POLIGRATIFICATION: THE ILLNESS IS SPREADING

Poligratification. Don't look up the word in your Webster's because it isn't there. I just made it up, and just to make sure someone hadn't beaten me to it, I checked my handy Franklin Spellmaster Computer, and it told me, "Sorry, can't help." Cut for some time now I've been trying to think of a word that would describe an age-old malady that has afflicted politics and the art of governance for generations, and finding none I was reduced to making up one of my own.

Poligratification is actually a blending of two words, politics and gratification, and when I submit it to the International Panel of Learned Scholars Who Decide What Words Are Worthy of Being Included in the Next Edition of Webster's Dictionary, they'll want some examples of how my word would be used. Thanks to politicians now occupying the America's city halls, state capitals and Washington, D.C., citing examples will be much easier than cutting the federal deficit, reducing the public debt or rewriting Missouri's school foundation formula.

Poligratification, you see, is everywhere there are politicians who seek honor without pain, which is another way of saying public servants who want it both ways. And, boy, do we have a lot of poligratification going on these days.

For starters, take Jefferson City. Our state capital is loaded with politicians who, only a few months ago, were begging voters for the chance to lead them to better government. Using words such as progress and reform, these candidates begged voters for the chance to exert leadership, vision and dynamic change in our state. "Just give me the chance to show what I can do for you," they said, in almost universal chorus, and then promised that if elected they would improve on everything that was wrong in our state.

But a funny thing happened between the start of this year's session last January and the first of May. Poligratification. The politicians got elected, all right, but no sooner did they take the oath of office and receive the keys to their office than rigor mortis set in.

With only several days left before this year's session must end, there are so many items left undone that anyone conversant with speedy legislative decisions is left quaking in his boots. Laws that were enacted two years ago are still waiting to be implemented. Reforms in everything from workers' compensation to school foundation funding to ethics enforcement to health care to ending the scandalous waiting list for mental retardation treatment to campaign spending are still waiting for some kind of action.

Candidates who beg for the public to give them responsibility have turned into politicians who confuse reform with relaxation, study with stupor, industry with indolence. In other words, poligratification.

Legislative lethargy was evident more than a month ago, and one of the first signs was talk in Capitol corridors about a special session sometime this summer. Once poligratification sets in, those who pledged to meet the tough questions with decisive action become those who duck the controversial with lame excuses.

This year's session has had no less time than previous ones to address some of Missouri's more critical problems, yet it has not done so. The result is that solutions will be sought in the final hours prior to May 14, and then disaster will really loom. The state Senate met the other morning until 1:30, discussing the fairness of the newly revised foundation formula. Anyone who believes you can define school funding fairness at 1 o'clock in the morning after 11 years of depriving school children outside St. Louis and Kansas City could qualify as a federal judge.

Poligratification is not just indigenous to Jefferson City. It occurs in large doses in that fount of celestial wisdom known as the District of Columbia. Poligratification is rampant there.

Politicians who promised to attack the annual scandal known as the federal deficit immediately began looking at the next election and following the path called The Same Old Stuff. Instead of reducing the deficit, some sought to enlarge it. Others who were suddenly aghast at these proposals pretended they had never participated in such duplicity. These are the folks who gave us such great federal programs as the multimillion-dollar rapid transit system in St. Louis and the federally funded commercial airport between Dallas and Fort Worth bordering land owned by Mr. Fiscal Integrity Himself.

When poligratification sets in, the patient comforts himself with the honor and represses the shame. Victims often don't even recognize they are infected, and even when faced with the reality of their illness, they seldom if ever seek treatment. The worst problem is that their poligratification is harmful to the public's health. Sometimes it's even terminal.