Clinton's veto - 10 October 1997

I know that the witching hour is, theoretically, midnight when witches and other dark and paltering spirits appear.

But maybe, because of the association with spirits in our and many other American households, the witching hour coincides with the near approach of sunset but always with the tinkle of ice and the appearance of spirits which do cheer, but we hope not inebriate.

According to practically a lifetime’s routine, and because I work at home, my wife and I make a point of not seeing much of each other by day. She’s off about her business, which I ought quickly to add is the business of maintaining the household, saving us from dirt, decay and famine; and I go about mine.

As the witching hour strikes, I call her with the magic words, “Huntley-Brinkley time.” And so it used to be 30-odd years ago – a team of news anchor commentators on the network we preferred. Huntley is long dead and David Brinkley has just retired at the age of 75. But Huntley-Brinkley is still a rallying call, as unmistakeable and rousing as Donner and Blitzen, or (at this fateful time of the baseball season) "Play ball!".

Anyway it’s news time; and though my habits are nothing like as meticulous as I gather a professional journalist’s ought to be, I do take out a lined pad and a pen and during the next half-hour or so jot down a note or two, hoping that some word or phrase will suggest a topic for these talks.

Occasionally, as now, I look back to my pad and find a note that is cryptic to say the least. For instance, our menu for the week, it says here, is eggs, pork and breasts. To me, the headline of the week was the simple, stark one, "Eggs are back".

Let’s begin with pork. Last Monday, President Clinton signed a bill that Congress passed recently – a military appropriations bill, the final bill; that is the one that spells out how the money is to be spent and who gets how much for what.

Well in anything as huge and comprehensive as a bill aimed at defending the country, there can hardly be a senator or a congressman or woman who can’t claim or dream up some necessary work or construction to be done in their own district. So military bills especially are stuffed with amendments that simply bow to the needs, or (if they’re in the president’s party) the demands of a congressman, a senator, to do something for the home folks.

Most often, the attached amendments have little or nothing to do with the main bill. Example: a bill, a very serious national issue, a bill to sanction abortion with the parents’ permission. A man from a mountain state took note that a famous band leader born in his state had just died, so he put in the Abortion Bill an amendment to spend $50,000 as a museum to commemorate the band leader. If this man had had enough clout, power, in the Congress, he might have stopped the main bill from ever getting passed.

But, unlike most worthy, unworthy and ridiculous amendments added for the home folks, the word of this one got out. It was widely ridiculed by the public and the infuriated congressman had to withdraw it.

The most famous regular bill that attracts local amendments as a dog attracts fleas is the Rivers and Harbours Bill, which, as you might guess, just magnetises the attention of every congressman whose constituents would like a new highway, a dam, a bridge, a pier, a new paved right-of-way. The construction business is the everlasting, bottomless pork barrel.

There, I’ve used the word about the custom, the barnacle that waves down and stifles practically every bill that comes up. For generations, "pork" has been the word for funds added to a bill to use for a local project.

The image of a pork barrel may seem odd until you learn about its derivation. In the years before the Civil War, plantation owners would, on special days, as a bonus to their normal diet, distribute slabs of salt pork to the slaves. The connection with the hunger of a congressman for a slab of local pork is obvious and has been used for well over a hundred years. Of course the successful claim of some powerful senator to get his slab at all costs can (and does) often bring down a serious bill.

One commentator wrote 80 years ago, ‘In their stampede to get their local appropriations into the big bill, congressmen behaved like former slaves rushing up on the pork barrel." And only 40 years ago, a famous and disillusioned old senator from Illinois wrote, "As they win the battle for their special expenditures, they lose the war for the general economy. They’re like drunkards who shout for temperance in the intervals between cocktails."

I’m afraid that in a country that’s a continent in which congressmen are elected for two years only, during which they’d better step lively and get some visible lump of pork for their people if they want to be re-elected, in such a country under such a system the prospect for ever abolishing the custom is invisible.

But what last Monday came flashing in from the horizon was a new weapon that might at least deter, or defeat, the usual wealth of nuisance or pork amendments.

For the first time in history, a president had been given the power by Congress, a privilege that every president since Franklin Roosevelt has been begging for – the power to delete from a bill items he deems unnecessary to the main purpose. Till now, if the president very much wants a bill passed, say on maternity home leave, he’s been powerless to kill added items – a race track for a county in Florida, a fishing licence for a river, and $20,000 for a school basketball court.

Now he has the power of what’s called the line-item veto – literally the power to delete individual items. And from that huge military construction law, he struck out 38 items worth $287 million dollars. This district wanted a new air force paint shop in Texas, another one a new aerial gunnery. Denied. On and on through another 36 items, he thought not absolutely necessary to the bill.

It’ll be interesting, to put it mildly, to see how the new power goes down in the long run. Of course congressmen who sponsored items left in were joyful. Ones who found theirs were out were furious and, if they’re of the president’s party, are likely to warn him that his man is going to lose next time in that district.

Of course both the joy and the fury could be anticipated and Mr Clinton knew what was good for him. He left intact $36 million dollars worth of projects requested by Mr Trent Lott, the Republicans’ Leader in the Senate.

Now the second note says "breasts", and I hope I can offer at least a consoling note. First, let me say that after 20 years of scare stories and million-dollar lawsuits still pending, the National Institutes of Health have put out a final conclusion that silicon implants alone do no harm.

The main story should do much to relieve the anxiety of millions of women, especially the young, about breast cancer; an anxiety which in this country has practically been organised into a national crusade, complaining that research lags far behind and that the government doesn’t hand out enough money.

This panic springs from a basic anxiety just reported in two national polls, which is that more than half of all American women believe that breast cancer is the most life-threatening of all the diseases that can afflict them. It is positively not so. Put the surveys that reveal this massive anxiety against the actual mortal statistics, and this is what you find. The overall count for causes of death among American women is as follows: from heart disease, 30%; from breast cancer, 3%.

One figure quoted far and wide is that one woman in eight has the risk. That’s true, but only women over the age of 85. A happier, contrasting truth is that up to the age of 35, the risk of breast cancer is one in 622. The one cancer that does cause many more deaths among women is lung cancer, at a rate that’s been going up ever since 50, 60 years ago, women caught up with men in the cigarette habit.

Finally, the note picked up from a riveting headline, the title over a piece reporting an international conference that was held last week in Bethesda, Maryland. The headline, "Eggs are back – maligned yoke, benign white and all".

Since the Second World War, the average consumption of eggs in the United States is less than half what it was, all because in the 1950s the dread bogeyman crept into the language and the kitchen: cholesterol. To people who knew only that egg yolks were a rich source of it, the yolk became a condemned creature.

Now these brooding scientists, concerned about the rising deficiency of – wait for it – omega-3 in most diets, are telling us that the egg, the whole egg is just what’s called for, especially when the chick is allowed to graze freely and pick up this precious fatty acid, omega-3, from wild greens.

In a resounding final note, the conference took the curse again of the egg yolk by declaring that omega-3 can reduce the risk of heart disease, arthritis, high blood pressure, tumour growth and diabetes. Well worth weighing against the threat of a little gain in that old devil cholesterol.

I had a friend in San Francisco who made up our Sunday foursome, which started always with a hearty breakfast. Some time in the late 1950s, he stopped coming to breakfast; he stayed home and made himself an all-white omelette. A kind of frost settled on the foursome.

I hope to see him back some Sunday, quoting Oscar Wilde but with a twist, “An egg," said Wilde, "is always an adventure.” And a healthy one too.

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