Rep. Crass (R-Bakersfield)

Unity is not something you put your hands around. It’s only a feeling. That is, you feel unified in a crisis or you don’t. And somebody can take it away in an eye blink by simply saying they aren’t going to stand with you--that you’re on your own.

I was feeling very much a part of the unity that swept America this autumn. In the dark clouds that gathered over the United States, a silver lining materialized when it appeared we were going to set aside old habits and face this unknown together. Then I looked up and saw some people scurrying off to see what they could leverage out of events while the rest of us were preoccupied relearning the lyrics to “God Bless America.”

I’ll put a face on one of them. The face of the person who left me standing in the flutter of car flags, feeling that unity is something for us suckers out here in the land of 9-to-5, hi-ho off to work we go, kids to school, bills to pay, dinner on the table, cross our fingers that we’re going to make it through this national ordeal.

The face belongs to Bill Thomas.

I could have picked others, perhaps. But he’s a front man in this, and I used to know him. He was a smarmy, self-important member of the state Assembly in Sacramento when I was starting out as a reporter. Now he’s the pompous chairman of the Ways and Means Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Because of anti-government lifers like him, I long ago gave up a career in political journalism. I found myself fighting gag reflexes all the time. So I went elsewhere to report on human affairs.

Unity and bipartisanship are anathema to the Republican Thomas--except as they open the door of opportunity in a war that is far more important to him than any war against terrorism: his Darwinian class warfare that pits the rich against the poor, his polarizing war that divides America by campaign contributors and everyone else, his self-indulgent war that answers foremost to lobbyists who know how to flatter an ego as oversized as his.

Thomas is the architect--or more accurately, the author--of the bill that destroyed congressional bipartisanship.

At the very moment that America looked to Washington for leadership, Thomas led the charge backward to the disagreeable days when America could only view itself as Big Business versus worker, have against have-not, conservatives against all.

I am referring to Thomas’ budget-busting $100-million “economic stimulus” giveaway, a proposal that does Newt Gingrich one better. Forget the “contract with America”; this is the “contract on America.” Details of this legislation aside, anyone who so willingly ruptures our national unity by devising legislation that can pass by only two votes of 430 cast fails the minimum standards of public service in a crisis.

Unity means just that. In so straightforward a matter as stimulating the economy, unity requires only compromise, which obviously asks too much of a punch-drunk partisan who can’t stop swinging even when America is under siege.

On Sept. 12, Thomas issued a statement saying that the terrorist attacks “are a declaration of war and I expect our government to act accordingly.” Unfortunately, he lost sight of what war we’re fighting.

If you examine details of this bill, matters are even worse. How about revving up the economy with a $671-million tax break to General Electric--a company that pioneered the idea of laying off workers to raise stock prices? That ought to really buck up consumers, who have been carrying the economy for most of the year while business retreated.

And any high school freshman could tell you that the fastest way to create jobs is not by giving multinational corporations another $21 billion over the next decade for laundering their money in offshore subsidiaries. In Bakersfield, Thomas’ hometown, ideas like that are commonly likened to the stuff that’s shoveled out of stock pens.

I don’t mean to slight Bakersfield. Actually, I like the place--a hard-working, bootstrap community where Dust Bowl immigrants and oil wildcatters made good. Bakersfield was the birthplace of hot-rodding and Buck Owens, to name two. And I’m sure the only reason the fine folks there keep punching this careerist’s ticket is that Thomas’ fealty to corporate lobbyists provides him an insurmountable advantage in campaign spending.

We’re told that the U.S. Senate will tone down some of Thomas’ dirty work. And we can hope so. But that won’t change the fact that Bill Thomas heard the patriotic call for national unity but was too small a man to answer. He scurried away to fight his old partisan grudge war, turning us against ourselves.