Rohrabacher’s Sin: Self-Righteousness

The temptation to stick it to Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Long Beach) because of allegations in the current New Republic magazine that he was a frequent and enthusiastic drug user during his college years is almost overpowering.

Over the past year, Rohrabacher--a freshman congressman--has assumed a posture of arrogant righteousness, especially in his criticism of the arts, that has made him highly vulnerable to the kind of attack mounted by the New Republic. He should have known better. He hasn’t paid his dues yet.

Part of the temptation is to joke it up. You know: Hey, Dana baby, whaddya say we smoke some pot while we talk over your tough new drug bill? Or, how about dropping a little acid and having a look at some dirty pictures--NEA-subsidized, of course?

But that’s too easy. It also misses the point that if you live by the sword, you can die by it, too. So--to mix a metaphor--you’d better be pretty sure of your own chastity before you throw that first stone. What we’re talking about here is hypocrisy, not drugs.

As far as Rohrabacher’s current effectiveness as a legislator is concerned, it doesn’t matter a bit that he smoked pot when he was in college. The hashish and LSD accusations give some pause but that was part of the scene then, too.

It doesn’t matter any more than it mattered that the college kids of the 1930s joined socialist clubs and made leftist talk over cheap beer. That was part of the college scene then and meant about as much as Rohrabacher’s pot parties. Yet thousands of those people were destroyed--reputations broken, jobs denied--during the McCarthy purges in the early 1950s by politicians who professed the same so-called conservative views Rohrabacher embraces today.

It also probably doesn’t compromise Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder’s effectiveness today that she didn’t get a degree from Wayne State University 25 years ago as her resume said.

But Rohrabacher--who beat out Wieder in the 42nd District Republican primary for Congress in 1988 while pledging to run a positive campaign and concentrate on issues--didn’t hesitate to mount a personal attack on Wieder when the opportunity arose. First he questioned the Canadian-born Wieder’s citizenship, a charge she quickly and successfully refuted. Then he told reporters that Wieder had never earned a college degree.

Challenged on his campaign pledge, he replied: “All I did was disclose information that I thought the people deserved to know.”

Now play this against his response to Times reporter Robert Stewart last week when questioned about the charges in the New Republic: “I don’t think any mistake I made in my personal life as a young person is anybody’s business but my own,” he said. “Mistakes that I may have made in this area were over 20 years ago. Since that time, I have lived a very responsible life.”

He also called the magazine “unconscionable.”

Next, consider Rohrabacher’s introduction of a bill about a year ago that would allow members of the House of Representatives to use money set aside to run their offices to pay for drug tests for themselves and their congressional staffs. At the time, staff members in Rohrabacher’s office were required to sign a pledge to avoid drug use and to submit to drug testing whenever Rohrabacher so decreed it.

Said Rohrabacher: “We’re not trying to sneak up on people and put them in jail. What we’re trying to do is provide incentives in our system to people who might be susceptible to drug abuse.”

(His associates didn’t buy it; a typical reaction came from Rep. Andrew Jacobs Jr. (D-Ind.), who called the move “political grandstanding.”)

Later Rohrabacher announced his support for the National Crime and Emergency Act that would dramatically stiffen penalties for casual drug use.

Now play this against Rohrabacher’s long background as an ardent Libertarian.

Although he says he “holds different views today,” he has admitted soliciting Libertarian campaign funds and was photographed two years ago at a party given by the Libertarian magazine Reason that featured a cover story that month urging the legalization of drugs.

And in an interview with Times reporter Jeffrey Rabin in May, 1988, Rohrabacher said that he still maintains “some sympathy for the Libertarian philosophy” that espouses maximum personal freedom and a limited role for government in the personal lives of Americans--including the decriminalization of drugs.

Small wonder, then, that the former pot-smoking college buddy who blew the whistle on Rohrabacher in the New Republic says he was motivated primarily by the congressman’s “hypocrisy” in introducing what opponents consider counterproductive drug laws, aimed at people whose behavior rather precisely parallels what Rohrabacher is being accused of doing in his college years.

Finally, we have Rohrabacher’s crusade against the National Endowment for the Arts to weigh against his reactions to his current difficulties. About a year ago, Rohrabacher discovered a generous vein of publicity gold in attacking federal grants to the arts and has been assiduously mining it ever since. Although he was soundly defeated in the House when he tried to attach obscenity standards to NEA grants, he enjoyed more public attention in the process than any freshman congressman in recent memory.

One of his techniques was to isolate a single portion of a much larger piece of art, often by internationally known and respected artists. He would then blow up the segment, declare it obscene and excoriate the artists publicly. (Art experts likened this to isolating one of the 19 nude males to be found in Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel frescoes and focusing in on a single penis.)

Now play this against Rohrabacher’s cries of “foul” against the New Republic which he accuses of “gutter politics and character assassination. . . . People don’t want to confront your arguments, they want to attack you personally.”

Rohrabacher might conceivably have turned all this to his own advantage--or at least disarmed his critics--by saying, “Sure I smoked pot when I was a college student. So did a few million others at that time in that place. I don’t do it any more, so what’s the big deal?”

Instead, since the New Republic article appeared, he has chosen to dodge the question, refusing to confirm or deny that he ever used drugs. He gave the same answer when a Times reporter--aware of his Libertarian background--asked him the same question two years ago. Such are the limitations of the self-righteous; they dare not admit wrongdoing.

So now Rohrabacher has himself painted into a philosophical and ethical corner. And I suspect that a lot of people who have deeply resented both his actions and his arrogance are pleased to see him twisting and turning for a change.

Just possibly Rohrabacher is learning that everything that goes around comes around. And sometimes, those who dish it out with such glee don’t handle it very well on the receiving end.