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Charles Jaco has written opinion and commentary pieces for dozens of magazines and newspapers. Each week, read and comment on a fresh on-line version. The discussion page enables you to share your view points world wide. If you would like to make a comment go to the " Join the discussion" link below. If you would like to view past editorials visit the Editorial Archive. Editorial 09/22/00 THE GROWN-UP TASTE OF BUSH LITE We were all rooting for the rat to get arrested, since video of a six-foot tall rodent being hustled into a police van is something you don't see every day. But in the end, the Secret Service and the Chesterfield, Missouri police decided that a grown man dressed in a rat suit was already being punished enough. Instead, he and his dozen companions from the Service Workers International Union were herded outside the chain link fence as Dick Cheney's venerable 727 made its' third campaign and fund-raising stop of the day in Battleground Missouri. The protestor's chants--the rat was content with just waving its arms--were directed at Cheney for supporting George W's. proposal to let states opt out of the Federal minimum wage. Actually, the Bush plan is a shade more modest. It would let states opt out of the new $6.15 an hour minimum wage when it takes effect, but would not allow them to go below the old $5.15 an hour level. Nor would it repeal the doctrine that in states with minimum wages lower than the Federal rate, the higher rate automatically applies, at least in most cases. This is not the Republican raw meat of, say, former Mineapolis Federal Reserve official Preston Miller, who wants the minimum wage effectively repealed. Nor is the Bush-Cheney plan to allow social security taxpayers to invest one-sixth of their contribution in a private, tightly-regulated account exactly the total pension privatization of Chile or Australia. Nor is Cheney's we-want-the-pro-choice-people-to-vote-for-us kumbayah the GOP jihad of past years. What you get with Dick Cheney is avuncular incrementalism, bouyed by a lifetime of public service and 18 and a half million in cashed-out Halliburton stock options. Cheney voted against Head Start, and against Nelson Mandela's release from prison. But those were symbolic votes back in the day when no one much cared what the Republican backbench House minority did anyway. Ask him if it's worth making three landings in six hours for rallies, interviews, and fund-raisers all aimed at Missouri's relatively picaune 11 Electoral votes, and you get a laugh and a punch line. "Well, I understand after you actually get the job all you've got to do is attend weddings and funerals." Compassionate conservatism? Try mellow. Cheney's prescription, from not making vouchers a Federal preference to saying opposition to abortion will not be a litmus test for a Bush administration, is a potion brewed with eye of Newt. Gingrich's Hezbollah-style storm the barricades school of conservatism lives on in the political fringe occupied by Rush Limbaugh. But it's deader than the Larry King debate inside Bush-Cheney central. The hard right helped elect Bill Clinton twice because, frankly, most voters think they're nuts. Cheney and Bush both know this. That's why conservatism is suddenly compassionate. That's why Cheney told me, "We're not trying to impose any kind of litmus test on abortion. We understand there are good people on both sides of the issue, and we want them all to support us in the campaign." The two parties are a long way from being Ralph Nader's Republicrats. But Bill Clinton told the Democratic Left "My way or the highway," and George W. is giving the same road map to the Republican Right. Maybe that's why the race is so close in a 50th percentile, middle-of-the-road place like Missouri. Nothing here is extreme, except for the weather. And the rats.
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