Tilting at windmills.

• Author: Peters, Charles
• Position: Brief commentaries on US politics and current events - Editorial

Julia's Choice * Designing for Polygamy * Auditing the IRS When the Royalton Wasn't Royal * Losing on Lumber

The New York Times recently devoted the better part of two pages to a story entitled "A House, Ten Wives: Polygamy in Suburbia." What the Times found worthy of discussion in all that space was the architectural challenges of this marital arrangement: "the first question,how to expand the [house's] design?" I suspect the rest of us might have been more interested in exploring the other challenges presented by 10 wives under one roof.

One of the more troubling of today's trends is the way America is timing out politics. According to a poll by Pew Research Center, the percentage of people who say they follow domestic policy news "very closely" or even "fairly closely" has declined from 62 to 51 in just the last four years. "There's a danger in not paying attention," observes Knight-Ridder's R.A. Zaldivar, whose story brought the Pew poll to my attention. "When people are distracted, government has a way of producing unpleasant surprises." As far as I can see, the only good that has come from this growing indifference is that the buckrakers, the Washington journalists who peddle their punditry on the lecture circuit, are seeing their speaking fees shrink. The income from speeches of one of the circuit's stars dropped from $466,625 in 1992 to under six figures last year, according to a recent report in The New York Times. Maybe now these fellows will go back to their real job, reporting. And, if instead of just being snide about political folly, they accurately describe the essential functions that government performs, their readers just might see that it's stupid not to pay attention.

Have you ever heard of iatrogenic illness? It's a disease you acquire while in the care of physicians. And it's not just a tiny little problem. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 24 million Americans get infected in a hospital each year, causing or contributing to 100,000 deaths.

What's even more unsettling is that the CDC says most of these infections could be prevented if health-care providers would just wash their hands. But, according to studies reported in The Washington Post, as few as 14 percent of physicians and 25 percent of nurses regularly wash their hands between patients.

Government may have its shortcomings, but those who assume private industry is always more efficient than government should consider recent revelations about E.D.S., Union Pacific, and Commonwealth Edison. Just recently Union Pacific messed up the merger of its operations with Southern Pacific, causing freight delays that have already cost Texas businesses $762 million according to The New York Times. The Times also reports that Commonwealth Edison has grossly mismanaged its nuclear plants, creating, among other dangers, the most troublesome nuclear incident of the last decade. Still another Times article describes foul-ups by Electronic Data Systems, which is under contract to handle the government's student loan program. So the government looks bad but the real fault lies with private industry, in this case E.D.S.

The truth is that any organization, whether public or private, can go bad. Union Pacific used to be great, so did the IRS. Never assume any organization will stay good. The private sector in America became fat and uncompetitive in the 1970s because of a lack of constructive criticism. The same thing happened to the government but liberals didn't want to face the problems and conservatives, more devoted to less government than better government, didn't want to fix them.

If you've seen photographs...