The Political Margin of 1984

...His record, however, suggests Hyatt would be no rubberstamp...

...and third, the Simpson-Mazzoli immigration bill...

...In a district with heavy pockets of unemployment, Long has dug himself in against any kind of federal enterprise zones...

...No one from this district will be able to go to Washington and sit on his hands," Blackwell says...

...Some argue that a Ronald Reagan fresh from an election mandate will be bolder on policy fronts...

...At the conference sufficient concern was expressed by the European participants for Jeane Kirkpatrick to reassure them that Europe was not about to be displaced by the Pacific as the area of major U.S...

...The most obvious candidates are the countries of the Pacific, many of whom have exhibited impressive dynamism in recent years and among whom there is stirring a vague but persistent interest in the concept of a "Pacific Community...

...Perhaps the problem with government today is really not the Congress at all...

...Before tax cutters in his state could move with plans to roll back the tax And this one, for what it's worth, calls for the U.S...

...Part of the impulse behind this interest is the concern of some (not all) countries in the region to play a wider and more assertive role in international affairs, to make Pacific voices heard more clearly both in the region and beyond it...

...There are various steps open to the United States in the Pacific which would serve to remind Europeans that, if worst came to worst in NATO, the United States is not without options...

...A recent speech on the transatlantic relationship by Lawrence Eagleburger, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, began with a discussion not of the Atlantic and Europe but of the Pacific and Asia-innocently introduced in terms of demographic changes in the United States...

...Interviews with more than a dozen officials, from the Republican party, Reagan's re-election campaign, the Democratic party, and such consulting groups as Nofziger and Bragg, Polyconomics, and Black, Manaforte, and Stone, suggest three races have particular significance...

...Today these would all be considered extreme right-wing positions...

...Interestingly enough, all of these fights placed the France, and Germany: Former leftcenter coalitions have fallen into disarray--and not because the left has lost power, but because it no longer welcomes the center...

...Marylander Dave Smick has spent several years preparing for this race, and there are signs that both Long and Smick's primary opponent, Helen Bentley, Maryland's answer to Millicent Fenwick, are ill-equipped to meet the Smick challenge...

...According to Mrs...

...As in the U.S...

...Reagan supported a major tax increase and candidates from his party suffered accordingly, both from it and from the Volcker recession...

...It was in the House, and it came from a band of young turk Republicans including Kemp, Newt Gingrich, and Trent Lott...

...Different observers may place the keys to 1984 elsewhere...

...so in Britain, establishment support, where was the opposition...

...Certainly, people making $12,000 or less should pay no taxes...

...J e r r y P. James, an Oklahoma political activist, probably speaks for many Americans when he writes: "The single most important political event in 1984 is the reelection of our great President, Ronald Reagan...

...Simpson-Mazzoli has failed in several attempts...

...Under the threat of a similar effort, Illinois Governor Jim Thompson now plans to let $800 million in tax surcharges expire...

...Congressman Jim Jones of Oklahoma, a major pothole in the road to smaller government, faces a pair of tough challengers for his seat...

...Consider Arthur Schlesinger's description of how just such a congressional vanguard was crucial to the progress of the New Deal, forcing FDR into an aggressive, activist stance: The 1934 election...

...An apposite example of this tactic is George Canning's famous "calling in the New World to redress the balance of the Old" in the 1820s, at a time when Britain was at odds with the other members of the Quadruple Alliance...

...Similarly, one of the two most interesting debates today is between the old Kennedy Democrats--Morton Kondracke, Ben Wattenberg, Robert Strauss--and the McGovernites-Christopher Dodd, Alan Cranston, and, well, George McGovern...

...You'd be surprised," Smick says...

...foreign policy concern: a reassurance that might itself have caused thoughtful Europeans to ponder...

...But one possibility immediately comes to mind, and that is the classic move of introducing new actors into the game to alter the existing balance of forces...

...And that makes all the difference...

...But do the voters really understand all this amid the steady drumbeat that such arguments are Horatio Alger stuff...

...One could list up to 50 such districts...

...More often than not, the tax issue bubbles up in individual states or in grassroots movements before being accepted by, or forced upon, national leaders...

