White House Politics/The Devil and Mr. Reagan
Barnes, Fred
White House Politics THE DEVIL AND MR. REAGAN by Fred Barnes In a stretch of about three minutes in the first presidential debate last October, two different Ronald Reagans appeared on stage in...
...Roosevelt was the master of this tactic, allowing the slings and arrows of friends and enemies to be directed at his Brain Trust and Cabinet...
...Expect it to continue...
...And Reagan thinks of the contras as freedom fighters, which they are, and any treaty acceptable to Nicaragua would sell them out...
...For some breathtakingly naive reason, a large number of conservatives believe that Reagan would dearly love to settle the disagreement in his second administration, embracing the ideologues as brethren and dismissing the pragmatists as interlopers...
...One, the numbers are inflated...
...A new personnel shift is brewing for the second term, one dependent largely on Baker's ability to fulfill his ambition to get a top Cabinet job...
...The pragmatist troika accedes when Reagan goes on an ideological binge...
...Reagan simply doesn't mind what Shultz is doing...
...The scheme was undone only when Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, CIA Director William Casey, UN...
...He's always willing to work hard if the goal is significant and achievable...
...It's the difference between something that is event-making and eventful...
...However, this was prompted by constraints of the reelection campaign and the budget deficit...
...To the ideologues, this is wrongheaded in the extreme...
...Thus, he was first expressing his own view and then that of his advisers...
...Compromise...
...All Reagan has to do is forge a compromise, which is no easy feat, and lead the tax reform army as it conquers Congress...
...And like the good pragmatist he often is, he's willing to let Shultz deal to get one...
...But the ideologues can probably count on the Soviets to save the day by demanding such a one-sided pact that Shultz and Reagan will have to balk...
...He's not so flaccid that he wouldn't act were he upset about it...
...Paul Volcker resigns as Fed chairman...
...Reagan alone is both at once...
...In all likelihood, such a treaty is a figment of the imagination...
...look for encouragement of the contras...
...And if his second term is not marred by a deep recession, major scandal, or foreign policy failure, he is likely to emerge alongside Roosevelt as one of the twin towers of twentieth-century politics...
...Kemp is too ideological for the pragmatists, Bush too pragmatic for the ideologues...
...This is hogwash, of course...
...Shultz and his minions are pursuing the treaty option, negotiating to see if a pact can be reached that would prevent Nicaragua from becoming another Cuba, exporting Communist revolution...
...They protested vigorously, and Reagan readily agreed with them...
...Deaver and Darman, both Baker's boys, leave the White House, if they haven't already...
...He couldn't have been more wrong...
...When William Clark left as national security adviser in 1983 to become Interior Secretary, the President went along with a scheme that would have made Deaver the White House chief of staff, replacing Baker, and Baker the new national security chief...
...Nothing more than the ambivalence of Reagan himself...
...The ideologues question whether treaties are worth the paper they are written on, whether they are reached with the Sandinistas or the Soviets...
...And two, Congress won't go along anyway...
...This is akin to saying the Devil made him do it...
...He was on the left...
...Naturally, pragmatists in the Congress and the White House-but not Darman, whose influence was growing-complained that tax reform wouldn't help the deficit...
...So look for Reagan to compromise on this, getting what cuts he can without jeopardizing his political manhood...
...Would the ideologues settle for strong words but little action on social issues from George Bush...
...And this isn't going to change, no matter whom he staffs his Administration with...
...And it is now Darman who seems most eager to make what there is of a Reagan Revolution permanent through forcing the Federal Reserve to stop strangling economic growth and by bringing about historic tax reform with lower rates and fewer loopholes...
...The more the aides are pilloried, the more the President stays above the fray, looks statesmanlike, and is swimmingly successful...
...That was Reagan the conservative ideologue talking...
...Since Reagan doesn't want one, it will be his aides who are responsible...
...I'm not going to increase taxes," he declared flatly, absolutely, and without qualification...
...Believe me, there is more than mere idle chatter about this scheme...
...Reagan knows this...
...Reagan wasn't dragooned into it...
...Come 1987 or thereabouts, things change...
...What is misunderstood about the Reagan Administration is where the tension lies...
...And what does this disagreement between the ideologues and pragmatists represent...
...he doesn't do much to see these issues through...
...Shortly after the Treasury Department issued an elegant, if improvable, tax reform plan, Irving Kristol declared in the Wall Street Journal that the whole issue was "dead" for 1985...
...Under the fashionable two-Reagans approach, it will be easy to assess the blame if Reagan succumbs to pressure for a tax increase...
...It was Baker, after all, who masterminded congressional passage of the 1981 tax cut...
...The popular feeling in Washington is that he'll dog it for the next four years, spending so much time at his ranch in California that the term "Western White House" will regain respectability...
