Capitol Ideas/The Hive Perceives

...The interesting thing is that the charges have been ad hoc, unforeseeable from day to day as to their specifics, but in the aggregate completely predictable...

...One can foresee in Reagan's second term an attempt to muddle through with compromises, commissions, negotiated settlements, and three or four more tax increases in a futile attempt to balance the budget...

...They need lists...

...It has in any event been a considerable weakness on Mr...

...Mondale, on the other hand, seems to have been shifting to a more centrist and sensible position...

...Ditto for the Republicans: the Richard ViguerieHoward Phillips component of the party is likely to go its own way once Reagan is re-elected, and more power to 'em, I say...

...about the Soviet Union being a treaty-ratifier and the U.S...

...stubbornly obsessed with Communism, and so on...

...But Hart now seems to have blown his chance by trying to get to Mondale's left, engaging in foolish polemics about the freeze and so on, as though this was what the voters wanted...

...It was in January that the" Washington Post editorialized: "Nothing about this transfer is likely to be tranquil...

...Well, for the credulous it is a scandal to curl the hair...

...The second lesson is for those who create these melodramas...

...Here, for example, are the first few sentences of a recent column by James J. Kilpatrick...

...I anticipate that President Reagan will be still weaker in his second term, if he has one...

...and for the Democrats whose policies and presidential contenders are so thunderously unfetching it is an issue on the order of "fifty-four forty or fight...

...I t would be nice to be able to register a protest by voting for the Democratic candidate this fall, but that now seems to be out of the question...

...President Reagan will have learned the right lesson if henceforth he avoids appointing people to top posts because they were once next door neighbors, old friends of Nancy, or golfing partners well known to good old J.B...

...He's no doubt a nice enough fellow, but he seems to have no real convictions and he would be an e a s y prey for his advisers, who come from the leftward edge of the political spectrum...

...In fine, these scandals are an embarrassment to America...

...out at the country club, thanks to the reduction of the top rate on "unearned" income...

...Reagan instead should look for people who are in philosophical agreement with himself...

...And if the Democrats lose in November, the party is likely to split in 1985...

...It looks at present as though Walter Mondale will get the nomination (I write shortly before the New York primary), and that Reagan will defeat him fairly easily in November...

...Baker may have had something to do with all this...

...Republicans are comparatively quite ignorant...

...The reality, unless I am sorely mistaken, is that Meese is an able and decent human being . . . . But because perception counts so heavily, my unhappy thought is that Meese ought to withdraw his name...

...Certainly there could be more surprises in store as the primary season unfolds...

...In any event, it is absurd to claim (as was incongruously heard in the media itself) that Gary Hart had somehow been a media creation...

...The attack on Meese demonstrates, if we needed any further demonstration, that we live in a new McCarthy by Tom Bethell eramcall it the time of MediaMcCarthyism...

...Not only that, he is Reaganite to the core...

...Lenkowsky says he abolished the list when he heard of it, which is perfectly plausible...

...Did Lenkowsky know about this Procrustean tool of Reaganite totalitarianism...

...One of the key points about the Hive is~:that its members communicate (openly) with one another in a slowly shifting language, the purpose of which is to erode definition, blur meanings, and above all to advocate its [~rogram (neo-socialism) in the guise of responding pragmatically to one alTHE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1984 9 leged crisis after another...

...Appoint the really rich who can afford to lose money in their moves to Washington, and fire those in the White House who allow such puny scandals to grow vast and bloodcurdling...

...The same must also be true of the absurdity of Meese's unreported cuff links, the "scoop" triumphantly reported by "CBS Evening News" reporter Phil Jones (and there's a true lefty for you...

...There are times when reality hardly matters, and that's where we are right now in the tribulations of presidential counselor Ed Meese...

...Tom Bethell is The American Spectator's Washington correspondent...

...To paraphrase a famous football coach, it's become the only thing...

...As I have said before, Mr...

