COLUMN LEFT/ TOM HAYDEN : Hi, L.A., I’m Peter, and I Haven’t a Clue : Let’s hope Ueberroth learns much about the inner cities that he seemed deaf to just a few weeks ago.

There has been much discussion of whether Peter Ueberroth, as a white businessman, is best suited to “Rebuild L.A.”

Virtually ignored is the question of what policy vision Ueberroth brings to the job. Asked how to rebuild the city, he only speaks generally of bringing the private sector and minority leaders together.

But around what plan?

For an instructive answer, we should turn history back to April 23--one week before the city exploded in flames. That day Ueberroth issued a 107-page, blue-ribbon report on “California’s Jobs and Future.” Gov. Pete Wilson hailed the blueprint of Ueberroth’s Council on Competitiveness. The state’s media headlined the report at the top of the news.

Less than three weeks old, the Ueberroth report now seems embarrassingly obsolete.

The report makes no mention of an urban agenda. No reference to racism is made, nor do terms like “black” or “inner city” appear at all. The section on small business ignores minority ownership.

There is a lengthy attack on the legal system, not for its treatment of the Rodney Kings, but for its alleged interference in business expansion.

The call for a longer school day is balanced by opposition to any new taxes to pay for it.

And on Page 67, there appears the following philosophical assertion: “Getting a job is a necessity, but it is not a right.”

Fortunately, copies of the report were not available for review by inner-city youth. If they have no rights as Americans to jobs, what’s the point of their participating in the system at all?

Seemingly the only occasion when we educate, train and employ black and brown workers to their fullest potential is during wartime.

So, Mr. Ueberroth, here’s an idea: Call in Colin Powell and Norman Schwarzkopf. If half of the front-line soldiers in the Persian Gulf were black and brown, why not draft and deploy a similar “multinational force” from the streets of Los Angeles? If we could lay airstrips overnight and rebuild the Emir of Kuwait’s palace, why shouldn’t we build some transportation and housing overnight here?

The problem is that conventional thinking separates economics from community. According to official doctrine, investment

is free to go toward employing a worker, or replacing that worker with technology, or to another country, depending where the reward is greatest.

We need to understand, with economic historian R.H. Tawney, that while “economic ambitions are good servants, they are bad masters.” Writing decades ago, Tawney anticipated today’s crisis: “Since even quite common men have souls, no increase in material wealth will compensate them for arrangements which insult their self-respect and impair their freedom. A reasonable estimate of economic organization must allow for the fact that, unless industry is to be paralyzed by recurrent revolts on the part of outraged human nature, it must satisfy criteria which are not purely economic.”

The issue is not Peter Ueberroth, but old thinking, reinforced by special-interest politics. Ueberroth need not apologize for being a concerned white businessman. We need more of them. But he, and the rest of his co-authors, might apologize for a report that has gone up in smoke.

Such an apology would be refreshing, like a 12-step program. Think of it: “Hi, my name is Peter, and I don’t have a clue.” Then we might begin a real recovery.