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Lamm for President
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Business New Haven
10/7/1996
By: BNH
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Would that it were an option. But it's not. The quixotic candidacy of former Colorado governor Richard D. Lamm was ill-fated from the outset - a fate determined not by his ideas and principles, which would have immeasurably elevated the national debate - but by the megalomania of the Reform Party's standard-bearer presumptive: a vertically challenged control-freak tycoon by the name of H. Ross Perot.
With polls showing that a majority of Americans yearn for a viable third party, Perot had an historic opportunity to create one with real staying power - by permitting someone other than himself to bear the Reform Party's standard during the 1996 Presidential campaign. The straight-talking and -shooting Lamm, who shrinks from none of the grave choices confronting the Republic, would have been a thought-provoking choice - forcing candidates Clinton and Dole to pay more than lip service to do-or-die issues such as the unchecked growth of entitlements or deficit reduction.
Instead, Perot succumbed - predictably - to the malady common to males whose physical stature falls short of their self-image - that is, what basketball coach Pat Riley likes to call “the disease of 'me'.” In so choosing, he has relegated the Reform Party to the scrapheap of history.
That's too bad. And while at least one friend of BNH would dearly love to see Lamm on Pennsylvania Avenue, she will have to write in his name at the ballot box even to assuage her conscience. Few others, sadly, will bother.
That being said, Business New Haven will endorse no candidate for President in 1996. We make note of this stance now, shortly following a request from the state chairperson for Clinton/Gore '96, New Haven State Sen. Toni Harp, to meet with this publication's editorial board. We politely decline, because: 1) to do so would waste Sen. Harp's precious time; 2) this publication does not, as a rule, cover national politics, excepting where its tos and fros impact area businesses directly; and 3) we have heard no vision, no outline, no plan for the next four years from Messrs. Clinton, Dole, Perot, Nader, etc. which seems likely to improve the competitive position of businesses, large and small, in Connecticut, and throughout the nation.
It's too bad that the candidates we have been dealt in 1996 lack the courage to publicly confront a tax restructuring which would spur productivity, a realistic plan to reduce the nation's trillion-dollar deficit, a redirection of resources from maintaining the lifestyles of the needlessly idle to ensuring that the tools they need to become productive contributors to American society are well within their grasp.
We have no idea whether it takes a village to raise a child. We're certain that it takes a family - mother, father, children - to begin to rebuild a society rent by strife, decay and despair. And the glue that binds that - beyond faith and love - is an honest day's wage doing dignified work that makes our world a better place for all its inhabitants.
That's our endorsement in 1996.
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