Article published November 28, 2001
From bad to worse
In Washington, a President's response to rejection of one of his federal appointees often seems to be a knee-jerk reaction to nominate someone who's actually worse. This "Oh, yeah, I'll show you" scenario is a bipartisan political tactic that surely is playing out again in the naming of Hal Stratton to head the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
President Bush's initial choice for the post, Mary Sheila Gall, was defeated on a party-line vote by the Senate Judiciary Committee in August. Majority Democrats said she had proven indifferent to consumer concerns since she was appointed to the panel in a political deal during the Clinton administration.
Now Mr. Bush is offering up Mr. Stratton, a former New Mexico attorney general, who was co-chairman of Lawyers for Bush in his home state during the 2000 campaign. He doesn't have a record on product safety like Ms. Gall, but he does have a reputation as a pro-business lawyer who virulently opposes government regulation. In this regard, he is just as bad as Ms. Gall and probably worse.
He inhabits a world in which government has no right to tell business what to do, a world where consumer choices are the best marketplace regulators, a world in which product-liability lawsuits stifle innovation. This would be the same world in which consumer products never are unsafe, only used incorrectly by careless people. In other words, a fantasy world.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission has a $55 million annual budget and 480 employees to keep tabs on some 15,000 products. Its files are filled with documentation on a host of products whose use can result in injury or death, even when handled normally. For example, the agency's current web site offers a list of dozens of toys and other children's products - 23 million units in all - that have been recalled or the subject of a consumer's alert but which may still be in homes around the country.
This is the real world, of parents who can't possibly know whether a toy could present a danger to their children. Lawyers who don't believe there could be a problem shouldn't be appointed to agencies like the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and the Senate should think seriously before it votes to confirm Mr. Stratton.
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