OUTSIDE THE BOX
URL:http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pdupont/?id=110002786
The Shot Unheard
Round the World
Amid Lott's blather, Bush announces a sensible smallpox plan.
BY PETE DU PONT
Wednesday, December 18, 2002 12:01 a.m. EST
No doubt the White House had big plans for the week of Dec. 9. President Bush would reveal the members of his new economic team, announce his smallpox vaccination plans and refocus Americans and global allies on Hans "See No Evil" Blix on ongoing weapons inspections. That was all before Trent Lott opened his mouth.
Sen. Lott managed to bury all of the president's initiatives with his disastrous racial references at Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday party. It took a few days before his statement evoked outrage. But before too long, criticism poured in from left, right and center. There was no getting around the clarity of Mr. Lott's statement. He seemed to approve of the racism of America's abhorrent segregationist past. In President Bush's words, "any suggestion that the segregation of the past was acceptable or positive is offensive, and it is wrong. . . . [Mr. Lott] has apologized, and rightly so." These are strong words from a president about his party's leader in the Senate, but they are exactly on target.
Mr. Lott's remarks have given the Democrats a powerful weapon that they will use persistently. The Democrats will now be able to point to Trent Lott whenever they subtly--and sometimes not so subtly--suggest that Republicans support racism. The Democrats do this by linking, however tangentially, legislation they want to defeat to race. Liberals loathe school choice and Social Security market accounts, for example. By labeling them as antiblack initiatives they may be able to defeat them.
Mr. Lott may not have intended to endorse segregation, but he must nevertheless resign as the leader of the Republican Senate majority. His leadership ability is now compromised. He will be undermined at every turn by constant Democratic and media criticism. This will put at risk elements of President Bush's domestic program. Mr. Lott should remove this issue from the front pages and resign sooner rather than later, and thus give Senate Republicans a free hand in electing a new leader when they meet on Jan. 6.
Mr. Lott wasn't the White House's only unpleasant surprise. North Korea announced that it would "immediately resume the operation and construction of its nuclear facilities," including starting up the Yongbyon reactor that it abandoned after the 1994 Agreed Framework--an international accord that was meant to stop Pyongyang from producing atomic weapons. A few months ago the North Koreans were forced to admit that they had begun an undercover uranium enrichment program, in clear violation of the 1994 agreement. Last month North Korea said it would not allow foreign experts into the country to verify that U.S. fuel supplies were being to produce electricity, and not nuclear bombs.
North Korea is attempting to blackmail America. Pyongyang wants to extort more international economic aid, while also stall for time in hopes of becoming a stronger nuclear power. President Bush will not accept this, for an unstable, militaristic North Korea armed with nuclear weapons cannot be allowed to threaten the world. But there's no getting around that North Korea--a part of "the axis of evil"--is now a more entangling long-term national security challenge than Iraq.
The controversy surrounding Mr. Bush's new economic team seemed calm by comparison. But Treasury nominee John Snow's philosophy was called into question. And Stephen Friedman, the new assistant to the president for economic policy and director of the National Economic Council, came under fire from the right for his ties to the Concord Coalition--a group that prefers closing deficits to tax cuts. Mr. Friedman is not an economic growth conservative. But it is nice, at least, to be arguing about tax cuts and economic policy rather than race and national security.
Which brings us back to the week as it was supposed to be, and the President's smallpox vaccination program.
Sometime in 2001 terrorists sent a very small quantity of anthrax spores obtained from a laboratory to several locations in the eastern United States. Thirty thousand people at risk were given medication to protect them from death or illness.
America may face the challenge of combating smallpox on a much grander scale. Introducing the deadly virus into one or more cities could be the next step in the terrorist campaign that began years ago. Highly contagious smallpox could rapidly spread to many more people than 30,000 and protection against it requires an immediate vaccination that would itself be a health risk to some people.
Smallpox was enough of a health threat through the 1960s that a preventive vaccination was mandatory. The vaccination program was so successful that the last known case of smallpox in the U.S. was more than 50 years ago. But a government intelligence analysis concluded that four nations, including Iraq and North Korea, likely possess stocks of the smallpox pathogen.
So President Bush on Thursday proposed a sensible program that will immediately vaccinate Americans in the front line of a terrorist smallpox attack, a million military and critical health personnel. The vaccine will also be offered to 10 million policemen, firemen and health-care workers, and about a year from now be made available to anyone who wants to be vaccinated. Such vaccinations will begin to build the "herd immunity" that was essential to eradicating the contagious disease in America.
Smallpox vaccination is not without risk--an average 15 to 20 people out of every million vaccinated will face life-threatening infection. Some people will be more susceptible than others to the ill effects of vaccinations, so the very young, pregnant women and people with cancer or the AIDS virus will be excluded from vaccinations.
The potential casualties rates have made this vaccination program somewhat controversial. Some people fear the vaccines; others think there will be little risk in rural areas where they live, so why chance illness? Carlos del Rio, director of HIV inpatient services at Grady Hospital in Atlanta, says "the risk of the vaccine is higher than the risk of us having a case of smallpox," which at the moment may be true but could swiftly change in the uncertain world of bioterrorism.
The president's vaccination program is medically sensible and offers individuals a choice in protecting themselves against a severe disease. Families all across the country have begun debating whether they and their children should be vaccinated. This is an important discussion to have as we, as a nation, decide how to cope with medical threats from biological weapons.
President Bush will be among the first to be vaccinated against smallpox. I have some sympathy for him, for I vividly remember my own smallpox vaccination as a young boy--the irritation, itches and inflammation that resulted from the multiple sharp scratches that put a small infection on my arm. Considering the difficult week the president just had--none of it of his own making--he may remember the irritation of a smallpox vaccination as the best of the week that was.
Mr. du Pont, a former governor of Delaware, is policy chairman of the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis. His column appears Wednesdays. |
