I was working on the Specter story today. In case you hadn't heard, let me fill you in. He's been flying himself and his entourage, which includes family, all over the place at government expense. To add insult to injury, he's been burdening the Foreign Service with requests for perks and extras, for which they can ill afford the time and money, including the outlandish request for a brace of squash partners to be lined up. I must confess I found this shocking almost beyond belief. Arlen Specter is a blunt, plainspoken man, who one would think abhors airs or pretention. Yet at a time when federal workers are unable to give their children Christmas presents and stand on the edge of foreclosure, this puffhead is straining government resources for a goddamn squash game. What is in his head? Where is his sense of decorum? Where is his sense of decency? Where is his sensitivity? Where are his political antennae, for Pete's sake?
I think I may have a tentative answer, but it may displease some of my friends in the moderate middle, or even on the moderate left. Democracies always describe a precarious path between autocracy and mob rule. The democracy of ancient Athens vested too much direct authority in the people, leading to impulsive decisions of the moment, and tyranny of the majority at the expense of the rights of the minority. On the other hand, Russia today suffers from a democracy where almost king-like power resides in the power of the Presidency. As a result, the people blame Yeltsin almost exclusively for all their problems, and because of that, Russia may be on the verge of an ugly new era of either resurgent Communism or rampant nationalism or a toxic combination of both. It is the healthy balance in between those two lethal poles in which good government and democratic survival can be found. And to me it has become fairly clear that in our country, the pendulum has swung too far towards autocracy. How else to explain it, when a principled man of conviction like Specter chooses to indulge in behavior more redolent of the world view of a Marie Antoinette than a Thomas Paine? It must be that by inducting our elected Republicrat leaders into an aristocracy, we run the risk of destroying their democratic sensibilities, and cutting them off from a healthy sense of reality. I have heard too many times that those who complain about paid vacations, the free parking, the haircuts, etc. etc. for our elected leaders, are indulging in knee-jerk demagogic populism, and scapegoating a group of people who are by and large of above average probity and principle. And not for one second would I disagree with the premise that most of our elected leaders, at least as far as Washington is concerned, are indeed fairly honest, well-meaning public servants. But they have been brainwashed, by a sheltering, mesmerizing atmosphere in which they are cocooned, into losing the instinctive understanding of the meaning of an open democracy where the citizen is the boss, and the leaders are the servants. If this sounds too close to Perot, guilty; the Texas salesman has it exactly right here. Sleep on a featherbed and you will pretty soon forget what it feels like to sleep on the floor. Live in a golden bowl, playing squash, and you will very quickly forget what it means to be living always 60 days away from losing your house or your car or your credit.
Our republic purports itself to be a representative democracy, not a direct democracy, and that's fine. But what sort of representation of ourselves is it to have representatives who have been altered into entities but scarce representative of ourselves at all? To paraphrase Hamlet, our forefathers hath given us one office for our elected leaders, and we hath made of them new offices, offices of luxury, prerogative, and whim. What wonder then that the honest one's head is turned, while the conscience scarcely feels itself even touched? This is how an Arlen Specter can see no contradiction, in fact not even a connection, between opposing a tax cut for the rich and squeezing a shutdown-impoverished embassy for his own so precious R and R.
And this is why we need to take the aristocracy out of public service, and the luxurious prerogative out of elected leadership. This is why the President and Congress should not receive a pay raise until they balance the budget and stop stealing from our children. Never mind that by so doing we risk squeezing those of less than princely means out of the government. For what can be worse than a democracy where those who run it, the voting citizens, have lost so much faith in those they have chosen to lead them, that they can scarce make the effort to vote any more? The seemlinesss, the sensibility shown, in declining the expectations and perks of privilege would do more to restore the vitality and credibility of our democracy than a hundred Paul Wellstones of modest means. This is also why the President and Congress should not keep a dime of their salary while almost three hundred thousand of those they represent go without pay or security in their future. Never mind that many of these very same people now failing to resolve their differences and move the country forward are probably working as hard as they ever have, and as nobly as they ever have. For it simply grates against every sense we have of what is right and proper that people who hold the fate of almost half a million people in their hands, and who have failed to protect those people, should not make some sort of equivalent sacrifice to demonstrate that they understand the meaning of what they do.
Well, this hasn't helped much. I STILL feel awful about Specter, who I briefly supported for President. But at least I'm more comfortable now in my understanding of how such boorishness could happen. And to me the solution is unquestionable and obvious. Whether you see it as being similarly obvious or, alternately, not so obvious at all, matters not when you write me at