Capitol Ideas/ The R**l*ty Principle
Bethell, Tom
C A P I T O L I D E A S THE R**L*TY PRINCIPLE I have a horrible feeling your Correspondent in the Capital has been a bit remiss, failing to file a single report on the Reagan Administration...
...Controversy arises only when ways of achieving them are proposed...
...Bill Moyers said: "Ronald Reagan has tipped his hat away from ideology, and toward r ~ *l*ty...
...Here is how befuddled we have become by the Freudian whim-wham...
...Good, should we cut spending or raise taxes...
...L a d i e s and gentlemen, this is ideology, not pragmatism...
...It' s still a possibility, though...
...TV news' impermanence assures its slovenly standards...
...I would further say that he has qualities of greatness...
...Nor is it reassuring to know that once Dan's wisdom has wafted across the airwaves it is defunct...
...In May, Lefty Lewis repeated himself and everyone else, noting triumphantly that something nice was beginning to "affect the Reagan Presidency after 16 months: r* *l*ty...
...Abortion is a reality, affirmative action is a reality, entitlement programs are a reality, the need to bail out Mexico is a reality, and the pipeline embargo is unrealistic...
...This was said to be: gr'tty...
...What is this "reality," this rock against which the waves of ideology repeatedly shatter...
...Moreover he believes he made a satisfactory effort to staff his government with like-minded people...
...Reality is said to be " g r i t t y , " and consists of "messy facts...
...The New York Times and the Washington Post have more " c l o u t " than Human Events and the Conservative Digest...
...Just like everyone else...
...A full month before Reagan's inauguration he wrote an article in the IUashington Post entitled "When Right Meets Reality...
...Lurking behind the pen you will find a liberal ideologue pretending to be a pragmatist...
...most people forget in a matter of days and sometimes in a matter of minutes...
...4 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1982 Two writers in the Washington Post then noted that Reagan's promise to dismantle the Departments of Education and Energy had bumped into: reality...
...Interestingly, those who cannot see this really are pragmatists...
...That is why the Twin Bakers and the Grown Dole have not been able to figure out that, in assenting to what they have been told is "reality," they have really succumbed to an ideology...
...To Dan he said, "I am concerned about the possible harm these reports [Dan's reports on U.S.Taiwan relations] may do to our international relations...
...Polls are realistic...
...May I suggest that it is nothing more noble than achieved liberalism...
...There's still a chance that Reagan can prevail over the Praetorian Guard...
...His column was headed: The R* *l*ty Principle...
...Stockman has been urging the President to face r**l*ty," echoed Anthony Lewis...
...colleagues throughout the media worry prodigiously about the effect of these calls--CHILLING, CHILLING...
...I'm simply adjusting them to realities,' he said...
...Sadly enough, we happen to live in an age when the Left, broadly speaking, controls the terms of public discourse, and has arrogated to itself both the taxonomic and the namecalling privilege...
...Think what a plus that will be, when the time comes to run for reelection, or for our good friend George Bush to runl as the case may be...
...When you hear a speaker say, 'Facts, gentlemen, are stubborn things,' prepare for a ramble through Utopia...
...Oh, yes, they want all things nice: economic growth, low interest rates, high employment...
...Needless to say they dictated imperial policy...
...Reagan hasn't yet surrendered completely to the Praetorian Guard of press corps and White House advisers that surrounds him...
...Nevertheless, the recent tax.increase bill was very bad for Reagan, a great triumph of the Guard over the Emperor's best instincts, and the Taiwan sell-out almost as bad...
...Who has been doing all this labeling and name-calling...
...It takes ideology to perceive a rival ideology in others...
...Reality is the sum total of government programs already in place-except for defense spending, which is unrealistic...
...I hope they will not forget me...
...The Republic's media hawks are now probing the Rather affair as meticulously as investigators for a grand jury...
...I give credit to William Greider, the good writer now with Rolling Stone, for initiating this most recent defense of the liberal sand castle...
...Mr...
...This meant that "the old folks' heating bills" would have to be paid by government - whatever ideologues might think...