...There aren't two Ronald Reagans...
...Don't look for a treaty...
...Finally, there are social issues-abortion, school prayer, tuition tax credits, feminism...
...The evidence is...
...But his aides, many of them anyway, are not so ideological, and they whisper in his ear a lot...
...Given that record, does anyone accept at face value Reagan's assurance that he won't raise taxes in 1985...
...White House aides always make a convenient scapegoat, and you can almost gauge a President's success by the amount of blame that is heaped on them...
...And guess who has played the issue both ways in his public comments over the years...
...But would Reagan's decisions be different should there be another cast of advisers strutting in and out of the Oval Office...
...At least that's the conventional way Reagan is regarded in Washington...
...Compared to this, a package of spending cuts and a tax increase is a piffle, an achievement of Jimmy Carter proportions...
...And how hard is he willing to work, at 74 and counting, on behalf of his conservative agenda...
...it's not lip service...
...Democrats who had jumped out front in opposition to the Treasury plan quickly figured which way the momentum is drifting...
...A package of cuts that large is illusory for two reasons...
...Reagan doesn't know yet...
...The vigor with which ideologues and pragmatists fight over economic issues pales next to the fury of the combatants in the two major foreign policy issues of Reagan's second term, Nicaragua and arms control...
...He's the ideologue, they're the pragmatists...
...You don't have to worry about Reagan's energy level, though...
...Reagan's ambivalence, which he cherishes because it serves him so well politically, makes it hard to chart the course of his second term...
...Only Reagan is a strong enough force to overcome the centrifugal force that pulls them apartv He is one politician both factions agree on, the ideologues because they think he's one of them, the pragmatists because they admire his ability to sway voters and win elections...
...Funny, huh...
...As a pragmatist, he is able to deal, to compromise, even to surrender if that suits him...
...he reads Evans & Novak and the New York Times...
...Were he to fight as aggressively for an anti-abortion bill as he did for the tax increase of 1982, it might come close to passing...
...Not between his instincts and his aides, but between the two sides of his political personality...
...If only Reagan knew what Shultz was up to, conservatives moan...
...Talk about an ornament for a second term...
...Some business lobbyists suggested a few changes in the Treasury bill might get them on board...
...REAGAN by Fred Barnes In a stretch of about three minutes in the first presidential debate last October, two different Ronald Reagans appeared on stage in Louisville and before a television audience of millions...
...The opposite may be true on a nuclear arms control agreement with the Soviets...
...This is the opportunity to enact a landmark reform of the tax code that lowers personal and corporate rates, tosses out uneconomic tax preferences, and invigorates the entire economy...
...Besides, it's difficult to achieve...
...A phalanx of conservative ideologues moves in, including Kirkpatrick as the new national security adviser...
...Still Reagan is a frustrating figure, especially for conservatives...
...Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, and Clark got wind of it...
...Never say never...
...In that happenstance, maybe he'd raise taxes...
...Maybe he'll fall for it...
...The ideologues want to go with an undiluted conservative agenda, push it relentlessly and take no prisoners...
...At the outset of the second Reagan Administration, Shultz is clearly in charge on arms control, and he wants a treaty...
...he has before...
...On this one, Reagan is likely to go with the ideologues...
...Conservatives can never relax in the comfort of knowing that Reagan will automatically stick to the right line...
...Don't count on it...
...It is his genius as a politician...
...The pragmatists insist that treaties, if carefully crafted, can insure a secure peace...
...pragmatist rushed to the podium, arriving just in time to handle the follow-up question about whether he had really meant to rule out, once and for all, any tax hike in his second term in the White House...
...Go for a tax hike and you'll be able to bargain for more spending cuts, the Republicans, including folks in the White House like budget director David Stockman, tell Reagan...
...Well, not really, this Reagan said...
...it's that they don't matter much...
...Nope...
...It's not between a saintly President who wants to do the conservative thing in all instances and perfidious aides who are closet liberals...
...The tricky question involves a tax increase...
...His name was Roosevelt...
...Be pragmatic...
...This is the guy, remember, who pushed through the historic three-year, supply-side tax cut of 1981, then followed it with four tax increases over the next three years...
...Fat chance...
...Clark returns to the White House as chief of staff...
...The question was about taxes-not a bad question either, since I happen to have asked it-and Reagan uncorked a sweeping answer...
...There is but one, and he happens to be a blend of ideologue and pragmatist...
...But he does...
...The answer is not much, for Reagan would still be torn...
...And sure enough, Reagan, reflecting their influence, backed off from any unqualified statement on taxes...
...As a sheer political matter, Reagan uses social issues brilliantly, talking them up enough to win the cheers of New Right conservatives but not enough to alarm conservatives and moderates who abhor them...
