Capitol Ideas/Dole's Bitter Medicine
Bethell, Tom
CAPITOL IDEAS DOLE'S BITTER MEDICINE T he correlation of political forces is I of exceptional interest as we enter the election year. The October stock market drop inexplicably gave the Beltway...
...rr he conventional wisdom in Wash-1 ington as I write is that George Bush will win the nomination and the presidency in 1988...
...One of the few books to extensively explore such an important topic, this classic study is now available again...
...By that he means he wants to raise our taxes...
...1 item on the supply-side agenda) is indeed the easy way—helpful to all (even to tax-collectors...
...Why me...
...Sensible, knowing in the ways of Washington...
...Especially if he's peddling bitter medicine...
...Neil Bush called Pat Robertson's supporters "cockroaches," who "issued from the baseboards of the Bible Belt," according to the Dartmouth Review of October 21...
...I'm certain when it first happened I was bitter, like anyone would be," Dole recalled...
...That comment about "low company" brings to mind a remark by the Vice President's son, Neil Bush, speaking to the Gamma Delta Chi fraternity at Dartmouth recently...
...The deficit is the issue," he keeps on saying...
...Name Address City/State/Zip Mail to: Liberty Fund, Inc...
...As Kemp's aide, John Mueller put it, the definition of the inch cannot be determined by the number of rulers...
...On this issue, at least, Dole stands shoulder to shoulder with his Capitol Hill colleagues, Sen...
...Mondale's forthright boast that he would raise taxes...
...If I had been Mon-dale I wouldn't have addressed it quite that way," Dole said...
...I record this as an interesting snap shot of conventional Beltway wisdom one year before the election...
...On Strategic Defense, for example, Dole said that the Soviets "may be catching up, or whatever...
...Dole is the Republican who wants to administer castor oil to the electorate...
...High rates of taxation do constitute just such an obstacle to trade...
...philosophy, psychology and the social sciences, Professor Schoeck elucidates the very destructive aspects of envy as well as the positive role it can play...
...Personally I am with the supply-siders in hoping that Jack Kemp wins the nomination...
...In 1980 Dole accused the supplysiders of peddling snake oil...
...They like his neatly edited sound bites, his scornful cracks, and of course they like the fact that he can be relied upon to implement the liberal agenda under cover of fiscal responsibility...
...How about Senator Bitter Medicine, champion of Deficit Reduction...
...Dick Gephardt...
...They like his wife, Elizabeth Dole, knowing as they do that she worships at the shrine of Women's Issues...
...an arrangement that conservative Republicans threaten and liberal Democrats validate...
...It is the unit whereby the market's performance itself is measured...
...I asked supply-sider and Polyconomics president Jude Wanniski how he felt about the Dole campaign...
...Dole has been Andreas's most steadfast legislative assistant on the Hill...
...The worst thing about Dole, and I don't think anyone remembers it," Wanniski said, "is that the day after Ronald Reagan won his 1980 victory—flying on the wings of Kemp-Roth, expansion, optimism, sweeping in a Republican Senate—Dole, the designated chairman of the Senate Finance Committee said: 'Now is not the time to cut taxes!' He was part of the Kauffman-Greenspan-Stockman cabal trying to side-track the Reagan revolution right at the beginning...
...Gilder said that the latter of these two scenes was cut from the Life article, on the grounds that it was "too devastating" to Dole...
...A week later Dole spoke to the Society of Financial Analysts in Philadelphia and was asked the same question...
...So writes Helmut Schoeck i I Envy, first published in German in 1966 and in an English translation in 1970...
...He doesn't want to be let off that easy," his brother explains...
...For those who haven't noticed so far, there's a war on for control of the GOP, and what is so revealing is that the "moderates," typified by Dole, reserve by far their greatest scorn not for liberals or Democrats but for conservatives in their own party...
...Their removal (the No...
...Hardcover $16.00 0-86597-063-7 Paperback $ 7.50 0-86597-064-5 Liberty Fund edition, 1987 Liberty Fund, Inc., 7440 North Shadeland Avenue, Indianapolis, IN 46250 Please send me: Envy Liberty Fund edition, 1987...
...I don't know anything about the dollar," he told those securities analysts...
...0 Enclosed is my check or money order made payable to Liberty Fund, Inc...
...Since 1965, Dr...
...464 pages...
...Gilder recalls being summoned into the Doleful presence, there to find one of his speeches spread by Tom Bethell out all over the floor...
...Ted Kennedy (worth at least $200,000 to Dole...
...Bibliography, index to names and subjects...
...Dole says that he "never understood" supply-side economics, but what he means is that he never liked it...
