MISSOURI WATCH: PARTY DUTIES, OTHER POLITICAL MYTHS

"The Founding Fathers did not foresee the party system as it has developed, and what they knew about its early beginnings they disliked intensely." -- Walter Lippmann

Few events are more loathsome than listening to some modern-day political advocate try to convince his audience that the partisan garbage he has just delivered has the blessing not only of the federal constitution's authors but the Great Democrat/Republican Upstairs. The frightening aspect of such dialogue is not that it contains not a scintilla of truth but that some portion of those within hearing will accept it as gospel, storing such flotsam for later regurgitation, ad nauseam.

As the above quotation from the late and still-missed writer and columnist Walter Lippmann so succinctly confirms, the men who took great pains in shaping the contour of future American governments deliberately ignored party inclusion in the document that has guided our nation's destiny since its beginning. The authors knew exactly what they were doing.

Today it is commonplace to hear mindless blather from both parties blaming everything from official malfeasance to a disengaged electorate on outside influences. The blame game is a bipartisan effort. The irony is that many citizens, so accustomed to the ubiquitous presence of these parties, believe they enjoy a non-existent constitutional privilege.

Yet, despite this, it is possible to detect more cynicism, indifference, anger and, unfortunately, less respect for constitutional government than was present during earlier, critical times of crisis, whether military, economic or social.

"The only difference I ever found between the Democratic leadership and the Republican leadership is that one of them is skinning you from the ankle up and the other, from the neck down." -- Huey Long

When citizens today look at both political parties, they can hear expressed differences by partisans from both sides but in the light of day and reality, they can detect very little difference. Our incumbent president, Bill Clinton, is a textbook example. When first seeking the office he now precariously holds, the former governor from our neighboring state asked for our votes "to make a change in the way Americans are treated by their government and the way they view their government." It is altogether possible President Clinton took himself too literally, for he has changed the way we view government, but it is certainly not in ways imagined six years ago.

It is fair to ask whether Mr. Clinton's critics, and this number appears to be increasing despite the dizzying effects of spinning, are more interested in advancing their own partisan causes than advancing the case for structural changes and moral reformation in the nation's capital. A Republican Congress, rather than reacting to an electoral change that occurred just two years after a new president had been installed, took noticeably visible steps to reform and then found itself engaged in battles that had nothing to do with their enlarged constituency. In other words, politics became more important than public mandates, a not surprising turn of events in light of a long history by both parties of ignoring public needs.

During the last national election, Mr. Clinton on one side and Mr. Dole on the other, pledged to cooperate in changing the miserable way in which the world's greatest democracy selects its leaders. It is called campaign reform, and as the late governor of Louisiana observed above, the only difference between the parties on this reform and virtually all others is in the methodology of skinning the public.

"I don't know a lot about politics, but I know a good party man when I see one." -- Mae West

Few Missourians have ever connected our soft-spoken incumbent governor, Mel Carnahan, with the loud and outspoken Mae West, but the leader of one of the state's two major political parties recently established a striking similarity by endorsing a candidate for his job nearly two and a half years before party members would make their selection. After one of the two most mentioned candidates for the executive office bowed out of the contest, the incumbent stepped in to preserve party unity and assure that an intraparty fight did not disturb the fragile condition of partisan solidarity.

Mr. Carnahan feared that a fight within the party, regardless of its participants or the need to select the best qualified candidate, would deplete its members financially and emotionally, thereby giving the opposition an advantage. It was just this advantage the incumbent enjoyed from the opposition in 1992 and he knew, first-hand, the benefits it could bestow.

"Any party which takes credit for the rain must not be surprised its opponents blame it for the drought." -- Late GOP Sen. Dwight Morrow

Forgotten in most of what passes for political strategy today is the issue of citizen welfare as opposed to partisan advantage. The latter comes first and those presumably to be served by the process take the hindmost.

The majority party in Congress has postponed promised remedial action in too many areas to earn even belated voter appreciation. The politician in the White House has abused his powers to the detriment of the office he temporarily holds.

In our state, its agenda to coincide not with the fulfillment of needs but the avoidance of issues that will embarrass it at election time. The minority party bases the perquisites of the majority.

"And the public sleeps." -- Abraham Lincoln

~Jack Stapleton of Kennett is the editor of Missouri News and Editorial Service.