The Nation's Pulse/The Other Duke
Fossedal, Gregory A.
THE NATION'S PULSE THE OTHER DUKE by Gregory A. Fossedal Palo Alto, California T hey say this state is a trend-setter, 1 and with its relatively issueless campaigns of 1986 and early 1988,...
...or Supreme Court...
...Californians can vote to throw justices off the court after a fixed term...
...In retrospect, it's surprising that so many politicians missed it...
...Take education...
...Even Ronald Reagan, after all, had signed on to the largest tax hike in history a few months before...
...These education bureaucrats came up with the usual laundry list of reforms: higher pay for teachers, adding a few days to the school year and encouraging summer schools, and firing the occasional outrageously incompetent teacher...
...And, unlike a former GOP governor oft-mentioned on the short list for George Bush's running mate, Tennessee's Lamar Alexander, Deukmejian has done something to rebuild his party...
...If it takes equanimity and social tranquility to achieve these things, Deukmejian seems to say, Gary Cooper-like, well then, far be it from me to disturb the peace...
...Dole would bring fewer issues and less Ran, but a certain gravitas...
...Whether George Bush wins California or the nation is going to be a function of what he says, what agenda he maps out," says Steve Merksamer, the Duke's former chief of staff...
...His oratorical style is steady but snappy...
...By common wisdom, then, George Deukmejian is a rather dull fellow but a terrifically adept politician...
...California spending has risen in real terms under Deukmejian, to $44 billion for 1988-89 from a total budget of $25 billion in 1982-83...
...Deukmejian capitalized on it...
...THE NATION'S PULSE THE OTHER DUKE by Gregory A. Fossedal Palo Alto, California T hey say this state is a trend-setter, 1 and with its relatively issueless campaigns of 1986 and early 1988, California once again seems to be setting the tone...
...And he didn't raise taxes...
...Reagan griped about the "politicization" of judicial appointments...
...And you pick up a newspaper and he's rated at better than 80 percent popularity in some polls...
...Politicians of both parties worship at the shrine of a balanced budget, and Deukmejian is the consummate balancer...
...Ask any Reaganite to cite the governor's main accomplishments and the answer isn't long in coming...
...Adding Kemp, Bush would reach out to the populist, activist wing of the Republican party...
...Quiet, unassuming, and satisfied to remain such, Deukmejian calls to mind Warren Harding's passionate pleas for non-passion, a return to post-ReaganRevolutionary normalcy...
...Everyone," wrote Minard in Forbes, "thought Deukmejian had one option...
...Anderson insists: "No way he's going to say no...
...In both parties, a certain breed now predominates: the somewhat passive, reserved, and soft-spoken man who seldom launches vast schemes, but does have a sensitive feel for which schemes launched by others will play with the electorate...
...Kemp would help in California," Merksamer argues, "partly because he's from California, playing with the Chargers and growing up here, and partly because he's sort of a Californian in his approach to politics, even in his appearance...
...No dice...
...Reagan-Ford would have seemed an apology for Reagan-anyone else, and eventually undermined the Gipper, even as a Dukakis-Nunn ticket in 1988 might be damaging to the New England spendthrift...
...Taxes per capita have nearly kept pace with Mario Cuomo's New York, remaining well above the national average despite the constraints of Proposition 13 and related ballot measures...
...The best proof was the governor's appearance on the June 12 David Brinkley show...
...In the weeks to come, both Republicans and Democrats took turns pleading with, giving instructions to, and pounding on the new governor to do what reason demanded...
...Deukmejian, unlike Reagan, did block hundreds of spending plans amounting to a hefty percentage of the state's annual budgets...
...That's an awful lot...
...But obviously he gives help elsewhere...
...I don't believe it...
...My astrologer," he said, "told me today was a bad day to answer that question," a snide jibe at you-know-what administration...
...That's becoming increasingly hard to do as California's education budget skyrockets: from $11.1 billion in 1982-83 to $19.2 billion proposed for 1988-89...
...California, in the middle of the spending pack in 1982, now shovels more money at schools than all but a handful of other states...