...Of course, studies have always shown that small businesses generate more new products, and many more new jobs, than established firms...

...And that infinitesimal change will in turn produce a tiny shift in the balance of power within the White House staff or on some congressional committee--which could lead to a Kemp-Roth or a Social Security Act or a War Powers Resolution...

...Ohioans rejected a proposed 1 cent addition to the sales t a x . . . West Virginians voted 4 to 1 to limit local property t a x e s . . . Texans abolished the state property tax, 71 percent in f a v o r . . . _9 . . In Missouri, the voters rejected a hike in the gasoline tax...

...No more of the "mutual, verifiable" flatulence that made the idea so attractive in 1982...

...We could choose other issues--how to respond to Soviet violations of arms control and human rights treaties, whether to go ahead with ABM defenses, and others...

...This year he is offering a populist alternative to a Massachusetts district that has generally been forced to choose between liberal Democrats and elitist Republicans...

...Or is it in the hands of Lewis Lehrman, William Armstrong, and Jack Kemp...

...broughtl into Congress a new breed of New Deal Democrats--men like Schwellenbach of Washington, Minton of Indiana, Guffey of Pennsylvania, Truman of Missouri in the Senate, a n d . . , the members of the Maury Maverick group in the House--who combined the party regularity of the older Democrats with the liberal fervor of the older progressives...

...Reagan's second term as California governor...

...It's too even...

...F o r as long as anyone can remember, Maryland's 2nd district-north of Baltimore--has been represented by Congressman Clarence Long...

...According to figures supplied by Sue Thomas of the National Center for Initiative Review near Denver, only 12 state ballot propositions appeared nationwide in 1970...

...Yet it was in those years that Democrats in Congress bucked Mr...

...A sound dollar and tax cuts and enterprise zones--these are the answers to the issue...

...Hyatt campaign literature talks about "taking on the entrenched politicians, bureaucrats, and special interests...

...Kristol evidently appreciates this, but believes that things cannot be altered without destroying NATO as it is now constituted--a form of political action, it is true, but one that should be considered as a last resort, after all others have been tried and have failed...

...It does not exist as a polity...

...argues that there has been no change in Mr...

...In the economy, the marginal businessman is that one businessman out of millions who will decide to move his factory, or fire one worker, or reduce by one widget his widget inventory, as a result of the next tiny increase in taxes, or the addition of one government form to his paperload, or a union wagedemand of one extra cent per hour...

...These gains were trimmed modestly in 1978, but by less than the typical loss of seats in an off-year...

...Another new breed of Republican is former Cincinnati mayor Ken Blackwell, who wants to unseat Congressman Tom Luken in that city...

...It really isn't hard to explain to a housewife or a teenager or a working man who haven't had their heads filled with all the wrong ideas...

...And as this is being written a specially appointed ambassador is about to take off through Asia on the first of several trips to explore the Pacific Community concept more actively and at a higher level than previously...

...Ohio's Richard Celeste, another old revenue enhancement monger, now wants a tax rebate...

...For this is where any gains by the young turks must take place...

...with political leaders who cannot practice what they preach...

...The Times continued to thump for it, and Mr...

...They were spurred on by the small savings and loans that suffer the most from new increments of paperwork, and were written by elderly women and working families who resented another form to fill out or another intrusion by the tax man...

...A similar effort may take place in Florida, where the state supreme court has brazenly struck down the Floridian Proposition 13 that passed in 1982...

...The district itself provides a classic showdown: half inner-city, half suburban, an almost perfect balance between Republican and Democratic registrants, a mix, Mr...

...This emphasis is probably misplaced, in several ways...

...Luken is lukewarm to the idea of enterprise zones...

...In Michigan, where voters last year recalled a state legislator instrumental in passing a whopping tax hike, the people this fall will have a crack at the "Voters Choice Amendment," which would outlaw all tax hikes since 1981 not ratified by a direct pol~ular vote...

...More likely, as Irving Kristol argues, it is less a question of changes in the balance of power between the parties than a question of changes within the parties themselves...

