Eminentoes/The Du Pont Revolution
Jackson, Gordon
EMINENTOES THE DU PONT REVOLUTION I f ideas are the stuff of political revo- lutions,, then which of the Republican presidential candidates is best equipped to rekindle the Reagan Revolution? Pete...
...He speaks convincingly of national security as government's first priority, regards the Reagan Doctrine as a necessary response to Soviet aggression, and favors early deployment of SDI...
...It also would mean the long-sought liberal objective of federal day-care is enacted by conservatives...
...In foreign policy, though, he confronts some justifiable skepticism...
...The unsurpassed academic quality...
...And breaking apart typically fatherless families even further by sending the kids to day-care makes it even less likely that any useful values will be transmitted through the family...
...It would do no such thing, says George Gilder: "By making government the employer of last resort, workfare is a Trojan horse for more intrusive government...
...The Child and Family Protection Institutes Connaught Marshner contends that pro-family opposition to workfare runs aground on an ethical argument: It is of trifling concern that welfare families are being dispersed into daycare centers when middle-class mothers must send their kids to day-care in order to support the federal welfare system...
...Kemp has actuarial figures reflecting different prospects for Social Security, but his main objection to du Pont's idea is that it would erode inter-generational dependence and place additional burdens on traditional families...
...But du Pont is taking his case directly to Gordon Jackson is managing editor of Policy Review...
...Gilder's is a lonely voice in the pro-family community right now...
...Delawareans almost universally acknowledge that he was an effective and well-liked governor...
...ter , (S...
...The American Enterprise Institute recently convened a panel of experts that endorsed workfare as the right's alternative to the current welfare system...
...He sees himself running from roughly the same place as Jack Kemp—the man he considers the next-best bet to hold the White House for Republicans...
...Du Pont remains a long shot for '88, but ten percent of the vote in Iowa and New Hampshire, leaving him well-positioned for '92, is not an unreasonable goal...
...A large and enthusiastic group of Dartmouth students works New Hampshire...
...Name the problem, and he's got a program to remedy it...
...He is especially reassuring to Reaganites on economic matters...
...Pete du Pont hasn't any doubt that he's the one...
...And he is not especially concerned to match his prescriptions with receptive forums...
...We all get wiser as we get older...
...Since du Pont is something of a road-to-Damascus case, having been the quintessential Rockefeller Republican as a congressman in the early to mid-seventies, movement conservatives, who regard ideas as their province, naturally view him with some suspicion...
...Like du Pont, Kemp prefers the rhetoric of opportunity and economic growth, but he can be comfortable appealing to social conservatives in their own language because he has traveled the intellectual distance necessary to meet them on common ground...
...When asked how President du Pont would respond to Sam Nunn's attempt to hold SDI hosby Gordon Jackson tage to recondite interpretations of the fifteen-year-old ABM treaty, du Pont answered: "I'd ask him to come to the Oval Office, and I'd say, 'Sam, you and I both know that the day we turn the country over to the lawyers is the day it's going down the tubes.' " The comment reflects the combination of confrontational candor and easy affability that by all accounts characterized du Pont's successful dealings with the Delaware legislature...
...As the candidate most genuinely interested in paring back government, he is drawing significant libertarian support including many proponents of the view that government should have no concern with moral decisions...
...He supports the Hatch Amendment, which would return the disposition of abortion to the states...
...He was not, to say the least, reared in the revival tent, and trying to make common cause with the sort of populist social conservatives that make up a large part of the Reagan constituency has required the suppression of his natural instincts...
...Many conservatives don't seem terribly skeptical of du Pont's move rightward, but all are reserving some doubts, most especially on social issues...
...The tradition...
...Du Pont did have the good fortune to inherit a state on hard times that was ready for major changes, but his eightyear tenure as governor is still the closest thing going to a demonstration of textbook Reaganomics...
...Du Pont says he is having a great deal of fun on the campaign trail, and his contagious enthusiasm would certainly suggest that is the case...
...Du Pont thinks the system will go bust when the baby boomers hit retirement age and succeeding generations include an insufficient number of workers to support them...
...Social Security benefits for participants are reduced in the amount of the government contributions, thus reducing the burdens on the system...
...Kemp, of course, is the genuine article, the "guru of supply-side economics," as du Pont calls him...
...The president of the Iowa College Republicans stumps the state for du Pont...
...His 71 percent re-election in a state five-tothree Democratic suggests he was doing something right...
...n at least one issue—major reform of the government's farm subsidy program—du Pont seems to have the stage to himself, much to his credit...