...Bird was crushed, and Deukmejian was easily re-elected, along with several promising first-time legislators...
...At the front of this unrevolutionary revolution, symbolizing the laid-back non-contentiousness of California's politique sans souci, is Republican Governor George Deukmejian...
...And the Senate majority leader...
...Given a strong push, of course, Deukmejian would reconsider...
...A similar dynamic emerges on the budget and tax issues for which Deukmejian is most famed...
...Well, not exactly...
...Still, in the age of politics with little politics, this is almost a perfect ten...
...That's more...
...The second spot on the ticket will be important mainly in terms of how it affects that equation...
...Everyone, however, didn't include Deukmejian...
...It's an issue the Republicans might well want to use against the Massachusetts governor, whose dangerous and silly prison furlough programs have come under attack even from Democrats...
...The impact of changes wrought by this brigade of Ph.D.'s has been marginal at best, and sometimes positively destructive...
...First, Deukmejian appointed an elitist Commission on Educational Quality to evaluate what makes schools successful...
...And while all politicians affect a certain uninterest in the number-two slot, the Duke really means it...
...He picks up good ideas from other people but he's not himself an initiator...
...Deukmejian, for one, truly doesn't want to run...
...In 1986, it was still possible to praise California for producing student performances on a par with those of New York state, yet with vastly less money spent per pupil, citing 1984 and 1985 statistics...
...But everyone was wrong...
...In the national House, meanwhile, Californians lay claim to several leading young turk Reaganites, including Jerry Lewis, Duncan Hunter, David Dreier, and the irrepressible Robert Dornan...
...He doesn't want to be accused of augmenting merely the quality of teachers' lives, and not the quality of education," wrote Lawrence Minard in Forbes...
...I don't think Dole would mean much one way or the other here...
...But there are other ways of channeling ideas onto the agenda and into your campaign—the vice presidential spot included...
...Everyone in particular had underestimated the popular force of the tax revolt, which won its greatest publicity triumphs with the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978 and the election of Reagan in 1980, but has since been upheld and even extended in a number of follow-up elections and ballot initiatives...
...He is, as one GOP activist told me, "something of a Clark Kent without the pizzazz...
...Look," says Martin Anderson, a Hoover Institution scholar and Deukmejian intimate, "he balanced the budget...
...Unfortunately, the Duke hasn't seen the issue in terms of choice, and California's schools slog along with more money, ignoring ever more brazenly what the customers want...
...Bush can't benefit from a national referendum system as his friend the Duke has in California...
...Whom does Deukmejian recommend...
...It would be ironic indeed if George Bush underestimated the potential importance of the running mate and signed up some mediocre politician from Tennessee or Colorado, a tax-hiking Illinois governor, or a gender-gap token from the U.N...
...And meanwhile he spenta lot on education...
...All he has done is to help the people he governs, a state roughly the economic size of Britain or Japan, to restore near-full employment, with pretty decent government services, low inflation, a sober respect for environmental quality, and a balanced budget—all, moreover, without taking credit for working any sort of "California Miracle...
...Yet their students are getting better grades...
...Indeed...
...And therein lies the secret of his success in a state where voter initiative places a premium on this skill...
...Even the New Republic now favors at least giving vouchers a fair test in a large state or district, an idea also endorsed by the nation's governors...
...And it also omits Deukmejian's finest hour: his dogged 1983 stand against any tax hike in the midst of a tidal wave of respectable opinion flowing the opposite way...
...Cranston's 1984 fixation on the nuclear freeze stemmed from its success on state ballots in 1982...
...And Reagan himself, in turn, was clearly intrigued by the success of the tax cuts on the ballots...
...The governor's few references to foreign policy speak consistently of "promoting . . . freedom and democracy abroad," not merely "defending" America or "containing" Communism...
...And both would add something to the "chemistry of the thing," as Anderson notes...
...0111111^111111 SARKES TARZIAN INC WRCB KTVN WTTS WGTC 32 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1988...
...Merksamer, who has attended several vice presidential sessions with Deukmejian, says flatly: "He's not going to be asked...
