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Show Standard-Examiner lie 12A Sunday, May 24, 1992 Standard-Examiner Tettee hoks (SARS ET Editorials ps S eeRet Scan Kel BY Bush’s urban decay plan only beginning « SS NN SS SS : MG SS People empowerment is the thrust of President Bush’s urban agenda. His initiative to meet the needs of an American dream is hindered by too manyobstacles: unsafe cities, slow economic growth, an out-of-date education system and dependency-creating government | | | Fey programs. So said President Bush upon striking an agreement with congressional leaders to provide post-riot help for the nation’s cities Mr. Bush announced a six-point “action plan” that attempts to lift those obstacles. =, Nap Br a So kehi) Nee — 2 PP t includes tax breaks for new businesses that locate in impoverished inner cities, an anti-crime initiative, incentives for home ownership, welfare changes, education re- forms and jobs for inner city youths. The object, Mr. Bush said, is “to restore hope and to bring some cohesion to these communities and offer these young people some opportunities.” Each of the six planks of the president’s urban agenda has merit. The administration’s proposed Weed and Seed program, for instance, is modeled after successful pilot projects in Trenton, N.J., and Kansas City, Mo. It aims to “weed” inner city neighborhoods of drug dealers and violent criminals and “seed” these poor communities with job-placement and other social services. The president's so-called HOPE program would provide grants to help public housing residents purchase and manage their dwellings Initially, 36,000 low-income families would be eligible for home ownership. Another 65.000 would qualifylater. | Mr. Bush proposes to designate 50 urban enterprise zones throughout the country over the next five years. Busi- nesses that start up in such zones and provide jobsfor inner-city workers would not pay federal taxes on profits ID made from their investment. al The president also would offer poor parents a choice of oO | | S$} | ° | | prove the coordination, and thus the efficiency, of government efforts to train and employ inner-city youths. a oe “a bo Om oo | educating their children in either public, private or parochial schools. Unfortunately, school choice for the poor is he least likely of Mr. Bush’s empowerment proposals to be approved by Congress. The administration’s welfare reform plank would encourage thrift among poor families by increasing the asset limit to $10,000 for recipients of Aid to Families with Dependent Children. As it is now, a poor family can lose its benefits if it saves more than $1,000 and even that paltry sum is not indexed for inflation. Finally, Mr. Bush aims to bring all { f the t federal job training programs under onetent to i1m- Altogether, this adds up to a radical departure from present approaches to innercity poverty, the President de1 j LidaditG If adopted, his action plan will cost taxpayers at least $2 billion. Before the president and Congress move full speed ahead with a multibillion-dollar plan for inner cities, they should ask themselves whether it will provide more than a negligible improvement in urban povertyrates. ‘ if they can say with cenfidence that inner-city problems ibside appreciably, they should move forward. If cannot, they should go back to the drawing board in der approaches to ease the fundamental urban decay. ™~ 2 on ey _— oO ses Of Idea catchingfire: Inspire self esteem e latest educational fad spreading across the country originates in California. It is the movement to improve igsters’ school performance by vaccinating them ssedly magical ingredient: Self-esteem. und like a fanciful notion and it has its critics. ng in instilling confidencein ones self, esmative years’ = ng fire. One of the major news magay reduced self-esteem to an art form that it from cradle on and throughout life. Peogood about themselves can accomplish mira- e wl meh ee es, U Nagazine article Other evidence said. of the movement's growth: Official f-esteem task forces. first created California, now exLouisiana, Maryland and Virginia, and are being al least five other states: chapters of the Calrnia-based National Council for Self-Esteem have been rganized in some 50 communities across the country; fast-growing industry has been created to provide speakers, books, tapes, curriculum guides andtraining progra California’s self-esteem programs have been well-reived, yet there lid data that validates tb ting seli-esteem d | {f an r The national magazine put different perspective: Youngster n impact inrela- efforts and praised ? persistent criticism may student motivation and of self-esteem in a ght to be encouraged t hav otherwise t juctive effects on perf in other words, don’t preach j t provide a breeding ground for underact Self-esteem is the gradual result her than thedirect ause, of diligent effort and successful performance. So what is wrong with inspiring Absolutely nothing. A good dose of self-esteem never hurt anyone. EFFORTS NEEDED TO SAVE LEANING TOWER. Democrats must change to grow Thomas Jefferson founded the Democratic Party on May23, 1792, according to party lore, but you won't see much celebration of the bicentennial Saturday, for two reasons. One is that the date is a bit arbitrary. Jefferson wrote President George Washington a long letter on that date attacking the “Monarchical Federalist” faction, Alexander Hamilton apparently