Adele M. Stan

For even as the chief executive in waiting decorated his cabinet with stars large and small, the men who won him the South Carolina primary, and who got their people to pipe down during the GOP'shappy-face convention in Philadelphia, began issuing their fiats: there will be no Christmas for George W. Bush should he fail to waltz with those what brung him.

The crackdown began with an opinion piece penned by Gary Bauer, failed presidential candidate and former head of the Family Research Council, in last Friday's New York Times. Bush had barely delivered his acceptance speech when Bauer began scrawling his list of demands, to be enacted immediately: school vouchers, "partial-birth" abortion ban, giant tax cut. On the same day, the Washington Post reported that a group of refugees from the Forbes and Buchanan campaigns would hold weekly strategy sessions on ways to hold Bush's feet to the fire. Next, the Rev. Jerry Falwell — whose now-defunct Moral Majority proved instrumental in the election of Ronald Reagan — issued a warning against bringing Democrats and pro-choice Republican moderates into the cabinet. New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman and Pennsylvania's chief executive, Tom Ridge, were cited as examples of major no-nos.

To hear the pundits tell it, the pronouncements of Bush's right-winged angels will amount to nothing more than a hill of beans, given the current construction of the Congress as a virtually deadlocked body. And if we view Bush's predicament simply from a mechanical perspective, that's true.

But in the grand scheme of things, politics is about far more than governing. The way in which we conduct our politics shapes our ideas of who we are as a people. And when the tone gets ugly under the Capitol dome, the nation becomes ill at ease, regardless of its prosperity.

The very gridlock we're most likely about to experience is the result of the right's decades-long assault on anyone it deems out of step with its agenda. For while the results of election 2000 are constantly thrown up at us as evidence of our "deep division" as a nation, when you look a little more closely, you'll find that, on the issues, we're really not so far apart.

Where we diverge is at the point at which half of the electorate bought into the right's demonization of moderates and liberals on disingenuous moral grounds, and the half that didn't. Factor in the half of the population eligible to vote who chose to sit this one out, and you begin to get a sense of the devastation such demonization has caused.

Take, for instance, the subject of child care. In an outstanding survey conducted by pollsters from both major parities, the Center for Policy Alternatives found that a majority of men and women agree that "something should be done to expand the availability of good, affordable child care." Since the men of the right believe that women should be home with their children 24/7 (whether or not they can afford to be), it's unlikely that the Bauers and Falwells of the world would stand idly by if the new president placed this vital issue at the top of his agenda.

The forces of the right have used the nation's moral decline as their currency, offering only government sanction of religious intolerance as a solution. While it's true that Americans on the right and left see moral decline and a slip in family values as an overriding concern, according to the Center for Policy Alternatives' data, most see another solution than the one offered by the right. When asked to rank a number of measures offered as fixes for the problem, an overriding plurality named "parents spending more time with children" as the best way to address the problem. Only nine percent of men and 12 percent of women thought "more religion" would help.

But just imagine what would happen if the incoming president held not Hollywood nor gays nor ambitious women accountable for moral decline, but rather our workaholic culture, and the employers who foster it. Right-wingers across the spectrum, from secular tax-cutters to religious zealots, would howl. Since the more-work-at-all-costs attitude is the real key to the problem — as evidenced by studies and the widespread parental wish for more time with children — we can expect the decline to continue.

After an election contest that went from a hardball campaign to a messy — and to many upsetting — end , the new president owes it to the nation to stand up to the forces of intolerance which threatens to poison the well from which we all must drink.

Adele M. Stan is the Washington correspondent for Working Woman magazine.

Does America have a "workaholic" culture? Do America's employers foster this culture? What is the best way to give parents more time to spend with their children?

The Right Calls On Bush 12/21/00 1:16:52 PM Larry B lwbloomer@home.com PL: I think your reading of Bush's comments on the tax cut is overly simplified. He said he campaigned on the basis of his tax cut plan, and he intends to pursue it. I'm sure Bush is at least as well aware of the problems it faces in Congress as you and I are. But what is he supposed to do, give it away in advance? Not very bright bargaining. No, he'll do what he's doing: saying that because he promised it, he has to try to get it. Then, when it becomes apparent that he'll have to trim it (sadly) to get it past the tax-and-spenders among the Democrats, he'll do what he did in Texas. That is, compromise as little as possible while getting as much as he can. He was VERY successful in Texas; he'll probably be pretty successful in DC, too.

