RUST COMMENTARY: GENE HUCKSTEP: `CLASSIC AMERICAN' RECEIVES LIMBAUGH AWARD

GENE HUCKSTEP was an excellent choice for this year's Rush H. Limbaugh Award given by the Cape Girardeau Chamber of Commerce. In fact after listening to David Limbaugh's effectively summarized listing of Gene's many awards and achievements, one wondered why it had taken so long for this much deserved tribute.

Unfortunately, Huckstep is fighting a health problem and was unable to attend the chamber dinner. He's won many a war over the years, and we all look forward to his fulfillment of his daughter's remark during her acceptance: Gene plans to attend next year's event to personally acknowledge the award.

Many of us have Huckstep stories ... but I want to pay tribute to the Huckstep heart, his openness and service to so many over the years ... and his direct but to-the-quick analysis of a situation and direct, open steps to solve or identify a problem.

Huckstep is a Republican by party, but any party would have embraced him. And the party has always been secondary to serving his community.

He and Democrat state Sen. JOHN DENNIS were friends and achieved much together along with his fellow county commissioner, Democrat J. RONALD FISCHER.

"Huck" has never flinched when telling fellow Republicans what he thought they were doing wrong nor when telling former GOV. KIT BOND why he lost his first re-election bid for governor.

And though he is always candid, everyone likes HUCKSTEP. He is, as he was described at the awards banquet, a "classic American." He wasn't born with a silver spoon in his mouth ... and he didn't get a fancy education ... but his compass is true. He knows what is right and wrong. I'm proud to be one of his many friends.

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The Twilight of Accountability? This has been an exhausting week for the nation, and a truly depressing one. Whichever way the facts come out and no matter how the Clinton-Lewinsky matter is resolved, the coarsening of our public life, magnified through the lens of television, has reached a new low. I won't recount the week's revelations, because the weekend news shows will surely do that, but I will offer this reflection on the connection between private character and public virtue. Public figures are, indeed, entitled to a considerable degree of privacy, but that idea is not incompatible with the notion that public figures, especially national leaders, are called to a high standard of behavior.

If we accept the idea that it's the president's or the House speaker's -- or whoever's -- performance in office that matters, and not what he or she does off-duty, these questions follow. Are we prepared to ignore the professional athlete who strikes a policeman, so long as his scoring average doesn't sag? Is it no business of ours that a corporate CEO sexually propositions every woman in his employ, provided the company's bottom line looks good? Is it irrelevant that a top securities lawyer in a government agency beats and terrorizes his wife, so long as his legal opinions are well-written?

If the boundary between public and private, character and competence, that some propose becomes the norm, then we must be prepared to undo some history. Bob Packwood should be restored to his Senate seat. Several drill sergeants in Aberdeen, Md., should have their posts restored. Court judgments against corporations for allowing sexual harassment against female employees should be reversed and the damages repaid, with interest.

I hope -- and I believe -- that America is not prepared to say this. The truth is not that the president of the United States should be held to the same standard as every other American, but that he should be held to a higher standard. -- Gary Bauer, Washington Update

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The Golden Age of Bill Clinton: The following is an excerpt from an editorial in the Little Rock Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on Dec. 30 referring to remarks President Clinton made at his press conference. Clinton had said he had wanted to ... "make the country work again."

"If the president was referring to the economy, then the statisticians who keep up with this sort of thing have noted that the current recovery began in the fourth quarter of 1991 -- more than a year before The Age of Clinton dawned.

"Even before that, America wasn't exactly broken. After the great Reagan Boom of the '80s, aka the Decade of Greed in clintonspeak, the country was experiencing one of the milder recessions on record -- which in the annals of Clintonian ranked alongside the Great Depression. In the clintonoids' version of history, the American economy was the worst in half a century till Bill and the FOBs came to our rescue. Visionaries all, they used the great resources of government to do for the people what the people couldn't do for themselves. Our Leaders understood that it wasn't a matter of letting the country and the free market work; the country had to be made to work by enlightened rulers who knew which levers to push, which cords to pull, and exactly which new programs to propose from behind that curtain in the magical kingdom of Oz.

"You -- poor, deluded soul -- may think that prosperity has something to do with the unconstrained industry of a free people. Reactionary rubbish. The country would have sat on its collective duff, or at least frittered its time away doing its own, unproductive business, if Our Leaders hadn't provided wisdom, direction, labor and one national dialogue after another. As the president said, we "worked so hard" to make everything work better. Surely that wasn't a royal we, or an editorial we, but a new construction -- the presidential we.

"The administration's record of accomplishment is apparent for all to see. There was the $20 billion Stimulus Package that Mr. Clinton offered in 1993 ... but that brilliant idea was rejected by Congress even when his own party controlled it. Then there was Hillarycare -- but it never came to a vote. Then there were all those Investments in Our Children's Future. You remember: The massive appropriations in that first budget the president submitted to Congress after the Republican landslide of '94. That budget, by its own reckoning, called for annual deficits of more than $200 billion as far as the eye could see.

"Bill Clinton fought tooth and toenail against all those heartless cuts in his budget that the Republicans made. He refused for more than nine months to submit a balanced budget of his own because he wanted to protect the country from the draconian sacrifices that a balanced budget would require. He vetoed one version of welfare reform, then signed another under protest only after painting a stark picture of the horrors it would cause. He fought especially hard against all those irresponsible Republican tax cuts now fueling the economy.

"But if you doubt that Bill Clinton and his hard-working administration don't deserve the credit for this wave of prosperity, just look at the results. After his proposals for government-approved health care, the country's health-care system is adjusting to the economic realities, if on its own. And after his opposition to a balanced budget, welfare reform, and tax cuts, look at what's happened: The budget is being balanced, welfare is being reformed, tax cuts have been made and still more are being proposed -- if not by Bill Clinton at the moment.

"Yes, this president's dynamic leadership has paid off -- if not quite the way he envisioned. He's made the country work again. And his vision of foreign affairs, in which everything is working out beautifully, is equally realistic. Yep, good thing we've all had Bill Clinton to crack the whip over us."

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Perjury and Conspiracy? Newsweek reported that Kenneth Starr's investigation team is trying to put together a perjury and conspiracy case. For example, Clinton swore in his Jan. 17 deposition in the Paula Jones case that he had not met alone with Lewinsky since she left the White House in April 1996, but Newsweek says it has confirmed the two met on Dec. 28 and may have met alone several other times. Starr is said to want to get away from "sex questions" and move his investigation toward "cover-up questions."

New Budget: Clinton's budget arrived on Capitol Hill, and it is amazing. In spite of all the talk about the era of big government being over, the Clinton budget totals $1.73 trillion, a $90 billion increase in spending over last year. It is "balanced" because it assumes continued strong economic growth as well as congressional ratification of a tobacco settlement that will result in $65 billion in new taxes. In fact, the tobacco settlement is in doubt, and the economy will not expand forever. Congress should resist this budget with its new spending schemes and use this opportunity to make the case for a smaller Washington bureaucracy. -- Washington Update

~Gary Rust is president of Rust Communications, which owns the Southeast Missourian and other newspapers.