among them, and describing opposition groups already in Congress, though none called themselves “Democrats” for some years. Indeed, Jefferson’s letter beseeches Washington, himself a Federalist, to seek a second term. Sull, the letter offers as good a birth date as any. But the second problem is that, after 200 years, the Democratic Party has little idea of what or howto celebrate. Once the hope and protector of America’s masses, the party has lost its message — and its membership. It is, in fact, a potential albatross for national candidates, as the early popularity of Ross Perot testifies. True, the Republicans are little or no better. but that’s no consolation. Many months ago, some staffers at Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington suggested that a huge celebration be organized for the party’s bicentennial. But a problem quickly developed. Lists of top elected officials and contributors were available, but then, as William Greider reports in his new book, “Who Will Tell the Peo- ROBERT L. TURNER ple.” someone suggested they “invite the many thousands of people who are active in partyaffairs — the ‘regulars’ who serve on county com- mittees or tend to the mechanics of election precincts or campaign operations, the legions of people who faithfully rally around the ticket... “The DNCstaffers searched the party’s files and discovered that such lists no longer exist. The Democratic Party headquarters did not knowthe identity of its own cadres.” The party, Greider concludes, is “a historical artifact” that “functions mainly as a mail drop for political money.” DNC chairman Ron Brown said in Boston last week that he hadn’t seen Greider’s account, though the book has been on The NewYork Times’ best-seller list. He said the DNC does have somelists of workers, but “I can imagine the donor list is better.” The donor list has 400.000 names on it (about one-third the size of the Republicanlist). The average age of these people is 70. Various states are trying to do more. North Carolina had a bicentennial celebration. In Massachusetts, chairman Steve Grossman has inserted an anniversary note in his newsletter, but says he is putting more effort into organizing citizen participation, especially of young people, rather than throwing a birthdayparty. Organization is clearly one problem. But even more paralyzing for the Democrats seems to be the question: If they could get everyone together, what would they say? The problem has been illustrated from the first day of the presidential campaign, with Tom Harkin claiming to be the only “real Democrat” and Paul Tsongas basically saying Harkin’s idea of the party is ancient history. Many Democrats, meanwhile, objected to Bill Clinton’s chairmanship of the Democratic Leadership Council, a splinter group that was in some ways more conservative than they, and to his emphasis on the middle class while, some felt, shortchanging the poor and disadvantaged — a traditional constituency. Indeed, there has been a debate recently at high levels of the Clinton campaign about whether he should run in the tradition of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John Kennedy, or whether he should present himself as an outsider — the candidate of change. But where is the conflict? Clinton in fact is well positioned by his youth and his non-Washington political experience to capture the traditional Democratic values and translate them into a message for the future — for himself and the party. There is never growth without change. One great American said he would decline a trip to heaven if he could get there only via a political party. The year was 1789. The man was Thomas Jefferson. Boston Globe Point in Quayle’s speech was on values WASHINGTON — Aprior engagement kept me from seeing the season’s final episode of “Murphy Brown,” the childbirth session that drew criticism from Vice President Quayle. But I am baffled by the denunciations of Quayle for attacking the Monday night television heroine’s plunge into single motherhood. It is not as if this is unfamiliar ground — or unimportant. Some people suggest that the No. 2 man in government ought to have better things to do than stick his nose into a sitcom. Where were these people when millions of us watched enraptured the previous week’s bridal-shower show, where the fictional Murphy Brown was feted bythe real-life women anchors, interviewers and news readers from the three networks’ morning news shows. If the network news departments sent their stars to Murphy Brown, Quayle’s “intrusion” into the scene — and his decision to treat Candice Bergen’s character as if she were a real person — cannot be totally eccentric. More important, the Murphy Brown paragraph was embedded in a serious speech on community values — echoing the one President Bush had given three days earlier at Notre Dame. Those speeches and Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton’s Thursday response in Cleveland framed what will almost certainly be an important element in the autumn campaign. Raising the issue is obviously a calculated political ploy on the part of the Bush-Quayle campaign, despite White House press secretary Marlin Fitzwater’s labored efforts to laugh it off. It is not new, but it is still serious — as Clinton recognized in giving a quick and substantive rejoinder Those with long memories might recall that 22 years ago this fall, another vice president, Spiro T. Agnew, was on the same