they work.
asking local store owners, school principals
It was just 24 hours after the Waco trageand community group organizers for the
names of young people who were "making a dy, but the mood was uplifting. Partisanship
was put aside, as leaders of the Points of
difference" by their volunteer efforts. Then
she and her friends found donors who gave
Light Foundation, launched by George and
stipends to some of these youths, between 18 Barbara Bush and funded once again in the
and 30 in age, who wanted to quit their regufirst Clinton budget, mingled with longtime
lar jobs and work full-time at their commuDemocratic community activists.
The night before, I had met one of the
nity projects.
A year ago, when Public Allies was gethonorees, 29-year-old Paul Griffin, co-directing ready to make its first awards, Kirsch
tor of the wonderfully named (in tribute to
got a phone call from the Clinton-for-Presi- "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof') No-Neck Monsters
dent campaign, saying that Hillary Rodham Theater of Youth, an inner-city, after-school
Clinton would like to join the ceremony. acting and production workshop in Washing"She wasn't a big deal then," Kirsch re- ton.
Griffin, who is white, had been nominatcalled, "so we just shoehorned her onto the
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ed by Paul Woods, a black staff member at
the Columbia Heights Youth Club, who had
seen the excitement and inspiration the theater project had brought to troubled teens.
"We help them develop unused personal
skills — concentration, imagination, collaboration," Griffin said, "and the result is liberating."
At the White House ceremony, Public Allies honorees spoke of similar experiences,
none more movingly than Carl Giddy, 23, a
self-described former drug dealer who, as a
member of the D.C. Service Corps, "saw
kids in elementary school who reminded me
of me/' and became a tutor and mentor to
one of them, helping a boy named Matthew
overcome his reading difficulties. "I love
Matthew," he said, "and I hope he will be
proud of what I have become."
That was the whole point, Mrs. Clinton
said in brief but near-perfect remarks closing the ceremony. "Service means you get
as well as you give; your life is changed as
you change the lives of others . . . It is the
way we find meaning in our lives, both individually and .collectively."
Service — and responsibility — are the
lessons Janet Reno and Vanessa Kirsch and
Paul Griffin and Carl Giddy all taught, in a
week when they were badly needed.
THE PRESIDENTS
TAKEN UP4 NEW SPORT..
Established 1850
SAVANNAH EVENING PRESS
Established 1891
FRANK T. ANDERSON
Publisher
WALLACE M. DAVIS, JR;
'Executive Editor
LARRY POWELL".
REXANNAK. LESTER
Managing Editor
Associate Editor
Sunday, April 25,1993
Georgia Needs NAFTA
P
RESIDENT CLINTON has tried to portray himself and his new administration
as champions of free trade and open
markets. But so far his actions have fallen short of his rhetoric when it comes to the
North American Free Trade Agreement with
Mexico and Canada.
NAFTA, as it is commonly known, would lower tariffs and other trade barriers from the Yukon to the Yucatan, creating the largest free
market in the world. Its approval would constitute a historic agreement among the nations of
this continent and would directly benefit Georgians.
Trade liberalization already in effect due to an
agreement with Canada have led to a doubling of
Georgia's exports to that country, Exports to
Mexico from this state have been growing at an
average annual rate of 42 percent since 1987. Exports include agricultural products and livestock,
textile mill products and apparel, lumber and
wood products, furniture and fixtures, printing
and publishing products, chemicals, rubber and
plastic products, transportation equipment, and
Industrial machinery and computers.
A study conducted for a committee of the Mexican and U.S. Chambers of Commerce by a group
called The Trade Partnership showed that in 1991
Georgia's exports to Mexico generated 7,300 jobs
in the state. Exports to Canada created another
30,700 jobs in Georgia that year. These figures
would grow considerably with the approval of
NAFTA.
Critics of the trade agreement say it would
cost American jobs. The study shows it would
create three new jobs for every one lost.
"We see a lot of potential in Mexico and we're
spending a lot more of our effort and budget in
promoting Georgia products there," Kevin
Langston of the Georgia Department of Industry,
Trade and Tourism said recently. "With the coming North American Free Trade Agreement,
Georgia is well-positioned to trade with Mexico
and we have a good product mix for Mexico. We
have a lot of the machinery and textile products
Mexico is looking for to upgrade its industry.
Mexico is looking for high technology products
and Georgia is a primary source for computers,
peripherals, and especially software."
Farm exports, which are also important to this
area of the state, include cattle, chickens, eggs,
peanuts and pork, according to the study, and
would dramatically increase if tariffs were eliminated.
NAFTA approval would eliminate current
Mexican operating and investment restrictions
on international cargo trucking and greatly benefit American trucking firms, including some in
Georgia, says the American Trucking Association.
