Word: harkin
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...news for you, George . . . Herbert . . . Walker . . . Bush," he says, jabbing his forefinger in the air. "Next year the American working people are going to veto you!" Lines like that evoke applause from blue- collar workers, farmers and party activists. So does Harkin's hectoring of new-wave Democrats who would move the party toward the center. Virginia Governor Douglas Wilder, who became a candidate on Friday, glories in his record of fiscal austerity. Paul Tsongas, the earliest aspirant, styles himself a pro-business Democrat. Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, still mulling a run, comes across as a middle-roader. Of Harkin...
...Harkin is the preacher of traditional liberal psalms: a massive public-works scheme, increased spending for education and health, lower taxes for the working class and higher levies on the affluent. He promises "a bold plan for a new economic structure." But many Americans long ago lost faith in such primordial liberalism. Nathan Landow, Maryland party chairman and a major campaign fund raiser, concedes that Harkin's record could turn off wealthy contributors, not to mention moderate voters. "But Tom has a fiery way about him that will catch on," Landow says. "Maybe this time we need the messenger...
...Harkin's Senate colleagues last week were anything but relaxed as he irked them with one of his guerrilla maneuvers. As chairman of an appropriations subcommittee, he proposed moving $3 billion from the Defense Department to popular education and health programs. That would violate the constraints in the 1990 deficit-reduction compromise reached after much anguish, but Harkin thinks the five-year plan inhibits flexibility and should be abolished. After an afternoon of contentious debate, Harkin lost by a vote of 69 to 28, as he knew he would. But among liberal political junkies who vote in primaries, he scored...
Tactics that raw have disappeared from Harkin's script, but he often declines to let accuracy ruin a witty line or blunt a political dart. Angry that Bush may provide emergency assistance to the Soviet Union if food shortages worsen, Harkin says that G.O.P. niggardliness toward elderly Americans will force many of them "to choose this winter between heating and eating." Harkin dismisses the possibility of starvation in the Soviet Union: "I keep seeing these pictures of Russians. I've never seen a picture of a skinny one yet." When he argues for rapid reduction of U.S. forces in Europe...
Under the intense scrutiny of a Presidential campaign, this cunning carelessness could be a liability. But voters tend to ignore such details, and Harkin's obviously heartfelt commitment to his causes overshadows his lapses. Last week when he pleaded for expanding immunization services for impoverished children, he recalled getting shots from the visiting nurse at his "two-room country schoolhouse, middle of nowhere, Iowa." Neither he nor his five siblings had easy access to medical care in the town of Cumming (pop. 139). When he fought for the disabilities act, he had in mind his eldest brother, Frank, who lost...