MSNBC
January 18, 2000
 
 
Elian’s case and Bradley’s crusade
 
Relating a Cuban boy to 14 million Americans in poverty


                                                         ANALYSIS by
                                                             Tom Curry
                                                                MSNBC

       
                                  Jan. 18 —  Bill Bradley knows that an emotional
                          symbol can help launch a political crusade.
                          Noting that the case of 6-year-old Cuban émigré
                          Elian Gonzalez “has riveted the nation’s
                          attention,” the Democratic presidential
                          contender called on Americans to use some of
                          the determination generated by Elian’s plight to
                          eliminate child poverty in America.
                                “IF ELIAN GONZALEZ can be an inspiration to do
                         that, then I think it will have a much longer-term effect than
                         just simply one tragic incident,” Bradley said in Monday
                         night’s Democratic debate in Des Moines, Iowa.
                                But Bradley and others who want to start a new
                         crusade to abolish poverty in America have no Elian
                         Gonzalez, no personal rallying point.
                                American politics in recent years demands what
                         Hollywood knows as “a story line,” a personal catastrophe,
                         a suffering victim or a bereaved next-of-kin to pique the
                         public interest and bring tears to one’s eyes.
                                To be sure, thousands of suffering children can be
                         found in America: some who are abused by their parents or
                         ill-treated by the foster care system.
                                Millions are born to single parents who are struggling to
                         make ends meet. The Census Bureau says that children who
                         live with a single mother have a poverty rate of 55 percent,
                         more than five times the rate for children in married-couple
                         families.
                         ENGAGING THE EMOTIONS
                                But Elian Gonzales has succeeded in doing what
                         children living in poverty often can’t seem to do: He has
                         engaged the sympathies of editorial writers and TV and
                         radio talk show producers.
                                You know when such a case has hit home when the
                         central figure suddenly is referred to by his or her first name.
                         “Elian” has passed this threshold.
                                Something similar happened with “Megan’s law,” the
                         1996 federal statute that requires state authorities to notify
                         communities when convicted sex offenders come to live in
                         their town. The bill was named after Megan Kanka, a
                         7-year-old girl who had been killed by a convicted sex
                         offender who had moved to her neighborhood in Hamilton
                         Township, N.J.
                         FDR DIDN’T NEED SYMBOLS
                                It was not always this way. In 1937 President Franklin
                         Roosevelt issued a ringing call to action on the unfinished
                         agenda of the New Deal. “Here is one-third of a nation
                         ill-nourished, ill-clad, ill-housed,” Roosevelt declared. “Here
                         are thousands upon thousands of children who should be at
                         school, working at mines and mills.”
                                FDR didn’t mention any particular child. He didn’t say,
                         “tonight, in Camden, New Jersey, Peggy Smith is walking
                         home after a 12-hour shift at the factory. Peggy is only 10
                         years old.”
                                The conditions Roosevelt described in 1937 were
                         familiar enough to enough voters — they didn’t require
                         extra added emotion to be believable.
                                And by the etiquette of FDR’s day, using a child as an
                         emotional prop for a speech would have been considered
                         maudlin and in poor taste.
                                Similarly, when President Lyndon Johnson launched the
                         war on poverty in an address to a joint session of Congress
                         on Jan. 8, 1964, he didn’t use any anecdotes about a little
                         boy going without food in Appalachia or a little girl suffering
                         in an urban slum.
                                He declared, “This administration today, here and now,
                         declares unconditional war on poverty in America. I urge
                         this Congress and all Americans to join with me in that
                         effort. It will not be a short or easy struggle, no single
                         weapon or strategy will suffice, but we shall not rest until
                         that war is won. The richest nation on earth can afford to
                         win it.”
                                A social evil exists and the powers of the federal
                         government should be used boldly to uproot that evil — that
                         was FDR’s political creed, it was Johnson’s and it is
                         Bradley’s today.
                         ROOSEVELT AS BRADLEY’S MODEL
                                Here is how Bradley put it when he unveiled his
                         anti-poverty proposal last October: “The task of
                         presidential leadership is to challenge ourselves to do things
                         we weren’t sure we could do. Things that we know we
                         want to do, things that deep down we know we need to do,
                         but that we are not sure how to do.”
                                He consciously evoked FDR as his model: “We set the
                         goal, and then we figure out how to get there. ... I think this
                         is what Franklin Roosevelt had in mind when he looked out
                         at America and saw that one-third of our nation was ill-clad,
                         ill-fed, and ill-housed.”
                                Bradley said that Roosevelt “wasn’t sure exactly how
                          to do it, he didn’t know exactly how to put food on those
                          tables, but he knew that we had to do it, and the first step
                          was saying so.”
                                So Bradley, the ideological heir of FDR and Johnson,
                         proposes to launch a crusade to eradicate poverty among
                         children.
                                His proposals, which range from increasing collection
                         of child support payments from fathers to new federal
                         spending on day care centers would cost, he estimates, $10
                         billion a year.
                                It might seem that the political tides are running against
                         such a proposal. The election of a Republican Congress in
                         1994 came about partly because of increasing voter
                         skepticism about federal spending programs that did not
                         seem to solve social ills.
                         BRADLEY DISSENTS ON WELFARE
                                In 1996, by overwhelming margins Congress passed an
                         overhaul of the welfare system that in effect told the single
                         mother, “after being on welfare for five years, you must go
                         to work, even if you’re unskilled and all you can get is a
                         low-wage job with little prospect of advancement.”
                                Bradley voted against that bill, calling it “a poor
                         person’s nightmare” that would lead to “chaos” as state
                         governments tried to manage assistance programs for poor
                         people.
                                But perhaps there is broader support for a Bradley-led
                         war on poverty than one might suspect.
                                The National Opinion Research Center at the
                         University of Chicago conducted in-person interviews with
                         more than 2,800 Americans last August and found that
                         nearly 63 percent thought that too little government money
                         was being spent on assistance to the poor; only 11 percent
                         thought too much was being spent.
                                Next Monday night, Bradley will get his first reading on
                         how Americans are responding to his old-style Democratic
                         call to action as Iowa voters take part in their state
                         caucuses.