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POLITICS
Won't Get Fooled Again?
Of The Body, The Bear and The Boss
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Business New Haven
8/23/99
By: Laurence D. Cohen
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He was a governor so unloved, so distrusted and detested that State Sen. George (Doc) Gunther used to tape a photo of him to the seat of his chair, so he could be accorded the respect he deserved each day when Doc sat down.
It was the same governor who won a "heroism" award from some slush fund the Kennedy clan established to honor those in public service who lied to voters, gave them an income tax they didn't want, and then skipped town, one step ahead of the election, where he would have been humiliated by voters who have a slightly different definition of heroism.
It was the same governor who forced the closing of state beaches over a July 4 weekend to reinforce a legislative snit - and because rich guys in Fairfield County don't need public beaches.
It was the same governor who gave Hartford a lousy hockey team and gave New Haven a lousy tennis tournament, but lived on to snicker at Hartford for its failure to buy itself a football team.
It was the same gubernatorial candidate who, once it was clear that his own party couldn't stand to be in the same room with him, created his own personality cult and pretended it was a new political party.
It was the same US. Senator who took up a Republican seat on the labor and education committee, voting with Ted Kennedy to assure decades more of lousy public schools and union-coddling legislation.
It was the same US. Senator who chose to grandstand on the front pages of national newspapers, humphing and growling about Richard Nixon and South Africa and other easy targets appropriate to his intellect and attention span.
It was the same US. Senator who went through more press secretaries than Clinton went through women, all in a desperate effort to massage an ego that wouldn't (and still won't) quit.
It was the same US. Senator who was so despised in Washington that when he was finally exiled to a small-business subcommittee, even the small-business lobbyists complained about the insult.
In fact, in Lowell Weicker's long, loud and undistinguished career in public service, he was only right about three things: If you repeat the obvious flaws about Dick Nixon, over and over, the Washington Post and New York Times will forgive you for being a Republican; the 1970s oil crisis wasn't much of a crisis and the market would eventually punish OPEC and self-correct; and a state income tax is a much easier way to raise money than the messy business of actually asking taxpayers what they might prefer.
And now, according to an overly friendly love-letter in the form of a news story last month in the New York Times, the growling bear is back, shaking off the dirt from a political hibernation and a few cushy corporate directorships, ready, perhaps, to run for the presidency under the Reform Party banner of Ross Perot, perhaps the only sort-of-public figure in America richer and nuttier and more ego-crazed than Weicker himself.
The father of this defective embryo is apparently Minnesota Gov. Jesse (The Political King Maker) Ventura, who believes that his practical joke on the political establishment can't sustain T-shirt sales indefinitely unless the Reform Party puts up a new national maniac more palatable than Perot.
Common sense suggests that Americans wouldn't be fooled by Lowell, but of course, common sense suggested that Jesse wouldn't be able to find thousands of young voters for whom marking a ballot with an X was a strain on their beer-besotted intellect. Le sens commun n'est pas si commun.
One of the few Weicker charms, and a dark and dangerous charm it is, unfolds when he cages his raging ego, gains temporary control of his snapping synapses, and behaves with just enough charm to get himself elected. It is days, or perhaps weeks, before voters realize the cruel trick that he has conjured. As professional golfer Nick Faldo said about his marriage: "We were happily married for eight months. Unfortunately, we were married for four and a half years."
Weicker as president? The gods would be angry and the Potomac River would part to make way for those with long memories or Connecticut addresses. Weicker, Ventura and Perot, locked in a room, mud-wrestling for the crazy soul of the Reform Party? Now, that would be a show worth watching.
Laurence D. Cohen is senior fellow of the Yankee Institute for Public Policy.
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