Capitol Ideas/Politics Misconstrued

...But now, a new wave of converts is entering the Church...

...The problem is that in his domestic policies President Bush has emerged as the supporter of big government, whether wittingly or unwittingly it does not really matter, and has thereby inflicted great damage on the party...

...Amazingly, while the REVIEW is a lightning rod for "papist" pilgrims, it is also ecumenical in spirit...

...Likewise, today a head of state must use the media to reach a wider audience...

...This huge sum resides in a "common pool," to which 535 legislators enjoy siphoning privileges...

...Bob Martinez of Florida, who supported a state tax on services, having been told by Democrats and the news media that this was the "responsible" thing to do...

...The forum for the new generation of converts is the NEW OXFORD REVIEW, a monthly magazine that takes its name from the 19th-century Oxford Movement in England...

...It is curious that the President should be so reluctant to use the escape route that is readily available to him...

...Today there is a new Oxford Movement afoot in America...

...President Reagan's "skinflint" image, although by no means justified, nonetheless served him very well...

...Berkeley, CA 94706 PAYMENT MUST ACCOMPANY ORDER 12 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1991 to do...

...The trend toward term limits should now spread across the country...

...Anne Roche Muggeridge, daughter-in-law of convert Malcolm Muggeridge, has said in her recent book, The Desolate City: Revolution in the Catholic Church (Harper & Row): "Because the integrity of its message has been betrayed, the Catholic Church is in ruins...

...A ndrew Rosenthal of the New York Times politely noted that Bush's "vehement assurances that he would fight any income tax increases carried some of the air of political uncertainty that led to his decision to give his blessing to a tax increase" earlier in the year...

...Over the last quarter century, the number of converts to Roman Catholicism slowed to a trickle...

...Bush's poor political instincts are also much in evidence in his handling of the conflict in the Persian Gulf...

...And of course with big powerful countries like China you have to be very careful (truckling emissaries no doubt will have to be dispatched...

...The Colorado vote ensures that the state's representatives "will be perennially junior to those from other states...

...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1991 13...

...Right, but what if the congressional leaders once again tell him that the need for new revenues is a matter of "reality...

...Bush, therefore, should invite that body to declare war...

...Bush, of course, was not up for reelection, but we should expect voter backlash against the party whose leader mistook his role and became the raider, rather than the custodian, of the voters' pocketbooks...

...Saddam Hussein has, and Bush keeps replying with the inappropriate rejoinder that this is merely "cynical...

...He is in the position of a chess player who has made two bad moves and doesn't know it yet, although the onlookers do...

...You join me on a bill to benefit my constituents, then I'll do the same for you...

...A few speeches to the American people about how Congress was eager to raise taxes, and those committee chairmen would have begun to look far less powerful...

...If a Republican by Tom Bethell chief executive is perceived as weak or ineffective or downright misguided on restraining the size of the common pool—in short, if he supports tax increases—the voters will predictably turn against him or throw him out...

...Mail to: NEW OXFORD REVIEW Room 26 1069 Kains Ave...

...George Deukmejian in 1983, but he wisely resisted and won reelection easily in 1986...

...Yes, he was elected to the highest office, and such a person, one feels, must have good political instincts...

...But I'm girding up my loins to beat back the tax attempts that I think are coming...

...Presumably he had not come across this common-pool analysis before, and only now that he has read this article will he realize the error of his ways...

...But the electorate will also seek to restrain the growth of the overall common pool, or budget...

...Catholics watched with a mixture of pity and amusement as the excellent Anglo-Catholic New Oxford Review argued and agonized itself into the [Roman] Catholic Church...

...Barring a tremendous stroke of luck, the next two years will be uncomfortable ones for him and for the GOP...

...Seven of them are my godchildren, and I must confess that some of us, to our shame, earnestly tried to delay them, on the grounds of the growing disorder in the Catholic Church...

...No, they are attracted by the Catholicism of the ages, the Magisterium, and the inspiring leadership of the current Pope...

...But that now happens only very rarely...

...In preparing to go to war, however, agreement with Congress is highly desirable...

