Real Constituents

December 18, 1989|By Debra Mecher.

CHICAGO — Reports say that President Bush, while holding a pre-Malta press conference, became testy when the phrase ``peace dividend`` was used to describe the benefits Americans might expect from a restructuring of federal spending away from military toward civilian needs.

``It is premature to talk about a `peace dividend` in the sense of taking volumes of money out of defense and applying it to some worthy cause,``

snapped Bush. ``We cannot do that.``

Reports have also said that the President feels he can`t reduce military spending because the threat to world peace, democracy, the free world, our NATO allies, or whatever, is still too great to spend more on butter and less on guns. Naturally, the media are swallowing this nonsense.

Either the media take the American people for simpletons, or being a simpleton is the first qualification for covering the President and military- industrial matters. The reason the President can`t restructure federal spending for civilian needs is because his real constituency isn`t the American people but the massive, vested, institutionalized interest of those who benefit from military spending-not the ``free world,`` and certainly not

``world peace,`` but corporate America. And though we the people would benefit from civilian spending (say on food, housing, education, improved productive technologies and other real but neglected needs), we have no one at the Capitol or the White House who represents us. Nor who would dare to.