...Thomas, several efforts to end state government funding for abortion are afoot, most by well-run New Right troops with a solid record of getting on the ballot...

...Filing deadlines are not due in most states until August, but as of April, more than 300 offerings had been filed with secretaries of state across the country, compared to 226 for all of 1982...

...In this battle for the Republican soul, a shift of a few seats--in the House--could spell all the difference...

...An old-style Democrat, Long has been swatting down these familiar challenges for years, talking about his support for "jobs," his opposition to tax cuts for "the rich," and so on...

...The TEFRA tax hike passed, but only after major and unexpected difficulties, and one of its most salient provisions--withholding on dividends and interest--was later rolled back by Robert Kasten, a Senate young turk, and his allies in the House...

...He was a leading opponent of the Federal Reserve's '81-82 tight money policy and favors a dollar backed by gold as the solution to high interest rates...

...The measure passed the 80-percent Democratic state legislature by an incredible 83-13 in the house and 23-11 in the senate...

...In New Hampshire, Larry Brady and Bob Smith are both mounting a serious challenge for the seat opened up by Norman D'Amours...

...Bentley, in a March 22 debate, attacked the Reagan economic program with the observation that she would have voted against Kemp-Roth had she been in Congress in 1981...

...The paper's focus on these popular shifts put it consistently ahead of the establishment curve...

...Bentley is far from certain...

...But that is not likely to be the campaign theme of most Republicans, or certainly of Ronald Reagan, in 1984...

...Thomas, the leading theme of 1984 referenda so far is the reform of state legislatures...

...Luken, on the other hand, helped design the nuclear freeze...

...In any event, see you this November...

...Reagan...

...Did Mr...

...They really do, and I have a much easier time explaining enterprise zones to a group of unemployed black teenagers, or a bunch of factory workers, than I did to some so-called educated people in Washington...

...After all, conservatives are supposed to believe in the power of local government and the importance of the individual entrepreneur...

...Long is a Democrat in a district that is 3-to-1 Democratic...

...On the margin...

...The former can all be heard bemoaning the growing power of the latter...

...But this time, Long may not be facing your conventional GOP opponent...

...Carter and voted in a Kemp-style tax cut proposed by Senator Sam Nunn...

...What is certain is that this race between conventional wisdomer Bentley and the populist Smick will be a fascinating and important contest on the margin...

...The typical Republican challenge to Long is a conventional assault on his "liberal" voting record, or his tendency to enlarge the "federal deficit...

...Reagan signed on one year ago this March...

...Long, like most politicians, seems simply too lazy to bother learning about monetary policy at all...

...aggregate changes in the Congress, e.g., whether the Republicans will gain or lose five seats in the House...

...While Jeff Greenfield drones on with scientific projections about who will carry Mississippi as of 7:28 p.m...

...This use of what Liddel Hart used to call "the strategy of indirect approach" may point to a more effective way of reinvigorating NATO than concentrating directly on the mired issues of organization, force structures, and political attitudes in Europe...

...Did he win for supporting the Kemp tax cuts, or because he watered them down twice in 1981 and then passed four tax hikes...

...Blackwell will counter with a call for strategic defense...

...that the capital gains tax was cut, again with a strong assist from supply-side Democrats...

...in Nevada, they passed two measures exempting home improvements, personal items, and energy conservation equipment from the property tax...

...Hyatt quietly left at about the time it became clear that the original Reagan agenda of tuition tax credits and elimination of the Department was being scuttled...

...And why not...

...Robert Dornan, one of the most conservative members of the House until he gave up his seat to run for the Senate, is trying for a comeback in a new district near Orange County...

...In those years, Democrats established two-thirds control of the House and gained in the Senate, and in 1976, scored the first victory over an incumbent since 1932...

...The same concept of marginality can be applied to politics...

...But then, it would be naive to expect the Reagan White House to change merely as a result of (yet another) mandate...

...These were in the avant-garde of the freeze movement a few years ago...

...As mayor, Blackwell helped design an innovative desegregation plan that saved Cincinnati from forced busing...

...Over the phone, Hyatt says he would like to support "some kind of flat tax, probably not perfectly flat and definitely not doing away with the home mortgage exemption...

