CAMPAIGN '96
AFTER 12 YEARS as the governor of Colorado, he quit politics in
1987 to teach college, think, and do something he rarely had time for in
the state house--read books. But this summer, ex-Democrat Richard Lamm,
60, threw his hat into the presidential ring, seeking the nomination of
Ross Perot's Reform party.
Though a social liberal--he's long supported the environmental and
abortion rights movements--Lamm echoes the fiscal conservatism Perot
espoused in 1992. One pundit has called Lamm's campaign "Perot-less
Perot-ism"; meaning, perhaps, that Lamm won't woo voters with charts and
homespun humor--or baffle them with paranoia about his daughter's
wedding.
We spoke to Lamm shortly before the Reform party's mid-August
convention. As this issue of Psychology Today goes to press, Lamm still
hopes to outmaneuver Perot for the party's nomination. By the time you
read this, he may have pulled off a remarkable upset--or failed in his
quest to shake up the status quo. But whether or not Lamm's candidacy
thrives, the questions he raises won't go away.
PT: If you beat Ross Perot, you'll be perceived as a
giant-killer.
DL: I think there's a combination of Cinderella and David and
Goliath in this that would capture the public imagination.
PT: You've been talking about the three demographic trends that the
Democrats and Republicans ignore: the dropping birth rate, the aging
population, and the fact that we live longer than we used to.
DL: I'm not complaining as much as I'm saying: We have to react to
this reality. I mean, I've got an 88-year-old father.
PT: "React to the reality" means we have to reconsider entitlement
programs like Social Security
DL: Yes. I think that the current demographic reality has made the
New Deal unsustainable. We're living 30 years longer than we were in
1900. And if this has rendered obsolete a bunch of our favorite social
programs, we should at least recognize that we're reacting to a success
story.
PT: Can you face the American Association of Retired People and
say: Look, for all of you making income X or more, we can't afford to pay
out what we in effect promised you?
DL: Yeah. I look forward to showing the nation that this isn't a
generational war but a generational misunderstanding. Many seniors
understand that Social Security is social insurance as opposed to a
program where we put money aside for our own retirement. But most elderly
individuals think they're getting their money back. So it isn't
selfishness as much as a misunderstanding. American public policy is run
on a myth.
PT: You have a lot of things to say about health care--that there
are too many doctors, that we're keeping people alive longer than they
need to be, that we're obsessed with technology. Can you expand on
that?
DL: I think modern societies have to ask a very basic question:
What strategies buy the most health for people? Doctors can do so many
marvelous things now. They can keep a corpse alive, almost. But the
dilemma is that we've invented more health care than we can afford to
deliver to everyone. We ration it by leaving 41 million people out of the
system--41 million of our neighbors and friends.
I've been around the world twice looking at health care, and it
seems to me that in the developed world there's an inverse correlation
between how much money you spend on health care and how healthy you are.
Germany and the United States spend the most money on health care, and
we've got among the worst statistics in the industrialized world. Japan
spends the least, and they're the healthiest. When I went to Japan to see
why, they told me: In 1947 we had a choice to make. Do we build a big
health-care system like you Americans, or do we give everybody good
nutrition, a job, a higher standard of living? And they found that a
health-care system has very little to do with the health of a nation. I
am convinced that I could provide more health by giving people jobs and
the sense of self-control over their lives that comes with a job.
PT: Let's say you have an 85-year-old lady who has Alzheimer's
disease and a failing heart--what do you do? You're talking about getting
the best care for the most number of people, and it means changing some
basic premises of how we administer health services in America.
DL: That's crucial to my candidacy. It does not make sense to give
a heart bypass to an 85-year-old with Alzheimer's disease. Not when, at
the same time, we're not vaccinating all our kids, and 74,000 women
delivered babies two years ago without any prenatal care. Aldous Huxley
said that facts do not cease to exist just because they are ignored. And
I think America has pushed the snooze alarm on many of the most pressing
issues facing us. An election should be a time when we debate the real
issues, rather than talking about reducing the gas tax until next
January.
PT: One of your pet peeves, if you will, has been military
pensions.
Tags:
abortion,
aging population,
birth rate,
candidacy,
david and goliath,
democrats and republicans,
demographic reality,
demographic trends,
fiscal conservatism,
giant killer,
governor of colorado,
health care,
immigration,
new deal,
politics,
public imagination,
reform party,
retirement,
Richard Lamm,
ross perot,
social liberal,
state house,
status quo
