The Fox Guarding the Slaughterhouse
Lost in the talk about the Bacteria-in-the-Burger story is the fact that the US Department of Agriculture tells restaurants to cook their hamburgers to 140 degrees F, but that regular folks cooking for themselves at home should leave the burgers on the grill until they reach 160 degrees.

Why the softer rule for restaurants?

Because the Department of Agriculture not only is supposed to regulate the beef and other meat industries, it also has a stated purpose of promoting those very interests. During the Reagan-Bush era, any regulation on any business with the potential of staunching the beef industry was considered a bad idea.

Within the DOA is a division called Marketing and Inspection Service. This office is charged both with making sure that meat is safe and that people eventually buy and eat it. (This ridiculous conflict of interest is the main reason for the DOA's criminally lax inspection regime, about which we have read much recently, and which President Clinton has pledged to strengthen.)

In order for the bureaucrats on the marketing team to have an easier time facing their client companies (many of whom are former employers), bureaucrats on the inspection team need to make sure that the rules they're supposed to be enforcing don't take too big of a bite out of meat-packer profits.

It's a crazy set-up.

First, the Marketing and Inspection Service should be split up. Then, federal officials should either get out of the meat-marketing business entirely, or they should admit to us that they've been joking all of these years by telling us that we live in a free-market society.

Out of one side of their mouths, big business interests - meat, oil, automobile, energy, weapons, banking, agriculture and so on - complain about government regulations. But out of the other side of their mouths, and in a whisper, they also thank the government for tax breaks and promotional assistance. Too often, those whispers are heard just as clearly, if not more so, as the hue and cry over government regulations.

The federal government as a partner to the champions of the free market: It's an unusual brand of business as usual. In many European countries, the formula works - employees and their families share in a company's success and enjoy generous government-mandated and government-sponsored benefits. In the US, corporate officers and shareholders are the only winners.

Myopic Media Need New Yardstick to Measure Presidential Success
When a president is in office, his record largely is based on his "popularity," and on the breadth and volume of opposition to his policies. Only when he leaves office does this measure start to shift where it belongs - to the perceived moral correctness of his ideals and the lasting quality of his reforms.

With Bill Clinton's inauguration only two months behind us, this disturbing pattern apparently is being replayed. Already - because of his stands on allowing gay men and lesbians to serve in the military, and on loosening Reagan-Bush abortion restrictions - reporters and commentators are interpreting minority opposition to Clinton's initiatives to mean that he is having trouble early in his presidency. (Both positions, polls show, are supported by most Americans.)

Instead of exploring the deeper implications of and motivations behind a president's positions, maybe it's just easier for the news media to report on them in the context of the public's negative reaction. But in a vibrant, inclusive democracy, dissent is not only expected, but mandatory.

We would like it if all Americans could come together on such issues as reproductive freedom, equal rights, universal health care, environmental protection, economic justice and a more representative system of government. But unless we're overlooking something, there's probably no single belief shared by everyone living in this country. To criticize and blame the president for the polity's divergent opinions is, simply by virtue of everyone's right to believe their own beliefs, an invalid argument. Progressive social and political ideas always are met with resistance.

Were Kennedy and Johnson bad presidents because people complained when they supported expanded rights for minorities and economic relief for the disadvantaged and elderly? A generation later, though both men had their share of personal and political shortcomings, the social views held by Kennedy and Johnson now are considered mainstream. The same will be case for Clinton a generation from now. But this legacy-to-come doesn't do him much good now.

Instead of writing so extensively about how much trouble presidents encounter in selling their initiatives, the punditocracy should discuss dissent in terms of its societal significance, and in terms of the credibility of the dissenters. Suggesting that Clinton is sailing rough seas, for example, because 15 or so percent of the people oppose his overturning of the abortion counseling "gag rule" is invalid. Rather, the suggestion could be made that the 15% is made up of people who oppose the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship, and who oppose the delivery of complete medical information to a woman seeking a constitutionally protected medical procedure.

Probing these deeper questions, instead of exploring the quick-hit issues of what harm an unpopular decision might spell for a president, not only would be a more accurate way to gauge a president's greatness, but also more responsible. Over time, a president - or any leader for that matter - would become more likely to follow his or her actual beliefs, and less likely to base decisions on their public reception.

Dissent must be reported by the news media, but not to the extent that its coverage underplays and otherwise warps the level of public support for a president's beliefs and policies.

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Contents on this page were published in the April, 1993 edition of the Washington Free Press.
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