The study cites other economic gains in wait
for Georgia if President Clinton and his trade
representative, Mickey Kantor, stop stalling on
NAFTA and begin to move it toward final approval in Congress. If the president wants to create jobs without spending tax money or enlarging
the deficit, this is a way to do it.
Vetoes Foil Flawed Measures
G
OV. ZELL MILLER has vetoed two
bills that were poorly conceived and
rushed to approval during the recent
session of the legislature: the straightparty voting bill and a pay raise bill that would
have affected various officials at the local level.
The voting bill would have eliminated the convenient straight-party voting now permitted in
Georgia and would have required a separate vote
on each race on a ballot. The raises in the other
bill would have gone to county tax commissioners, probate judges, clerks of court and sheriffs.
The proposals deserved, at the very least, to
be discussed at farther length, with the public
getting a fair chance to register its opinions. Instead, they zipped through the legislative process
like a cat scooting off a hot tin roof.
Secretary of State Max Cleland campaigned
for a veto of the straight-party voting bill. He
said it would make voting more cumbersome and
was intended to assure the jobs of a few Demo-
cratic incumbents. He is a stalwart Democrat
himself, so his opposition certainly didn't arise
from partisanship.
It turned out that the governor agreed with the
secretary of state. Mr. Miller said the balloting
change would cause frustration and confusion
among voters - which they certainly don't need -and was passed without adequate public notice.
And besides that, it would require Justice Department approval.
The voting measure was hurried through the
legislature in the closing minutes of the 1993 session. It did not become widely known until the following day. The county officials' raises also
swept through in the final hours. Some of the
raises were exorbitant, but the major point is
that the people who would have to pay for the
raises were not consulted. As Gov. Miller succinctly put it, the pay increases were "in the
wrong amount, done at the wrong time and done
in the wrong way."
Filibusters Serve a Purpose
Washington
The Republican filibuster,against
the Clinton "stimulus" package was
a resounding educational success
because it provoked liberal denunciation of the Senate's protection of
the right of a minority to use extended debate to obstruct Senate action.
At issue are two different stances toward government.
Is efficiency, understood as the
ability to implement the majority's
will quickly, the primary value in
government? Or is the primary value caution born of anxiety about
government power, caution that respects the right of an intense minority to put sand in the gears of government?
Lloyd Cutler is a liberal critic of
Senate Rule XXII that requires 60
votes to curtail debate by imposing
cloture. He is a distinguished Washington lawyer, seasoned by public
service (he was President Carter's
counsel) that unfortunately did not
inoculate him against the temptations of institutional tinkering. The
tinkering he favors would facilitate
the essence of the liberal agenda —
more uninhibited government. For
example, a decade ago he recommended various reforms to undermine what he called an "anomaly"
and what the Framers considered
the essence of the constitutional system — the separation of powers.
Cutler finds Rule XXII not only
politically but also constitutionally
objectionable.
Politically it aggravates, he believes, the disjunction between public expectations and institutional
functioning. The public expects
modern presidents to formulate policies and lead Congress into supporting them. Rule XXII complicates
presidents' attempts to fulfill that
expectation.
But the answer to this problem
(which modern, hyperactive presidents aggravate) is to educate — reeducate, really — the public to have
eorge
more judicious expectations regarding the presidential role. Presidents
have limited powers; the primacy of
Congress is an older, sounder tradition than presidential supremacy.
And the Senate is not obligated to
jettison one of its defining characteristics, permissiveness regarding
extended debate, in order to pander
to the perception that the presidency
is the sun around which all else in
American government — even
American life — orbits.
Cutler's argument for the unconstitutional ity of Rule XXII is:
"The text of the Constitution
plainly implies that each house must
take all its decisions by majority
vote, except in the five expressly
enumerated cases where the text itself requires a two-thirds vote: the
Senate's advice and consent to a
treaty, the Senate's guilty verdict on
impeachments, either house expelling a member, both houses overriding a presidential veto and both
houses proposing a constitutional
amendment."
But the Constitution "implies" no
such thing. Cutler's
semantic
sleight-of-hand is in the words
"must take all its decisions." The
Constitution provides only that, other than in the five cases, a simple
majority vote shall decide the disposition by each house of business that
has consequences beyond each
house, such as passing legislation or
confirming executive or judicial
nominees. Procedural rules internal
to each house are another matter.
And the generation that wrote and
ratified the Constitution — the generation whose actions are considered particularly illuminating concerning the meaning and spirit of
the Constitution — set the Senate's
permissive tradition regarding extended debate. There was something
very like a filibuster in the First
Congress.