...The flat tax promises to be a major campaign issue of 1984, but precious few members of the press were willing to consider it seriously in the fall of 1982...

...In his new book on the history of tax-cutting movements, James Adams of the Wall Street Journal shows that such shifts in popular opinion have proved a reliable barometer of the political climate throughout our history...

...Like most other Republican hopefuls, Hyatt is understandably reluctant to talk about areas where he might try to prod a second-term Reagan into more vigorous action...

...And this spring Kemp offered one...

...Simply put, the question to ponder this election year is this: Where is the political margin in 19847 One possibility is the state referendum...

...Two things have worked against serious American consideration of the politics of alliance in this sense...

...Using the same lens most observers are holding today--essentially, focusing on the presidential vote and total congressional seats--conventional wisdomers would have detected a mild liberal shift in the popular mood between 1974 and 1978...

...it's just that somewhere, there is some untypical executive who /s working harder...

...Perhaps George Will is right--and somewhere in every right-winger there beats a centrist heart...

...As an undergraduate, he penned some of the wittiest attacks on New Haven pieties the Yale Daily News has seen since William F. Buckley...

...Blackwell says, that will keep any congressman on his toes...

...second, Mr...

...Between now and November, most of the media, much of the money, and a good share of the time of political volunteers will focus on the race for the Oval Ofrice...

...One politician who noticed such events was Mr...

...As we go to press, Smick's primary race against Mrs...

...A lot of people have been advising me to play down the criticism of the Fed, that monetary policy just isn't an issue...

...Somewhere in the country there is one race being run, one spot commercial being filmed, one petition drive being launched, that will infinitesimally affect the national debate on an issue...

...But then, I don't plan to go to all this work just to be a follower...

...Reagan's campaign themes will of course be more conservative than Ike's or Nixon's, yet since becoming President, he has essentially based his decisions on "political reality"--reality defined less by John Lofton than by the Washington Post...

...Reagan, that he "prefers to point the way" but wear the white hat, that he is a rhetorical right-winger but an operational centrist...

...This split seems to be taking place throughout the West...

...He attacked Ike's defense policy as too inflexible to respond to the Communist threat in Cuba and Europe...

...Reagan, the only 1980 Republican candidate to campaign on the KempRoth tax bill...

...The same measure failed almost 2 to 1 there three years ago...

...In little Ira, they defeated a 25 percent hike in education spending--barely enough to keep pace with inflation and overcome the "Reagan cuts...

...The United States has interests in the Pacific which are extremely important in their own right and which should not simply be subordinated to other considerations...

...History again lends a supporting argument...

...Blackwell plans to make the idea a major campaign issue in Ohio, one of the few states where unemployment lagged above 10 percent into 1984...

...Dole's 1982 tax hike...

...By December, the New York Times was writing tax-cut obituaries headlined "Reaganomics RIP," and the Washington Post was saying such things as "now that Reaganism is clearly d e a d . . . " Today, 18 months into a recovery, the Reagan Renaissance seems obvious...

...According to Mrs...

...One newspaper that understood the '82 results was the Washington Times, which had this to say in an editorial on November 9 of that year: Tuesday night sent network analysts and news pundits clawing through a pile of races in search of the results on the Reaganomrcs referendum...

...Brady was one of the few members of the Reagan Commerce Department to fight for a tougher stand against the flow of high technology and cheap credits to the Kremlin...

...In the 1940s, a man named Hubert Horatio Humphrey became Mayor of Minneapolis in Republicandominated Minnesota...

...If past approval rates hold, this means 1984 could break the 100-barrier for state ballot propositions...

...Do Robert Dole, Howard Baker, and George Bush represent the GOP Future...

...Scattered attention will no doubt be given to a few governor's races, or Gregory A. Fossedal is an editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal and co-author (with Daniel O. Graham) of A Defense that Defends...

...But I would keep cutting the rates, simplify the code, and drop several million people off the tax rolls altogether, like Margaret Thatcher did...

...But this did not happen with Richard Nixon or Dwight Eisenhower, the last two GOP candidates to win in a landslide...

...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1984 17...

