Capitol Ideas/Chumps and Charleys
Bethell, Tom
CAPITOL IDEAS CHUMPS AND CHARLEYS T he principal difference between 1 Democrats and Republicans seems to be this: The Democrats don't understand government but they do understand politics; the...
...But I see I am out of space...
...2006 756 pages, hardcover, $14.95 920.45 #20.31 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1987 I1...
...Buchanan here represents the problem as excessive Republican decorum...
...By then the damage was done...
...A2, Gilroy, CA 95020 LibertyTree Network State THE OLD C„-,11 REVOLUTIONARIES by Pauline Maier Here is the breath-taking story of SAMUEL ADAMS, RICHARD HENRY LEE, and others who actually made the American Revolution...
...2016 150 min., set of 2 cass., $17.95 #2042 510 pages, paperback, $7.95 COMMON SENSE Ftlby Thomas Paine and THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE by Thomas Jefferson #2012 150 min., 2 cassettes, $17.95du Pont is the true candidate of new ideas...
...but about government spending I'm not so sure...
...To him that hath shall be given...
...Republicans say "me too" to that, but they have a different set of beneficiaries in mind...
...In any event, it is extremely important that control of the Republican party finally be wrested from the Country Clubbers who have taken up residence in Washington...
...Almost everything connected with government is expected to be open to public scrutiny...
...Not like Cranston and Biden and Kerry and the rest...
...What looks so bad about the details coming out in the Iran-contra hearings is not so much the substance THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1987 9 of policy as the furtive, guilt-ridden way it was carried out...
...Republicans must believe they will triumph in the conflict that results 1986 ANNUAL REPORT RKOVTELEVISION Broadcast to over 12 million viewers RKOVRADIO Broadcast to over 8 million listeners RKOVPICTURES Produced 6 feature films RKOVBOTTLERS Produced over 30 million cases of Pepsi and Dr...
...It wouldn't be so good for the country if government only helped poor people and minorities...
...According to the "new morality," acardinal virtue of our times is "openness...
...The Democrat can't either but then by his lights, and by the lights of the income transfer programs that were started in the 1930s, government is supposed to be a team player, not a referee...
...In which case why wasn't the money transferred openly, in full view of the media...
...But a President can recommend that the entire pool be reduced...
...In particular, f_.is problem is appropriate for a presidential candidate to address: A congressman can hardly decline to extract benefits from the common pool...
...Isaid earlier that the Republicans, like the Democrats, believe in government-as-player rather than government-as-umpire...
...Now, at last, President Reagan says that he did too have permission to send money to the contras...
...by Adrienne Koch and William Peden This powerful biography and collection of JEFFERSON's writings reveals the basis of his enormous influence as a leader of the American Revolution...
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...Anyone who talks about cutting programs will be demagogued to death, Kemp's people fear...
...Government is something the two parties are supposed to take turns at, like teams at bat...
...It is also where the campaign for the 1988 Republican nomination comes in...
...Set I: The Background and Debate #1097 5 hrs., 4 cassettes, $39.95 Set II: The Documents #1098 5 hrs., 4 cassettes, $39.95 Complete Sets of I and II #109910 hrs., 8 sass., $69.95 SM QUAN TITY THE WEALTH OF NATIONS 1'2025 (2 vol), by Adam Smith Perhaps the most influential economics work of all time, The Wealth of Nations is an extensive study of economic laws and the 2036 harmful effects of government encroachments into free markets...
...But first they must believe in their own principles and believe they are important enough to fight for...
...Would it...
...Conciliation becomes the order of the day...
...Your average Establishment Republican just can't conceive of government as a neutral enterprise, with a role analogous to that of the referee in football...
...Kemp, Kristol & Co...
...In any event, Reagan's "over the cliff" metaphor points up what has all along been his great weakness—his timidity and his unwillingness to risk his own political capital...
...More and more of his friends at Chumps and Charleys, the club for Republican by Tom Bethell Businessmen in Government that he joined, seem to be getting into trouble on "ethics...
...He looks in the mirror in the morning . . . Guilty as charged...
...Openness means making the news media work for you...
...Another Watergate," everyone seems to be saying...
...Remember, he doesn't get honors and laurels the way the Democrats do—being called compassionate for spending other people's money...
...2011 417 pages, hardcover, $29.95 I—I THE IDEOLOGICAL ,2.11 ORIGINS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION by Bernard Bailyn, Ph.D...
...Probably nothing much to it other than trying to make an honest buck, but of course you daren't say that because you'll be next to get the treatment...