...Now he has some bitter medicine to sell us...
...For a long time he went around telling the following Doleful joke...
...Thus deficit reduction will mean, in legislative reality: Tax Increases...
...Bush won the poll with 62 votes, Dole was second with 26...
...Please allow 4 to 6 weeks for delivery...
...He is Mikhail Gorbachev's best friend in America and the president of Archer-Daniels-Midland, a gasohol and corn-syrup company largely dependent on government protection and tariffs to prop up its high prices...
...He will hold the spoon and we are supposed to swallow...
...Maybe the wise men will prove to be correct...
...Qttan...
...I think [Walter] Mondale had a point," Dole told Sidney Blumenthal of the Washington Post...
...Gilder told of Dole speaking (this year) to Iowa farmers and being asked what he thought about the value of the dollar...
...Ranging widely over literature...
...Nicely observed, Rick...
...A magnificent achievement...
...This would encourage people to get behind Rep...
...You may have a point there about Dole...
...George Gilder, the author of Wealth and Poverty, worked as a speechwriter for Bob Dole in his 1976 vice presidential campaign...
...C Edney Blumenthal hints that Dole's 1.3 seemingly embittered outlook on life may date from the wound he received in World War II (he has little use of his right arm...
...A most timely and necessary book, with the unmistakable stamp of the classic upon it...
...D fight now Dole is the media's favorite among the GOP candidates...
...Deficit reduction" was their war cry—a thinly disguised appeal for tax increases, phrased in a way that nonetheless continues to dupe the unwary...
...The worst thing I can think of about Dole is that he would thumb his nose at the electorate in that way...
...The reduction of high tax rates is objectionable only to those who believethat the appeasement of envy should be the first concern of policy...
...A few months ago Gilder wrote an article about Senator Dole for Life magazine...
...Paul Simon, Sen...
...It is not only a basic contribution to social psychology, but also a wise defense of individual excellence and a compassionate but firm refutation of the naive, but all too common, propensity to placate envy...
...Jimmy Carter's election in 1976 whs the last truly unexpected development in preside:gal politics...
...The supply-side hope is that the October market drop will have focused attention on the issue that they have never stopped emphasizing since Reagan's 1981 tax cut: the need for a gold-backed dollar and fixed exchange rates...
...All orders must be prepaid in U.S...
...All in the room groaned...
...Pete du Pont, I am told, believes that the market should determine the value of the dollar...
...Times bureau chief Jack Nelson, and ABC White House correspondent Sam Donaldson...
...I don't know anything about the dollar," Dole said...
...Thomas S. Szasz...
...Price Amount Hardcover $16.00 Paperback 7.50 Subtotal Indiana residents add 5% sales tax Total We pay book postage rate...
...Dukakis and Gephardt came in first and second on the Democratic side, and by a two-to-one margin the wise men picked Bush to win next November...
...Launching his campaign, Dole said in Iowa: "The American people are ready for bitter medicine...
...He didn't think that Dole had much of a chance in the campaign, or indeed particularly wanted to be President...
...But then again he might not...
...He shows that the concept of envy is necessary to fully understand both the totalitarian state and the utter futility of egalitarianism...
...Hertzberg comments: "That 'or whatever' was a nice contemptuous touch...
...They all think it would be a good idea if a greater portion of the national income were sent to Washington so they could re-route it back to favored constituents...
...Too many conservatives, hypnotized by the idea that the market should rule, believe that the market should also determine the value of the dollar...
...Jack Kemp, Wanniski felt...
...Among those at the latest poll-party were Republican National Committee Chairman Frank Fahrenkopf, columnists Mark Shields and Robert Walters, L.A...
...Pointing accusingly at the pages and glowering at Gilder as though he were an incontinent dog, Dole repeated in his harshest voice: "Bad...
...dollars...
...The bad news is that there were two empty seats on the bus...
...The October stock market drop inexplicably gave the Beltway tax-eaters the excuse they were looking for to howl for more revenues...
...1 don't know anything about the dollar," Dole repeated...
...In the White House Dole gets to play doctor and we the patient...
...And the liberals will deliver a sly ovation right along with the Republicans...
...His immediate reaction was that the October stock market drop was a good thing in that it had emboldened Dole to emerge in his true, austere colors...
...Call it deficit reduction and you will soon have the dimwitted GOP establishment on your side...
...He's promising bitter medicine right now and I've got to hand it to him," Wanniski said...
...Another thing Beltway types know and like about Mrs...
...If Bob Dole gets the Republican nomination, but not before then, the media will probably put the spotlighton his relationship with Dwayne Andreas...
