Friday, July 6, 2001 | 9:41 a.m.
Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun.
WILL HE GET it right this time?
Like many Americans, I have been disappointed in President George W. Bush since he took office this past January. Disappointed in the sense that I had hoped he would take his good fortune and sufficient electoral votes into the White House and out across an America which was hoping for his success.
Many of us who did not vote for the president and most of the people who did, came together as Americans in the spirit of this great democracy and in the fervent hope that our new president would continue the policies and practices that made President Bill Clinton's eight years two of the best presidential terms in history. We had reason to believe that would happen, too, because candidate Bush spoke of compassionate conservatism and the need to move forward as one. Besides his political fixation on the need for a huge tax cut he also directed us toward his idea of environmentalism, two issues which gained him some respect amongst the electorate.
What has happened since he took office, of course, has been not much short of a mini-disaster, if you consider success as an indicator. Other than the tax cut which, by now, most people have seen the flim through the flam and realize was mostly a ruse, there is little else that the good Mr. Bush has proposed that has not elicited ill will and negativity -- and that's from the people who voted for him!
The good news, though, is that it is still early in his reign and there is plenty of time for him to start getting this president thing right. Remember, President Clinton was knee-deep in the gays-in-the-military bog at about this time in his administration. He turned it around once he understood how the Washington game worked and how and where to spend a president's not unlimited political capital.
So we can skip over the estate tax boondoggle, the carbon dioxide turnabout, the Kyoto Treaty walkaway, the Star Wars initiative that has seen more hostility attached to it than the nuclear warheads we fear so much -- and that, by the way, from our friends and allies -- and President Bush's complicity, if any, in the Jim Jeffords switch of the entire United States Senate. Having skipped all that and written it off to, shall we say, naivete where none exists, what is next on our president's agenda for which he can show his true self and a style of leadership that will make most Americans happy to have him in the White House?
How about a decision which may help Parkinson's victims live much longer without the debilitating symptoms that make this disease so awful to contemplate? How about a decision that will give parents the peace of mind in knowing that diabetes need not be a way of life for their children? How about a decision that will give scientists the tools they need to probe practically every aspect of the maladies that make many lives miserable and the ends of those lives far worse? If President Bush can do that, then he's showing America what compassion really is and, more than that, he is showing Americans that he really does get it.
So, when the time comes shortly for the most powerful man in the world to make a decision about the future of stem cell research, there should be little question that he will act in the name of science, in the name of humanity and in the name of all those who ail in this country from diseases that could be conquered if the researchers are right.
The issue is about the use of embryonic stem cells, which come from destroyed embryos that were created for fertility treatment. Scientists have very good reason to believe that these cells have a great potential for treatment and cures for a whole host of maladies. They hold out far less promise for what they consider less flexible cells from adult tissue. So what's the problem and why the debate?
Abortion, that's what!
Somehow, in the realm of scientific endeavor in which the study of these embryonic cells could lead to the eradication or, at least, successful treatment of diseases that affect millions of people each year, the politics of abortion has reared its ugly head. And that prospect alone has caught our good president in the headlights of public opinion and at the end of the lightning rod of political destruction. And, I think right about now, President Bush is not quite sure which way to go.
That reminds me of the time when former Vice President Dan Quayle, who constantly railed against abortion -- in part because he said he believed it was wrong and, in part, because millions of his political supporters believed it was wrong -- once told the truth when given a hypothetical about his own daughter and her decision to have an abortion. His answer caught the anti-abortion movement by surprise but hardly got a rise out of the millions of parents and others who knew the truth of what he said and the sincerity with which he admitted that he would have to support his daughter's right to choose.
In short, when it comes to family and loved ones, the rule may be just a little bit different from the rules we want everyone else to live by.
In the matter of embryonic stem cell research, there are just too many millions of somebody's family members who need the help that this research can bring to raise the barrier of political rightism to act as a roadblock to good health. This is not even to suggest that the "A" word has a place in harvesting these embryos. Rather, it is to acknowledge that those who want to push their anti-abortion agenda are not bashful in pushing it in this case, regardless of the facts which suggest that they are barking up the wrong tree of life.
Nevertheless, there are the usual political hacks looking to curry favor with the far right on this issue -- that would be Dick Armey, Tom DeLay and even J.C. Watts -- who wield a lot of clout in the House of Representatives and over their Republican colleagues. What is interesting in this case, though, is that dozens of Republican faithful are breaking ranks in the House and the Senate because they understand what the zealots of the other side do not. If science can find answers to the scourges of society, so that mothers and fathers do not have to bury their children prematurely, and it can do so in a way that does not do violence to the norms of society, then most Americans say "go for it."
That's the stage upon which President Bush sees himself ready to act. His dilemma is to upset his political base on the far right and risk alienation come the next election, or to upset Republicans, Democrats, independents and every other kind of American who know this is the right and compassionate way to go.
Will he get it right this time or will the right make him get it wrong? That's the question.
And, the answer is ...
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