...By law each administration should have to appoint a few certifiable grafters to positions of public trust...

...That perception, in my judgment, is wrong...

...He enacted a tax cut, but then allowed himself to be talked into four subsequent tax increases...

...I suggest that former Secretary of the Treasury William Simon be brought in...

...Reagan in general seems to be so unaware of what is going on about him that one wonders if he even knows very much about Baker--beyond the significant fact that in 1980 Nancy Reagan thought him just super...

...This is unjust, but the Republican party could be the beneficiary if in the future Washington appears to be too much of a minefield for those inept senior corporate types who have routinely held key posts in Republican administrations...

...It was interesting to see the media take Hart apart after his New Hampshire victory...

...Of these two scoundrels Meese is providing greater melodrama...

...and his pals toot-tooting their way around the golf course have not yet been informed of the fact and are unlikely to find out for themselves...

...Moreover what kind of ethical issue is it...

...He is a'iife-long Democrat, and Democrats are politically savvy enough to know intuitively whom to invite to represent them...

...For a while I hoped that Hart would win it, knowing that he would be more of a challenge for Reagan and so might force him into a competition for the affections of the voters rather than the elites...

...These are most likely to be found among Democrats, as some of Reagan's best appointees (e.g., Jeane Kirkpatrick) attest...

...Kraft noted that when Meese headed for the Justice Department (and I applaud his use of skeptical quotation marks) " a t least some of the White House 'pragmatists,' as part of the continuing fight with the 'right wingers,' were glad to get him out of the White n ouse...

...Meese is a rare instance...

...Baker is known to be out of sympathy with,Reagan's views on government, and he has been involved in two presidential primary campaigns against Reagan...

...Gary Hart is obviously a quickwitted man but he appears to lack common sense...

...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1984 11...

...Overnight the head of the National Security Council, the head of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Secretary of the Navy, and all manner of smaller fish are turned from their governmental tasks and obliged to provide us with thrills on the evening news and opportunities for Pulitzer Prizes...

...The first is for the White House...

...Joseph Kraft, the Hive-harmonious columnist (though, again, not necessarily in sympathy with, or even aware of, its goals), said in a recent column that "abundant detail" about the unreported $15,000 loan to Meese's wife, "and the circumstances of the Meese preparation for the Senate hearing," came from "sources close to the White House...

...If it wishes to avoid future imbroglios such as the Meese grilling, do not appoint middle-class salary-earners...

...The Democratic party has moved so far to the left that one must wonder if it will ever recover...

...In fact Meese (as everyone in the news media knows perfectly well) has made personal sacrifices to work for the government...

...Baker has certainly received extremely favorable treatment from the press which normally claims an adversary relationship with government...

...The good thing about disaffected Democrats is that they know how to fight the ideological war in progress and they are greatly helped by knowing that there is such a war...

...In that important respect, Mondale really would be a replay of Jimmy Carter - - and I think we can do without that...

...He is "sending the right signals," as Hive communicants like to say...

...The view among the few surviving conservatives in the White House is that Baker believes that Reagan would receive favorable news media treatment (and so, presumably, a favorable verdict from history) if only he would allow the Washington Post to set his agenda for him...

...THE HIVE PERCEIVES W e l l , don't say I didn't give you plenty of warning about the vilification of Ed Meese...

...Martin Agronsky of "Agronsky & Co.," the slow-paced syndicated talk show, recently observed that whether or not the various charges against Meese have substance, there is a "perception" that they do, and therefore his performance as attorney general would be impaired...

...Since Ronald Reagan took office," an inflamed New York Times reporter revealed last month, "more than a dozen high-level officials have resigned, been investigated or been forced to explain their actions after charges of impropriety...

...If he cannot prove his ignorance, back to New York he, his wife, and two children will be sent and under a very dark cloud...

...Oh, what an error the news media made in their 10 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1984 1981 assault on Nancy Reagan, and oh, how quickly they reversed themselves once they saw how useful she could be in "moderating" the views of her husband...