...Perhaps that is why she is a two-time loser to Mr...

...He pledged to "maintain the Bretton Woods gold standard" and ultimately passed huge tax cuts...

...But by and large, all eyes will be hypnotized by the supreme event, and that, it is assumed, is the White House sweepstakes...

...Reagan win because he was "pragmatic" after the shooting down of the Korean jet liner, or because he was "right wing" over Grenada...

...First, the U.S...

...The only certainty is that the Hive will play the results as an affirmation that the public is much farther to the left--or rather, much "closer to the center"--than Mr...

...Indeed, it was Blackwell who helped steer the Kemp-Garcia bill to approval by the National Conference of Mayors and the United Conference of Mayors...

...The IMF bill also passed, but by less than ten votes...

...Another journalist to catch the significance of all this, one should note, is Fred Barnes of the Baltimore Sun, whose piece in The American Spectator of January 1983 perceived the same shifts in the political curve...

...The addition of nine or ten Hyatts and Smicks and Blackwells to Congress might do more to change the complexion of that body than a hundred Charles Percys...

...Of even greater interest, however, are the specifics...

...Nor did it happen in Mr...

...A voluntary school prayer amendment is likely to be approved by West Virginia voters...

...Hyatt does not face the kind of heavy Democratic registration that will confront Smick--in fact, his district voted 44-39 for Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 61-39 for Hyatt's Proposition 2 ý89 Moreover, he is seeking a seat now occupied by Congressman James Shannon, who will be taking his 90-plus ADA rating into the race for Paul Tsongas's Senate seat this year...

...Another young turk is Gregory Hyatt...

...The balance of power is more even than one might think...

...Freezemania has subsided--so far only Montana is planning for such a resolution this fall...

...Hyatt, like many Republicans, plans to run on the economic recovery, but unlike many Republicans, he will not stop there...

...In April, a large and well-publicized conference was held in Paris with the interesting title, "The Challenge of the Pacific: Western Hopes and Fears...

...Even in 1982, the leading indicators told a different story about popular opinion from that of conventional observers...

...Buckley is right...

...This fumble has already infuriated Baltimore Mayor Schaefer, an enterprise zone enthusiast, and other top Democrats in the area...

...Hyatt made his name in Massachusetts when he criss-crossed the state in 1980 plugging Proposition 21A, the Bay State's version of Proposition 13...

...To Long, all this talk about tax incen16 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1984 tives and entrepreneurship and innercity progress must seem hopelessly arcane...

...As official talk focused on the need for tax hikes, and even supply-siders doubted further tax cuts were feasible, the Times wondered aloud why Ronald Reagan or Jack Kemp hadn't proposed a flat-tax bill...

...Signals such as these already seem to be registering in Europe...

...With all this young turks in a notably populist position, fighting for the blue-collar votes that are arguably the cutting edge of politics today_9 The opposition to a "big bank bailout" certainly did not come from the old eastern Rockefeller GOP, but from a curious alliance including such disparate elements as Howard Phillips, Ralph Nader, Conservative Digest, and the New Republic...

...Consider three major issues on which there has been a major split between the GOP centrists and the GOP supply-siders or right-wingers or newrighters or whatever we might want to label them...

...It appeared in the January issue of People and Taxes magazine under the headline: "The Split Between Supply-Siders and Corporate Lobbyists: The Untold Story...

...The point seems clear: Those who ignore the state ballot in 1984 are likely to repeat and compound their errors of the last several years...

...These are: first, the bailout of the International Monetary Fund...

...Thus when John Kenneth Galbraith says that "the typical corporate executive" does not work any harder today than three years ago, before his tax cut, Galbraith is as right as he is irrelevant...

...But this does not mean that they should not be thought of in relation to other things, and indeed such linkages are required of a global power worthy of the name...

...By 1980 there were 45, and in 1982, an off-presidential election year, 58...

...As a reading of popular sentiment, Mr...

...But each of the first three have come up for a direct vote, and in each case have enjoyed the support of virtually the entire establishment of both parties: Ronald Reagan, Tip O'Neill, Paul Volcker (except on Simpson-Mazzoli regarding which he's taken no position), the New York Times, the Washington Post, Robert Dole, Bob Michel, Howard Baker...

