Reagan's Advice Squad
JudeWanniski
"Reagan's Advice Squad" himself with the aging lions of the American Left. Twenty years ago, Aaron interviewed or corresponded with almost all of them in the process of writing a large book called Writers on the Left,...
...Quiet, gracious, even-tempered, Miller is so popular in the industry that after it gave him almost every possible honor it awards, and he was still only 47, it began to award him seconds...
...She's not only quotable, she's one of the smartest political women in the world, in the Margaret Thatcher class...
...Who can judge of it?--who can say...
...All SCC participants agree that major oil company people are out, that if it is to be an oilman, it has to be an independent...
...Perhaps Richard Wilcke, president of the Council for a Competitive Economy, summed up the delusions of the official group best in his Council's August newsletter...
...The appointment would not be popular in the world press, Simon being viewed as a flintheart...
...Secretary of Agriculture: Clayton Yeutter, undersecretary to Earl Butz, now a Reagan adviser...
...The rules are simple...
...Sowell, a Reagan adviser, helped him write his Urban League speech in early August...
...4. Secretary of Treasury: Reagan's administration will fail without exactly the right Treasury Secretary...
...The obvious choice, hands down, is William Agee, the 41-year-old chairman and chief executive officer of the Bendix Corporation...
...Shuhz does have a brilliant protege, though, whom Reagan might draft into Shultz's old job: Kenneth Dam of the University of Chicago Law School...
...Rumsfeld is overqualified for Defense, ideal for State...
...But he has the brass to stand up to the elites until the reforms can work to benefit the grassroots...
...If there is an Anderson on the CEA, it will be his wife, Annalise, who professes classical macroeconomics at Stanford and does it well...
...5. Secretary of Defense: Haig's name comes up again...
...Laffer, not a participant in the SCC, got wind of the debate and ended it by recommending the ideal CEA Chairman...
...Sooner or later, it is expected he will seek elective office, perhaps the governorship in 1982...
...But the SCC's Cabinet already has a Nixc, man, at the World Bank, and a Nixon-Ford man, at State...
...read The American Spectator...
...Its presidential candidate, Ronald Reagan, had just won all 50 states, losing only the three electoral votes of the District of Columbia...
...Surely Lyn Nofziger will be press secretary...
...His mentor's is just the right size...
...There is broad agreement that the best man for the job is William Simon, especially after Hobart Rowan of the Washington Post declared Simon to be the "worst possible choice...
...Searle & Co., which does business in half the countries in the world...
...He and Max Fisher, the Detroit industrialist, threw Reagan's biggest fundraiser during the primaries, in Fisher's home town...
...The Committee is composed solely of men and women who Jude V/anniski is the author of The Way the World Works: How Economies Fail-and Succeed...
...He was the first Fortune 500 chief outside California to endorse Reagan, when everyone else was going for Connally or Bush...
...This is why the Shadow Cabinet Committee formed in early August, beginning its meetings at an apartment on Central Park South...
...Lehrman belongs at Treasury, to keep the Treasury bureaucrats from chiseling down Reagan's economic programs and then to guide them through Congress...
...Senator Sam Nunn, Georgia Democrat and a younger man, also has broad support for this job...
...Surely Edwin Meese III will be Reagan's chief of staff...
...And surely Pete Hannaford, who brings out the best in Reagan, will be nearby in some capacity...
...It's no easy job putting together a Government...
...The word is they like each other, which is not surprising in that their temperaments are almost identical...
...The Congress is still in Democratic numerical control, but by the Republicans' picking up seven seats in the Senate and 47 seats in the House, Reagan has effective control for his legislative agenda...
...He's not going to stick around to "wash the dishes," he says, which suggests that his team will be given a good deal of power and responsibility...
...Wilson, a St...
...In a severely disapproving review of Iririters on the Left, William Phillips of the Partisan Review called attention to Aaron's failure to offer any sort of critical evaluation of the people he had written about...
...8. UN Ambassador: Margaret Bush Wilson, chairman of the NAACP, is quoted by Ronala Reagan in many of his speeches...
...He was in the original Bush "kitchen cabinet," and supported Bush through the primaries...
...In a year's time, Simon would find himself in an uncharacteristic position, a popular hero, with William Simon statues eventually sprouting over the developing world...
...But since he left DOD, Rumsfeld, 48, has spent three years running a multinational pharmaceutical company, G.D...
...He's brisk and relentless, the kind of fellow who gets to the heart of the matter (Cabinet meetings would end in time for Reagan to get his afternoon nap...
...Yet they signed the bills that created the EPA, OSHA, National Highway Safety Administration, Consumer Product Safety Commission, Federal Energy Administration (now DOE), and others...
...Trouble is, the 60-year-old Halbouty is of the type that does not suffer fools gladly and thus could not survive on Capitol Hill...