...Forced to explain their actions," what pale representation of scandal is this...

...Among conservatives at least, there is a "perception" in Washington that Mr...

...To translate it, simply substitute the word "accusation" for "perception": It has become a truism in our town that perception isn't everything...

...C u r r e n t l y in our nation's capital we have two more appointees jumping through the journalists' hoops and otherwise being sweated by the news industry at taxpayers' expense...

...They are the sinister Edwin Meese, President Reagan's nominee for attorney general, and Leslie Lenkowsky, a Democrat whose appointment as deputy director to the United States Information Agency was a shoo-in until it was discovered that someone somewhere at the USIA had compiled a list of speakers to be barred from USIA trips...

...Substitute the word "accusation" every time you hear the word "perception" in the media, and you will readily see that we now live in an age of vilification by "perception...

...Reagan emerges from all this a very nice old fellow but as a weak President...

...We should have scandals as great as America is great...

...J.B...

...He promises us an inactive military, and really seems to believe his own nonsense to the effect that the problem in the Third World is "poverty," not assault by armed revolutionaries...

...But they were nevertheless foreseeable, because Meese was known to be an ideological enemy of the apostate communion known as the Hive, and he was threatening to take over one of its key cells, the Justice Department...

...I stress also that the use of Hive vocabulary is for the most part unconscious (as indeed is everyday language), and it is commonly used by those who do not necessarily have any sympathy for or even awareness of the Hive's goal...

...Joe McCarthy, ~,ou should be with us in this hour...

...Kilpatrick is hardly in sympathy, with the goals of the Left, but he is here in harmony with the Hive...

...Many of the unfavorable "perceptions" about Reagan's aides have first appeared iti the Washington Post...

...Tom Wicker for one made this odd claim...

...Taxes have gone up for the middle class in his tenure (even if they have gone down for J.B...

...Perception" is a good example of Hive talk...

...His imbroglio involves money, cuff links, and the mysterious Carter briefing papers...

...Lenkowsky's is merely a question of whether he knew about the infamous list (now reported to be a bureaucratic record of the 95 or so speakers rejected by political appointees out of the 5000 accepted over two-and-a-half years...

...At that time he will be more interested in the verdict of history than the verdict of the voters, and in such a frame of mind he is likely to be even more attentive to the "pragmatists" who surround him than he is today...

...Fasten your seat belts...

...At that time the editorial writer can have had no idea what specific form the Meese accusations would take...

...Reagan's part to have tolerated for so long a chief-of-staff who is not in sympathy with his own views, and around whom aides fall like flies--the victims of anonymous perceptions...

...I suppose many in the press had already "bought stock" in Mondale at that point...

...There are two lessons to be learned here...

...Can you imagine how the liberals would have reacted if Joe McCarthy had said, "Whether or not my charges are true, there is a perception that they are, and so the performance of State Department officials has been significantly impaired...

...There has been a clear pattern of adverse "perceptions" of those around Baker in the White House--those with whom he is known to be in ide~ogical discord...

...from the Palisades Country Club...

...A perception has grown that Meese, the president's nominee for attorney general, is a wheeler dealer...

...And it would be hard to differentiate your average Mondale aide and your average Washington Post reporter...

...federal spending is quite a bit higher than was projected under President Carter, protectionism has increased, deregulatory initiatives have stalled, and defense spending is no higher than was projected by Carter...

...There are now so many goodgovernment laws on the books, designed precisely to trip up unwary stalwarts like Meese, that he could predictably be shown to have left one or two t's uncrossed and i's undotted: enough for the Hive to come swarming in .filling the airwaves with their hypocritical indignation about "sleaze" and influence peddling...

...Anyone familiar with urban politics knows where to find likely candidates...

...Although I have absolutely no inside knowledge here, I confess that one can't help wondering about the role of the President's chief of staff, James Baker, in all of this...

...He is as rich as Croesus, and he makes it all himself...