...Meanwhile, the continuing stagnation of Argentina, Nigeria, and other debtor nations suggests the issue will live on--at least until the IMF ceases to demand tax-hikes and inflationary currency devaluations as a price for its largess...

...That is why supl~ly-side economists such as Jude Wanniski understand that when it comes to incentives it is not the average person who necessarily counts...

...Hyatt won over not only the voters, but even the Boston Globe and much of an initially skeptical press...

...But "the character of Congress" is an elusive term...

...What we are really talking about is a principle typically used in economics, 14 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1984 the concept of marginality...

...I will have some ideas of my own in Washington...

...Wielding a bold agenda of new ideas, he forged the new Democratic Farmer Party--and the GOP didn't know what hit t h e m . . . For Maryland Republicans to succeed, they need to develop a more populist Republicanism, in the best sense of the word, which reaches out to the blue collar worker, the shopkeeper, and the struggling entrepreneur...

...i n c e even popular tidal waves can be blocked by a sufficiently obstinate Congress, the character of Congress might be said to be this election year's second political margin...

...to stop waiting around for the Kremlin and go it alone with a unilateral freeze...

...You know, I always read Jude Wanniski's arguments that the people understand economic policy instinctively, but I never believed it like I do now, after getting out and campaigning...

...He votes the labor line in a district that is heavily unionized...

...If we further assume that moderate Republican incumbents are safe in 1984--if they aren't, the argument which follows is only strengthened-then a handful of presently open or Democratic districts will prove to be the cutting edge of that cutting edge...

...Is it simply a matter of the number of seats held by Republicans as opposed to Democrats...

...And a recent Small Business Administration survey suggests they hire more women, minorities, youths, and first-time job seekers as well--an engine of opportunity that targets its benefits to the needy without a single bureaucrat present...

...But it was hardly obvious in November 1982...

...Long...

...William F. Buckley, Jr...

...that Proposition 13 succeeded in California...

...And Mrs...

...Yet to Smick, who as an aide to Kemp has watched the former football player roll up 80 percent of the vote and more in his blue-collar Buffalo district, it is all so simple...

...Republicans held majorities in both houses during the early Eisenhower years, and retained the Senate until 1958, yet John F. Kennedy arguably did more to implement a conservative agenda...

...Franklin Roosevelt may have crushed the Republicans in 1932, but his more lasting impact was his complete reshaping of the Democratic agenda and coalition...

...Such numbers alone tell us something about the popular mood, reflecting a growing dissatisfaction rates they indexed a few years ago, Peprich has launched a pre-emptive tax cut strike, offering to cut taxes by $225 million by July 1. Tax cuts are not the only issues finding their way onto the ballot this year...

...that supply-side unknown Jeff Bell stunned Senator Clifford Case in the New Jersey primary...

...More recently, he was one of a group of officials dedicated to eliminating the Department of Education...

...now America is in the British position of requiring new actors...

...If it was a referendum they were interested in, they should have looked at the referentHE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1984 15 d a . . . By 57 to 43 percent, Maine voters approved a measure to index the state income tax...

...The scorecard shows how close the balance of power between the GOP camps is...

...Gold is a good example of this...

...Minnesota's Rudy Peprich seems to have learned the lesson more quickly...

...Similarly, the idea of "Star Wars" was dismissed even more quickly, if not ridiculed...

...Republicans lost seats in the House and seemed to be on the defensive generally...

...Second, the propagation of the view that NATO was not simply an ordinary alliance between nation states but represented a supranational and spiritual entity known as "the West" made it seem indecent to think in selfinterested political terms...

...Adams provides a mine of information on the efforts of such Presidents as Jefferson and Jackson to reduce the tax burden, and notes that tax-cutting Presidents--and Congresses-are usually made, not born...

...People who track all 435 districts say there are Blackwells and Hyatts all over the country...

...Meanwhile, Howard Jarvis, Gann's co-eonspirator, has organized a "Save 13" resolution to overturn a series of state supreme court rulings that have watered down the tax cut's intended effect...

