If the secret to success is picking your predecessor, the class of ‘92 has the good fortune of following what Speaker of the House Tom Foley called “the Congress from hell.” These newcomers have got to be better, if only by comparison-or so the theory goes. In the public mind, Congress is a scandal-ridden, perk-crazy place indifferent to the country’s needs. The election of more than a hundred new people, the largest infusion of outsiders since World War II, could restore the sense of connection that has been missing for a decade. They represent a chance for Congress to regain respect and get off the talk shows as the institution voters most love to hate.
With the sweeping mandate comes enormous pressure on the Democrats to deliver-and fast. President-elect Clinton does not have until Jan. 20 to leisurely fashion a 100-day agenda. Between now and the time he takes up residence in Washington, the congressional newcomers will hear from all the vested interests that rule the city. The only thing many of them have in common with Clinton is a commitment to change. Negotiating the fine print could be as fractious as fighting with a Republican president. What Clinton has going for him is the aura of a winner, a big winner. Congress will want to share the glow, at least initially. That’s why time is of the essence.
The thought of Congress as the good guys and gals requires some imagination. The most recent model is the debate over the Persian Gulf War, a singular moment of serious, bipartisan decision making that stood out in an otherwise bleak landscape of petty bickering. A more relevant model, perhaps, is the so-called class of ‘74, the reform-minded group of lawmakers who swept in on a tide of public anger during Watergate. The class of ‘74 arrived determined to eradicate the seniority system on the Hill and root out corruption in Washington. They succeeded in passing some well-intentioned laws, but failed fundamentally to clean up the Washington mess of special-interest lobbying and partisan posturing. This year’s winning crop of outsiders will arrive in Washington with the same high-minded fervor to change the system. The question is whether the system will change them first.
Unlike the single-minded Watergate babies, the class of ‘92 brings an agenda that reflects its diversity, particularly the increased number of women. With the cold war over, female candidates ran without apology on domestic issue&-including many once dismissed as women’s concerns. Dianne Feinstein’s ads focused on fighting breast cancer. There were education ads “up the kazoo,” says Democratic strategist Wendy Sherman, Several women-and some men-closed their campaigns with pro-choice spots, a final marker that separated them from their opponents. “These were stand-up, in-your-face campaigns,” says Democratic vice chair Lynn Cutler. “Nobody had to cover up being for child care.” The addition of more than a dozen women in the House, some who have been single mothers, will offer a real-life perspective on family and children’s issues. In the Senate, four women were the beneficiaries of a backlash generated by the all-male judiciary panel’s grilling of Anita Hill and the harsh rhetoric about family values at the GOP convention. “They took a swing at Hillary Clinton, and every working woman felt the slap,” says Cutler.
Being an incumbent was tough duty at the polls-most ran against the mess in Washington even if they were part of it. Even so, most incumbents survived, insulated against the vagaries of politics by their fund-raising advantage. Of the 348 House incumbents who faced re-election, only 47 had challengers who raised even half the money they did. Many of the most vulnerable had retired earlier in the year or were defeated in the primaries. Without the big bucks, the body count would have been higher. Asked about prospects for campaign-finance reform, a House Democratic leadership aide responded, “Murky.”
New members will move quickly to separate themselves from the imperial Congress they ran against. There will be heroic efforts to scale back the size of staff and restrain the free-mail privilege that incumbents enjoy. Still, cleaning house will not define the 103d Congress the way it did the post-Watergate class of ‘74. If this Congress succeeds, it will be because lawmakers, new and old, grab hold of big ideas, like health-care reform, that can transform the country. For the hundred-odd rebellious freshmen, the challenge will be to know when to play follow the leader, and-just as important-when to say no.
title: “Rebels With A Cause” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-24” author: “Warren Lane”
In Germany, Italy and Spain, a swarm of new political groupings- including Greens, regionalists and far-right nationalists-has been forming for some time. In part, the trend is the product of post-communism, of a new Europe in which the division between left and right has lost much of its meaning. It is also a response to political and financial scandals that have sullied mainstream politicians. At bottom, the trend embodies a rejection of old habits of mind in a continent plagued by recession, a degenerating environment and near hysteria over the threat of uncontrolled immigration. Apart from specific gripes, many continental Europeans are fed up with over familiar faces: in France, Spain and Germany, the top political leaders have been in power for more than a decade, and opinion polls constantly register a yearning for change simply for its own sake. Whatever their provenance, the new parties are taking the play away from the Socialist, Liberal and Christian Democratic forces that have ruled Europe since World War II. If the trend continues, it is bound to weaken central governments, both internally and externally. America’s major European allies and trading partners are likely to become more inward-looking and less capable of taking controversial initiatives on issues ranging from free trade to security and defense policy.
The case is clearest in Italy. Italians have seemed to exemplify political diversity, with revolving-door governments and as many as 10 parties in the legislature. But that image was misleading. In fact, the Christian Democrats have dominated for 45 years, in coalition with a clutch of smaller parties and with the collusion of the Communists. Now Italian voters, sick of kickback scandals and political corruption, are moving to throw the rascals out. In municipal elections in December, the separatist Lombard League became the largest political force in prosperous northern Italy. A movement for radical reform headed by the charismatic Mario Segni is likely to capture a third of Christian Democratic voters if, as expected, it sets up as a separate party later this year. In Sicily and southern Italy, a grass-roots anti-mafia movement called the Network is eating at longtime Christian Democratic strongholds.
