Fightin', Feudin' and Fumin'

"The misadventures of a gang that can't rule straight," one side charged. "An energetic display of political distortion, half-baked ideas and the big-lie technique," countered the other. The latest salvos in the presidential campaign? No, just samples of the recent invective between James Miller, chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, and the man he replaced, Commissioner Michael Pertschuk. A staunch consumer advocate whose seven-year term at the FTC expired last week, Pertschuk left office fightin', feudin' and fumin'. He accused Miller, a Reagan appointee, of deliberately sidetracking the FTC's mission to protect consumers against unfair and deceptive business practices. "While they have fiddled," complained Pertschuk in a 240-page critique of the Reagan FTC that he submitted to Congress prior to his departure, "consumers have been burned."

Not true, retorted Miller in a 115-page rebuttal. He dismissed the attacks as the "predictable venting of final rage by a chronic complainer." The winner in the slugfest: Who knows? Who cares? The loser: U.S. taxpayers, who paid an estimated $80,000 to prepare and publish the competing critiques.