NEW HAMPSHIRE WEEKLY

In politics these days, it's all relatives

By Arnie Arnesen, April 11, 1999

Story One, spouses and sex:

I have been thinking about the two most talked-about women in American politics today. Neither has ever run for office and both can credit their spouses for their politically bankable names. I am talking about presidential hopeful Elizabeth Hanford Dole and possible US senatorial candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton.

After nearly 80 years of full democratic participation in the electoral process (women got the right to vote in 1920), marriage still carries the key to political access and credibility. Even though "Wife" Dole managed to get appointed by three presidents to high-level positions, we know that the national exposure presented by presidential candidate Bob Dole did more to grease the skids than did her position as secretary of labor. The marriage thing is even more obvious with Hillary. Trust me, a brilliant Little Rock, Ark., attorney couldn't get a free token on the New York subway, let alone be the buzz of the upper east side as Daniel Patrick Moynihan's replacement for the US Senate.

There is something even more unusual about these two women and their prominent political spouses; it is the fact that sex (and I mean the kind you have between two consenting adults) is a part of their political portfolio. This hit me the other day as I was sitting in my radio studio. The room where we tape our show is covered, floor to ceiling, with campaign posters and provocative magazine covers. Prominently showcased on the door behind me is a full-page New York Times ad featuring none other than Bob Dole. The ad shows a painfully sincere Dole urging America's males to muster up a little "courage" and talk to their doctors about E.D., also known as erectile dysfunction. Imagine the 1996 Republican nominee for CEO of the Free World getting paid to educate the world on how to improve their sex lives with a little blue pill called Viagra.

This has got to be a first. Liddy's spouse has spent months, with the help of a Pfizer million-dollar marketing blitz, talking about the problems of dysfunction. Hillary's husband, our president, has managed, with the help of Ken Starr and millions of taxpayers' dollars, to preoccupy the country with his overactive sex life. Maybe 1999 will be remembered as the year we so outed the sex thing that it finally found its rightful place in the private reaches of our lives. I'm hoping that the next two most prominent political women in American politics may actually have an electoral legacy to their name.

Story Two, when DNA matters:

What do Charles Bass, Judd Gregg, John E. Sununu, Al Gore and George W. Bush have in common? The right DNA, which has given them access, name recognition and ostensible credibility in the political arena. Ronald Brownstein, a political correspondent for The Los Angeles Times and author of the article "The Successor Generation," notes that in 2000 there is "the possibility of the first all-second-generation presidential race in American history -- between Al Gore, the son of a senator, and George W. Bush, the son of a president, who was himself the son of a senator. The prospect of a Gore and a Bush leading both parties into the new century speaks volumes about the enduring power of pedigree in a society that supposedly apportions its reward by the impartial calculus of merit."

I want to laugh. Pedigree has always been America's perfectly acceptable form of affirmative action. It's ironic that so many white male conservative politicians, those most blessed by America's earliest form of affirmative action, seem so offended with the legislative version that was designed to help open the door for minorities and women to the white, male-dominated world of education and work. You know the arguments against affirmative action: we are putting the force and effect of government regulation behind the hiring of incompetent, less qualified people; the government should be blind to color, sex and class; today's citizens cannot make amends for past wrongdoings. The arguments sound great, but no cigar. People act in hiring just like they do in elections: They choose what is familiar. It is not surprising that a white male CEO from an Ivy League institution would tend to hire a similarly situated white male. It is what he knows best. Is it fair? Is the person selected the most competent? Who knows? Who cares? Try asking all those folks who are neither white nor male to start.

New Hampshire does affirmative action by pedigree better than many states. Just look at our current crew of congressmen, where three out of four are second- and third-generation New Hampshire pols. If I were Judd or Charlie or John, the question that would nag me every night is whether I would ever have arrived at my position of power without the luck of DNA.

Story Three, S.O.S.:

At last count there were 17 folks signed up to lobby the New Hampshire Senate on the virtues of video slot machines. Given the fact that we only have 24 senators, that is nearly one lobbyist to every senator.

According to State House lore, all you have to do to control the New Hampshire Senate is to buy six senators and confuse seven. After looking at the April 1 Senate plan -- a potpourri of taxes, including a new entertainment tax and expanded gambling at the racetracks and two grand hotels -- it looks like that is exactly what the lobbyists were able to accomplish.

But the key to the gambling interests is their ace in the hole, Governor Jeanne Shaheen herself. The Shaheen '96 and '98 campaign discosure reports reveal contributions totaling in the tens of thousands of dollars from parties associated with gambling intersts nationwide.

The influx of large pots of cash gave me a great idea: We could organize a movement called S.O.S. -- Save Our Shaheen. S.O.S.'s goal would be to raise enough money to pay back the various gambling investors in the Shaheen for governor campaign.

Another first in the nation for New Hampshire! New Hampshire citizens could buy back their governor! Maybe that is what is meant as "Best Buy."

Arnie Arnesen is co-host of "Morning Attitude" on WSMN-AM 1590.