Capitol Ideas/Ducks and Bees

...He will be more realistic and more pragmatic than he has been,' said Deaver [according to the Chronicles of Cannon], who is expected to leave for a major public relations job after directing next month's inauguration...

...For lame duck President read lame duck electorate...

...He will either have to trade away America's security-and I am sure he will do no such thing-or he will have to face a full-scale Hive assault for having permitted "the talks to fail...

...They know that the real reason we have so much government is that they have worked tirelessly for fifty years to attain that goal, and that the popular will, insofar as it has to be taken into account (and alas it does, because the Constitution mandates elections), has been and remains the principal obstacle to further expansions of government power and liberal (meaning illiberal) influence...

...As I say, someone should tell Reagan that he is walking into a trap...

...The 22nd Amendment, limiting presidential terms, was ratified in 1951 and specifically did not apply to Truman...

...But the minute Reagan was re-elected they were singing a different and more triumphant tune...

...Indeed, the liberals would like to believe it themselves...

...In Europe, Britain especially, there was a sizable working class, so at least for a time the socialist elites could enjoy leading troops who followed voluntarily...

...What he should realize is quite simply this: Our negotiating partner in arms control talks will be the Soviet Union...

...the hunt for new euphemisms is a never-ending business for the working bees of the Press, whose industriousness I salute...

...The precedents Kaiser alludes to-Nixon's and Eisenhower's second terms-are also the only periods in U.S...

...Gentlemen, the liberals want us to believe that the extensiveness of government is mere response to the will of the people...

...There the policy analysts with gleams in their eyes and plans in their pockets also have dachas in the countryside, and-what a relief!-they can go about their business without having to worry about the voters...

...On the next day (December 9) Cannon chronicled: "Reagan is said to be entranced by the notion of being a 'peace president,' but he prefers the phrase 'arms reduction' to the more customary 'arms control.'"(All right Ronnie, the Hive will be glad to make that little concession on your behalf...

...Supporters of arms control agreements in this country, including State Department and White House officials, are, to the extent that they hunt for a formula that will yield "successful negotiations," promoting positions that harmonize with Soviet positions...

...After five years, the Sandinistas were sufficiently in control in Nicaragua to stage an election...

...history when we have experienced a lame duck electorate...

...It is true that the electorate is in one sense now reduced to lame duck status, but in others it will certainly be heard from...

...or he is going to have to take on the ducks who have been supporting him for twenty years...

...Note the linguistic imprecision, with "conservatives" in apposition to "pressures of time and circumstance...

...I think that he does not...

...perhaps one should say especially the lowest income...

...Jimmy Carter, the only Democrat elected President in twenty years, succeeded in blurring his identity in the '76 campaign...

...But deep down they know it isn't true...

...This becomes clear when you realize that someone who runs for President cannot be harmed by being clearly labeled a conservative...

...Neither the Nixon nor the Eisenhower second term offers much by way of encouragement to conservatives, as Kaiser suggests...

...For a while after World War II the left could entertain the hope that its programs enjoyed popular support...

...Some conservatives, I'm afraid, have deluded themselves into thinking that this is to their advantage: No longer is it necessary for the Administration to appease all those special interest groups-senior-citizen lobbies and so on-who are responsible for our fattened government...

...Does Reagan have the slightest idea what he is getting into here...

...The only way he can get "success" in negotiations is by doing what the Soviets want...

...Republicans," he wrote, "have a landslide winner at the helm, but they also have something Washington hasn't seen (except in the unrevealing special case of Richard M. Nixon) in a quarter century: a lame duck President...

...As I see it, the bad news for conservatives is that Reagan no longer has to face the electorate, and therefore worry about what they think...

...At least some liberals in the U.S...

...The dirty secret of those on the left is that they are profoundly antagonistic-to elections...

...Someone should give Rip Van Reagan a shake and warn him (although I suspect it's already too late to change anything...

...And the Soviet goal is to dominate the world...

...From Reagan's point of view, no good can come of this...

...How Reagan can have placed himself at the mercy of people of such poor political acumen is perhaps the major mystery of his Administration...

...are well aware that their agenda is congruent with socialism, and as long as the electorate knows it too liberalism will get little encouragement in the voting booth...

...But this is one of those false analyses that has been quietly encouraged all along by the shapers of the liberal consensus...

