Wanted: sacrificial lamb

...Lawton Chiles of Florida reached the Senate having refused any campaign contributions over $100 a person...

...It was the faith of the Enlightenment, but its ultimate source was the humanism of classical antiquity, especially as formulated in Stoicism...

...while the liberals, betraying their tradition, have transformed themselves into particularists, favoring special treatment for special groups...

...So what's the big deal...

...CHRIS ANDERSON Chris Anderson is an associate professor of English at Oregon State University...

...The ladies at lunch, for example, waved him aside when his name was brought into their conversation...

...Once elected, he promises, among other things, to serve only one term, limit his office staff to five--there now are senators who have personal staffs of one hundred--vote the national interest whatever the consequences for California, refuse speaking fees, free meals, golfing trips, or anything else of value from any private interest while in office...

...It's my dad telling me to put my foot on the rim and then yank up on the cord at a slight angle...

...And he would refuse to run in the way outlined as obligatory by the congressional wife cited above...

...The mission of the 422: Commonweal Democratic party in 1992 would normally be to put one of its own in the White House," he says, "but these are not normal times...

...It's that contradictory love of the sound of the engine, so out of keeping with my usual aversion to noise and machinery...

...It takes $10 million just to get through the Iowa primary...

...In his announcements, Bisnow anticipated the findings of the recent Kettering study ("Citizens and Politics: A View from Main Street America") which found Americans angry about a political process they think is controlled by a professional political class and the media...

...Tsongas, too, would like to alter the way the game is played...

...But perhaps the trap of eternal fund-raising and nondefinitive primaries can be avoided...

...It is merely a procedural device, a legalistic tool, for protecting individual rights...

...Such a campaign was announced halfseriously recently by lawyer and former congressional aide Mark Bisnow (the inspiration for the early idealistic Michael Doonesbury in Garry Tmdeau's cartoons...

...The creation of a mandate or program is vital for the Democrats...

...It is a grave dilemma...

...nor is it a scheme for granting "group rights...

...House a "quota bill...

...It positions America as the critical parmer in achieving world peace, but based upon the principles of true burden sharing...

...It seeks the repairing of the American social fabric so that we are spiritually one community...

...Let us create a mandate, a mandate that will allow purposeful and effective govemance...

...Admittedly his announcement was for a Senate race in California but the size of California and the millions spent in its Senate races make what he had to say relevant to a presidential candidacy...

...It calls upon America to lead the fight for world environmental equilibrium...

...Let us use 1992 to articulate the cold challenges and the real threats to America...

...It demands that, once and for all, we achieve energy sufficiency...

...Few may be listening right now, but Tsongas is doggedly taking every opportunity to reach the voters with a new plan for Democrats outlined in a position paper entitled "A Call to Economic Arms...

...He plans to make speeches around the country later this year to shape a Democratic agenda...

...Bisnow's campaign proposals are not as far-fetched as they might seem...

...Only human, however, he reminds us that he was discounted at the beginning of other campaigns, campaigns that he won...

...Of course the liberals in Congress cry "foul" at this...

...In the words of Marcus Aurelius, addressing himself: "The poet says, Dear city of Cecrops...

...It's the illusion of pattern, the illusion of authority...

...In the meantime your family has led a fractured life and has been under almost unbearable strain...

...This liberal idea, that "all men are created equal," has an ancient pedigree...

...By so doing, he is trying to seize the universalistic high ground, at the same time portraying his opponents, the liberals, as particularists...

...Why does the pres12 July 1991:423...

...Many even go so far as to accuse him of stooping to a level no prominent national figure has descended to since the heyday of George Wallace: the level at which one stirs up racial animosity for the sake of political gain...

...A candidate would have to spend two years raising money and part of that time is gone...

...Paul Tsongas's views were shaped by his experience in the Peace Corps...

...If he wins there, as Richard Gephardt did, and falters in New Hampshire--as Gephardt did--funds dry up...

...These two things make the candidacy of another lesser-known candidate, Jay Rockefeller, an appealing prospect...

...But they were fighting a losing cause...

...As the president tells the story, he is on the side of Martin Luther King, Jr., Thomas Jefferson, Marcus Aurelius, and various other angels who believe that all humans are created equal and that it is therefore wrong to discriminate on the basis of race, sex, etc...

...He would run, he said, to change the present system: "Sure I wouldn't win...

...It's the long hour of the soothing mechanical mindless motion and then coming in for coffee, my grass-stained shoes left on the porch...

...address these issues...

...they say Bush is playing demagogue...

...Interestingly enough, Mario Cuomo, who does not seem to be of a mind to be a sacrificial candidate, includes Tsongas on his list of those who have the physical presence and the intelligence to be an attractive candidate...

...If my platform provoked even a blip of public response, they might sit up and listen...

...Essentially Bisnow is saying that he would like to alter the way the game is played...

...His emphasis is on strengthening America at home--on domestic programs...