...Now, to put together a government, an executive staff, and a Cabinet...
...The job would have to go to someone who has the absolute confidence of the Reagan inner circle...
...The group favoring an energy producer, specifically an oilman, believes that nothing less will do if there is going to be expanded energy production...
...Representative Manuel Luhan of New Mexico, second-ranking Republican on House Interior Committee, Hispanic-American from a public-lands state...
...But the Bush campaign rejected his ideas on fiscal and monetary refi~rm, which happen to be identical to Reagan's...
...The official Reagan task force on the Cabinet, composed entirely of men who read Business Week, is also meeting, in Washington, D.C...
...Grace & Co...
...Nixon imposed peacetime wage and price controls...
...It needs a "fresh face" at Defense, namely, Senator Henry Jackson, Democrat...
...What else...
...2. Director of the Office of Management and Budget: In the Carter administration this is a glamorless job...
...The Old Guard would put Simon in the Pentagon, a nonsensical spot for a fellow who has made his mark in finance...
...Clearly troubled by Phillips's review, Aaron published a long and defensive essay a few years later in which he announced that his attitude toward critical scholarship was the same as that of the ancient lady who owns the Aspern Papers in Henry J a m e s ' s story: "The truth is God's, it isn't man's...
...Finally, several positions are left open, lacking suff• consensus in the Shadow group, which is actually composed of about 25 people...
...The SCC also shows some support for Luther Hodges, J r , who is Commerce Undersecretary in the Carter administration, on the grounds that the defeated administration should also be represented in a Reagan Cabinet, and that Hodges, a former North Carolina banker whose father was JFK's Commerce Secretary, is one of the classiest Carterites...
...a00i00i60OIOoiO00I0BoiO00600ia060DOOIi0i00QOiO0iiQi0QiOoio~Di0i00QD000O0i0Oi00~OI000ioi00QOiiOi0io00Bii0iQo9o0QiiQi00~iiii0iiiiiiO~DQiii J u d e Wanniski REAGAN'S ADVICE SQUAD Fourteen people who should lead the countryma missive to P r e s i d e n t Reagan...
...At CIA, he's an entrepreneur, rebuilding the nation's intelligence capability...
...Here it is, Wednesday morning, November 5, and the Republican Party is pinching itself, to make sure it isn't a dream...
...He's plenty close, in other words...
...Few of the original names survive, as more people are drawn into the exercise and come up with superior "nominations...
...This is not going to be an easy task...
...Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford were perceived by the business community as pro-business Presidents," he writes...
...The Institute has, through its myriad seminars on global public policy, exposed Lehrman to the leading academic, political, banking, and business figures of the world...
...Anderson himself is surely ticketed for a White House assignment, heading the Domestic Council...
...Miller and Reagan have known each other for four years, including private dinners at Reagan's home...
...The exercise is theoretical, aimed at producing the best possible Reagan Cabinet...
...His appointment would immediately soothe American allies in Europe, who wonder if Reagan is really "trigger happy...
...He needs someone who views the world in classical economic terms and thus someone who will not be homogenized by the Keynesian and 18 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1980 monetarist careerists at Treasury...
...Even Martin Anderson, Reagan's chief economic adviser in the campaign, would endorse Sowell, who has Laffer's assets and none of his professional scars...
...calls a "world-class f o r t u n e . " He and his partners built the Rite-Aid Corporation of discount drugstores after he graduated from Yale in 1960, where he was the roommate of Bucky Bush, George's younger brother...
...As an alternative: John Connally as President of the World Bank, William Simon at CIA...
...While Reagan's commitment to free enterprise may be greater (I wouldn't know), I see many of the same advisers lining up to give him "fresh" economic advice that gave "bad advice" to Nixon and Ford...
...If there were two Hannafords, the SCC would make one Director of Internal Revenue and one Director of (;ommunications...
...He's written and spoken of the need for developing " s t r a t e g i c budget planning" at the federal level and he has schooled himself on the intricacies of the public and private pension laws and Social Security System...
...His hero is Jacques Rueff, President De Gaulle's legendary finance minister, and he is personally publishing Rueff's collected works in both English and French, which he speaks fluently...
...To assist President-elect Reagan in the employment process, the Shadow Cabinet Committee has convened once again in a midtown Manhattan Italian restaurant to review its deliberations...
...we had better leave it alone...
...If there is a "cinch" in the SCC " n o m i n a t i o n s , " this is it...
...As Ronald Reagan will soon discover, it can give a fellow a dizzy feeling of power...
...Louis lawyer by profession, would strengthen the Cabinet by providing both access and assurance to black Americans, and also adding a first-class political mind...
...He understands global markets and incentives, and at age 67 seems eager for an assignment to help Save Western Civilization...