...Oregon cut some minor taxes, and it is worth noting that one of the nation's most radical tax reduction packages lost by just 1 percent...

...The Republicans also gained seats in both houses of Congress in 1966 and 1968, but no notably conservative agenda followed_9 They seized the Senate in 1946, and prepared to thump Harry Truman in 1948, but the landslide never developed...

...In that instance the United States was the new actor introduced...

...One does not want to be misunderstood: There is, of course, a sense in which "the West" does exist, but it does so as an entity characterized by certain shared values and traditions...

...In the last several months, however, more than ten Vermont towns have been voting for a different kind of freeze--on taxes...

...In Springfield, they said no to a proposed 46 percent increase in the school budget...

...it was the marginal person who was thrown out of work or who lost everything he owned in the stock market...

...The national legislature at this time contained strong, independent-minded, and intelligent m e n . . . Far from being a servile body, it played a vital and consistently underestimated role in shaping the New D e a l . . . In these early years, Congress was as often to the left of Roosevelt as to the right...

...Colechester, a Burlington suburb, refused a 16 percent tax hike that would have been devoted to "services...

...Others to watch are Minnesota's Pat Truman, Michigan's Tom Ritter, Oregon's Drew Davis, Indiana's Ken MacKenzie, and Judy Petty of Arkansas...

...The President will inevitably play to as many constituencies as he might plausibly attract, muddying the question of what his victory means...

...Smick, by contrast, helped draft the Kemp-Garcia enterprise zone bill now before Congress, and has written regularly on the subject for the Baltimore Sun...

...Nonetheless, it is strange to find so much discussion, particularly among conservatives, dominated by the race for the top spot...

...Well, of course it isn't an issue, in the sense that, five or six years ago, Kemp-Roth and tax cuts and enterprise zones weren't issues...

...It is no doubt easier to draw attention to the importance of intra-alliance politics in a general way than it is to propose particular strategies which might effect the kinds of changes required in this instance...

...Reagan's margin of victory--assuming victory-may tell us far less than is widely believed...

...The letters that flooded Capitol Hill over interest withholding, contrary to the Hive's drumbeat, had little to do with big banks...

...History suggests not...

...But economic growth and jobs and opportunity-these are issues, always will be...

...was so dominant for so long, and could get its way so easily, that it was unnecessary to think about it...

...In California, where voters have been frustrated by Sacramento's circumvention of Proposition 13--and by the legislature's intransigence generally-Paul Gann, an original Proposition 13 sponsor, has a proposal on the ballot that would greatly curtail the power of the assembly and state senate leadership...

...The House is the cutting edge...

...EST, November 6, my dial will be spinning from channel to channel to find out what is happening to congressional hopefuls David Smick, Gregory Hyatt, and Ken Blackwell...

...Interestingly, there is some evidence that such thinking may now have begun...

...Ironically enough, the best essay on this submerged Republican feud has been written by a Naderite, Tyler Bridges...

...During the Depression, the "average person" was employed, and "most companies" did not go broke...

...This is precisely how political parties are built," Smick wrote last fall in the Sun...

...Have you read anything about Vermont town meetings lately...

...published earlier this year by Devin-Adair, Greenwich, Connecticut...

...Last year Celeste had to battle a blue-collar tax cut initiative of his own, and the fight apparently took away any stomach for a rematch...

...These range from taking a more active, positive attitude toward the idea of a "Pacific Community," through stimulating the creation of social and economic institutions in the region (perhaps along OECD lines), to the setting up of mechanisms for political and strategic consultations on global issues with those countries in the regions that would be interested itt participating...

...He who cannot think on the margin is doomed to misunderstand the world, because he will think in terms of how the average businessman, or the median income-earner, or "most" corporations will react to a change in policy...

...Nor will the presidential election necessarily tell us much about the future policy direction of the country...

...Given this state of affairs on the left, all eyes should focus on the outcome of another inner-party squabble-between Republicans...

...Any of these steps, perhaps combined with a deliberate and measured "benign neglect" of purely European preoccupations for a while, would be likely to focus the minds of Europeans wonderfully...