The Clinton Administration no kidding this time
Daniel A. Foss
which I remind you is called the Ward Melville Social and Behavioral Sciences
Building, Melville as in White Whale, which was not easy as only the most
deadline-crazed or object-cathexis-perverted cases (like me) use this room in
the maddening sweltering heat, Governor Cuomo, Give Me Airconditioning or Give
Me Death! O where is the Sulla who will stomp our Marius! we asked the
following question:
"If next year's budget deficit were held today, what size would it be, to
the nearest fifty, hundred billion, as you like."
The political scientists, without exception, assumed that politicians, while
not necessarily doing anything, and if so, not necessarily anything like what
they promised to do, still, au fond, have a yearning in the heart to do some
little thing. With some, this comes from the craving to wield power, Man's most
testosterone-driven urge. (As for recent research on another urge see below).
With others, it's more of a moral thing, we must keep a promise we made to the
Armenian people: When George Bush, for example, agreed in 1990 to a tax
increase negotiated by Budget Director Darman because he did not want an angry
Congress messing with the war he, Bush, had in an advanced planning stage, the
same Darman thought Bush knew what he had done, moralcommitmentwise, that is,
break the "read my lips" pledge. With the legislation passed, Darman said,
"You know you broke your tax pledge?" and Bush said, "Really?" (The language
may have been cleaned up. But it does show how the sense of moral commitment
works.) The other motive noted was Glory, called "a place in the HISTORY
books."
The political scientists estimated a $300 billion deficit, making no
distinction as to who got in; improved from $350 billion budgeted and $400
billion, realistic.
The economists regard politicians as at best a damned nuisance, a source of
random variability in hard math formulas which were difficult to show worked
the way the books said they did as it was; the naive laybeing is shown what
looks like a blob of points on the graph. Guesswork, with hard math formulas
to back it up, began at $450 billion and got worse from there. It was pointed
out to this reporter that neither Bush nor Clinton had promised to do anything
much, and anything which was not mere nebulous platitude would be voted down in
Congress with boos and catcalls if introduced.
6. John H. Gagnon, world's leading authority on sex research who, having
announced his retirement from that field as it had become "tedious," and
endeavoring instead to develop a new specialty in the sociology of the meaning
and purpose of human existence, of which Life had already been thoroughly
understood and reduced to the format of a course called, "The Sociology of
Everyday Life," told the Sociology Department Seminar today that he changed
his mind after dying gay friends begged him to do one last gigantic study.
In the waning days of the Reagan Administration a request for proposed surveys
went out, and Gagnon's team figured the study could be done for fifteen
million dollars. "The White House" in a waking moment had got curious about
the AIDS situation. Then, in the Bush Administration, the Department of Health
and Human Services was handed over lock stock and barrel to the Fundamentalist
Right. HHS, abetted by the political clout of Sen. Jesse Helms, R,NC, violated
all known and a few obscure rules of federal funding procedures. Private
foundations then stepped in to save the project with a few million discreetly
slipped to the National Opinion Research Center team: This money came from
big business Republicans, who as previously noted in this column, are the very
people whose use of sex appeal in commercials and magazine ads moves the
consumer goods.
Gagnon's talk, "Sex and Politics," concluded with the preliminary results,
which usefully supplemented the Martian perspective on what sexual selection
and, still more, mate selection, is *for*. Which is, to establish publicly
who is good enough for whom. To make explicit, that is, the verdict of the
Marketplace. "Though sex is very important representationally," Gagnon said,
"it has become quite unimportant behaviorally. In other words, people are
thinking about it a lot and not doing it much."
Persons with more than one sex partner a time, he said, decline rapidly in
numbers after age 27, reflecting the frantic urge to sustain the marital
bond, often as not unsuccessfully, at all costs; and those who are married,
however precariously, do not dare fool around.
It should go without saying, after all the hullaballoo over his once-private
life, Clinton will have a, uh, family policy as much as Bush has had one, and
is likely to be more sincere about it, too. For one thing, Clinton will not, I
predict, masturbate when raising taxes, as George Bush charges he did 128
times. Raise taxes, that is. The source of the number 128, a magic number for
computer users, is the number of possible bit configurations for the seven bits
used to represent the ASCII code used on all personal computers, VAX and other
mainframes, and other stuff. Neither will he shed any tears. He will be flat-
affectual. He will show no emotion, as a real man shouldn't. Hillary will make
sure he does it right.
7. One difference between Clinton and his role model, JFK, is that Clinton has
*not* promised to "get this country moving again." This is because it cannot
be done. Watch this column as I continue to try to figure out why.
Intellectually, the task is quite beyond me. Contrariwise, anybody who could
give me any help, better yet figure it all out themselves, refuses to even
think about it.
8. The period after 1994, when this writer does anticipate national ruin to
arrive at latest, possibly they will call a meeting of the Estates General or
something while starving women scream, "Bread, bread, give us bread!" in
frantic efforts to close loopholes and balance the budget, bondholders will
object, Simon Schama will bring you the play by play, I don't care. I shall
be lying on the beach on the Hel Peninsula in Poland.
Sincerely,
Daniel A. Foss,
who really wishes he could say he is going straight to Hel but there
have been too many escapist fantasies already.