(4 of 7)
In "An Open Letter to the President," which ran last Nov. 3 in the Washington Post, Edelman urged Clinton to oppose welfare and Medicaid block grants. She wrote, "Do you think the Old Testament prophets, Isaiah, Micah and Amos--or Jesus Christ--would support such policies?" If he were to let federal protections go, she warned, "we may not get them back in our lifetime or our children's." She concluded: "What a tragic irony it would be for this regressive attack on children and the poor to occur on your watch. For me, this is a defining moral litmus test for your presidency." In the end, Clinton withdrew his support for the bill, perhaps in part because he was shamed by his old friend, but also because it was good politics to do so. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan had forced the White House to disclose its estimate that more than 1 million additional children would be thrown into poverty by the Senate measure. (The Clintons and the Edelmans remained friends. Peter rode Air Force One to Yitzhak Rabin's funeral last fall and stayed up most of the night playing hearts with the President on the trip home.)
The word moral appears seven times in Edelman's letter, and the certitude with which she plunges ahead is both her greatest strength and her greatest flaw. What looks like "morality" to her is merely discredited 1960s liberalism to others. Her opponents believe that all of Edelman's big talk about children masks her true goal: to solve the problems of poverty--for people of all ages--through the expenditure of federal money. While most Americans agree children deserve extra help, when policymakers start talking about solutions they speak completely different languages. "As long as liberals talk about economics and government and conservatives talk about culture and values, there will never be a political debate that reaches a successful conclusion," says William Galston, a former domestic-policy adviser in the Clinton White House.
The unshakable conviction that they have God on their side may also help explain why advocates for children are not more effective lobbyists. A 1995 report on how state legislative leaders view children's issues and the people who come to lobby on their behalf discovered a vast chasm of misunderstanding and miscommunication. Few of the 177 legislative leaders who were interviewed could identify by name the children's-advocacy organizations in their states. Many complained that those who ask them to act on behalf of children do not understand the legislative process and tend to arrive too late in the budget cycle. Says Michael Iskowitz, Senator Kennedy's aide on children's issues: "Just expecting people to do the right thing is often not enough. You have to give them a range of arguments about why it is in their interest."
Chief among those arguments are votes and money, yet the study found that children's advocates rarely work in political campaigns or contribute to candidates. Worse still, they have little organized, grass-roots support. "[The legislators] are not getting calls in their office asking, 'What are you doing for kids?'" says Margaret Blood, who ran the study. Even some of Edelman's supporters acknowledge this has been a problem with her work. "CDF has been enormously effective on a national level," says Eve Brooks, president of the National Association of Child Advocates. "It has been less effective in building a constituency that stays in place."