Although the filibuster was often
used by Southerners against civil
rights legislation, liberals have repeatedly used it. When in 1957 the
Senate selected from its history five
outstanding senators whose portraits adorn the Reception Room,
one was Wisconsin's liberal Robert
La Follette (the others were Webster, Clay, Calhoun and Taft). La
Follette, one of the most aggressive
filibusterers, led, along with another
liberal, Nebraska's George Norris,
the 1917 filibuster against the arming of the U.S. merchant fleet, the
filibuster that caused the Senate to
adopt its first cloture rule.
Democracy is trivialized when
reduced to simple majoritarianism
— government by adding machine.
A mature, nuanced democracy
makes provision for respecting not
mere numbers but also intensity of
feeling. And ask yourself: Is there
anything the nation has ever wanted, broadly and deeply, that a filibuster prevented the government
from giving? Clinton's "stimulus"
package would have passed if the
country wanted it.
Liberal critics of filibustering
say, as they do about many good
things, that it was fine long ago, in a
slower, simpler age, but not now,
when there is so much that government must do, immediately. Conservatives answer with words from one
of Trollope's parliamentary novels:
"The best carriage horses are those
which can most steadily hold back
against the coach as it trundles
down the hill."
Second Guessing's Fine, But Lay Blame Correctly
By the time you read this (written on
Wednesday), there'll have been more second-guessing on the Waco tragedy than you
can shake a stick at Nothing wrong with
second-guessing in this instance because
Waco has been one of America's most terrible chapters.
It's still hard to believe Those children 1
They never had a chance, and fell victim of
a looney who. going into the horrible episode, demonstrated no respect or even mild
regard for kids or their rights, not to mention adults
The reports of David Koresh's sexual followers ultimately have shaken off their
abuse of minors in his hellish retreat have obvious hypnosis and told him to 0go fly a
shocked even the unshockable. This has kite and find another band of dupes
been Jim Jones all over again, the only dif
Such questions Americans are posing,
ferenoe being a sea led-down version
and
it's understandable
Second-guess0 Certainly Americans are
There is a difference, however, between
only human They can't help but conjure up
second-guessing and laying blame for the
a lot of what-ifs and on-the-other-hands
Could, or should, the FBI have waited a horrible consequences where it doesn't belittle longer' 7 Was tear-gassing the fortress long Some may conclude that the FBI
absolutely necessary'7 Wouldn't Koresh should have been more patient, but please
eventually have worn down 0 Wouldn't his don t blame the FBI for the mass murders
Also, don't blame Attorney General Reno
or President Clinton. Theirs was a judgment
call, the wisdom of which didn't prove out,
but don't lay those deaths at the feet of
Reno, FBI director Sessions or the president.
They didn't start the fires. They didn't
keep keep the kids and their misguided elders captive inside that tabernacle-turnedfortress And don't forget that, early on in
the siege, some dedicated federal agents
lost their lives in gunfire that came from the
fortress.
Also don't forget that what started the
whole thing was Koresh's cache of illegal
weapons I don't care what the gun advocates may say, ordinary citizens shouldn't
be allowed to own 50 caliber machine guns,
grenades and other weapons intended for
use only by such constituted authorities as
troops and police, and under the constraints
governing them
If you want to lay blame for those
deaths, lay it all on David Koresh
The second-guessing began w i t h the
president's own spokesman, George
Stephanopolous. Right after the tragedy, the
fellow was on camera saying yes, the president knew about the FBI's planned assault,
but he left the procedure up to Miss Reno
and Sessions. It was as if to say, "Gee, the
boss didn't really know they were going to
doit f/iafway."
Nothing like trying to cover the boss's
flanks and rear. Loyal subject, George
Thank goodness, President Clinton finally set matters straight — the buck stopped
with him and he took full responsibility And
no. he definitely did not want his attorney
general's resignation
I'm not certain how the resignation issue
arose, but it received instantaneous agitation from the big media, second-guessers
par excellence, especially of presidents and
their underlings (and think what it would
have been had this happened on a Republican president's watch >
President Clinton rightly has ordered an
investigation Congress too, and I suppose
rightly" also That's official second-guess-
ing, and in the public's interest.
But for goodness' sake, let's hope those
investigations stay on track, which means
sorting out the facts of the case and eschewing tangential excursions and incursions.
The big media also will jump into it, and
while they may tread only lightly on the
president, their darling, and his attorney
general, you can bet they'll clobber heck out
of the FBI. "Get something" on the FBI has
been their battle cry for years, and they've
done a thorough job on J. Edgar Hoover
long after he has died and cannot defend
himself.
Meanwhile, a nation should pray for
those victims of the tragedy, especially the
innocent children, and even for the soul of
miserable David Koresh Prav also that lessons for the future will come from this awful
episode.
Not just lessons for dealing with kooks
and their followers, but also lessons that
may keep gullible souls from succumbing to
such spiritual seduction as practiced by the
kooks