”There are many differences between Congressman Rostenkowski and I,”
said Dick Simpson to a gathering at a YMCA on Irving Park Road.
Well, it could have been a slip of the tongue. But a few minutes later he used the same words, and then again at a press conference in the afternoon, confirming the worst: An instructor of political science at the University of Illinois at Chicago does not know when to use the objective case.
OK, this could be nit-picking; Simpson wants to be a congressman, not an English teacher. But it is instructive. His is a campaign based on nit-picking, and on the invalid assertion of intellectual and moral
superiority.
There is no reason to doubt Simpson`s decency or his sincerity. That he is a thoughtful and knowledgeable person is evident from his interesting, if overwrought and self-indulgent, new book, ”The Politics of Compassion and Transformation.” Unless the polls are wrong, he will not come close to winning the March 17 primary, and it is unseemly to hit a man while he is going down.
But there is a larger matter involved here, not because there is anything unusually wrong about Simpson and his campaign but because there is something so usually wrong about them. Simpson is typical of the self-styled
”outsider” candidate, so often an academic or clergyman (he is both) who claims to be more honorable and more enlightened than the general run of politician but who turns out only to be more self-righteous.
Despite his storied ”clout,” Dan Rostenkowski is not an indispensable man, because nobody is. There is no reason why someone who considers himself an unconventional politician-a persuader rather than a dealmaker-should not challenge him.
But when that challenger appropriates the role of reformer and intellectual in order to appeal to independent-minded voters, he should be more accurate, honorable and intelligent than those he criticizes.
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Simpson is not. He is asking voters to believe he will be a different kind of congressman, but he is not running a different kind of campaign. His rhetoric may not be worse than the usual. But neither is it any better, as just a few examples illustrate:
– His television commercial begins with the blunt statement:
”Rostenkowski`s tax law wrecked the economy.” No, it didn`t, and nobody thinks so. Some economists think the 1986 tax changes backed by Rostenkowski did more harm than good. No one yet has blamed them exclusively for the recession, much less for ”wrecking” the economy.
– He claims that Rostenkowski is ”single-handedly stifling” a bill that would increase Social Security payments to the ”notch babies” born between 1917 and 1926, whose benefits are lower than others. Not so. The
congressional leadership of both parties in both houses is all but united in opposition to the ”notch” bill.
– Attempting to deny that Rostenkowski`s power helps his constituents, Simpson notes that Illinois ranks 44th in its net revenue exchange (federal spending here vs. federal taxes paid from the state) with the federal government. Actually, it ranks 48th, but as a political scientist, Simpson should know that this statistic means almost nothing except that Illinois is a relatively rich state without a lot of federal land.
Then there is his habit of gross exaggeration. The New York Times quoted him describing Rostenkowski as ”a little to the left of Attila the Hun.”
Rostenkowski is a little to the left of John Kennedy. Simpson now says he meant only Rostenkowski`s position on issues relating to women. But that is not the way it was heard by the Times reporter, who has a reputation for getting these things right.
Simpson regularly refers to Rostenkowski as a ”corrupt Chicago ward boss run amok” in Washington. He isn`t. He isn`t corrupt at all, but he is an old-fashioned Chicago-style politician at the center of national power, and if only Simpson could see this truth and resist simple-minded hyperbole, his challenge could be valuable.
As chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, as part of the House leadership and as a traditional, Chicago-bred politician, Rostenkowski participates in making deals. He`s very good at it and there is no reason to believe that he makes them illegally or dishonorably.
But someone could argue that making deals is inherently a bad deal. A restrained and reasonable challenger could present the case that all decisions in Congress should be made in the open, and entirely on the merits. If the incumbent were candid and articulate-and Rostenkowski is both-he could reply that in a complex nation with so many competing interests, a certain amount of give-and-take behind closed doors is both necessary and inevitable. This would be a useful discussion, and Chicago would be the best place to engage in it.
But Chicago will have to wait for a challenger who can make his case accurately, honestly and, yes, grammatically. Simpson does not.