Clinton made his comments during a national radio address to tout his crime bill, which is encountering tough sledding in Congress. He wants federal subsidies to put more cops on the street, to provide “boot camps” for first-time criminal offenders and to impose a five-day waiting period for handgun purchases. Republicans scoffed that the administration bill was weak. Meanwhile, Democrats joined the GOP in hazing Clinton’s drug czar, Lee P. Brown, when Brown couldn’t answer their questions about the administration’s new, treatment-oriented approach to drug abuse earlier in the week.
Clinton and Brown need drive only a few blocks to discover the link between violent crime and drugs. With 378 homicides and even more shootings–many of them drug related–so far this year, Washington is once again in the running for the unwanted title of the nation’s murder capital. Kelly said the National Guard would supplement the city’s police force, and an aide said no one thought troops would patrol the streets with fixed bayonets. But the president was plainly hesitant. Asked about Kelly’s request, Clinton said he was “very sympathetic” to the mayor’s problems. On the other hand, Clinton said, using National Guardsmen for routine police work “is not a precedent that can be confined just to Washington, D.C., so there has to be a lot of questions that have to be thought through.” Translation: don’t hold your breath.
The symbolism of sending in the National Guard, as city councilman Harold Brazil complained, is powerfully ugly–an admission “that crime fighting in the district is a lost cause, and that America’s capital is no better than the unstable capital of some anarchist, Third World nation.” The sad part is, that impression isn’t entirely wrong.
