Playing Politics With a Tragedy : Bush aide lays blame for riots on liberal social programs of ‘60s and ‘70s

Marlin Fitzwater, the White House press secretary, thinks he knows what caused the Los Angeles riots. Much of the blame, he asserts, can be traced to “failed” social welfare programs launched in the 1960s and ‘70s.

What programs was President Bush’s spokesman specifically talking about? “I don’t have a list with me,” he said, refusing repeatedly to identify even one in support of his sweeping generalization.

A LOW: Well, there’s a lot in the way of decades-old social legislation to choose from: Medicare and Medicaid, for example, which give older Americans and the poor access to health care they might not otherwise be able to afford; food stamps, which help one in 10 Americans; the enormously popular Head Start, which seeks to give a leg up to preschool children.

Is it these Fitzwater is thinking of when he decries programs that “redistribute the wealth or that deal with direct handouts”?

Granted, some of the social programs enacted under Lyndon B. Johnson or other presidents did not work as planned. But many, those programs noted above as well as others, have contributed significantly to improving the quality of life for scores of millions of Americans.

They may be imperfect, but they emphatically have not failed, any more than Social Security or child labor laws or standards for safe food and drugs have failed. To suggest otherwise smacks not just of bad analysis but of implicit demagoguery.

Fitzwater, of course, was letting off a broadside in this year’s political wars. The President for whom he speaks has an agenda--just as that President’s predecessor did--that posits an approach to encouraging economic growth and social mobility considerably different from what liberals in Congress are inclined to offer.

Fair enough; let the competing approaches to alleviating economic distress and entrapment in despair be debated. But let them also be debated on all sides with respect for facts. If the President is prepared to act to alleviate urban problems, then let him move forward--without delay.

AND A HIGH: Last Friday night George Bush gave one of the outstanding speeches of his presidency. He spoke about the Los Angeles riots using words that seemed to have been weighed with the precision of a jeweler’s scale. He condemned the lawlessness that shocked a community, the nation and the world. He expressed compassion for those who suffered. And he said he was stunned by the verdict in the Rodney King case. It was a speech that did him credit.

The President is due in Los Angeles late today to survey the riot scene. He will have some things to say about its causes and consequences, and he surely will have more to say in the course of his reelection campaign. We hope those words will measure up to the high standard he set in his remarks last week.