...The thing h a s happened before, and when it does Dan flummoxes millions of Americans who come to him for enlightenment while they stuff their faces or remove their socks...
...One week last month, while Dan and I were duly applying ourselves to our arts--he on a Tuesday evening, I on a Monday afternoon--the President telephoned us with complaints...
...But there's no chance if he doesn't realize how much danger he's in...
...He predicted that "pure abstractions of ideological principle will be settled by crass, messy, homely facts," adding that a "soaring oil price" would soon be a part of this reality...
...My call came as I was tapping out a book recounting the glory of the Carter years...
...I'm surprised...
...Literally thousands of such examples could be given...
...First I should say that I have always defended Reagan against his detractors in Washington, often the kind of people who would like to have Bob McNamara, Elliot Richardson, or Clark Clifford as their Well-trained President...
...Ronald Reagan, I should think most people realize now, was vastly underrated when he came to Washington...
...The trouble is that such people as Baker, his senatorial counterpart Howard, and Bob ("Has Grown") Dole really are pragmatists...
...The Praetorian Guard protected the Roman emperor...
...Dan's call came as he was earnestly talking into his microphone during the evening news...
...Look what happened to Richard Nixon when he tried to go up against these guys...
...in fact, that all those like-thinking, left-leaning consensus liberals such as Haynes Johnson, Mary McGrory, Anthony Lewis, Richard Cohen, Leonard Silk, Hobart Rowen, Tom Wicker, and on and on, don't find it embarrassing that they echo one another so faithfully week after week...
...Why he has singled us out I cannot fathom, but it is chilling...
...To the unwary pragmatist, all such behavior appears random...
...European disapproval of the embargo is a reality, the PLO is a reality, Begin is unrealistic, the need by Tom Bethell for negotiated settlements around the world is a reality...
...Liberals and leftists say they "reject labels," but they are mighty quick to pin them on others: on the rigid ideologues, the faithful and the true believers, the strident hardliners, on the New Right with its purity, its dogmas and schisms...
...lae about pragmatism triumphing over ideology and the need to bow to " r e a l i t y . " Perhaps, oil the other hand, it is somehow reassuring to be a part of a collective think-team...
...Well, Dan and I answered...
...You see, there is one thing the Doleful Bakers, Domenici, Gergen & Darman do know for sure...
...Against his own best instincts, he's being led step by step to accept an ideology which is embraced by people who are afraid that his own beliefs, if put to the test, might succeed, [] E D I T 0 R I A L THE PLOT TO DESTROY DAN RATHER AND ME P r e s i d e n t Reagan is trying to destroy Dan Rather and me...
...Of the two, Dan was in far greater peril of being manipulated...
...T h e ' r e a l i t i e s of wielding power seem to be catching up quiteearly with Ronald Reagan," added Ed Magnuson in Time...
...One can easily imagine the Columbia School of Journalism convening a high-level seminar to probe the question, "When the President Calls Must the Virtuous Journalist Answer...
...So perhaps it is time to point out that the government solutions these people invariably, consistently, and unanimously support are compatible with the left-liberal ideology, which is the same as the .age-old ideology of socialism, but in modern dress (no need to go on about the " s t a t e ownership of the means of production" anymore, for example...
...The President by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr...
...That means trying to capture some of the tax _9 / revenues lost last summer...
...Did the late Alexander Graham Bell ever envisage his invention as a tool of government intimidation...
...Now I am not so sure...
...On the contrary, it should negotiate and compromise with them...
...But it should crack down hard on countries where the governing structui:e makes the emergence of socialism difficult-i.e., countries with market economies and no elections (Chile, Taiwan, etc...
...Wouldn't we like to be rid of them sometimes...
...I doubt it, but I can tell you that my esteemed Adapted from P...
...The government should not pick quarrels with other socialist countries...
...And until recently I had assumed that he would somehow prevail over the army of liberal ideologues arrayed against him, subsequently going down in the history books as one of those rare men who managed to resist the tide of fashionable opinion when it was bent on defeat and sell destruction...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1982- 5...
