Columnist Jon Ralston: Politics takes back seat for a spell

Friday, Sept. 7, 2001 | 4:43 a.m.

Jon Ralston hosts the public affairs program "Face to Face" on Las Vegas ONE and also publishes the Ralston Report. His column for the Sun appears on Sundays and Wednesdays. Ralston can be reached at 870-7997 or through e-mail at ralston@vegas.com

SOMETIMES, maybe too often, when analyzing why things happen in politics and government, we media types forget or ignore the human component.

In ferreting out the real reasons why a politician behaves a certain way or a government makes a decision, we can be cold-blooded. And our chilly cynicism is enabled and fueled by those in the political world, many of whom see each other not as human beings but in more inanimate or at best reptilian terms -- as roadblocks, as snakes.

A cynicism that feeds upon itself precludes the possibility that a candidate got into a race because he felt deeply in his heart that he wanted to run.

Or that someone decided not to run because he had to pay his four kids' college tuition. Or that members of a government body actually voted their consciences and were not unconscionably influenced by external forces.

I was struck by these thoughts as I pried my eyes open to watch the eight hours or so of Yucca Mountain hearings last week. No issue and no rhetoric by elected officials so ices a pundit's blood as the nuclear waste dump.

If it's not the sibilantly soporific "Screw Nevada bills" or "sound science," it's the fear-mongering "nuclear graveyards" or "health, safety and welfare of the people of the great state of Nevada." We've seen politicians hypocritically brandish the issue as partisan bludgeon and shamelessly use it as a tool to rack up easy political points.

But something new, something illuminating, something insightful? That we haven't seen in many years.

Until Wednesday night. That's when the humanity, at least for a brief moment in time, eclipsed the politics.

No, the politicians who spoke provided nothing new. Oh, Mayor Oscar Goodman was colorful, Gov. Kenny Guinn was steely and the congressional delegation was, well, the congressional delegation (get some new material, folks.)

Nor did the labor guys who see the dump as a jobs-rich public works project, nor the audience plants urged to come by both sides, offer anything revelatory.

But then there were the people. The real people. Regular folks -- mothers, fathers, enviros, Shoeshone Indians -- who showed what is almost never seen on the dump issue: Real emotions.

They showed real anger, real fear, real worry about the quality of their lives. They didn't care about the political ins and outs; they just wanted to protect their families or question authority or plead for fairness.

It was heartwarming, inspiring and yet sad to see such verity in a world of verisimilitude. Sad because there were so few of them there -- a few hundred folks. And even sadder because the purity of their thoughts allows them to be so easily manipulated by demagogic politicians, some who secretly believe the dump is on its way but publicly need to pander to and even inflame the public.

So the public is susceptible to Goodman's Wyatt Earp imitation (as if arresting a dump truck driver has anything to do with stopping the dump) or Sen. Harry Reid's asinine demand that Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham attend the hearings (a demand made, by the way, from Washington because the senior senator -- and the rest of the delegation, for that matter -- did not attend, either).

Allow me to uncouple myself from this warm-blooded transfusion for a moment to cast a clear eye on the issue that has been distorted by the politicians and the DOE.

Surely, there are rational, qualified, unbiased scientists who could reach the conclusion that Yucca Mountain is "suitable" for a nuclear waste dump.

But if you live here, would you take the risk they are wrong?

Let me put this in the kind of human terms that might apply to this political situation: This is equivalent of kids getting together to make enough of a cacophony so the parents have only two choices: Give them what they want so they will shut up. Or use their superior force to bend the children to their will.

Which kind of parent do you think we are dealing with?

Before the end of the year, it's possible, even likely, that Abraham will recommend Yucca Mountain as the permanent repository. Then, only two possibilities remain:

One, the state will succeed in fighting off the project by lawsuits, a gubernatorial veto and even more delays. The DOE will have to find an alternative -- dry cask storage, transmutation, perhaps.

Or, two, all of the state's legal and political efforts will fail and the dump will be finally constructed. And the Senate majority whip and George W. Bush's putative pal in the governor's mansion, among others, will have a lot of explaining to do.

Is it better to be noble in defeat, not compromising anything when the health, safety and so on are at stake? Or is it preferable to, at some point, accept the project as inevitable and find out what compensation the state can receive for surrendering?

Unfortunately, there is no easy answer. But even worse, the decision will not be made by real people with rational thought processes. It will be made by politicians, some of whom are even more cold-blooded than us media types.