...Something must be done about the budgetary common-pool problem (the congressman who forgoes benefits for his constituents merely leaves more for everyone else), and the ever-rising tide of government spending it generates...
...He becomes convinced of the need for more bilingual education funding...
...We'll call for a special prosecutor and when it comes to the televised hearings at least some of us will be up there among the accusers, looking respectable...
...I'm not sure I agree, however...
...Something will be salvaged...
...the demagoguery facing the program-cutter is fatal...
...Irving Kristol, a Kemp supporter and unofficial adviser, has even suggested in the Wall Street Journal that since the money is going to be spent anyway the Republicans might as well spend more rather than less and take credit for "compassion...
...That is politics...
...A s a party, Republicans tend to have so little sense of legitimacy or conviction about their policies that they often believe the only way they can be implemented is secretly, in the dead of night...
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...But first they must acquire a sense of the rightness and legitimacy of their own policies...
...You're just looking out for your buddies," he catches himselfthinking...
...the Republicans understand neither...
...Even if his party is in the majority he still thinks of himself as the "loyal opposition...
...In 1980 the supply-siders understood that taxation was the problem and that spending was far inferior to it in the hierarchy of problems...
...First the Democrats help the poor people, or try to...
...Get the best lawyers and see if we can't plea bargain...
...bagmen and Swiss bank accounts and so on...
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...Armed with this self-confidence, they can fearlessly take their ideas to the TV cameras and thence to the nation...
...At least the American people won't think we're all crooks...
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...Perhaps you meant interest...
...It is a natural aspect of democracy and free markets...
...In his "Memorandum for the President," published in Newsweek after leaving the White House, Pat Buchanan wrote: "If—as you have more than once reminded me—the problem with True Believers is that they always want to 'go over the cliff with flags flying,' the problem with Establishment Republicans is that they abhor the unseemliness of a political brawl...
...The cliff metaphor tries to make a virtue of this defect by misrepresenting the real world of politics: If you go over a cliff, you do indeed die...
...Now I worry that the same insight may no longer apply, yet Kemp and his supply-side team will be sticking to the 1980 play book...
...Kemp is good on almost all issues...
...And fear of recipient wrath seems to be a basic tenet of Rep...
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...Democrats think government is an institution that is meant to take sides, helping some people at the expense of others...
...Maybe I should say Establishment Republicans or Wall Street Republicans or Country Club Republicans, but I won't because the great disappointment of the Reagan years has been that a transfer of power within the party seemed possible but never happened: the Country Clubbers remained firmly in control (thanks largely to Reagan himself...
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...I shall have to continue my ruminations on the GOP next month...
...It could also be that QUANTITY COMMON SENSE, THE RIGHTS OF MAN, AND OTHER ESSENTIAL WRITINGS by Thomas Paine The powerful writings on human liberty that sparked revolutions in America and countries around the world...
...Let's make it bipartisan," he says at Chumps one night...
...The Country Club Republican new to Washington soon begins to have doubts about his own moral legitimacy...
...This is where change is needed...
...The problem they face, of course, is that "government" now means a trillion-dollar pot of taxpayers' funds in Washington, from which 535 legislators are entitled to siphon off benefits for their constituents...
...That is what I mean when I say that Republicans don't understand politics...
...He's careful to say "he or she" whenever appropriate (wouldn't want the little lady to accuse him of sexism...
...Unquestionably the finest book on the ideas of liberty that generated the American Revolutionary War...
...Republicans might as well get used to this idea because it's not going away...
...Instead of fiddling about with gifts from Saudi Arabia and transfers from the Sultan of Brunei, Reagan should have welcomed the various Boland Amendments (preventing U.S...
...the Republicans help theirs...
...And as Gary Hart recently discovered, it is expanding—becoming applicable to more and more facets of public life...
...Use the Boland Amendment itself as a platform from which to address the American people, educate the American people, and excoriate the Democrats for their inability to grasp the Communist threat in this hemisphere...
...He sees the hearts and minds contest this way: The Democratic party, to give credit where it's due, consists of non-needy politicians (like Ted Kennedy) valiantly helping needy people...
...It is hopeless to argue with this or try to do anything about it...
...Bristles with wit and intellectual energy...
...The outstanding, Pulitzer Prize finalist on the men and ideas behind the Constitution...
...by Charles S. Hyneman and Donald S. Lutz A seminal selection of the highest intellectual quality, containing seventy-six pieces which shaped the founding of America...
...More to the point, it's not a bad idea...
...to be avoided as a first priority...
...by Walter Cronkite Especially produced for the Bicentennial, here is the authoritative and fascinating story of our Constitution...