...Senator Paul Laxalt, Reagan's campaign chairman, stayed at Agee's house during the GOP convention, and Reagan himself spent a day at the house practicing his acceptance speech...
...There is also abundant SCC support for Robert Bork of Yale as Attorney General...
...He was president of the Independent Petroleum Association of America from 1973 to 1975...
...So a lot of people want to come to Washington...
...For the last four years, Jimmy Carter has been the whole government, and each of the senior slots has been worth about as much as John Nance Garner's pitcher of warm spit...
...The Lehrman Institute in upper Manhattan has provided the only forum for classical ideas in the last decade...
...Secretary of the Interior...
...One of the few Big Businessmen who ardently advocates econothic policies to encourage the entrepreneur...
...Its list will lean heavily toward former employees of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, which means no person under 50 years of age will be considered...
...Robert McNamara retires next March, leaving behind him a Third World buried in debt, perhaps $300 billion owed to Western banks...
...He skyrocketed to the top of Corporate America before his fortieth birthday, at Boise Cascade and Bendix, with finance as his strongest suit...
...Moreover, both Presidents dramatically increased the size and scope of the Federal government...
...The GOP is in Fat City...
...If John Wayne were cast as Halbouty, Jimmy Stewart would be cast as C. John Miller...
...The SCC also assumed that importam White House jobs were not subject to influence by "outsiders...
...Eggheads, journalists, polemicists, and a smattering of radical-conservative (supply-side) businessmen are in attendance...
...She's fascinated by Reagan's economic program, the private sector, and supply-side ideas in general...
...The right appointment could quickly defuse much of this tension by reversing World Bank/ International Monetary Fund policies, that is, by inviting debtor nations to supply-side monetary and fiscal reforms...
...In subsequent meetings, and over the telephone grapeTHE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1980 17 vine, the list goes through several transformations...
...And the people named cannot be consulted on wht.'ther or not they would even be interested...
...20 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1980...
...In the last decade, Scoop Jackson has spent 90 percent of his considerable intelligence on national defense, and his influence reflects that commitment...
...6. CIA Director: John Connally...
...There are about 2,500 subcabinet jobs that should be turned over as a result of the Reagan landslide...
...The Shadow Cabinet Committee disagrees...
...One of his greatest admirers, Malcolm Forbes, Sr., believes he should be named Chairman of the Federal Reserve and has written so...
...Washington is in a dither...
...Dam was director of the Council on Economic Policy in the Nixon White House, knows his way around, is brainy, charming, and diplomatic-just the fellow to entertain Lane Kirkland while slashing the Labor Department's bloated budget...
...But Bork, former Solicitor Genera/, should be saved for Reagan's first Supreme Court appointment, or so runs the SCC consensus...
...The official group will suggest Big, Important names, perhaps recommending one another for choice assignments...
...Reagan not only has a colossal mandate, which makes the idea of government service exciting again, but he has also made it clear that he expects to be a 9-to-5 president...
...Roughly in order of importance, here is the list of nominations by the SCC as of late August...
...9. Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers: The SCC debate raged between those who said Arthur Laffer should have the job and those who said he should THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1980 19 not have the job, on the grounds that he would be too controversial...
...Last year, the IPAA drafted him to come back as president on the argument that the industry and nation were so imperiled that they needed the best man...
...Shultz, who was also OMB Director and Treasury Secretary, should stay out of Washington where he would likely run into the Peter Principle, as he did at Treasury...
...1. President of the World Bank: This is the most important selection Reagan will have to make...
...But he also needs a Pillar of the Establishment, who will be able to sell Reagan's ambitious fiscal and monetary reforms, here and abroad...
...This is the most powerful domestic position, however...
...But she thinks globally, in which manner her enthusiasm for private-sector solutions to economic problems could easily spread...
...If you don't do it right the first time, you don't always get a second chance...
...Some on the SCC suggest Alexander Haig, but Haig has little grasp of global economics and commerce...
...The international bureaucrats are so worried that Reagan will be elected and Simon appointed that there is talk of filling the chair with a non-American this time...
...Dam, about 42, no doubt has his own sights set on .Justice or the Supreme Court, but he needs a stepping stone...
...Thomas Sowell of UCLA, the young, eminent, black economist who has written a book about Say's Law, the heart of classical economic theory...
...Lehrman is as articulate a businessman as there exists, pens his own essays on the international and domestic economy, and has personal diplomatic skills that disarm his most hostile intellectual adversaries...
...He is, in addition, a Republican partisan, chairman of the New York State GOP economic policy committee...
...Both proposed record budgets and deficits...
...One of Reagan's closest advisers on energy, Michael Halbouty of Houston, enjoys an international reputation as a geologist and as a wildcatter...
...Wilson is responsible for turning the NAACP toward energy deregulation...