...Liberals by contrast, are famous for rejecting labels...

...As far as the present Administration is concerned, President Reagan for reasons that remain obscure has chosen to insulate himself with a senior layer of advisers-I am thinking of the pragmatic firm of Shultz, McFarlane, Baker, Darman & Deaver-who are more in sympathy with Inner Beltway analysis than they are with the electorate...

...Is it surprising then that our liberal analogues find it so difficult to criticize the Soviet system...

...they must have known that the people knew only too well what they had to offer...

...The Soviet Union does not have the best interests of the United States at heart...

...In fully Communist countries, of course, there are no elections...

...He's either going to have to take on the Hive at full swarm...

...The truth is that the electorate exerts a conservative or restraining influence on the ambitions of practically every enthusiast who came to Washington with a gleam in his eye and a plan in his pocket...

...This explains the liberals' constant attempts to disguise not only their identity, even from themselves (the word "liberal" is itself such a disguise of course), but also to disguise their agenda, which they represent as procedure (fairness) rather than substance (equality...

...Incidentally, it is probably just as well for America that the country has not yet experienced the combination of a lame duck electorate and an incumbent Democrat...

...Why this Deaver has chosen to work at all for a man whom he evidently considers unrealistic, I don't know...

...But notice that in El Salvador the left boycotted elections...

...Robert McFarlane is then identified as opining that "the President's commitment to getting success goes back many years...

...We are all set for a big uproar of buzzing or quacking or both, and I wouldn't be surprised if pragmatic heads roll in response.tic heads roll in response...

...But by then there may well be a big row developing in Washington requiring his attention...

...At that point I imagine that Mr...

...Possibly in his case he really did not know himself what it was that he stood for or believed in, and in this of course he resembled many liberals, who are quite sincere when they say they "reject labels...

...According to the Chronicles of Cannon in the Washington Post, Reagan by no means appreciates the dilemma that now confronts him: "Now, say officials, Reagan has made arms control a high priority of his administration, reflecting the view urged by advisers that he could leave office as a 'peace president' if he succeeds...

...Today the political future looks bleak for explicitly socialist parties in Europe...

...As Lou Cannon put it in the Washington Post: "While some conservatives say they think Reagan, now that he can no longer run again, will be more ideological in his second term, others say the pressures of time and circumstance will make him more flexible...

...Reagan himself seemed to go into a protracted hibernation, but by the latter half of January somebody will presumably have aroused him, so that he may emerge in time to read the Inaugural Address...

...But . the point that I would like to make is that these people-Deaver & Co.-are going to get President Reagan into big trouble before very long, if they haven't already gone a long way in that direction, on the topic of arms control...

...Lame ducks may not be able to walk to the polls but they sure can quack, as Reagan will soon hear...

...Thus the liberals sense, probably correctly, that the present moment is an opportunity for them, notwithstanding their earlier bogus alarums to the effect that a re-elected Reagan, free at last from the moderating influence of the voters, would proceed full speed ahead to implement his right-wing ideology...

...Soon thereafter he will be expected not merely to stand outside the Capitol building, but to go inside it, there to read a second speech, entitled the State of the Union Address...

...Since then, socialism's dependence on brute force has become more and more apparent...

...Leftists know that their preferred policies involve above all an assault on individual liberty, and they know also that this is not popular with even the lowest income voters...

...Three years ago I checked with the Nexis computerized word-retrieval system and at the time all label rejecters were liberals...

...That's what Within-the-Beltway advocates really mean by lame duck, and alas there is ample justification for their relishing this state of affairs, even if their analyses are not forthrightly expressed...

...And they surely find it easier to press Beltway opinion upon the President now that they know he doesn't have to bother too much about what the electorate thinks...

...That is one reason why domestic liberals have invested so much effort and hope and political capital in the judicial, or unelected, branch of government...

...There was a scarcely disguised gloating, for example, in a recent article by Robert G. Kaiser, an associate editor of the Washington Post whose job it is to furnish left-of-center policy analysis for the Within-the-Beltway crowd...

...But this has weakened as capitalism has slowly spread...

...Reagan will be free to return to California, if he so wishes, where he may chop wood and ride horses to his heart's content...

...Can it be that McFarlane doesn't know this yet...

...But, according to Cannon's Chronicle, the very people who should be warning Reagan about what he is getting into are the ones who are pushing him into it...