...There is no advisory board, nor any list of eminences supporting his candidacy...
...The cost of the FSAs (estimated by du Pont at about a $20 billion addition to the deficit in the first year) would, Kemp argues, be borne solely by the baby-boom generation and especially by families, which typically would have to forgo the luxury of FSAs for the necessity of raising children, thus cutting against du Pont's objective of having a large enough worker base to support the baby boomers in retirement...
...The theory is that such a program would make welfare less attractive and inculcate greater discipline and self-reliance in participants...
...Du Pont is finding some farmers violently opposed to it, some for, and some indifferent...
...But he has spared no expense to avail himself of a full panoply of policy positions...
...T he 1987 model du Pont is a down- 1 the-line Reaganite on foreign policy issues as well...
...n some policy questions the du Pont candidacy is challenging conservatism to define itself more precisely...
...Not that du Pont isn't working hard to find common ground with social conservatives...
...0 X F O R D FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY SUMMER PROGRAM The prestige...
...Spend Summer '88 living the Oxford experience at historic Christ Church...
...And unlike Kemp, Gov...
...Executive may be a role for which he is well-suited...
...aid to UNITA—against...
...After all, du Pont comes from a social milieu in which moral values, aside from a dash of rugged individualism, are rather regarded as opiate for the masses...
...34 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1987...
...It's hard to say how much a President du Pont would do to further the Reagan goal of arresting moral decline by articulating a core set of values...
...Du Pont claims to welcome Gilder's critique, and insists: "The important thing is to get the debate going...
...Strongly encouraged by state Republicans to run for the Senate against Biden, du Pont passed on the race, even though he was given a good chance of winning...
...The inevitable result of such a program, Gilder argues, is contempt for the working world...
...He is utterly promiscuous with ideas...
...He browbeat the Delaware legislature into imposing upon itself a balanced-budget amendment and a super-majority rule requiring a three-fifths vote to raise taxes, both measures he would support at the federal level...
...Du Pont thinks this innovation is necessary to allow the system to proceed into the next century without need of a substantial tax increase...
...Du Pont has only a bare-bones organization thus far—five staffers in Iowa, five in New Hampshire...
...There is a strong libertarian strain among du Pont's younger enthusiasts, McGuigan being an exception, and to the extent du Pont succeeds in playing generational politics his candidacy may test the oft-heard hypothesis that the baby-boomers are going to be a fairly solid libertarian voting bloc...
...His approach to school prayer, criminal rights, busing, affirmative action, and the like is similarly what might be called an above-the-fray federalism: take these questions away from the federal courts and return them to units of government closer and more responsive to the governed...
...He knows that economic prosperity depends on a sound moral base...
...But a President du Pont might be as formidable on these issues...
...Du Pont is on the national political map now, and will probably stay there...
...Gilder's careful examination of the disastrous CETA program led him to believe that "government just can't create meaningful jobs...
...He has called for an end to farm commodity payments over five years, with the transition to be softened by direct income-support payments to farmers...
...He doesn't like to talk about values, beyond an occasional paean to discipline or self-reliance—something that wouldn't get laughed out of the locker room of his cherished Philadelphia Flyers...
...He says simply: "Fifteen years ago I cast votes I wouldn't cast today...
...He said he'd had quite enough of legislative work, and much preferred the executive side of things...
...He enjoyed phenomenal success as a supply-side governor of Delaware, cutting the income tax 42 percent and turning the state's economic fortunes completely around...
...Study in residence with Oxford tutors . . . earn course credits . . . take field trips to famous sites . . . get to know England in a way few outsiders can...
...His record in Congress can only be characterized as dovish, considering such votes as: the War Powers Act—for...
...He thinks farmers want straight talk and long-term solutions, and he expects to do well in Iowa...
...July 3 - 23 and July 24 - August 13, 1988...
...He seems confident that he will be winning most of the debates...
...Everyone opting into the FSA program, however, must still pay the Social Security tax, so revenues coming into the system would remain unchanged...
...He announces to a gathering of the Conservative Political Action Conference that South African sanctions are a good idea that's working just fine...
...It's not so much that du Pont is a blueblood—just more comfortable THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1987 33 talking the language of brisk corporate efficiency or hockey fans' banter than sermonizing about the unraveling of the social fabric...
...Like Kemp, he wants to solidify a base of Reaganite conservatives before conquering the rest of the land...
...He informs the Ripon Society that they aren't in the mainstream of anything...
...Please write or call for more information...
...Eschewing the froth and focusing on real issues, du Pont is beginning to find his constituency, as he'd hoped, among young conservatives...
