SCARED SPEECHLESS

By Michael Kramer

WHERE'S CLINTON? WHERE'S DOLE? WHERE'S POWELL? THE REST OF the country is talking about nothing else, yet those who would lead us are talking about anything but. As the O.J. verdict exposes America's great racial divide, public figures capable of talking forever have become minimalists. Their comments are worse than unsatisfying. They insult our intelligence and fuel our disgust with the system. "Respect" the jury's decision and pray for the victims' families, says Clinton. Avoid "a huge national debate and move on," says Powell. "We need a healing period to find ways to understand each other and bring us together," says Dole.

We know why they're saying so little of value, of course. They can't quite figure the political benefits of saying more. "There's lots of talk about how this helps Republicans," says a Dole campaign aide. "Some say it'll work for us by osmosis. Some are talking about finding code words and code events, like having Ron Goldman's father speak for the victims of violence at the G.O.P. convention." But the Dole adviser, who worked for George Bush in 1992, remembers how wrong they were back then. "We thought Rodney King would re-elect Bush," he says. "The King verdict revolted everyone, but we figured whites would worry most about becoming victims as they drove through the areas they'd escaped for the suburbs." Bush, thought the Bushies, was more likely than Clinton to be seen as capable of stopping such outcomes. "We're skittish about O.J. because we misread King," says the Dole aide. "So it's safest to basically say nothing."

What should we hear, especially from Clinton, who has the job the others want and so has a special responsibility to speak frankly at a time like this? By last Friday the President had elaborated a bit. He wished for more police, fewer racist cops and greater accountability. "We know how to do it," Clinton said. "Let's get after it."

How, exactly? It would be good to hear the President blast Los Angeles police chief Willie Williams for failing to clean up the L.A.P.D.--the job he was expressly hired to do after Rodney King. It's Clinton, not the Attorney General, who should promise a thorough investigation of Mark Fuhrman and his boasts of police mistreatment of blacks. It is the President who should swipe at the "code of silence" too many cops embrace when their colleagues are guilty of excess. Above all, it is Clinton who needs to say what we all know--that minority Americans are too often the victims of police misconduct and that the misuse of public power diminishes everyone, not only those against whom the nightsticks are swung. The President claims to have recently rediscovered the bully pulpit. He should use it now, when it is most needed.

As for General Powell's pabulum, it does little but support the view that he too will soon be running for President--and skirting the issues that matter most. His advice to turn away is exactly wrong. We will never "move on" as a pluralistic society until we have the "huge national debate" about race that he seems to fear.

Dole deserves a slight bow for at least saying we should "ponder [the] unsettling fact [of] the deeply divided views we hold about life in this country." But why the divine dodge about asking God to "watch over us as we do"? John Kennedy got it right in his Inaugural. In the grand tradition of such addresses, Kennedy too sought "His help and His blessing," but he added toughly that "here on earth God's work must truly be our own." That's what's not getting done now.