...And those in favor of tax reform, like Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey, proclaimed themselves ready to negotiate a bipartisan compromise...
...Besides, ideologues such as Casey and Weinberger are constantly reminding him that the Sandinistas are not agrarian reformers...
...Let me hammer away at this point from another angle, namely the overrated philosophical split that rigples through the entire Administration...
...The appearance of two Reagans in Louisville fits nicely with the conventional wisdom about the man, namely that he is a committed ideologue sur...
...True, both of these aides have sought to scale back the military buildup and to script Reagan's appearances with happy talk about arms control...
...The great reconciler of the two factions will become something of a lame duck, the more so as the race for the 1988 Republican presidential nomination accelerates...
...The pragmatists want a sharply modified conservative agenda, one less likely to clash with the institutional arrangements and business-as-usual political culture of Washington...
...too strong that the Sandinistas are hell-bent on turning all of Central America into a swatch of near-totalitarian countries that would be Jhe delight of visiting American clergymen...
...Here the disagreement is fundamental...
...Nonsense...
...The simple truth is that Reagan wants an arms treaty with the Soviets of one kind or another...
...the actual amount being cut is far less...
...Reagan isn't given to grand gestures like that on either personnel or policy...
...Even if Congress were willing to knuckle under in a fight, what's in it for Reagan to expend a full measure of political capital to be remembered as the President who pared the deficit from $200 billion to $175 billion...
...It is classic Reagan...
...He does, he does...
...As he prepared for his second term, Reagan backed Weinberger, an ideologue, on protecting the military buildup while tacitly supporting Shultz, a pragmatist, in his replacement of conservative political appointees at the State Department with bureaucrats from the striped-pants set...
...Probably not...
...Baker jumps in at either Treasury or State...
...he readily agreed and a press release announcing the changes was prepared...
...Reagan, in fact, doesn't appear to give a hoot about who fills what job...
...This helps Reagan and keeps the issues alive...
...Gag writer Robert Orben says Reagan will stay in Washington so little that he'll start showing slides of his precious moments at the White House to his California pals...
...rounded by clever pragmatists...
...It's between the two sides of Reagan, ideological and pragmatic...
...By combining the two styles, Reagan has become the most successful President in four decades...
...And he doesn't always pick the same one...
...Would the pragmatists who want to raise taxes defer to Jack Kemp the way they have to Reagan...
...And that's when fragmentation is threatened, the ideologues going one way, the pragmatists the other...
...But quickly the ideologue exited, and Reagan the Washington, D.C...
...practically any White House aide would have given Reagan the same advice...
...It's not that aides don't matter...
...Treasury Secretary Donald Regan or Secretary of State George Shultz replaces him at the Fed...
...To get one, he is willing to make some concessions, not big ones, to the Soviets to get them back to the bargaining table...
...It's their turn, not the Reagan Administration's, to come up with a concession or two...
...There is enormous pressure from Republican pragmatists in the Senate to boost taxes as part of a deficit reduction package...
...Reagan lets the darts fly undeterred at James Baker, Michael Deaver, and Richard Darman, the triumvirate that runs the White House staff...
...But there's a rub...
...But would it really make any difference...
...It is an approach that is at once ideological and pragmatic...
...Four years of toughness have softened the Soviets, they argue, so let them crawl...
...Think back when there was another political figure of this sort...
...As an unswerving conservative, a rallying point of the American right for two decades, he has no intention of raising taxes, and that's just what he said...
...They disagree on nearly every major issue that confronts the second Reagan Administration: the economy, tax reform, Central America, arms control, social issues...
...But there is a counterpressure this time...
...Reagan loves these issues, and he talks like a sincere ideologue about all of them...
...That's right, four-the "tax reform" hike in 1982, the gas tax boost and the Social Security tax increase in 1983, and the deficit "downpayment" last year...
...Only when the split confronts him in the form of some specific unavoidable issue is Reagan willing to pick sides...
...Which is why you shouldn't expect to see Reagan breaking his back to push $40-odd billion in spending cuts every year...
...As an ideologue, he has an agenda, and he has been remarkably effective in imposing it on Washington...
...It is not easy to predict what he is going to do...
...Thomas DeFrank of Newsweek jokes that when Reagan gets whipped up about some issue he might even be spurred to spend a few sleepless afternoons in the Oval Office...
...It'll be conservative, but how conservative...
...If only Reagan knew what Shultz is doing, you say...
...Once more, it's between the ideologues and the pragmatists...
...people like Governor Mario Cuomo and Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York reversed themselves...
...Three, four, and five cushion shots are talked about...
...His name was Roosevelt.he left...
...Why, he could imagine a circumstance under which all the fat had been cut from the budget and all conceivable revenues collected from the economic recovery-and still a federal budget deficit was looming large...
Vol. 18 • February 1985 • No. 2
