Hawaii's World

By A.A. Smyser

Thursday, April 4, 1996

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Neil Abercrombie has kept the First District seat (Hawaii Kai to Mililani) with the Democrats since 1991. Hawaii has had only Democrats in the Senate and House since then, one of the few such state delegations in Congress. It hurts us to have no voice in either the House or Senate GOP caucus.

Abercrombie, who is about as quick and bright as they come, got a loud wake-up call in 1994. Beating him won't be easy, but it's possible because the district is middle of the road. It has gone both ways in past congressional and presidential elections.

If the test is grass-roots penetration, Abercrombie wins easily. He has been an active, often flamboyant, force in politics for 35 years since he came here from his native New York to get a University of Hawaii masters' degree. Georgia-born Swindle came here to marry in 1989 and has been more visible nationally than locally.

But Swindle is a true American hero.

• He flew 205 fighter missions over Vietnam as a Marine Corps officer.
• He endured nearly seven years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, often tortured, but came back from the war with his love of America even stronger.
• As head of the Economic Development Administration under President Ronald Reagan, he publicly rang the bell on House Speaker Jim Wright's shenanigans with EDA funding, starting the process that brought down the speaker.
• In 1992 he took charge of a shattered Ross Perot campaign organization, got Perot on the ballot in all 50 states, persuaded him back into the presidential race, and then spoke out articulately for Perot on many national talk shows. He is at home in the limelight.

Should President Clinton win re-election, Swindle could provide one of the votes needed to push the contract past Clinton vetoes.

Abercrombie will picture the contract as a way to help the rich by taking from the old and poor. He will deride the idea that it is meant to address some fundamental problems growing from the failure of our 30-year "War on Poverty" and excessive government growth.

In truth, we must curb the growth rate of Medicare to save the system for the long term. The contract's intent to place welfare more fully back with the states looks reasonable in view of the failed one-size-fits-all federal record.

NO one that I know, Democrat or Republican, wants to see women, children or oldsters starving, homeless or without health care. But a lot of us have come to believe that the word "entitlement" needs re-examination when it means funding unlimited births for young, unmarried girls ill-equipped to be parents, giving aid to those quite able to help themselves, or further funding programs that haven't worked.

I hope there will be several major debates between Swindle and Abercrombie. Both are extremely good in public forums. Both have strong convictions. Abercrombie has faith in big government solutions. Swindle looks to the private sector and more local government control, both for results and to help restore America's moral fiber.

Their differences put them at opposite edges of the great political divide in America today. If they would do it, they could give us some of the best issues debates Hawaii politics has yet seen.