Asked in a public meeting to say what Congress does that he condones, Herschensohn said he supports programs that are pertinent to the duties of the federal government. Right there is a hint of how radical Herschensohn is: he thinks not everything is pertinent. He is as radical as our Founders, who favored a federal government of limited and enumerated powers. For example, Herschensohn says the federal government is properly involved with airlines and other interstate transportation. But not with, say, urban mass transit. He recalled a Los Angeles mayor returning from a foraging trip to Washington and boasting about how much federal money he had scooped up for his city’s subway. Then Herschensohn said those words about the coal miner.
Today a willingness to spend other people’s money to please one’s own constituents is taken to be the measure of a politician’s moral stature. But Herschensohn’s words about the West Virginian pose this question: How can the compassion-mongers in Congress claim to have cornered the market on “caring”? Who is more genuinely compassionate, Herschensohn or the moral grandstanders at the opposite end of the political spectrum? California, which is weighty enough to nudge the nation toward new thinking, can do so by answering in the affirmative this question: Does the nation need-and deserve-one senator who is alert to the moral ambiguities and constitutional dubiousness of much of what Washington now does?
Herschensohn’s persona-part basset hound, part pixie-is a cartoonist’s delight. His sleepy eyes and bright smile are framed by a thick shock of gray hair–a Marx brothers’ composite, bits of Chico and Harpo. But his arrival in the Senate Republican cloakroom would increase by about 10 percent the ranks of the thoughtful people there, and would markedly increase the wisdom of the Senate as a whole. He has made documentary movies, has worked in the White House and for 13 years has been a radio and television commentator. He is a genuinely friendly and funny man, about as menacing as a chocolate eclair, but he is a Washington lobbyist’s nightmare. This is so because he wants much of Washington’s power to go back where it came from-to states, localities, voluntary associations, individuals. Furthermore, he favors a flat tax. His proposed tax form, the size of a postcard, would put out of business Washington’s parasite class that makes money not by making anything for the marketplace but by manipulating the tax code for the convenience of clients.
Here are three items just from last week that demonstrate why at least one Herschensohn is needed in Washington to raise an eyebrow about routine goings-on:
The Senate overrode President Bush’s veto of the “family leave” bill. It would require businesses to give employees, for family reasons (illness, births, adoptions), up to 12 weeks’ leave per year, without pay but with continuing health care benefits and a right to return to the same job. The veto was for “competitiveness” reasons: family leave is a regulatory burden. A better–a Herschensohnean–reason is that the bill reflects reasoning that is ruining American government. The reasoning is: family leave is a nice idea; all nice ideas should be either enacted or mandated by government; the federal government is the first, not the last, recourse for social improvement.
Last week Congress passed a bill that addresses, with hot urgency, a national grievance. Which one, you ask? The deficit? Children in poverty? Exploding health care costs? No. What galvanized Congress is that people are paying more than they would prefer to pay for cable television. So Congress wants the government to establish a “reasonable” price. Once upon a time, price controls were extraordinary measures for essential goods (sugar, meat) made scarce by emergencies, such as war. Now Congress wants to control the price of an entertainment option. The price controllers in Congress say most cable franchises do not have “direct competitors.” The Devil is in the adjective “direct.” Over-the-air television, cinemas, bookstores–there are lots of competitors for Americans’ entertainment dollars. But cable prices shall be controlled as Congress goes apandering.
Last week the University of California’s Board of Regents accepted a bequest to fund scholarships for “Caucasian” students. The civil rights movement’s original struggle was to make America colorblind. But now in Berkeley, the Vatican City of liberalism, whites-only programs are approved. Liberalism has become a pretzel-like persuasion, so twisted that it rationalizes racial, ethnic and sexual spoils systems as part of the “identity politics” now Balkanizing America into grievance groups. Each group nourishes its unassuageable sense of victimization and demands that group rights supersede individual rights.
In opposing all such stuff, Herschensohn draws upon the Founders’ thinking about limited government and federalism. He stands in the noble tradition–call it Jeffersonian-that says the federal government should do only what individuals can not do for themselves; and only what other institutions–the family, voluntary associations, local and state governments-can not do. Herschensohn in the Senate would be a fitting filigree on next year’s celebration of the 250th anniversary of Jefferson’s birth.
His opponent, five-term Congresswoman Barbara Boxer, is a feisty hyperliberal from Marin County, the San Francisco suburb that even “San Francisco Democrats” consider a bit much. She and he were invited to a meeting of elderly and mostly liberal San Franciscans to give yes or no answers to 10 questions. She sent videotaped answers, all 10 exactly what the crowd wanted to hear. He appeared in person and gave eight “wrong” answers.
It will not matter much if she joins the dozens like her in the Senate. However, the Senate will be a much better place if it has a Herschensohn there to give everyone a history lesson and an uneasy conscience almost every day.
