[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 65 (Friday, May 10, 1996)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E769-E770]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    WES PRUDEN ON A HERO FROM KANSAS

                                 ______


                         HON. ROBERT K. DORNAN

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                          Friday, May 10, 1996

  Mr. DORNAN. Mr. Speaker, I commend the following editorial to my 
colleagues. Wes Pruden always seems to hit the mark.

                [From the Washington Times, May 9, 1996]

                  Somewhere There's a Hero From Kansas

                           (By Wesley Pruden)

       Now that someone from Kansas has to stand up to the wizard 
     behind the curtain, where's Dorothy?
       The wizard, without even popping a sweat, has sent the 
     Republicans into a tailspin a lot like the crash of George 
     Bush in 1992, when his eye-popping poll numbers fell from 92 
     percent in the wake of the war in the Gulf to 38 percent in 
     the ruins of November.
       One loud ``boo!'' from the nation's most famous draft 
     dodger and the entire regiment of Republicans who only 
     yesterday imagined they should be posing for recruiting 
     posters, went flying for cover, crawling up under the nearest 
     front porch to hide with the dogs. Bill Clinton, who's never 
     met a woman he didn't run after or a man he didn't run from, 
     was the most astonished pol in town.
       When the president found someone to throw the first punch 
     at New Gingrich, he never imagined that nobody would strike 
     back. When he found someone to throw the second punch, he 
     never imagined that the Republicans themselves would join in 
     piling on.
       The campaign to demonize the speaker was simple and 
     brutish: Throw out lies and distortions and scream even 
     louder when the Republicans fire back. The lies got louder, 
     but the Republicans never fired back.
       The speaker's aims were not radical, unless most of us are 
     radical: Cut down the size of government, shrink the budget 
     on which big government feeds, crack down on criminals, 
     throttle welfare cheaters, strengthen the military, roll back 
     the regulatory bureaucracy, cut the throat of the trial-
     lawyer lobby before everyone but the lawyers are bankrupt, 
     limit the terms of congressmen so they can return home to 
     productive jobs, take the necessary steps to preserve the 
     medical-care safety net--and cut taxes. Some radicalism.
       So radical, in fact, that President Clinton adopted most of 
     these goals himself, beginning with his assertion that ``the 
     era of big government is over.'' None of his own troops, 
     liberals all, believe he really means it. Sen. Bob Kerrey of 
     Nebraska, the Vietnam war hero whose contempt for the 
     organizer of Vietnam anti-war rallies is obvious, calls him 
     ``an accomplished liar,'' and in this case the president's 
     big-government allies feel reassured.
       Some the speaker's erstwhile allies in the bravura of the 
     morning after the November '94 blowout likened their mighty 
     victory to the D-Day landings at Normandy. The analogy, for a 
     bunch of guys who mostly spent the Vietnam war at the Student 
     Union, sounded a little farfetched to some aging ears, but if 
     some of these warriors had been barreling across France in 
     the summer of '44 they would have braked cold on hearing Axis 
     Sally's first diatribe against that ol' meanie Georgie 
     Patton, and looked for a barn to hide in. Second Lt. Al 
     D'Amato would have wanted the Germans to understand that he 
     never really liked that Patton fella, anyway.
       Who can be surprised that the clouds of pink and baby blue 
     floating over the White House are made of gauze and 
     giddiness? Bill Clinton hasn't had a stroke of luck like the 
     Republican collapse since Monroe Schwarzlose, a turkey farmer 
     so obscure that even Mrs. Schwarzlose wasn't sure who he was, 
     turned up as his only serious oppoment in a Democratic 
     gubernatorial primary back home. (Mr. Clinton won, but not by 
     much.)
       The moral is that the Republicans can make a race of it in 
     '96, too, if they can figure out which end of the gun you 
     shoot with, and how to tell a foot from foe.
       For weeks everyone in Washington was trying to figure out 
     whether Bob Dole was asleep, or merely dead, and now they're 
     trying to figure out whether Al D'Amato is the hit man from 
     Cleveland, dispatched by Mr. Dole, or whether he's just a 
     slap-happy, showing off.
       What the Republicans seem to have lost sight of--and Bill 
     Clinton hasn't--is that the conservative tide is still 
     running, and gaining momentum. The great risk to Republican 
     fortunes is that the voters will conclude that the Grand Old 
     Partypoopers never had the convictions it seemed to have the 
     courage of only a few months ago. Bill Clinton has no 
     convictions, either, but he knows better than anyone else how 
     to fake it.
       Mike McCurry, his press agent, remarked yesterday that the 
     pendulum measuring the Clinton fortunes is groaning against 
     the rope, close to reaching its apogee. Soon everything that 
     has been breaking in the president's favor may begin breaking 
     the other way.

[[Page E770]]

       But maybe not. Iron laws govern politics, but not the iron 
     laws of physics. The Republicans think they've got the 
     character issue cold, and maybe they do, but in a street 
     fight and a presidential campaign raw courage can count for 
     more than character.
       The wizard, trembling behind the curtain, understood that. 
     So did a little girl from Kansas.

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