In Spain, the principal force undermining traditional big-party politics is regionalism. After the end of the Franco dictatorship, the new democratic regime granted a high degree of autonomy to the Basque country and Catalonia, both hotbeds of separatist feeling. In the 1980s autonomy was extended to a dozen other regions. The move succeeded in blunting secessionist extremists. But it stimulated a welter of regional parties, which push purely local interests. Jordi Pujol, the Catalan strongman, deals with the Madrid government on virtually equal terms. The regional splintering has weakened the Spanish right and helped keep Felipe Gonzalez’s increasingly unpopular Socialists in power. But the price is constant attention. From now on, no national party, left or right, can gain or hold power in Spain without stroking the regional autonomists.
Like Mitterrand, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl presides over a political system that is crumbling on both left and right. The far-right Republikaner Party, led by a former SS officer, is successfully exploiting German fears of immigration. The German Greens, which in 1983 was the first ecological party to gain seats in a national parliament, lost support during the late 1980s. Now it has merged with East Germany’s ecologists, known as the Alliance 90, and seems set to become a national force once again. Kohl’s Christian Democrats and the opposition Social Democrats are trying to co-opt the Greens’ environmental stances and stem the Republikaners’ rise by toughening immigration and refugee laws.
But the most surprising case is France, the country that created the notions of left and right 200 years ago. In March’s national elections, the country’s two ecological parties will run a single list of candidates. The first Greens ever will enter the French Parliament-20 to 30 of them, enough to form an independent parliamentary group. Jean-Marie Le Pen’s xenophobic National Front could take as much as 15 percent of the vote. Even within the ruling Socialist camp, it is relatively nonpolitical figures like Health Minister Bernard Kouchner, who founded the humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders, who score highest in the polls. “Young French people are thirsting for outlets for their idealism, and the political parties don’t offer them much,” says Harlem Desir, founder of the anti-xenophobic group SOS-Racisme and a hero of the antiparty young.
Periodic fits of disenchantment with conventional politics are nothing new in European political history. And the carefully calibrated electoral systems used in most Continental countries make it almost impossible for ecologists, regionalists or the racist far right to grab power. No European Community country faces the Polish nightmare of a 29-faction Parliament. But the current trend is probably more than a passing fancy. In a gathering recession, with unemployment rising into double digits, Western Europeans are not, as might be expected, voting their pocketbooks. They are opting for strong (if incompatible) ideological positions. They are telling mainstream leaders that they want an end to corruption, a reordering of priorities and a new political order that speaks directly to their current hopes and fears.
title: “Rebels With A Cause” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-05” author: “Lois Santangelo”
It’s no idle threat. Iraq’s Kurds have spent many years rebelling against the Baghdad government, and recent developments have intensified the ethnic disputes that could ultimately rip apart Iraq. Behind-the-scenes intervention barely averted a revolt last week within the new interim government after language guaranteeing Kurdish rights was excised from a U.N. Security Council resolution on Iraq. The Kurdish deputy prime minister, Barham Salih, threatened to quit even before being sworn in, and the leaders of the two main Kurdish political parties sent a letter to President George W. Bush warning that the Kurds would boycott the new interim government if it reneged on Kurdish rights.
The political threats are backed by muscle. The peshmerga have an estimated troop strength as high as 75,000, by far the largest independent fighting force in the country. Unlike most other Iraqi groups, their troops are professionally trained, tightly disciplined and heavily armed with tanks, armored personnel carriers and artillery. They are reluctant to relinquish that power: before last week’s U.N. vote, U.S. and Iraqi authorities announced an agreement to disband Iraq’s “legal” (noninsurgent) militias, including the peshmerga–but Kurdish leaders quickly said their forces were exempt.
If the Kurdish-rights dispute bursts into war, it’s likely to center on the Kurds’ traditional capital, Kirkuk. Saddam tried to “Arabize” the city, which stands atop an estimated 6 percent of the world’s oil reserves. He leveled entire neighborhoods to drive out the Kurds and encouraged Arab tribes to relocate from southern Iraq. Now the Kurds want the place back. In the days after Saddam’s fall, the peshmerga evicted some 2,000 Arabs from homes in and around the city. Since then the Kurds have begun using less violent tactics, setting up land offices to help displaced Kurdish families buy out the Arabs. One local real-estate agent calculates that 5,000 or so Arabs have sold their homes to Kurds in the past year. “For 12 years we fought Saddam for one reason: to get Kirkuk,” says Nasser. “The central government can have everything south of Kirkuk. The rest is Kurdistan.”
Most of all, Kurds don’t want other Iraqis telling them what to do. For more than a decade they effectively ruled their own territory, with U.S. air power shielding them from Saddam. Now, while Shiite and Sunni Arab leaders in the south gather for emergency talks on ways to stop the insurgents, Kurdish leaders are discussing how regional airports can be expanded to accommodate commercial traffic. They managed to get serious guarantees of Kurdish rights written into the “transitional administrative law,” the interim constitution that was approved by U.S. and Iraqi authorities in March. The constitution recognized Kurdish as an official language. It allowed the Kurdistan regional government to retain control over local security forces, and it promised that victims of Saddam’s Kirkuk relocation campaign would get their homes back or be given compensation.
The Kurds don’t trust their countrymen to keep the deal. In an effort to give the constitution international standing, Kurdish leaders tried to get it mentioned in last week’s Security Council resolution. The attempt was foiled by the objection of one man: Iraq’s most influential Shiite leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. “The law, which was written by an unelected council under occupation… is rejected by the majority of the Iraqi people,” he warned. With the June 30 deadline for Iraqi sovereignty less than three weeks away, no one had time to argue. The reference was dropped. The country’s new interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, acknowledged the Kurds’ trepidations. “There are reasons [for the Kurds] to be concerned,” the Shiite politician said. “Absolutely. It’s something I sympathize with.” But sympathy won’t mollify the Kurds for long.
