Clinton’s USDA Aided Campaign
With Happy Talk And Handouts

WASHINGTON —(AP)— Even quiet government research in Peoria can become politically useful in campaign season.

Reaching deep and wide into its many programs, the Clinton administration has been using the Agriculture Department's taxpayer-funded publicity machine to toot its horn.

Putting a little spin on each routine announcement or release of money, the department, with a $52 billion budget, has become a virtual wellspring of cash and good news the past month.

"It's just obvious to anybody who looks that they try to give an election campaign spin to everything," said James C. Webster, the Carter administration's assistant agriculture secretary of public affairs and now publisher of the Webster Agricultural Letter.

Headlines for news releases mention the good deeds of the "Clinton administration" instead of the department, one of its 29 agencies or even Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman, as is usual.

Each contains a quote from Glickman about what "the Clinton administration" is committed to or is trying to do.

"The Clinton administration is committed to helping farmers make it through these rough times," Glickman said in one release announcing $9.7 million to help North Carolina victims of Hurricane Fran.

"Clinton administration brings 600 new jobs to St. Louis, $250 million in savings to taxpayers," said another announcement about the opening of a loan office in St. Louis.

The money has been flowing in recent weeks: $26 million for a wetlands restoration project in Florida; $30 million to buy surplus beef; $63 million to repair damage from "recent hurricanes, wildfires, and other natural disasters."

The $63 million, of course, was made available from a budget bill passed by the Republican-controlled Congress, but the administration took credit.

Then there was $7.5 million in grants for rural schools, libraries and health care centers to link up with the Internet and other modern communications; $14.5 million to protect farmland from suburban sprawl; and $1 million for community food projects.

"We believe that these are successes of the Clinton administration and it's important to take credit for them," department spokesman Tom Amontree said in the administration’s defense. He claimed fewer than five percent of the news releases issued in October mentioned the administration.

However, Dave Lane, a Farm Bureau spokesman who spent most of the 1980s as a top department spokesman, contends that the campaign season changes operations.

"You try to do a lot of nice things that impress certain parts of the country more than others," he said. "Things that might have been handled at an agency level, suddenly the secretary is making an announcement, pointing out how helpful this action is to the citizens."

Agency actions can be speeded up or slowed down for the most political impact, he said.

Yet, too much politicizing can make people cynical about the message and the routine, day-to-day work of public servants, said Karl Gutknecht, president of the National Association of Government Communicators.

"More checks are cut during political campaigns than at any other time, you would think," he said. "But the same amount of goods and services are being delivered around the clock."

What about that ethanol research at an Agricultural Research Service lab in Peoria, Ill.? It, too, went through the spin cycle, handled by the political appointees in Glickman's office instead of by the usual agency spokesmen.

"This research delivers on the Clinton administration's commitment to the continued growth and development of the domestic ethanol industry," Glickman said in the press release.