The Unfinished Reagan Agenda
Novak, Robert D.
W hile marching methodically toward the Republican presidential nomination in the summer of 1987, George Bush was answering tame, predictable questions in a session with well-mannered party faithful...
...3 / MARCH THE UNFINISHED REAGAN AGENDA To meet conservative expectations, President Bush will have to pay more than lip service to such issues as government spending, the contras, and abortion...
...c) 0 d) No one knows of invigorating the inner city and its residents—a daunting task...
...On that summer evening in South Carolina, he said nothing about what concerned the conservative rankand-file: abortion, contras, 011ie North, Robert Bork (then facing confirmation...
...Bush was an astute enough politician in 1980 to see that his fuzzy position on abortion blocked his long-range presidential ambitions...
...Free report Our engineers had to know every detail about traffic radar before they could design Escort and Passport, the most respected names in radar detection...
...They act as though the great battles have been won—a restoration of the economy and American prestige in the world...
...That's all...
...The pause by the Vice President signaled that this was a question he had not heard at previous "Ask George Bush" meetings...
...Only then did Bush start to exhibit some zest for agenda-finishing...
...But this is an old-fashioned Republican battle cry that has roused few pulses over the last half-century...
...And since radar operators are human, they don't always guess right...
...Just call us toll-free or mail the coupon...
...The most obvious unfinished economic goal is the reduction of government that thoroughly eluded Reagan...
...W hile marching methodically toward the Republican presidential nomination in the summer of 1987, George Bush was answering tame, predictable questions in a session with well-mannered party faithful at Greenville, South Carolina, when an elderly gentleman rose and asked: "What do you consider the unfinished Reagan agenda...
...decade, want stability...
...Even so doughty a conservative stalwart as Lyn Nofziger considered Nellie Gray and her annual anti-abortion march to be a nuisance...
...Here is the second most obvious illustration of Jeff Bell's theory that the conservative rank-andfile and the conservative elite are out of tune with each other...
...And it's yours free...
...They are uncomfortable talking about abortion and refuse to view it as a serious issue—only the concern of a noisy pressure group...
...Jack Kemp, who blazed the trail for Reagan's conversion from austerity to growth, can no longer deal in sweeping macroeconomic situations...
...Now we've released a report that explains radar and radar errors, in plain language...
...The operator has to decide...
...Abortion is the preeminent moral question for the millions who feel strongly about it, but it is also a symbolic manifestation of deep-seated yearning for a return to traditional and family values...
...The difficulty in mobilizing the Bush Administration behind this last Bennett goal becomes obvious when the nascent Bush Administration is examined...
...Arthur Laffer, the supply-side pioneer, says all that remains to be done in taxation is a moratorium for evaders (an idea whose time clearly has not yet come...
...Like Bennett and Bell, Weber sees the uncongenial issues of contras and abortion as the cutting edge...
...But reacting as though he feared that agenda item was a little too frivolous, he soberly listed the reduction of international tensions...
...Retired Adm...
...The non-Republicans who have voted for Ronald Reagan and George Bush in no small part because of the abortion question are treated as interlopers in the Republican home...
...Standing beside Watkins as he was announced was drug czar Bennett, who talks about contras and abortion as unfinished business of the Reagan agenda...
...If the unfinished "Reagan agenda" means leftover items from an administration that in its last two years had taken on characteristics of previous post-World War II Republican regimes, Bush's answer in Greenville was not out Robert D. Novak is a syndicated columnist, television commentator, and publisher of the Evans and Novak Political Report...
...Even consciously conservative Republican leaders are not at all sure about the unfinished agenda...
...That explains why Bush, in a seemingly automatic response, blithely broke his campaign promise to name a stringently anti-abortion secretary of Health and Human Services...
...James Watkins, in proposing antidiscrimination protection for AIDS victims as chairman of President Reagan's commission, inveighed against moralizing in dealing with the disease...
...Even if only one percent of the tickets issued last year were wrong, that's one hundred thousand undeserved tickets...
...It is second only to abortion...
...The new détente with the Soviet Union, following incessant propaganda against supposed Pentagon waste, has applied the coup de grace to public support for high military budgets...
...Here's why You may find this hard to believe, but traffic radar doesn't tell the operator which vehicle he is clocking...
...There is an unfinished agenda and there is a lot of popular steam behind it," says Jeffrey Bell...
...If the unfinished agenda refers to the Reagan Revolution, however, the new Republican leader had lost sight of his followers...
...14 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR of the ordinary...
...Republican politicians, reckoning that one revolution is more than enough for one Robert D. Novak VOL...
...Now they feel a strictly defensive holding action is necessary...
...He tempered his conversion to the pro-life camp by exempting abortions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother—a concession to Bush's old backers in the Planned Parenthood Federation and perhaps to Barbara Bush...
...Louis Sullivan is at best confused about abortion and at worst pro-choice, from the standpoint of the pro-life movement...
...The question is how long it will take the conservative leaders to catch up with their rank-and-file...
...Although the federal government still spends too much and meddles too much, the citizenry is thankful for its lowered profile...
...It is neither hyperbole nor paranoia to expect that the Mexican-American border may turn into a fortified line during the life of the Bush Administration...
...William Bennett, Bush's unexpected choice as drug czar, lists these specific agenda items: educational choice, support for the contras, and opposition to abortion...
...The problem is that prominent conservative leaders, almost without exception, don't agree with the agenda of the conservative movement's rank and file...
...The consequences of abandoning SDI lie in the still dim future...
...But abortion is the most emotional, the most important, and the most divisive of the social issues...
...Nobody can doubt the sincerity of Reagan's opposition to abortion, following his support as governor of California for a legalization law Nevertheless, he gave the pro-life position no more than lip service the past eight years, a lassitude most welcome to his political advisers...
