GOP's fund-raising pitch is a nuclear horror show

WASHINGTON In 1964, Democrats sponsored a television campaign commercial that depicted a happy child preparing to pick a daisy from a field of wildflowers. As she reached for it, an explosion obliterated everything on the screen, the familiar mushroom cloud leaving no doubt that it was atomic in nature.

The message was clear. If voters elected Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater to the presidency, this is what they could expect.

Political veterans shook their heads in disbelief. Public outrage over the commercial was instant, so much so that it ran just one time. But it had done its job, leaving Goldwater forever and unfairly tainted with an image of nuclear warfare.

Since that time, politicians and those they hire have studiously avoided the frightening specter of nuclear holocaust as a campaign tactic -- until recently, that is, when the head of the Republican Senate Campaign Finance Committee, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, raised the threat in a letter to potential contributors.

McConnell declared that if his party loses control of the Senate in the next election, there is a real chance that the United States will be the victim of a nuclear attack by the North Koreans, who are developing missiles capable of reaching Alaska and Hawaii. Recipients of the letter were urged to donate $25 to keep the Republicans in power and presumably to save the lives of millions of Americans.

McConnell's letter was the second one to raise eyebrows -- and hackles -- in political circles in the last few weeks. Earlier in the year, it was revealed last week, McConnell, a staunch opponent of campaign finance reform, had urged a number of top businessmen to resign from a committee that supports overhauling the political funding system. Proponents of reform instantly noted that the letters went to executives of companies that have serious issues pending before Congress.

But it was McConnell's clearly outrageous scare tactic that points up the lengths to which politicians are willing to go in their mad scramble to raise money for next year's presidential and congressional elections. While his GOP defenders tried to pass off the letter as not unusual in the wild and woolly world of political direct mail, a number of leaders of non-partisan watchdog groups rightfully decried his statements as unfair and unconscionable.

It is not unusual for politicians to ascribe disastrous consequences from electing a certain party or candidate. Election after election, Democrats have irresponsibly demagogued the issue of entitlements, frightening the nation's sensitive older population by declaring that Republicans were out to destroy Social Security and Medicare. These tactics have prevented meaningful reform of the programs.

There's no comparison, however, between this and posing the possibility of death and devastation from nuclear attack. Few things are more upsetting.

While there is concern about North Korea's testing of a long-range rocket capable of reaching U.S. territory, to insinuate, as McConnell's letter did, that Democrats generally and President Clinton specifically would fail to "preserve, protect, and defend" the nation is truly beyond the pale. It is tantamount to calling the president and his party either traitorous or incompetent or both.

In 1960 John F. Kennedy's campaign scared voters into believing the Russians had more missiles than the United States and if something wasn't done the Soviet Union would have the upper hand and use it to hold sway over the free world. The implication was that President Eisenhower's incompetence had brought this about and that his vice president, Richard Nixon, would continue this policy.

The fright campaign was an absolute lie. In fact, just the opposite was true. The United States had far more delivery systems for nuclear weapons and the Russians were scrambling desperately to catch up. Only two years later, America's ability to wreak havoc on the Soviet Union resulted in the abandonment of Russian plans to install missiles in Cuba.

Politicking on the issue of national defense in a responsible way is certainly legitimate. But resorting to horror stories that accuse the other side of deliberately fostering the annihilation of America and arguing that the only salvation is the election of one's own party have no place in our current system.

McConnell should review the history of the missile gap and remember the little girl picking the daisy.

Dan K. Thomasson writes for the Scripps Howard News Service.