path as Quayle. Jules Witcover, in his book “White Knight,” recounted Agnew at a Las Vegas Republican fund-raiser attacking the movie “Easy DAVID S. BRODER Rider,” the Beatles and various other purveyors of popular culture he said were promoting permissiveness on drugs. Now, as it happens, neither the 1970 midterm campaigns nor Agnew’s career turned out well for the GOP, but that has not stopped the Republicans from replaying their refrain on “values.” Nor should it. In his just-published volume, “Populism and Elitism: Politics in the Age of Equality,” conservative author Jeffrey Bell argues that “the setting of a society's standards is, in the final analysis, what politics is about.” That is a striking but notself-evident proposition. Politics is also about the distribution of costs and benefits, about the mobilization of national energyto face foreign or domestic threats, about the reconciliation of long-standing conflicts and grievances. But value questions are important. The public already understands that — -even if the press commentators are inclined to mock. When eight out of ten Americans tell pollsters they believe their country — traditionally the most optimistic on earth — is headed down the wrong path, they are reflecting their concern about the economy, the schools, crime and drugs and maybe even race relations. But as anyone who listens to voters knows, they are also concerned about what many of them see as a decline in family and community values. Bell argues, with some accuracy, I think, that the 1988 election was all about values. George Bush and Michael Dukakis had relatively few outright disagreements about fiscal or foreign policy; remember Dukakis saying that “the issue is competence, not ideology.” But the Bush campaign took the offensive on the “values” questions symbolized by the Pledge of Allegiance, the death penalty and the week- end-furlough policy. That, Bell argues, is what took Bush from 17 points back to an 8-point victory. In the current political situation, with Cold War issues largely irrelevant and no boasts to make about economic performance, it is understandabie that the Bush-Quayle campaign would want to return to values questions. They are right to do so — not only as a tactic but because the country cares. But as Bell observes, there was little follow-up from Bush on the “values” issues with which he bludgeoned Dukakis. That gap between rhetoric and action is exactly what Clinton hit in his Cleveland speech. He did not challenge the Bush-Quayle premise that values are of central importance. Indeed, he had identified himself with that view at the outset of his campaign in talking about a “new covenant”of citizenship responsibility. And in his Cleveland speech, he reiterated that programs providing economic opportunity must be linked with “social responsibility” from the recipients. But he said, “The president’s notion that we can do nothing for a communitybut rebuild the American family is as wrongheaded and simplistic as the Democrats’ old notion that there is a social program answer for every social problem. Family values alone won’t feed a hungr7 child, and material security will not provide a moral compass. We need both.” Clinton and Bell are right — and the journalistic mockers of the Murphy Brown speech are wrong. The values debate is important. But it can’t be allowed to stop at the level of once-every-four-years rhetoric, whether it’s Spiro Agnew, Dan Quayle or George Bush doing the orations. Values that mean something are a spur to action. The debate can start with values. But it can’t stop there. Washington Post TODAY IN HISTORY Today is Sunday, May 24, the 145th day of 1992. There are 221 days left in the year. Today's Highlight in History On May 24, 1844, Samuel F.B. Morse transmitted the message, “What hath God wrought!” from Washington to Baltimore as heformally opened America’s first telegraph line On this date in 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge, linking Brooklyn and Manhattan, was opened totraffic. In 1983, New Yorkers marked the 100th anniversary of the Brooklyn Bridge with a parade and a massive fireworks display. In 1984, a court in El Salvador found five former national guardsmen guilty of murdering four American churchwomen in December 1980 In 1986, the Union Jack was flown in Israel for the first timein 38 years as Margaret Thatcher became the first British prime minister 10 visit the Jewish state. Ten years ago: In the Falkland Islands war, Britain claimed to have shot down seven more Argentine warplanes while Argentina said its jets had seriously damaged a British troopship and frigate. Five years ago: An estimated 250,000 people crowded onto the Golden Gate Bridge to celebrate the structure’s 50th birthday a few days before the actual anniversary. One year ago: Israel beganairlifting 15,000 Ethiopian Jews to safety as Ethiopian rebels continued to advance on Addis Ababa The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to deplore Israel's deportation of four Palestinians from the occupied territories. Former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, assassinated by a suicide bomber, was cremated Today's Birthdays: Singer Bob Dylan is 51. Actor Gary Burghoff is 49. Actress Priscilla Presley is 47 Singer Rosanne Cash is 37. Thought for Today: “What makes us discontented with our condition is the absurdly exaggerat- ed idea we have of the happiness of others.” —Anonymous |