Another Way to Turn Down the Heat

By Rick Horowitz

WASHINGTON, SOONER OR LATER -- Seeking to avert potentially serious environmental problems in the decades ahead, President Clinton called today for mandatory limits on the production of White House gases. But the president's announcement was immediately criticized by forces on both sides of the contentious debate over global yawning, and it was unclear whether his position would ultimately prevail.

In a major policy address whose details had been eagerly awaited for months, Mr. Clinton proposed reducing administration rhetoric to 1990 levels by the year 2012. The president noted that the United States, with less than five percent of the world's population, produces more than forty percent of its meaningless chatter.

"We are largely responsible for the current climate," the president told an audience at the National Geographic Society, "so we must take the lead in turning things around."

Among the president's recommendations, reached after intensive discussions dating back to the administration's earliest days: an immediate end to White House task forces and study groups, the gradual elimination of press briefings by anonymous White House officials, and the development of non-polluting alternatives for covering the First Family's various milestone birthdays. Many observers have viewed these activities as prime sources of overheated oratory.

The president also proposed a system of cash incentives to encourage radio talk-show hosts to go into other lines of work. Talk shows have recently been identified as a significant new cause of global yawning, one with long-term consequences.

"Once this stuff gets into the air," Mr. Clinton asserted, "it takes years to get rid of it. The time to stop it is now."

In setting forth his plan, the president was quick to acknowledge that he would not satisfy everyone. In fact, the early reaction to the president's speech was clearly divided between those who saw it as "too little, too late," and those who felt that any such measures, no matter how limited, would have a devastating effect on the American economy.

"Our entire system is based on a continuous supply of hot air from the White House," said one industry official who declined to be identified. "You start messing with that, and you're really playing with fire."

Environmental groups, not surprisingly, saw the matter differently. They worried that nothing in the president's proposals would slow down what they viewed as the biggest single source of White House gases: the nonstop production of issue papers and press releases from an ever-expanding White House media operation.

"You've got all those hotshot kids in the West Wing," one senior environmentalist complained, "cranking out this stuff day and night, night and day. Get a life!" Indeed, several environmentalists faulted the president for failing even to mention the question of nocturnal emissions, an issue they saw as central to cooling the Washington atmosphere to acceptable levels.

Administration officials, meanwhile, promised that today's speech was not Mr. Clinton's last word on the subject, and suggested that further proposals would be forthcoming as negotiations continue. These proposals, sources hinted, might include additional cutbacks in White House gases, and substantial cutbacks in statehouse and courthouse gases as well.

On the other hand, sources confirmed, plans to limit Speaker-of-the-House gases -- an effort code-named "Stick a Cork in Gingrich" -- remain on hold.

Said one Clinton aide, "We can dream, can't we?"

10/24/97