Seattle Post- Intelligencer  - September 12, 2007


Opinion

Judgments too often made on personalities

By Ted Van Dyk

 

ne of the most difficult things to do, in any part of life, is to make judgments on the basis of facts and principles rather than on our feelings about personalities. Here are two examples.

• Tim Eyman: Local politicos and media have scourged Eyman only a bit less regularly than departed Bush political adviser Karl Rove. It is easy to do. Most of his ballot measures would have arbitrary, disruptive effects on public policymaking in our state. The current Initiative 960 certainly fits that definition.

But wait a minute. Why do Eyman's proposals gain broad public support, even when losing?

It is because they resonate in an electorate just plain fed up with undisciplined and even mischievous state and local spending and taxing decisions. Eyman's ballot measures become send-a-message blunt instruments for ordinary citizens.

Eyman's I-900, mandating performance audits of public and quasi-public agencies, has had an immediate and positive effect on policymaking.

Later this month, state Auditor Brian Sonntag will release such audits of the Washington State Department of Transportation and Sound Transit and, shortly thereafter, of the Port of Seattle. All three audits will precede fall elections and could have important impacts on voter decisions about the Sound Transit-RTID regional transportation package and Port of Seattle Commission races.

The local establishment reflexively scorns Eyman. It, too, reflexively endorses proposals opposed by Eyman. Keep Washington Rolling, the front organization backing the Proposition One ballot measure, has drawn big dollars from the contractors, subcontractors and others who eat at Sound Transit's trough. But it also has gotten $200,000 from Microsoft, $75,000 from the Seattle Mariners, and $50,000 each from PEMCO Insurance Co. and the Washington Association of Realtors, among other donors.

Urban analyst Joel Kotkin, in a recent Wall Street Journal essay, related the experience of other metro areas with light rail systems that have "minuscule ridership but consume a disproportionate share of transit funds that might go to more cost-efficient systems, including bus-based rapid transit." That is precisely the outlook for the proposed regional system here. It would eat the major share of the $38 billion, over 20 years, to be allocated to the Sound Transit-RTID package, which neglects vital bus transit, bridge and highway needs. Yet corporate sponsors are heedlessly backing the scheme, which would further snarl transportation and harm the economy. They make Eyman seem sensible.

• Sen. Larry Craig: It is easy to be gleeful about the come-uppance of a values-preaching conservative such as Idaho's Craig, forced from his Senate seat after a Minneapolis-St. Paul airport bathroom sting.

But, again, wait a minute. If you listen to the airport police audio of the incident, you can entertain Craig's assertion that he was entrapped. It also is jarring to hear the officer's explanation to Craig that a quick disorderly-conduct guilty plea would put the matter to rest and out of view.

In 1964, President Johnson's chief of staff, Walter Jenkins, resigned immediately after having been caught in a similar sting in a Washington, D.C., YMCA men's room. He got no leeway whatever. Years later, Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank became involved with a male prostitute who, without Frank's knowledge, was using his home as a base of operations. Frank has remained in the House and been one of its most effective members. Between Jenkins and Frank, it seemed, thinking had evolved about such matters.

Public officials, the thinking properly went, should be judged on the basis of their performance in the public sector and not on their private lives.

Why would airport police, in Minneapolis or elsewhere, be spending hours in bathroom stalls while post-9/11 security threats continue? What if Craig had chosen to fight rather than make a quick guilty plea he was told would bury the matter? Why did police take the initiative to give the tape of Craig's arrest to the media?

The event involved an unattractive politician in an airport bathroom. Next time it could involve almost anyone, of any ideological or cultural persuasion, damaged or destroyed by some arbitrary exercise of power in his or her home or office.

Put Eyman and Craig, as people, aside. Substitute another name, perhaps your own, for theirs and see if it colors your thinking.

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