...Successful as it may well prove on the other side of the world in Afghanistan and Angola, it has failed dismally in Central America, and the results may be measured in months not years...
...Even more than the last stage of the Reagan Administration, it is dominated by conservative elitists (Baker at State, Brady at Treasury, Mosbacher at Commerce, the President himself) and bureaucrats (Scowcroft at NSC, Thornburgh at Justice, Cavazos at Education, Dole at Labor, Yeutter at Agriculture...
...That may seem disconnected from the real Reagan agenda, but it suggests the problems that will face the first third-term succession by the same party since the Roosevelt-Truman Era...
...Vin Weber of Minnesota, a rising young figure in the conservative movement, says he cannot remember the last time a constituent complained about OSHA or the EPA...
...That does not speak for the conservative rank-and-file, however...
...15...
...22, NO...
...The problem is that prominent conservative leaders, almost without exception, don't agree 1989 with the agenda of the conservative movement's rank and file...
...The new President never would have named a suspected unilateral disarmer to the Pentagon or a suspected tax increaser to the Treasury...
...His call for recreational spending may have been somewhat idiosyncratic, but his harping on the twin deficits, education, and peace fit the unadventurous mood of Ronald Reagan's last two years...
...There is an unfinished agenda, and there is a lot of popular steam behind it," says Jeffrey Bell, a long-time soldier in the conservative movement who has carefully studied the tension between elite and populist opinion flows...
...Unmistakably, the governmental task that the enthusiastic fisherman, bird-shooter, power-boater, and horseshoes-player really warmed to was "outdoor recreation...
...Supply-side enthusiasm for a gold-convertible dollar has flagged in view of how effective less sweeping monetary reforms have proved...
...While Reagan's last budget calls for a 2 percent defense increase in real money (adjusted to inflation), nobody thinks Congress will approve that much, Even zero growth seems beyond attainment...
...what the conservative elite miss in the abortion issue is how deeply moral questions affect the conservative rank-and-file...
...If the latter oppose abortion as an immoral crime against God's laws made permissible under civil law by judicial edict, how is it possible to make exceptions for expedience's sake...
...Baker's answer is to put pressure on THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1989 Mikhail Gorbachev to call off Sandinista expansion in Central America...
...This was the core of the Reagan Revolution, and here there is no sense of an unfinished agenda but rather an attempt to prevent a liberal counterreformation...
...As secretary of Housing and Urban Development, he must harness supply-side incentives to microeconomic goals THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1989 How many undeserved radar tickets were issued last year...
...The contra alternative is impossible, says Baker, because there is no public support for it...
...As Bush's presidential campaign chairman, he publicly defended the candidate's campaign silence on this critical issue on grounds that polls show 80 percent public opposition to the contras...
...While a majority of Americans are pro-choice, exit polls from the 1988 election show that the intensity lies on the anti-abortion side—which explains the remarkable success the pro-life forces are having in statewide popular balloting...
...Some experts say up to thirty percent of them were incorrect...
...Or it might not...
...It might be the closest car, it might be the fastest car, it might be the biggest car...
...Yet Watkins ended up as Bush's secretary of energy...
...He suggested the federal government's attention to "outdoor recreation" was long overdue...
...Over ten million tickets were issued last year...
...Reagan himself expresses eagerness to return to the "mashed potato" circuit to plug the balanced budget constitutional amendment and the line-item veto...
...After another pause, he absent-mindedly gave the sort of reply one could expect from any self-respecting Democrat by listing the "twin deficits"—trade and budget...
...These exceptions are but one indication of the deep unease the conservative elite feel over the issue...
...He has expressed contempt for the "right-wingers" who opposed his recommendation...
...It is one of many such concerns that were played down by the Reagan Administration and truly constitute an unfinished agenda: choice in education, reforms in criminal justice, religious reaction to the secularization of society...
...Y et Bush is not alone...
...The lone Reagan military innovation, the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), has only Kemp and Bennett as staunch supporters in the Bush Administration—neither of them able to provide much support while tending to their new duties...
...Extending the Reagan agenda in the military arena is even more difficult than extending it in economics...
...Secretary of State-designate James A. Baker III has been warned that the collapse of the contras in Nicaragua, which seems so imminent, dooms hopes of holding off the Communist tide in El Salvador...
...The exceptions may be supported by many sincere opponents of abortion, but they also demonstrate the gap between the elite and populist streams...
...a) 1,012,317 b) 649,119 Unfortunately, the answer is d) No one knows...
...T here is no obvious sequel to Rea- l gan's economic accomplishments...
...They can hardly criticize the new President when they cannot enunciate the agenda themselves...
...Noting wife Barbara seated in the front row, he dutifully mentioned her pet cause of combating "the horrors of illiteracy...
...Put simply, all but a small fraction of conservative leaders view abortion as a political problem rather than a deep-seated social concern, and even its political importance is underestimated...
...Nowhere is the gap between the country club and the Elks club wider...
...Nor does the new regime enjoy either the determination of Ronald Reagan or the simplicity of his two overriding goals: reduction of tax rates and the restoration of military power...
...The fact that he will get precious little support from his colleagues in the new administration suggests that agenda will not be completed any time soon...
...Not so with the Reagan Doctrine, the attempted counterattack against Communist expansion...
...Even the Great Communicator will have difficulty breathing life into those instruments of governmental accountancy...
...The radar unit displays one number...
...They could not be ignored, if only for political reasons...
...But the support figures are reversed among the rank-and-file of the conservative movement...
...His broader goals: "fighting for freedom in the world and making American institutions more responsive to the American people rather than being run by bureaucrats and elites...
...Nor as the President-elect has he dealt with those incendiary subjects...
Vol. 22 • March 1989 • No. 3
