Whipping Us Over Welfare

All across the land, a great cry has risen over the cost of welfare. Each political season seems to find its whipping boy, and this season’s designated whipee is the man or woman in the welfare line.

A good taxpayer myself, I favor this whipping. Don’t most of us? Yes, indeed, because we understand that the welfare system has failed, that it perpetuates poverty just like prisons perpetuate crime. Our annual billions spent on welfare do little more than keep the ghettos from bursting into riot and flame.

So we need some new ideas about welfare, and the flogging of the old system should be welcomed without a twinge of conscience.

Yet we still feel those twinges. Could it be that we sense this debate is hardly genuine, that we are being played for patsies by candidates who see another chance, a la Willie Horton, to pull our strings?

It could be, and that brings us to our story for today. Last week, in San Diego, the curtain got pulled back on a political race where welfare has been played to the max. I will simply relate the events and you can make your own interpretation.

The story begins with Susan Golding, a San Diego County supervisor currently running hard for the mayor’s office. Outside San Diego, Ms. Golding is best known as the wife of fallen financier Richard T. Silberman.

Back in December, as the mayor’s race began to pick up, Ms. Golding rose to propose that an entire segment of the welfare system be wiped out in San Diego because it amounted to abuse of the county’s generosity.

She made an interesting point. This particular program gave $291 a month to single, employable adults who found themselves without jobs or other means of support. Why, she was asking, should the county support single men and women who can work?

Ms. Golding argued that these 2,000 people should be told to find a job and get off the dole. A week later, the other supervisors agreed and shut down the program.

A modest furor ensued. The legal aid society hauled the county into court claiming the cuts were illegal. Everyone held press conferences. Day after day on television, Ms. Golding stood by her plan. She was whipping the welfare wave.

Then came the pulling back of the curtain. Last week a memo was slipped to local reporters. Written by Dick Dresner, Ms. Golding’s campaign pollster, it was dated two weeks prior to the day she went public with her welfare proposal.

In the memo Dresner recommends that the candidate create a “storm of publicity” by taking a strong stand against welfare payments to “white, able-bodied males.”

The memo describes Golding being perceived as “just another typical politician” who needs to “stand out from the crowd.” The welfare thing will be just the ticket, it says.

After recommending the plan, Dresner describes the welfare cuts as “illegal” and says that makes it even better. “Susan will be in a position to stand up to the government bureaucracy and fight for something most people would like.”

In one of the small ironies of the memo, Dresner concludes that his plan will allow the campaign to “overcome some underlying skepticism about Golding’s own ethics.”

Shades of Zev. When this happened to Yaroslavsky a few years back with the release of the infamous BAD memo, his mayoral campaign in L.A. never recovered. Ms. Golding’s staying power remains to be seen.

For her part, Ms. Golding claims the Dresner memo had little or no impact on her decision. Zev said the same, of course. So do they always.

Actually, the point here is not Ms. Golding or her political future. Rather, it’s the corrupting power of cynicism. How it can take a legitimate worry of millions of people and convert it to something loathsome. The way it destroys trust, even the trust that a genuine political debate can take place.

And you might be interested to know that Dresner turns out to have another major client in California. That client is Pete Wilson, who made his own speech in December calling for a 25% reduction in California welfare payments. As a matter of fact, that speech took place on Dec. 9, the same day Susan Golding went public with her plan in San Diego.

Wilson’s speech provoked a nationwide response. It struck a chord. Do you think a similar memo from Dresner sits in Wilson’s files?

Wilson’s people say no. They say Dresner had little or no impact on Wilson’s welfare decision. And let’s assume they are telling the truth.

But that’s the problem with cynicism. It makes you wonder.