...But that is what great political revolutions like Andy Jackson's and FDR's are all about...
...And why didn't Reagan tell us this six months ago, if that is what he thought...
...The Democrats help their friends and then Tom Bethel...
...But he left it until 1986—about four years too late...
...Our friend tries to be ingratiating, talking about the need for bipartisan consensus, a responsible tax increase before recess, an "expansion" of civil rights immediately...
...is a visiting media fellow at the Hoover Institution and The American Spectator's Washington correspondent...
...All of which brings me to Vice President George Bush and Senator Bob Dole and their high standing in the polls...
...Accepting the Democrats' rules of the game (the ref plays for one of the teams), Republicans labor under a grave handicap...
...Maier makes her subjects live...
...there is something disinterested in their actions...
...He may be premature about the latter (although I believe Social Security will eventually have to be phased out...
...Hunker down, our man instinctively thinks...
...He worries that he's in Washington on sufferance, or because there's a need for a minority party...
...Jack Kemp's campaign...
...Cr #1011 353 pages, paperback, $9.95 THE FEDERALIST PAPERS by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay These famous articles, written during the bitter debate over the Constitution, formed the basis for our resulting federal system of government...
...Perhaps this comes down to the same thing as insufficient self-confidence...
...ETHNIC AMERICA A stimulating history of nine of America's largest ethnic groups, this powerful book questions the merits of government racial policies and shows that "there is no single majority but rather a icomplex mosaic...
...They came in for much criticism from liberals, libertarians, and conservatives for this great insight...
...Republicans must establish that they, and they alone, are defenders of the rule of law and the equal application of the laws...
...And they may be right...
...Likewise it is true that Reagan did finally embrace inter-party conflict in pushing for contra-funding, and he won...
...Pulitzer Prize #2004 335 pages, paperback, $8.95 [7,71 by Thomas Sowell, Ph.D...
...Absolutely excellent...
...The Republican party is going to have to do better than this if it is to become the party of principle, not interest—eager to take its case to the people rather than tiptoeing around the congressional obstacle course...
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...And still the Washington Post won't let up...
...The overriding political principle is that winning or losing any particular vote in Congress is less important than using that vote to illuminate party differences...
...And promise—promise!—that the contras won't get one cent of help until the Boland Amendment is lifted and the Democrats decide it is time to get serious about Communism and help our neighbors to the south...
...Not a member of Chumps, I hasten to add...
...Next thing there is to be this commission of inquiry...
...taxpayer transfers to the contras...
...Then the Republicans help rich people --or businessmen, or the existing business community...
...secrecy means having them come after you...
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...But if you lose a vote in the legislature, you can emerge all the stronger from it—as Reagan himself did recently, to give him his due, in his overridden veto of the pork-laden highway bill...
...For those who don't understand or try to resist, politics becomes impossible...
...I don't know about you, but I really am looking forward to a Republican President who doesn't go on vacation to Palm Springs...
...Pete du Pont is calling for the abolition of farm subsidies and privatizing Social Security...
...This may very well be true...
...may indeed be correct...
...He's uneasy because he never rises much above thinking that the business of America is business, therefore the business of government is business...
...Morally, he assumes a defensive crouch...
...Alas, it could be...
...What an opportunity to make the Democrats look bad...
...Further, they can be confident that a vote lost in the Senate or the House on Monday will only advance their standing with the public on Tuesday...
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...Whereas the Democrats graciously play for the losing side, the Republicans find themselves stuck with the winners...
...from adherence to principle...
...My friend and Hoover neighbor Mikhail Bernstam points out that as long as this common pool exists, politicians who high-mindedly decline to extract their share (or better, more than their share) are bound to be penalized by the voters...
...But can it really be unwise to campaign for changes that are just and that more and more people recognize as just...
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...Whereas look at us (the Republican continues): non-needy politicians helping non-needy people...
...Did you say principle, or principal...
...2008 288 pages, paperback, $8.95 AMERICAN POLITICAL I WRITINGS DURING THE FOUNDING ERA (2 vol), ed...
...I can almost hear Bob Dole joking at Chumps...
...If the Republicans only knew it they could take this idea and make it work for them...
...CHRISTIAN SI:1 rSCIENCE MONITOR O #2015 359 pages, paperback, $12.95 ELECTED WRITINGS THE LIFE AND OF THOMAS JEFFERSON ed...
...Unfortunately, the key opponent of such a strategy in the Reagan Administration has been Ronald Reagan himself...
Vol. 20 • July 1987 • No. 7