...There are only two candidates in Christendom who can be counted on to defend the Reagan tax revolution from the insidethe-Beltway coalition of Keynesianism and Stockmanomics—Kemp and du Pont...
...he does not support the Helms Amendment, which would make abortion constitutionally illegal...
...He only recently hired a press secretary...
...One of those five, Pat McGuigan, while stopping short of endorsing du Pont, says that of all the candidates du Pont most makes him hear the "call to the banner" he heard Reagan sounding in 1976...
...Recent preference polls in three Iowa counties saw him place fourth, third, and second (although on September 13, he finished fifth in a straw poll held in Ames, unexpectedly won by Pat Robertson...
...So far, this proposal does not seem to be a formula for political suicide in Iowa...
...He advocates a form of workfare—putting most able-bodied welfare recipients to work to earn their payments, including single mothers who would be permitted to deposit their children in government-supported day-care centers...
...Du Pont doesn't defend his voting record, especially his failure to support Jonas Savimbi's UNITA...
...Such conspicuous confrontation may be nothing more than tactical maneuvering, reminiscent of John Anderson courageously advocating gun control before the National Rifle Association while television cameras broadcast the show to millions, but it is also obvious that du Pont genuinely enjoys the interplay of competing viewpoints...
...Charles Murray and Anna Kondratas have been among his principal consultants...
...It is difficult to gauge the sincerity of du Pont's conversion, but on the evidence of these and several similar votes, it has indeed been a conversion and one of some magnitude...
...In this regard, he can take a lesson from ex-jock Kemp, whose upbringing in California and the AFL certainly didn't reinforce conspicuous displays of piety...
...Du Pont has a bit of a political problem, as well as an intellectual one, in enlisting the support of the religious right...
...du Pont was diligent in pursuing another mandate of Reaganomics—cutting government spending...
...Five "third generation" conservatives signed a letter saying du Pont is "the one candidate we believe is speaking for young Americans...
...aid to Vietnam and Cambodia late in the war—against...
...Few of them are entirely certain that this pin-striped patrician is really a grunt in the Reagan Revolution...
...He travels regularly to Iowa to tell farmers they should be weaned off of subsidies...
...Candid and engaging with the press, he is running the sort of issue-oriented campaign envisioned in the civics texts...
...Du Pont's welfare proposal presents an even more fundamental challenge to conservatism...
...As scion of one of the nation's most firmly entrenched business families, he might be forgiven an especially keen sensitivity to the needs of big business, but he doesn't hesitate to say that the tradeoff in the 1986 tax reform bill of business breaks for lower individual rates is good economics...
...His position on abortion is illustrative of a movement rightward on social issues that has thus far fallen only a tad short of Reaganism...
...prohibition of travel by Americans to nations with which we are at war (aimed at the Jane Fondas and Ramsey Clarks)—against...
...To adopt Moral Majority rhetoric would put at risk the allegiance of this core group of supporters...
...them with an extensive list of issues and clear-cut positions...
...Du Pont and Kemp are squaring off in a debate over the program that promises to be one of the most useful and interesting of the electoral season...
...Gilder's views will get an airing, though, and du Pont must respond to them, and to Kemp's Social Security argument, if he is serious about wearing the pro-family mantle...
...He is also without question a superb presidential candidate...
...OXFORD/FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY ADULT PROGRAM Florida State University Center for Professional Development Box S, Tallahassee, FL 32306-2027 904-644-3801 The University of Oxford Department for External Studies 1 Wellington Square Oxford OX1 2JA England Yi d ti*I1 Z4I tei4 \I/lad,"• ,"•":M ire .91111.111, dilddHl e *ICJ...
...What's interesting about du Pont's perspective, lending credence to his characterization of himself as a populist, is that he seems to belong to the strain of supply-siders who prefer cutting individual marginal rates to helping established businesses lower the tax costs of capital formation...
...A recent address to the national organization of College Republicans brought ten standing ovations...
...The happy warrior of 1987 substantially answers the charge made throughout Delaware in 1984 that the governor was missing a bit of fire in his belly...
...Government would guarantee a job for those who couldn'tfind one in the private sector...
...Du Pont would have himself cast as a candidate of substance, a supply-sider, and a populist conservative trying to marshal a constituency against established interests...
...His solution is the introduction of financial security accounts—savings accounts that participants can pay into and have their contributions matched by dollar-fordollar tax credits from the government...
...One such is Social Security reform...
Vol. 20 • November 1987 • No. 11
