Fulbright Calls Flag Issue Unimportant, Emotional : Politics: Former U.S. senator decries shift away from world events to debate constitutional amendment.

Former Sen. J. William Fulbright expressed disappointment with his successors in government, saying it is a “great tragedy” that politicians have shifted their attention from world events to debate a constitutional amendment to ban flag burning.

The 85-year-old Democrat from Arkansas invited reporters to his home Monday to call for greater funding for the scholarship program that bears his name and has helped nearly 180,000 students worldwide attend universities in other nations.

But Fulbright, the longest-serving chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and an early congressional foe of the Vietnam War, also surveyed the world scene and found much to his liking.

“I feel more optimistic about the international situation than any time I was in the Senate,” he said, adding that he believes even the Chinese will “come around” and join the world move toward democracy.

But Fulbright was clearly troubled by the response of American politicians, faulting President Bush for refusing to cut defense spending or raise taxes, criticizing the invasion of Panama and the funding of the rebels in Nicaragua and accusing Democrats in Congress of timidity.

Asked to comment on the flag amendment, he said, “I think it’s a great tragedy that in this time of very promising issues that we should be diverted by such an . . . utterly emotional and unimportant issue.

“I just don’t understand it. But I thoroughly disapprove of fooling with (the Constitution). I think it ought to be left alone.”

Fulbright said the United States remains an economic power but Bush’s refusal to raise taxes and thereby reduce the federal deficit has put America at risk.

“We have a major problem now. We don’t pay any taxes,” he said. “I don’t see any justification for no new taxes.”

However, Fulbright did not assign all the blame to Bush. Of Democrats in Congress, he said, “I don’t think they’re doing a very good job. They don’t seem to say much or do much. I think they’re afraid to say much about taxes.”

Although Fulbright, a member of Congress from 1932 to 1974, repeatedly referred to himself as an “old man,” he was set to leave this week on a trip overseas to receive honors in Britain and the Soviet Union.

On June 23, a quadrangle of Pembroke College at Oxford University, where Fulbright studied as a Rhodes scholar, will be named after him. On June 28, Fulbright will receive an honorary doctorate from Moscow State University.