European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - June 13, 1992, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Saturday june 13, 1992 the stars and stripes James j. Kilpatrick Page 19 commentary Perot s electronic government is a loony idea is  the Tovac try in a Ross Perot the Texas Tornado continues to stir up a mighty wind. A nationwide sampling by the Washington Post and Abc news taken during the first week of june came up with Perot 38 percent George Bush 30 percent and Bill Clinton 26 percent. Remarkable. Remarkable but not much More. Political contests often offer a voter no More than a Choice among perceived evils. If the major party candidates were Democrat Edward Kennedy and Republican Jesse Helms the pollsters might find 38 percent for unwed mama Murphy Brown. The sentiment in Early summer is not so much pro Perot As it is anti everybody else. This will change Over the next four months. Clinton will get a boost from the democratic convention in july. Bush will pick up Points following the Republican convention in August. Perot will announce his candidacy formally on june 27, but after that it will be downhill All the Way. That prediction rests in part upon the Only novel idea the texan has produced so far. He would be guided or at least strongly influenced by his electronic town meetings. I done to mean to be critical but in advancing this loony proposition the gentleman is nuts. The general idea is that president Perot would ask the major to networks for a regular hour of prime time. This month the Issue might be gun control next month the tax on capital gains. Above a certain level should retired persons pay taxes on All their social Security benefits yes or no. Other issues come to mind. Agricultural subsidies for crop Loans and irrigation Cost billions of dollars. Should these be curbed or abolished More billions could be saved by abolishing funds for space station Freedom. The sea Wolf submarine is a big item. So is the super accelerator in Texas. Do the people favor a Federal Law against gambling on sports events should employers be forbidden to replace striking employees with non Union workers what of Aid to Israel should billions be spent to help the former soviet Union Day care tuition vouchers election Reform a plan of National health insurance a the list goes on and on. Under the Perot plan a Neutral Moderator would first state the question of the month should the Federal tax on gasoline be increased by 20 cents a gallon experts pro and con would explain the Impact. Such an increase would produce an estimated $20 Bil Jion in new revenues. It would increase the Cost of living also. The Moderator might question the debaters. Listeners would then vote. This could be done by Telephone by computerized postcards or by interactive to devices. Electronic wizardry would instantly count the yeas and nays. President Perot and the Congress would not be required to abide by the plebiscite but they would be hard put to oppose it. In the 14th Century an archbishop of Canterbury used As his text a Vox Populis Vox Dei a the voice of the people is the voice of god. Commentators explain that the Maxim does not mean that the voice of the people is Wise but Only that the voice is irresistible. Applied to contemporary political issues the scheme is implausible impractical deeply misleading violative of fundamental political principles and subject to manipulation by demagogues and special leaders. Besides that it is a Wacky Way to run a government. After the Novelty wore off Perot a Vox Populis hour would command about the same slim audience that now listens to talk shows on sunday morning. This would be a Well educated politically Active audience would Perot hear the voice of the people the voice of the lobbyist would be heard in the land. Any More ideas Perot if so Trot them out. Meanwhile suppose we put this Piebald Maverick Back on the Range. C univ Oral Pross Syndicate George f. Will recoils from Ever creeping Statis populace Well tailored and Well intentioned the very Model of the modern International improver Maurice Strong impresario of the Rio Earth Summit intoned a we have been the most successful species Ever. We Are now a species out of  to which a healthy response is Damn right and we re determined to stay that Way. A burgeoning International bureaucracy of Rule writers wants to control the species in the name of that sentiment lists fiction the a International  their Mission is to move nations a beyond sovereignty a using multilateral agreements couched in Broad language the effect of which will be diluted sovereignty and abridged Liberty. How much dilution and abridgement will be decided later by the authors. The Rule writers of Rio fancy themselves the wave of the future. Actually they Are a late 20th-Century gasp of a late 19th-Century invention bureaucracy. A Harbinger of the future May be the mouse that recently roared Denmark. Friends of Freedom owe much to the 46,269 Danes who made the difference in the glorious defeat a 50.7 percent to 49.3 percent a of the maastricht treaty. Denmark a political class casually submitted the treaty to a popular referendum assuming perfunctory ratification because Mere citizens would not have the impertinence to reject what a a Progress Sivest consider self evidently desirable a Europe a political and economic Union. The a a deepening of the european Community a meaning deepened submission of nations to the Brussels bureaucracy a has become like environmentalism another value invoked to justify More bos siness by government. Behind the fog of euro jargon about a a harmonization and a coordination a there is the spread of soft statism. Its goal is to suck toward the Center a to Brussels a Owers and rights hard won Over centuries y National parliaments. The casualties of this centralization include government by representation and consent. Centrifugal forces Are being Felt in the multiplying fragments of the soviet Union and Yugoslavia in Czechoslovakia in scottish nationalism and Quebec separatism a and in Northern California and southwestern Kansas. Recently 27 Rural California counties approved a non binding but intensely cathartic measure endorsing secession. They say Sacramento is a Distant Gaggle of strangers and the states vastness and diversity precludes a sense of commonality and Community. In Kansas a bleeding Kansas again a nine counties convinced they will pay More for education while having less control Over it under a new school finance plan have voted again it has no Legal effect to secede from control by that Distant and self aggrandizing Metropolis Topeka. Back in Copenhagen Denmark a foreign minister says a we must now sit Down and find out How we were so Distant from our  the emotional distance Between government and governed defines american politics too and Clinton Bush and Perot seem to misunderstand it each in his own Way. Clinton is identifying More closely with democratic leaders of Congress americans most despised institution of governance. He stresses the blessings that will pour from Congress in the springtime of a Clinton presidency when divided government ends. The strange theory of the Clinton Campaign which needs new theorists is that voters regret government a a gridlock because it impedes the expansion of government favored by the congressional Wing of the democratic party. Bush a incomprehension of contemporary politics is written All Over his fading presidency. In an interview in policy review Chris Demuth of the american Enterprise Institute says a a Reagan a breaking of the Patch strike signalled accurately that a no More business As usual in Washington was More than Campaign rhetoric. Bush a agreement to a tax increase he had vowed never to accept signalled with equal accuracy that it was Back to business As usual. A everyone in Washington with the possible exception of a few of president Bush a advisers understood that the 1990 budget agreement was not about solving a particularly knotty fiscal problem but about whether it was Safe to get Back to promoting increased Federal spending taxation and  Perot a defining Promise is to make government  his brusque Persona is his program he will bark orders and take a a action and this a Lead of ship will end governmental  but his stress on efficiency and other managerial values is at Odds with the Public a recoil from the statism and collectivism that were born with this Century and May be dying with it. Beginning with Theodore Roosevelt an american majority Felt that govern ment needed strengthening because it seemed anaemic compared to the institutions and problems of Industrial capitalism. However on the eve of the 21st Century american opinion is that government is now overdeveloped and is decreasingly competent and increasingly costly to Freedom. The mood of people from Copenhagen to California is that we Are the most successful species because we resent control. Having escaped from the control of Kings and priests and the like we Are not going Back to control this time by bureaucrats. The species is most successful a morally As Well As materially a when resisting permeation of life by political regulation. Ail a frn Poil