...I think the combination of Prop 13 and Reagan had a profound effect on him," says a former top aideto the Duke...
...If he listens to Deukmejian, he won't...
...the local officials always cite the program as one "even George Deukmejian hasn't opposed," and the New Righters go home empty-handed...
...If his charisma is underrated, though, the Duke's achievements as governor are probably overrated...
...Maybe too much: You can argue that high-powered dream tickets, such as the proposed 1980 Reagan-Ford match-up, may look good on the evening news but bad in the final returns...
...An April Field poll showed both Robert Dole and Jack Kemp adding as much support to a Bush-led ticket as Deukmejian, even among Californians...
...You can safely bet against it...
...California, like Massachusetts, also benefited from the boom in THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1988 31 defense contracting: About 20 percent of the 1984 Pentagon budget came here...
...My own sense is that both halves of this formulation are a bit wrong...
...In several private meetings, Deukmejian and staffers told Bush that putting the Duke on the ticket was not the key to California anyway, much less the country...
...He then compounded the error by blaming the press for creating a "perception" that it was a tax hike, when in fact even most Republicans werefcalling it the same...
...Pressed by George Will, a journalist, as to whether he would really turn down party and country to remain in California, Deukmejian answered as only someone strongly desirous of not being a running mate would...
...In fact, he rode the death penalty to several victories throughout his career, from a state legislature race in the 1960s that he almost lost to his 1986 landslide over Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley...
...The big difference between the old Reagan and the new Reagan was the tax cuts, all the supply-side stuff...
...Whether the issue is crime, the budget, education, or the environment, it's hard to think of a major policy in California in which the people haven't led their elected representatives...
...All this is mentioned by way of adding perspective to some nevertheless Herculean achievements...
...In California and in other states," he told an audience at the Heritage Foundation, "there are some truly outstanding, high performance schools...
...It would also circumvent the vice-grip that state education czar Bill Honig has applied to discourage such experimentation...
...H is success, and the sheer size and strategic import of his state, naturally has prompted speculation on a Bush-Deukmejian ticket...
...California Slashes Big Government," gushed James Bovard in the Reader's Digest several years ago...
...Unlike Michael Dukakis and many governors, he's never signed a major tax hike, though California's Duke did propose one this year...
...Four out of five people think "Governor Deukmejian" is performing well, but fewer than four in five can identify who "George Deukmejian" is...
...Indeed, if Ronald Reagan irritates other politicians by doing impossible things with so little effort, George Deukmejian ought positively to infuriate them...
...Thus Deukmejian rightly has focused on education reform as the key to success...
...But he's not going to do it himself...
...The net effect, then, of more spending, and even of the reform-by-the-experts effort, has been to decrease the authority parents have over the education of their own children...
...Handed a $1.5 billion deficit by the outgoing Edmund G. "Jerry" Brown, Deukmejian, unlike Reagan, turned it into a surplus—in one year...
...many people who don't even know who Deukmejian is like him...
...Giving parents more choice through a voucher or credit, by contrast, is the one reform that such experts as Denis Doyle agree would make schools substantially more effective...
...Just remember, that debate started right here...
...That's been discussed in private, aides say, but the governor declined an invitation to comment on these and other matters for The American Spectator...
...Hearing the Duke deliver them, though, is somewhat more inspiring...
...Another politician who didn't miss the lesson, by the way, was Jerry Brown, who rapidly reversed his opposition to Proposition 13 and even tried to take credit for the economies in government that resulted...
...In 1986, the Duke turned his own campaign and that ofmany Republicans largely into a referendum against the leftist chief justice of California's supreme court, Rose Bird...
...So the Times set about tutoring the new governor in reality...
...But aides close to both Deukmejian and Bush, longthe governor's favorite man for 1988, say that in any case the Duke's message has gotten through...
...Thus in terms both partisan and non, Deukmejian has established himself as one of the top five or ten politicians in his party...
...His model of reform, though, has involved tinkering within the administrator-teacher complex, closely following Reagan's misguided national effort...
