Don't Pity the Poor Potato Head

Less than six weeks before the election and Danno still can't get away from the dummy thing. Attempts to look seriously at his record have been obscured by Murphy Brown, Doonesbury and a barrage of potato jokes. He's Ronald Reagan without the power; light relief for us drones in the newsroom.

But as difficult as all this may be for the Vice President to handle personally, surely an adviser or two has pointed out the side benefits of being thought a perpetual lightweight--minimal press scrutiny or public awareness of what he really does. This is particularly true with regard to one of the most significant of Quayle's activities off the golf course, the President's Council on Competiveness, which he heads. Danny Boy has a record, and it's a scary one.

As chair of the Council, Quayle has managed to cater to big business by knocking the guts out of some of the most significant regulatory acts passed into law during Bush's presidency. Not bound by the Freedom of Information Act, Quayle and his cohorts operate in almost complete obscurity. Many people don't even know that the Council exists.

This is how it works. Say the President signs a regulatory bill--the Clean Air Act, for example--in full media spotlight. Say some business people don't like it. Say they complain to the Council. The staff of the Council will review it and may in turn recommend certain changes in the legislation to the agency that is responsible for implementing it.

It may be even more convenient for business leaders to complain directly to the Vice-President during one of his numerous political junkets. Quayle raised $22 million for Republican campaigns in more than 400 appearances in 1991 alone. The Washington Post reported in January of this year that "in almost every city he visits as a campaigner, Quayle holds closed-door round tables with business people who have made sizable contributions to the local or the national GOP."

Nor does the Council limit their reviews to specific complaints from businesses. In a March 1991 memo, Quayle directed every federal department and agency head to send the Council all "documents announcing or implementing regulatory policy that affects the public," including strategy statements, policy manuals, grant and loan procedures and press releases.

After government agencies receive letters from Quayle and the Council with "suggested" changes, they may find it difficult to say no to a group that includes the Vice-President, the Chief of Staff, the Attorney General, the Secretaries of the Treasury and Commerce, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget and the Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors. End of story.

One of the clear targets of the Council has been the Clean Air Act. President Bush signed the bill in 1990, calling it "the centerpiece of our environmental agenda" and "simply the most significant air pollution legislation in our nation's history." By the summer of 1991, Quayle's Council had proposed more than 100 changes to it. Among the Council's "suggestions":

.Dropping the proposed ban on the incineration of lead batteries, the source of over half of the lead in U.S. garbage. While incinerated lead helps cause high levels of lead in the blood of 400,000 babies each year, Quayle's council reported that the ban "did not meet the benefit/cost requirements for regulatory policy" without stating on what data they were basing that assertion.

.Narrowing the definition of what constitutes a wetland, thus allowing private development on as much as 30 million acres of formerly protected wetlands.

.Allowing companies to set their own maximum pollution levels unless the state agency objected within seven days. If no response from the state is forthcoming (if, for example, it took a while for the letter merely to reach the appropriate desk) the emissions permit would automatically be changed to the companies' levels.

.Dropping a regulation to require cities that incinerate their waste to recycle 25 percent of their garbage, a regulation that the EPA predicted "would pass any imaginable [cost/benefit] test."

And unlike Bush, who put his personal assets in a blind trust upon being elected Vice-President, Dan Quayle has never seemed bothered by even the appearance of gross impropriety.

How's this for a benefit/cost analysis of the recycling bill? Quayle owns $350,000 of stock in family controlled Central Newspapers, a conglomerate that owns seven newspapers, two paper mills and a plant devoted to producing virgin newsprint and that reportedly belongs to the same industry organizations that lobbied against the EPA proposal.

None of this has gone completely unnoticed by the Washington community. Both Democratic Sen. John Glenn of Ohio and Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Ca.) have attempted to call Quayle and the Council on some of their more egregious actions. Every few months, another newspaper will write a feature about the Council. The facts about Quayle are out there; they just can't compete with his potato-head image.

Lori E. Smith '93-'94 is an editor of The Crimson. Her column appears in this space every other Saturday.