...Now it's our turn, if I read Dole aright...
...Robert Dole of Kansas is conspicuous for his eagerness to please the Beltway crowd...
...He showed a similar subtle scorn for some of the positions he apparently believes himself obliged to take...
...Dole is that she was Mike Pertschuk's great ally on the Federal Trade Commission...
...Among the Republican candidates, Sen...
...Hertzberg wrote that Dole "managed to convey a (to me) attractive impatience with the low company he was being forced to keep...
...The credit card is due...
...There is no easy way, in other words...
...That's why the liberals love him and call him a "pragmatist...
...Jack Kemp was picked as vice presidential nominee...
...A formidable candidate," Lewis noted...
...Dole is a liberal—common knowledge inside the Beltway...
...A friend of mine who worked for Mrs...
...Dole as an "unrivaled asset" and as "politically shrewd"—a "very effective campaigner...
...That is, the aggressive extension of affirmative action into as many areas of life as possible, with THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1988 11 "women" as the aggrieved aggressors...
...Dole refuses to wear clip-on ties or loafers, instead laboriously tying his own ties and shoelaces...
...He received swift praise from Anthony Lewis, the left-wing New York Times columnist...
...Do people like Hertzberg and Anthony Lewis know something 12 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1988 about Dole that we don't know (yet...
...Wanniski's prediction: "Dole may get more than 597 votes in New Hampshire, which is what he got when he ran for President in 1980...
...This is because GOP moderates see the party as a high prestige jobs program for themselves...
...Helmut Schoeck has been professor and the director of the Institute of Sociology at the University of Mainz...
...O Please send me a copy of your latest catalogue...
...Albert Hunt, head of the Wall Street Journal Washington bureau and purveyor of Beltway conventional wisdom to the nation, described Mrs...
...They cannot fluctuate, or measurement itself is meaningless...
...There isn't an easy way," is Dole's Doleful Refrain...
...In a world economy it is essential that we have a world currency...
...and he added: "I don't really accept it yet...
...O LibertyPtess/LibertyClasszcs ENVY By Helmut Schoeck nvy is a drive which lies at the core of man's life —d as a social being...
...It's interesting, isn't it, that he detects in Dole an "impatience with the low company," meaning conservative company, that he is "forced to keep...
...And Archer-Daniels-Midland provided half the sponsorship for "Face-Off," a Mutual Broadcasting Network-distributed daily radio-debate between Dole and Sen...
...International trade cannot be "balanced" at nationalborders by allowing currency values to soar or sink unpredictably in relationship to one another, any more than trade between New York and New Jersey would be possible if the two states had separate currencies of gyrating values...
...Albert Gore, and Rep...
...According to Chuck Conconi's Washington Post column of November 4, about 100 political reporters and operatives "get together on an irregular basis at the home of electronic journalists Martin Plissner and Susan Morrison to poll themselves—the city's resident wise men of presidential politics...
...And so the dollar must be fixed, just as inch-markings on rulers must be fixed...
...For those who don't know him, Hendrik Hertzberg, a former editor of the New Republic and once Jimmy Carter's chief speechwriter, is a left-wing Democrat who would be the first to embrace the label...
...7440 North Shadeland Avenue, Dept V-101 Indianapolis, IN 46250 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1988 13...
...In 1984 Mondale promised the Democratic convention in San Francisco that he would raise taxes if elected...
...Butthe dollar is the one thing whose value the market should not determine...
...Jack Kemp understands this, and at the moment I think he is the only candidate in either party who does understand it...
...Actually, if a legislative obstacle prevents the citizenry from engaging in trade with one another, then the removal of that obstacle really will make life easier for all...
...His reasoning is obscure, but he believes quite fervently that we have been on a binge of late...
...The liberals are completely confident, with good reason, that the Democratic Congress will obstruct all spending cuts (except for defense...
...My own suspicion, nonetheless, is that on the Republican side Pat Robertson is going to do better than a lot of people think...
...When Gilder told the other staffers about this later, their general reaction was that he had gotten off lightly...
...Dole's only quarrel is with Tom Bethell is The American Spectator 's Washington correspondent...
...The good news is that a busload of supply-siders went over a cliff...
...H endrik Hertzberg's comments on Bob Dole's performance in the GOP "Firing Line" debate in Houston were so good that they are worth repeating (they first appeared in the New Republic...
...The Beltway will applaud...
...Dole went through much pain and suffering for the American people...
...Dole at the Department of Transportation said that, apart from the sale of Conrail (the only DOT issue then getting White House attention), her only interest was in "women's issues...
Vol. 21 • January 1988 • No. 1