...You can't keep going...

...For whatever losses there will be gains--if nothing else an awareness of the web itself, an awareness of this unavoidable economy...

...SEIZING THE HIGH GROUND QUOTAS, BUSH & THE DEMOCRATS ime was when American liberalism--a tradition that goes back at least to Thomas Jefferson, if not to Roger Williams--stood unambiguously for universalistic values...

...She spelled it out...

...That is, it insisted that persons possessed their fundamental rights by virtue of being human, not by virtue of membership in some particular group or category...

...It's the smell of the gasoline as much as the smell of cut grass...

...These liberals deny they have turned their backs on universalistic values...

...ask the liberals...

...How can we ask anyone to run, answered a Democratic congressional wife, when the conditions are so impossible...

...But someone should run just to get a serious message to the voters about the problems facing your country, argued the foreigners...

...For the longest time American conservatives were only half-hearted in their acceptance of universal values...

...Right now Paul Tsongas, former senator from Massachusetts and the one announced Democratic candidate, is launched on a campaign which seems as quixotic as that proposed by Bisnow...

...Like Tsongas but more mundanely partisan, he believes that "the Democrats need ideas that are not Republican ideas...

...Why, the implication was, were the Democrats abandoning the country to George Bush and the current Republican administration...

...Jimmy Carter became a leading contender in the 1976 primaries by substituting intensive personal campaigning for a media campaign...

...At least half of the points he made zeroed in on the relationship of politicians to moneyed special-interest groups, a prime source of the public's disgust according to the foundation's report...

...they found it hard to renounce particularism...

...The participants included several savvy diplomatic wives of varying backgrounds: one Frenchwoman, one Fijian married to a New Zealander, an Egyptian member of an international commission...

...OF SEVERAL MINDS Abigail McCarthy WANTED: SACRIFICIAL LAMB FILLING THE DEMOCRATIC TICKET I f I can judge by an after-lunchover-coffee conversation the other day, the failure of the Democrats to produce a presidential candidate is becoming something of an international scandal...

...He would limit campaign contributions to $50 a person, do no TV advertising ("It's expensive, simplistic, and deceptive"), reject all endorsements, use no pollsters, media consultants, or speech-writers ("Politicians shouldn't lip-synch...

...OF SEVERAL MINDS David R. Carlin, Jr...

...In pursuit of that mandate, Tsongas is willing to be, as he now appears to be, a sacrificial candidate...

...As he goes from living-room fund raisers to small city Rotary meetings the effect may be incremental...

...It is a way of removing a very heavy burden of proof from the individual who might suffer discrimination, instead placing a relatively light burden of proof on the employer who might discriminate...

...How does one get the message out, she countered, when it has to be tai/ lored to costly TV thirty-second spots, to slogans and sound bites retailed by a media with no interest in serious discussion of complex issues...

...Who knows...

...For the Stoic, universalistic loyalties took precedence over particularistic loyalties...

...Whatever the program or mandate, however, the reality is stark...

...This is the mandate he envisions: "It requires the reemergence of America as the world's preeminent economic power...

...they dug in their heels, they dragged their feet...

...for the world decided, in one case after another, that differential treatment on the basis of race, religion, sex, and other non-merit criteria was wrong--and inefficient...

...Rockefeller's intense feelings about the neglect of America's children, about health care, and other issues stems, he says, from his experience as a VISTA volunteer in the state he now represents--West Virginia...

...But in the ecology of whatever large systems are at work here, there will be some compensations, I expect...

...If Rockefeller would dare the race, as Tsongas has done, might Democrats not have the perfect sacrificial ticket--RockefellerTsongas or Tsongas-Rockefeller...

...His efforts, like those of Tsongas, will be a service...

...Again the congressional wife was skeptical...

...As columnist Mary McGrory puts it, he strikes many Democrats as the perfect sacrificial lamb for '92...

...But it's worth a little personal humiliation to help get my message across to other candidates...

...Why, they demanded of the American women present, was no prominent Democrat running for president...

...All it would take would be a breakthrough by one candidate--a candidate who refused to accept the limitations of the present campaign givens...

...Let us rally our nation to...

...There is always a chance...

...He must be invulnerable to a Willie-Hortonesque attack already shaping up in White House-Congress encounters...

...His interest in the presidency is fueled by his disgust at the lack of leadership shown by Bush on the domestic front...

...But hold the phone...

...the single city of God transcended the many cities of men...

...In the battle over the 1991 Civil Rights Act, George Bush is attempting to turn the tables on the liberals by calling the Democratic version that passed the U.S...

...The candidate, whoever he is, must hit the ground running in a series of primaries beginning only months from now...

...They saw it as a moral lapse with possible worldwide repercussions...

...and wilt thou not say, Dear city of Zeus...

...They say their affirmative action proposal is not a plan for quotas...

...Thus it was wrong to discriminate for or against someone on the basis of religion, race, ethnicity, or sex...