CLINTON'S CLARION CALL ULTIMATELY HURTS CHILDREN

It sounded so nice at the time. President Clinton, father-figure extraordinaire, was going to do something to help children. Thus, on April 21, he signed Executive Order 13045 directing federal agencies to assess environmental health risks that affect children.

I don't know about you, but anyone who loves my child is a friend of mine. There's just one thing. In signing EO 13045, Clinton simultaneously revoked EO 12606, signed Sept. 2, 1987, by former President Ronald Reagan.

The old order, so to speak, aimed to protect children and families too, though not from environmental risks. Reagan's order was designed to protect children from an overzealous, overbearing government -- the sort of government that, for instance, creates exaggerated impressions of risk in order to rush to the rescue.

The Clinton administration's clarion call for the children is the government version of Munchausen syndrome by proxy, in which adults deliberately hurt children so they might then soothe and heal them. Syndrome sufferers get attention and sympathy by abusing power and creating dependence among the weak and defenseless.

On the surface, Clinton's quiet -- some would say, stealth -- revocation of Reagan's order replaces the old Bad Nasty (big government) with the new Bad Nasty (environmental risk). Beneath the surface, however, he has removed any remaining obstacles to government intrusion into family affairs. Under the guise of protecting children, Clinton has loosened much-needed governmental restraints.

Meanwhile, suffer the children whose parents still smoke tobacco. Under the new order, one can easily imagine government officials determining that parental smoking poses an environmental risk to children. Whereupon Clinton mounts his ivory steed (or is that a Trojan horse?), gallops to the rescue and spirits the children away to Hillary 'n' Bill's Village. Far-fetched? Sadly, no. Family judges already have made custody decisions based on a parent's smoking habits.

Clinton's response to critics is that his order replaces "nothing (Reagan's order) with something (Clinton's order)." Singling out environmental hazards does sound specific and hard-hitting. And it can't hurt to consider the children when creating environmental policies, not that we've been ignoring them.

But Reagan's order wasn't exactly nothing. The mandate of Reagan's order was that federal agencies weigh the impact of proposed rules and policies on families. The assumption was that family concerns are as important to our nation's welfare as any other.

The president wouldn't say otherwise. He just believes that he and Mrs. Clinton know better than families what's good for families. "It Takes A Village," Mrs. Clinton's best-selling book on child-rearing, wasn't really about parenting but about "governmenting." In essence, she said, parents can't do the job of raising children alone, but need government to help them. How else are kids going to learn how to use condoms?

Clinton's order hasn't escaped the attention of at least 11 Republican members of Congress, who, led by Senators Lauch Faircloth of North Carolina and Spencer Abraham of Michigan, have introduced a bill to restore Reagan's protections. Called the Family Impact Statement Act of 1997, the proposed legislation would forbid passing any new federal policies without a study of how the policy might affect families.

For years, we've required developers to file environmental impact statements before they cut down trees. Why not require bureaucrats to file a family impact statement before they create policies that might further undermine the disintegrating American family?

The Republican bill requires federal agencies to answer seven questions when considering any new rule, including whether the policy strengthens or weakens parental rights, enhances or undermines marriage, increases or decreases family income. The bill also requires policy makers to determine whether a new rule substitutes government for the family.

It's difficult to imagine that such guidelines would be controversial or that they'd be considered "nothing." Given that families are the bedrock of civil society, it behooves us to protect and preserve them.

Yet government action in recent years hasn't been family-friendly, despite rhetoric to the contrary. High taxes don't help families function well. Welfare policies that essentially require single motherhood and absent fathers don't help families survive. They do, however, keep government running at a clip and make presidents seem like saviors rather than scoundrels.

Reagan's order may not have been "something" in the tangible sense -- nothing you can quantify like passive smoking or alar-tainted apples. But it was something to the extent that it kept bad policies from taking shape. Sometimes, nothing is better than something.

Kathleen Park is a columnist for the Orlando Sentinel.