The Right Calls On Bush 12/21/00 3:09:34 PM Ezekk Hey, Nog! How is everything up in the Great NorthWest? Beautiful as ever I am sure. Well, I am off hiking in the woods. My grandson came in last night so, it's fun time. Laterguys.

The Right Calls On Bush 12/21/00 3:14:07 PM alanH Ezekk: damn...ya need company...?

The Right Calls On Bush 12/21/00 3:28:19 PM pji Nog: I keep running across people who think cider is something peculiar to their regions, e.g. N.W. Spain, S.W. Germany, etc., & are surprised to find it widely drunk in England. Not tried Spanish or German, but there's some good stuff made in Brittany & Normandy. There it's usually only 4-5%, but it tastes OK.

The Right Calls On Bush 12/21/00 4:13:03 PM Kenny Anyone else heard the story about the man acused of cannibalism in Montana? Makes me proud that I support the death penalty. I'd push the button on this guy without breaking a sweat. Justice, man, that's what it's about in the first place.

The Right Calls On Bush 12/21/00 4:41:16 PM Mean Mark Nog and Sheen: I'll tell you what being a Buccaneer fan for 22 of the 32 years of my existence has done to me: my standard is not winning the Super Bowl-- it's simply being competitive (even 7-9 is acceptable). So I'm happy this year whether the Bucs win it all or lose in the first round. And Monday night's game-- it was pure delight. It's all gravy from here on out. Last year (in Feb) I commented to a co-worker that all the Bucs needed was a go-to reciever. Tony Dungy must have read my mind. However, I was wrong. Keyshawn hasn't been the answer. It would have been really cool if the Bucs had drafted Daunte Culpepper-- cause as much as I like Shaun King-- he needs some more seasoning to work on his throwing accuracy-- to be a QB to be feared. When you don't have a QB to keep defenses honest-- the running attack (which with Dunn and Alstott is very good) bogs right down. King has the rest of the tools. (It would also be nice if Keyshawn and Dave Moore would stop dropping so many passes).

The Right Calls On Bush 12/21/00 5:37:37 PM Charles Taylor charleswt@my-deja.com "Man charged in Montana cannibal case": http://www.vny.com/cf/News/upidetail.cfm?QID=146252

The Right Calls On Bush 12/21/00 5:44:57 PM apeepo Dear dollar, please come into my pocket and I promise I'll be good from now on. Terry: It's called idolatry. Very catchy and most likely fatal. The adoration of money is death of all that is free. All the best stuff is lost to those who are of the you-are-what-you-have crowd. Science continues to search for a new cure. The Jesus medicine has been on the shelf too long and doesn't work any more. ... Ah, one thing, watch out for that bible, it will confuse you.

The Right Calls On Bush 12/21/00 6:00:59 PM Kenny Charles, thanks for the url. Interesting that no less than four "experts" declared this man safe for return to society. I was a psy major, and did some graduate work in it as well. How can you declare a person safe or dangerous? There is nothing objective with which to make a certain appraisal. Those "experts" should have been required to rate the man on a scale of 1 to 10 on the likelihood that he'd be recidivist; 1 being no chance and 10 being certain. And then how would they determine their number?? It's reading tea leaves, that's how they do it. You give the guy an MMPI or some such well researched personality inventory and get a semi-objective measure of his personality on 10 different scales. Then you give him an intelligence test, run some subjective tests like the ink blots, etc, and you come up with a feeling about the guy based on 1) his performance patterns on those tests and 2) your interaction with him. If I were judge, I'd be hard-pressed to accept these expert opinions that were so overwhelmingly opposed to his actual historical performance in our free society. Also, how did the guy score on the sociopathy scale? It would be a clear indication of how well he manipulates others into believing his stories of rehabilitation. You would expect the psychologists to see his score on the sociopathy scale, but after going through the nearly 600 questions of the MMPI a few times you can start to figure out how to manipulate your scores on it. So maybe he looked normal.

The Right Calls On Bush 12/21/00 8:22:02 PM Kenny Also, why not keep track of the outcomes of these "experts" predictions? That way judges of future cases will know how much weight to give their psychological assessments.