House Doesn't Go Soft
USA
Today and the Washington Post lead with the imminent landfall of
Hurricane Floyd somewhere along the southeastern U.S. coast. The storm is also
the top non-local story at the Los Angeles
Times . The New York Times
runs Floyd top-front, but leads instead with the House's passage last night of
a campaign reform bill that would ban "soft money" and tightly regulate
"issues" ads in the two months preceding an election, to prevent these two
items from becoming vehicles for flouting contribution limits that are supposed
to apply to individual candidates. The other papers front the bill.
The dailies compare Floyd to Hugo (1989, 29 killed, $5.9 billion damage,
says the LAT ) and Andrew (1992, 26 killed, $25 billion damage, says the
LAT ). The WP calls it "one of the most dangerous storms of the
century." The prospects are grim enough that President Clinton took the
unprecedented step of declaring Florida and Georgia disaster areas even before
the storm arrived. The coverage ticks off some of the other Cassandra factors:
several million people fleeing their homes (with all the fronts that run
pictures showing the resultant traffic jams); the mass cancellation of airline
flights; and the first-time-ever shutdown of Disney World.
The coverage notes that last year the House passed a nearly identical
campaign reform bill, which, despite drawing a majority in the Senate, was
filibustered to death there. The NYT reports one reason for the extent
of Republican antipathy to such measures: In a recent closed-door meeting,
House Republicans were told that for the 1997-98 election cycle, their party
held a nearly $40 million advantage over the Democrats in soft money. There
actually is one important new feature of this year's reform bill: It contains a
provision requiring "a candidate for election for Federal office (other than a
candidate who holds Federal office)" to reimburse the government for federally
provided transportation used for campaign purposes. Can you say "Hillary"?
Apparently, the nation's lawmakers cannot. And by the way, why should
incumbents be able to fly Uncle Sugar Airlines without paying?
David Ignatius, in his WP column, identifies what he calls our
tendency toward "sequential hysteria," the phenomenon in which a problem is
well recognized long before it reaches a critical stage, then for a few brief
days it becomes Topic A, but then before long it's back to inattention, all
without anything ever really being done about it. Ignatius gives as examples
the Russian corruption scandal, Chinese atomic espionage, the FBI at Waco, the
North Korean nuclear threat, and genocide in Africa. A good point, but marred
when Ignatius, trying to tie up his column too neatly with a bow made from the
day's news, adds Hurricane Floyd to his list. The problem is Floyd hasn't been
known about for a long time and things are really being done in reaction to
it.
The Wall Street Journal "Tax Report" depends a little too much
on IRS Commissioner Charles Rossotti, judging from how frequently the good
commissioner appears in the column being a ... well, good commissioner. Today's
effort, for instance, includes mention of how Rossotti "always enjoyed solving
problems when he was in business. 'And now,' he says, 'I have an unlimited
supply of problems to solve.' " This is called "greasing the source," and is a
major source of skewed coverage. Homework assignment: find an example where the
"Tax Report" said something truly tough about the IRS's top man.
The LAT reports that the Los Angeles Fire Department is caught up in
a controversy stemming from the revelation this week that for the neighborhoods
of Bel-Air, Westwood, Pacific Palisades, and Brentwood, it has introduced maps
that identify the houses with the highest risk of burning: those with wood
shingle roofs. The city councilman for the area involved has called for a full
public debate about whether or not the LAFD is in fact writing off certain
homes in case of fire. Fairly far in, the story mentions that maps of other
parts of the city also indicate areas of risky homes, apparently without
controversy. But the LAT utterly ignores the impact of this fact, which
is the real explanation for why the maps are now "news." The story never
mentions that Bel-Air, etc., are the city's lushest neighborhoods, housing the
city's most influential people.
Tucked away on Page 23 of the WP is a Pentagon story that bears
watching. The Department of Defense is conducting a comprehensive review of the
battle damage inflicted by NATO during the war in Kosovo, and it's already past
due. A delay like this is sometimes a sign that unwelcome figures are being
"massaged" into the most favorable shape possible. So it will be interesting to
see if the Kosovo scorecard goes the way of the Gulf War's Patriot missile
totting up, which went from a mid-war near-100 percent intercept rate to a
morning-after count much closer to 5 percent, if that. Of course, the Building
stands ready to make an argument either way. If the numbers are good, then the
refrain will be, "See, this stuff works, give us more stuff." And if not, it'll
be, "This stuff didn't work as well as we'd like, we need better stuff."
