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The Dartmouth
March 28, 2024 | Latest Issue
The Dartmouth

Panel discusses who runs Washington

None of the four participants in yesterday's political panel discussion "Who's in Charge?" could agree on who holds power in Washington after the 1996 elections.

Answers from the panelists ranged from the American people to Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott to no one.

Government Professors Thomas Nichols, Catherine Shapiro, Constantine Spiliotes and Republican political Advisor Tom Rath '67 speculated about the current direction of Washington politics before 75 people in 2 Rockefeller Center.

Although the panelists disagreed on who is in charge of Washington, they said whoever is at the helm will make few daring moves.

Spiliotes said that with a cautious president governing from the "sensible center," a Speaker of the House "who just received a public spanking" and a narrowly elected Congress, he is concerned about a lull in creative policy making and "furtherance of the status quo."

Nichols also said he expects no dramatic action from Washington, because the citizens of the United States are not looking for change.

"The group in charge is the American people," Nichols said. "[Congress shows] immediate responsiveness to shifts in public opinion," so if they decide they want change, it will occur.

Rath, who was Senior National Advisor for the Dole '88 and Baker '84 campaigns and most recently financial advisor to the Lamar Alexander '96 campaign, said "the middle is in charge."

"The center has, by its definition, a limited agenda. They tend to be very broad and vanilla in terms of what they want," Rath said.

Shapiro said she thinks no one is in charge.

She said she believes although the president and congress will be gridlocked, in the higher courts "you're going to see real interesting policy changes."

Students seemed to enjoy the discussion.

Charlotte Zukowski '00 said the talk was informative and "better than your normal TV news spiel."

"Primarily I leaned a lot about shift in debate from a liberal agenda to a more conservative agenda," Mike Pyle '00 said.

One student said this was the driving message of the forum, although it might have sprung from the panelists' political biases.

"Actually there was a pretty conservative bent to the whole thing," Anne Mullins '00 said.

The forum was conceived and organized by Rockefeller Student Council Intern Jake Shields '99, who acted as moderator.

Shield said the forum was based on an event by the same name held after the "Republican Revolution" in 1994.

"It's almost a carbon copy of that event," Shields said.

Shields said he was greatly satisfied with the turnout and especially with the panel's discourse.

"You see these professors come to Rocky events -- last term we showed the presidential debates -- it was like the peanut gallery -- they never shut up," Shields said of his past experiences with professors Nichols, Shapiro and Spiliotes. "You're talking about some dynamic professors."