...Let's raise taxes then...
...Leftists, by any chance...
...The tax bill will be damaging to the economy, but perhaps only mildly so...
...They've figured that out for themselves...
...R e a l i t y , ladies and gentlemen, is the liberal ideology: Note the word when you see it...
...This ideology dictates the following "realities": The government should expand its control over as many areas of life as possible, and religion should be excluded from these areas...
...tt doesn't pay, you know . . . . You can't win without the m e d i a . . . so Ron, be sensible and adjust to reality...
...Only someone guided by a consistent philosophy can see that another's behavior has an equal, if opposite, consistency to it...
...The reality was that the oil price was then at its peak...
...Welfare at home is a reality, food stamps are a reality, FDR was realistic...
...But here's a final example that really does have a piquant flavor: "In a candid comment to columnist Henry Brandon, White House aide James Baker said he is not compromising Reagan's convictions...
...Aren't we getting a little sick of hearing these words...
...Nothin' here but us pragmatists and moderates, whistled Moyers and McGrory, Lewis, Greider, Haynes Johnson, and a hundred others...
...Sometimes they decided to kill him, and usually they selected his successor...
...A presidential call could panic Dan, causing him to utter an indiscretion or, worse, an untruth...
...Oh, the former is unrealistic...
...At that point two incompatible ideologies emerge: left and right, liberal and conservative, socialist and capitalist...
...So if it's all the same anyway - - j u s t a bunch of people trying to solve our problems without preconceptions-why not go along with the powerful and the fashionable...
...Wishful thinkers love the slogans of realism," Frank Sheed wrote in 1953...
...Still, it's possible that Reagan could escape without too much damage provided he holds the line and makes up his own mind from now on...
...The Soviet Union's nuclear arsenal is a reality--don't mess with -that messy fact...
...Of course, but reality can't be wished away...
...Reagan should be alerted that his "pragmatic" and "moderate" friends---David Stockman, for one--are planning to come back for another tax increase next year (elimination of indexing, restoration of bracket creep, yea for inflation as taxcollector), and that Stockman will have the full Praetorian support of the New York Times and the IVashington Post...
...Robert G. Kaiser of the Post and Steven V. Roberts in the New York Times swiftly followed up on the reality theme--both before Reagan was sworn in...
...That is, they are not guided by any philosophical principles...
...It should capture as much of the nation's wealth as possible, and redistribute it so that all subjects are equal to one another, if possible...
...Did someone say balance the budget...
...Writing is more deliberative than talking, and I can erase...
...T's weekly Washington Post column syndicated by King Features...
...Many were reluctant to leave their jobs...
...He got me in Indiana, and professed his belief that he has remained true to his conservative principles and friends...
...These things are not at issue...
...Will Reagan be able to resist the onslaught of pragmatism ? What is worrying, of course, is that Reagan does seem to have bought the Praetorian line about being an "ideologue" who was taking insufficient notice of "reality," neglecting "pragmatism," and so on...
...The recent flurry of comment provoked by the tax-increase bill and the Taiwan sell-out provides me with a suitable excuse...
...You mean well, but you haven't quite grasped how the system works around here...
...These people can't tell the difference...
...C A P I T O L I D E A S THE R**L*TY PRINCIPLE I have a horrible feeling your Correspondent in the Capital has been a bit remiss, failing to file a single report on the Reagan Administration to date, even though we are approaching its half-way mark...
...enters a complaint, and the Republic's sages fasten upon the matter of *'how his mind works" rather than what he said...
...To me he said, "Did I get you in your New York office or in Indiana...
...Do what the Times says, then they'll be on your side...
...When apprised of the President's call many in Washington were at one with Roger Mudd, who adjudged the call " i n t e r e s t i n g " because "it reveals how his [the President's] mind works...
...endlessly repeating the same formuTom Bethell is The American Spectator's Washington correspondent...
...Yet it was not easy for him to attract conservatives to government, particularly conservatives from the business community...
Vol. 15 • October 1982 • No. 10