...In helping get Rose Bird kicked off the court in 1986, Deukmejian did something Reagan failed to do in 1987 with Justice Robert Bork: rallied popular support for an active jurisprudence of original intent...
...His catholicity in including South African blacks in this vision may irritate some, but makes clear that Deukmejian has in mind not a mere tactical doctrine here and there, but what he calls a "principled advocacy" of democratic republicanism...
...Republicans and Democrats who saw him debate New York's Mario Cuomo in Washington on the issue of Reaganomics rated the match a rough draw—that's quite an achievement considering Cuomo's 30 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1988 reputation as a rouser of emotions...
...A longtime adviser to Deukmejian says that "if someone else put together a good voucher bill in the legislature, Deukmejian would see the benefits of it and go with it pretty quickly...
...For with the Reagan prosperity now in its sixth year, and the leaders of both parties agreed on the merits of another U.S.-Soviet detente—"negotiating from strength again," as the National Interest puts it—there isn't exactly a burning national dispute about anything...
...Examples run the gamut from Tom Bradley to Pete Wilson, Ed Zschau, and even Brown and Alan Cranston...
...That's a lot...
...To equate more money with an improvement in quality would be, as Deukmejian has said, a mistake...
...But then, Deukmejian, unlike Reagan, has made use of an item-veto blue pencil to remove particular items...
...Thus, the California governor has the crime issue in his bones...
...In addition, Deukmejian has been tough on crime...
...California was one of the few sources of GOP joy in the fall of the Volcker-Reagan depression...
...Deukmejian's positions," wrote David Willman in the San Jose Mercury, "were revealing for their content and the emotion with which he delivered them...
...While this wouldn't please Howard Phillips, the point is that Deukmejian does have fire, and tyrannical governments seem to ignite it...
...The Duke's well-run 1982 race, focused in large part against the kookiness of then-Senate candidate Jerry Brown, probably helped tip the ballot boxes for now-Senator Pete Wilson as well...
...With Mondalesque certainty, the editorial proclaimed that everyone knewthere had to be a tax increase...
...Days after Deukmejian was elected on a no-tax-hike pledge, the Los Angeles Times wrote an editorial it thought would serve as an obituary of this idea...
...Gregory Fossedal is John M. Olin Media Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a columnist for Copley News Service...
...Many of these schools are getting the same amount of money, and sometimes less money, per student...
...Getting a touch of California on the ticket, however, might best be achieved with someone else...
...Activists here in Silicon Valley have pleaded with local schools for the last eighteen months to drop such materials as a pamphlet on "anal intercourse" and "water sports" from school curricula reaching kids as young as 14 years of age...
...The four-out-of-five figure is accurate but a little misleading...
...Dreier says Deukmejian "was a major help to all of us, both directly in terms of campaign assistance, and indirectly in terms of his own campaigns helping shift votes to the Republican party...
...The Duke also spoke forcefully on behalf of some economic sanctions, such as university divestiture, against South Africa...
...He saw Reagan as moving from an eloquent but somewhat limited politician in the 1970s, a sort of suave Barry Goldwater, to a political giant surfing on a great wave...
...Deukmejian—like Reagan in launching the Star Wars program or the Reagan Doctrine—has one of the most sensitive antennae in politics...
...Unlike Illinois Republican Jim Thompson, he did all this without a lot of anti-Reagan posturing, and without driving his state's economy into the doldrums...
...I t's easy to see why some reporters find Deukmejian drab: They've read his speeches...
...One of the governor's most impassioned speeches was a 1985 attack on Ronald Reagan—for downplaying the holocaust of Armenians from whom Deukmejian descends...
...Republicans are stronger in both the state legislature and the state's national congressional delegation...
...Indeed, the pervasive use of direct democracy and popular referendum has greatly influenced the kind of political leader produced by the state...
...While local districts aren't required to distribute AIDS education packets that legitimize homosexuality, for example, administrators have used the state packet as a means of forcing their own sex education agenda on district after district...
...California has certainly spent more money on this under Deukmejian...
...Four out of five people think he's doing a good job...
Vol. 21 • August 1988 • No. 8