...If you want to recapture the excitement of when you first really believed, if you feel inundated by "bad news" about the Church, if you despair of all the moral laxity and doubt and dissension within her portals but seek a remedy for that despair, or if you're searching for a "face" of Catholicism that is spiritually vibrant, solidly prolife, doctrinally sound, and socially engaged, it's time for you to subscribe to the NEW OXFORD REVIEW...

...If incumbents were truly unpopular, it is reasonable to suppose that their very familiarity to voters would work against them...

...What's more, contrary to the shibboleth that Catholicism is a superstitious religion for the ignorant, an unusually high proportion of the new Catholics consists of writers and intellectuals...

...He can and should involve Congress in his own predicament...

...Voters therefore rationally support their own congressmen—provided they join in the general logrolling, which almost all do...

...In California, the press is already urging Governor-elect Pete Wilson to face reality, recognize the magnitude of the state's budget shortfall, and do the responsible thing by forgetting his campaign rhetoric and supporting an increase in you-knowwhat...

...Just telephone your good friends in foreign countries, arrange for a Security Council vote at the U.N., and send the army abroad...

...With really powerful people, like committee chairmen on Capitol Hill, you just have to reach the best deal you can...

...But I don't think Bush does...

...And we cover the full range of issues of concern to today's reflective and believing Christians, including the quest for a more just and compassionate society...

...A likely explanation, of course, is that he does not yet see the predicament that he is in...

...He may have a personal affection for fountain pens and manual typewriters but his competitors will drive him out of business if he clings to them...

...At the margin, therefore, a significant number of people are likely to vote for a fiscally conservative Republican as President and for a big-spending Democrat to represent them at the common trough that is Congress...

...is The American Spectator's Washington correspondent...

...Bush's only hope now is to recapture the guardian role, and this is what he has already tried to do...

...The same pressure was brought to bear on Gov...

...Democrats were already at their highest level at midterm elections during a Republican presidency in this century...

...Something else seems to be at work, and the institutional structure of Congress suggests what it is...

...Such constraints enable the electorate both to vote for their familiar local figure and to serve notice on all the others, who represent other constituencies...

...But when they reminded him of their prerogatives, Bush pulled a copy of the Constitution from his pocket and replied: "I know what the Constitution says, but it also says I am commander in chief...

...If the limit remains, we can expect Colorado to receive a diminishing share of the common pool...

...As the President saw it, he needed to make a deal with Congress to get a budget, and the deal had been duly struck...

...As George Will has pointed out, Bush disparages argument as "bickering...

...The longer a legislator remains in power, the greater his ability to direct resources from the common government pool to his own jurisdiction's benefit...

...staff, and mailing privileges give incumbents high name recognition and therefore a big advantage...

...He merely leaves more for all the others, who are less shy about dipping into the common pool...

...They are restricted only by the rule that they must team up with colleagues to form majorities...

...Whether they said yes or no, Bush would be in a much easier position...

...It sounded more plausible to me after I spoke to a senior administration political appointee recently...

...He doesn't have any choice about using this apparatus, just as the head of a large corporation today doesn't have any choice about using computers and fax machines and the latest technology...

...I n short, a President or governor who misconstrues his role and haplessly collaborates with greedy legislators will soon fmd himself in political trouble...

...But the REV IEW isn't just for converts...

...The claim that the number of House seats lost was below average for the party holding the presidency is not persuasive...

...Among the converts to Roman Catholicism who have written for the REVIEW are Sheldon Vanauken, John C. Cort, Walker Percy, L. Brent Bozell, Avery Dulles, and Peter Kreeft...

...Bush seems to think that politics entails negotiating with known quantities in a private room rather than reaching out to an unknown, wider audience...

...Bush had been advised that breaking his no-newtaxes pledge had inflicted serious political damage, I was told, and he knew that the advisers who brought this bad news weren't lying to him...

...In domestic budget negotiations, an uncompromising presidential stance is not only appropriate but practically demanded by the institutional logic of the federalgovernment as presently organized...

...Better for a President to be pushed into a war by popular demand than for him to leap blithely over the top, only to find the electorate lagging reluctantly in the rear...