...The Old Guard is pushing Charles Walker, Treasury Undersecretary in the Nixon administration, a fair choice...
...If Malcolm Cowley says he has tried to write about the 1930s as candidly as he could, what right does a mere reviewer have to say that he has not...
...The SCC finally awards State to Donald Rumsfeld, who almost made it as Reagan's running mate...
...No member of the ad hoc SCC can be named for any post...
...At Defense, he'd look like a Nixon-Ford retread...
...but he can't get over his idea that American domestic problems are caused by foreigners...
...The Old Guard would install John Connally at State, because he radiates vitality...
...What about Health and ttuman Services, HUD, Education, and Transportation...
...Plenty...
...Secretary of Commerce: J. Peter Grace, president and chief executive ofricer of W.R...
...If the nation's 12,000 independent oil and gas producers could have their pick, they would choose Charles John Miller, 48, of AUegan, Michigan...
...Secretary of Labor: Old Nixon bands, like Melvin Laird, are promoting Nixon's first Labor Secretary, George Shultz, as Secretary of State...
...This is the group that believes the Nixon-Ford administrations would have been hugely successful if only the Watergate burglars had placed the tape vertically instead of horizontally...
...Surely the job of National Security Advisor will be scaled down, as suggested by Richard V. Allen, to restore the pre-eminence of the Secretary of State, and the job would be filled by a lesser light than Allen...
...Very few opportunities to make speeches or get photo in newspapers, which will suit President Reagan just fine...
...He threw parties for Baker, Bush, Connally, and Kemp and a big affair for the entire Reagan senior staff on the closing night of the convention...
...Carter himself has really run it since Bert Lance was purged...
...He understands the importance of international economics and would complement Simon at World Bank...
...But it can also be a headache...
...Thus, Rumsfeld's planetary travels now include commercial as well as diplomatic (NATO Ambassador) and military purposes...
...Agee, originally from Idaho, has been on social terms with several of the Reagan inner circle for years...
...His reputation for "ruthlessness" is undeserved...
...Reagan's foreign-policy advisers think Rumsfeld was the best Defense Secretary the nation has had in their memory, and would love to see him back at the Pentagon...
...The reason for rushing into print with such early speculation is, of course, to influence the selection process...
...The potential for war, revolution, famine, terror, and Communist takeovers is enormous...
...Twenty years ago, Aaron interviewed or corresponded with almost all of them in the process of writing a large book called Writers on the Left, and he apparently was so awed by the experience that he has never been able to criticize them...
...The World Bank appointment would be an audacious one by Reagan...
...From almost a standing start in 1963, he built what Morgan Stanley & Co...
...From that defeatist tilt, policy inevitably becomes defensive, "lightening the load" by discarding the lowest priorities, radiating weakness rather than vitality...
...The right man is Lewis E. Lehrman, 42, one of the best entrepreneur/financiers the country has every produced...
...There is also some interest in the SCC for Representative Phil Gramm, Texas Democrat, former economics professor...
...If he can be enticed to Washington, the Shadow Cabinet Committee believes he would be ideal...
...Like Simon and the World Bank, anywhere else Connally is a retread...
...The Shadow Cabinet Committee contemplated forming a Shadow Subcabinet Subcommittee, but the above exercise was so exhausting that a motion was made to adjourn for drinks...
...Agee's credentials for OMB are perfect...
...And he'd probably love to be Secretary of Energy...
...10 Attorney General: Laurence Silberman, former Labor Undersecretary, former Deputy Attorney General, former Ambassador to Yugoslavia, now 44-yearold general counsel to Crocker Bank in San Francisco, one of the Reagan near-inner circle...
...There were plenty of names kicking around the Shadow Cabinet Committee, but it could not really get excited about filling these slots because they will inevitably be filled by "fresh faces" and not retreads...
...Ford extended controls on energy...
...3. Secretary of State: The fundamental assumption of the Trilateral Commission and Henry Kissinger has been that the United States is a declining power...
...A Nebraskan...
...7. Secretary o f Energy: Here, the SCC divides, between those who believe the job should be filled by an academic and those who argue it's time for an energy producer...
...In a Reagan administration, the director would amount to being the assistant President...
...A a r o n ' s seeming lack of bias actually produces a biased view of the 30s," Phillips pointed out, " t h e bias coming from the assumption that something called the 'record' is identical with the history...
...The former propose Harry Rowen of the Stanford Business School, former president of Rand, a former deputy assistant secretary of Defense, former deputy director of OMB, a first-rate economist who has devoted much of his time in recent years to energy problems...
...The Cabinet also benefits by including a Democratic "regular," a respected member of Congress, who provides a conduit of information and ideas to and from Democratic and congressional sources...
Vol. 13 • October 1980 • No. 10
