It was just a year ago, and Germany was the big story. The Berlin wall had come down. Chunks of it were being sold as souvenirs. No one was quite sure how or when Germany would be united, but events were moving at a dizzying pace that amazed everyone. East Germany’s accelerating collapse symbolized the crumbling of the Soviet bloc and the “end of the cold war.” Remember all that?
We’ve been so absorbed by the Persian Gulf for the past six months that we’ve lost touch with almost everything else. By we, I mean those of us in the news business–our addiction to crisis and calamity is well known– and most other Americans as well. How could it be otherwise? But life goes on, and with the war’s end, we’ll soon rediscover much of what we’ve missed. It’s going to be a big letdown. Part of the peace dividend will be a rise in national boredom.
Get ready for the pleasures of energy policy, banking reform, the highway program and the parental-leave debate. I’ve been rummaging through my notebooks. The stories that got shoved aside by the war are all important, but none of them involves the compelling drama–or emotions–of the war. Peace means a return to the ambiguity of almost everything. Here’s a sampling of the things I might have written but for the Persian Gulf. For starters, there’s an emerging welfare crisis.
The American Public Welfare Association reports that the number of families on welfare (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) has hit a record. The total was 4.2 million last December, up from 3.7 million in mid-1989, and is still rising rapidly. Likewise, the number of Medicaid and food-stamp recipients has jumped sharply. The increases have contributed to the budget squeezes of many states, which pay almost half the costs of AFDC and Medicaid.
Why are welfare rolls swelling so rapidly? The current recession has so far been fairly mild (the February unemployment rate of 6.5 percent is still much lower than the 10.8 percent rate reached in the 1981-82 slump). Cesar Perales, New York’s commissioner of Social Services, says no one knows. Fewer people may be getting unemployment insurance and going directly on welfare. Congress has also expanded Medicaid eligibility. What’s clear is that the states want more money from Washington to help pay the bill. They probably won’t get it.
Of course, much “news” is routinely served up with ulterior motives. Consider one study I didn’t write about. Released by Republican Sens. Pete Domenici of New Mexico and Phil Gramm of Texas, it’s full of statistics intended to debunk the idea that the 1980s were a “decade of greed” in which only the rich got ahead. Between 1982 and 1989, “real” (inflation-adjusted) median family income rose nearly 14 percent, the study says. But wait a minute. Wasn’t 1982 a recession year in which income was depressed by high unemployment? Doesn’t starting from this low point exaggerate the decade’s gains? Yup.
To be fair, the counterpart Democratic reports–in which almost no one manages to get ahead in the 1980s–are equally skewed by statistical gimmicks. The truth is that the decade was neither the best of times, nor the worst: most people did all right, but poverty remained stubbornly high.
Finally, here’s one last story I haven’t yet written: the difficulties of German reunification. I recently had breakfast with Reimut Jochimsen, a German economist who tells me that it is taking longer and costing more than even pessimists had feared. Since 1989, a third of eastern Germany’s 9.5 million jobs have effectively vanished, he thinks. (Of the loss, nearly 800,000 people are officially counted as unemployed, perhaps 1 million work in western Germany and another 1.9 million are subsidized to stay at jobs with little work.)
Investment in eastern Germany has been delayed, he says, by disputes over property rights (1.5 million claims have been filed) and chaotic local government. Getting building permits isn’t easy, and environmental cleanup costs are another deterrent. Companies expand in the west instead of building new plants in the east. The implication for us: the more burdened Germany is by unification, the less attention–and money–it will devote to Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union or the Middle East.
Stories like these are what lie ahead. We’ll be hearing more about the recession, cable television, trade conflicts and divorce rates. I’m not saying the war won’t have lasting effects, especially on the nation’s psyche. World War II gave Bush’s generation self-confidence and a sense of global mission. Vietnam scarred the baby boom and led to a questioning of American motives. But the war’s immediate impact may fade more quickly than people suspect. War is a simplifying, focusing event: a morality tale of good guys and bad. Peace revives the nation’s diverse interests, ambitions and passions.
Even a successful war doesn’t guarantee a blissful peace. The end of World War II, our greatest military triumph, triggered turbulence. The dismantling of wartime wage-and-price controls was a nightmare. There were strikes, scarcities of meat and other goods (products were held back in anticipation of higher prices) and rapid inflation. In 1946, the public punished the party in power, the Democrats. The Republicans gained control of Congress by picking up 54 seats in the House and 11 in the Senate. The Democrats’ trouncing came just a year after VJ Day, when President Truman’s popularity was enormous. (His approval rating in October 1945 was 82 percent. By the next September it was 32 percent.)
At the time, I was 11 months old. Samuel Shaffer, NEWSWEEK’s retired (but still vigorous) congressional correspondent, reminds me of the 1946 election. It could be that Bush’s present popularity won’t last. But Sam draws another lesson: that the electorate–when highly angered–can savage anyone. He thinks the Democrats, having waffled on the war, may have aroused such anger and could suffer a devastating backlash in 1992. We’ll see. Duller than war, the peace will still have its dramas.