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...Among them, it may be hoped, is another Chesterton, another Maritain, another Newman, another Ronald Knox, another Dorothy Day, another Gerard Manley Hopkins, another Edith Stein — converts all...

...Make check payable to NEW OXFORD REVIEW...

...Another way of putting it is to say that if you are pondering your vote for your local congressman, and you notice that there are already 534 thieves in Washington, you will probably conclude that your best bet is to send your own thief to join all the others, if you are to have any hope of sharing in the benefits from the common pool...

...The principal activity of Congress is redistributing about one trillion of our hard-earned dollars...

...Bush asked...

...if he does, the political cost will be extremely high...

...The key feature of this arrangement is that the fiscally conservative legislator who refuses to join in the general logrolling succeeds in hurting his own constituents but does not thereby reduce the budget deficit or contributeto the nation's economic well-being...

...I know a substantial number of recent converts like this and am much edified by their purity and ardour...

...That's the uncomfortable position that President Bush finds himself in today...

...Others will if he doesn't...

...Can I make a promise I won't support them...

...They come because at the highest level of Catholic teaching, the doctrine of the faith, though much embattled, remains uncompromised and is as fearlessly proclaimed by John Paul I I as by Peter, Paul, Ignatius, or Augustine...

...As President, then, he would be kinder and gentler...

...True, he met with congressional leaders...

...Absolutely...

...The hot potato of warmongering (or weakness) would be in Congress's lap...

...These new Catholics and the extraordinary Pope to whom they belong are a very present comfort when one is tempted to despair...

...But this is what Bush doesn't want Orthodox Catholics: DON'T DESPAIR...

...Stand by for the deficits next year...

...This is an anachronistic view, given the vast media apparatus that is uniquely at his disposal...

...What we are dealing with, I'm afraid, is a President who doesn't understand politics...

...What was so bad about that...

...They are not restricted by the requirement that they limit themselves to the amount that has been diverted to Washington by taxation...

...The common-pool theory also predicts that voters will tend to support term limitations...

...Jim Florio of New Jersey is an unusual case: he raised taxes without external pressure, out of ideological conviction...

...If the country is not united about such a course of action, perhapsit never was a good idea in the first place...

...Bush seems to have been under the impression that Reagan was hurt by this image...

...But as James Hammit of the Rand Corporation pointed out in a letter to the Los Angeles Times, Colorado's vote to restrict the terms of its congressional delegation was perverse, because of the role that seniority plays in legislative power...

...Voters would be inclined to vote against the local scoundrels they knew only too well and opt for less well-known challengers...

...Notice that Bush has this exactly the wrong way around...

...This is what has happened in Colorado, California, and Oklahoma...

...He thought his job was to come to an agreement with Congress when he should have opposed them all the way...

...The tricky part, Bush seems to believe, is handling people more powerful than yourself...

...The pattern is now being repeated in state legislatures as well, notably California's...

...One obvious move is open to him, however, and of late it has been urged upon him from all sides...

...The result suggests that something may be wrong with the normal explanation—that campaign funds, paid Torn Bethel...

...A bad mistake...

...Because I think the American people are fed up with it...

...In his inept handling of Iraq's seizure of Kuwait—he has sometimes responded as though he took Saddam Hussein's actions personally—Bush has no doubt also inflicted political damage on himself...

...You know, sometimes you run into some realities...

...This is no doubt what happened to the inept Gov...

...They forced their way past us anyway, thank God...

...But a retreat is equally out of the question...

...0 ush seems to construe politics as 13 an arena of fixed, well-defined power relations, not as something fluid and amenable to argument and persuasion...

...Constitutionally, as we have been repeatedly told, a declaration of war is up to Congress...

...No deals are needed...

...This task cannot be performed by any single legislator—only by a President who promises to veto spending bills and pledges "no new taxes...

...The new converts are not attracted to the diluted Catholicism of the Hans Kungs, the Charles Currans, or those who sign ads favoring legal abortion...

...This is exactly what Bush did...

...Consider the small number of House seats the GOP held in the first place...

...He wanted to be numbered among the THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1991 11 Good and the Compassionate...

...He cannot now very easily launch an unprovoked attack on Iraq...

...But with the head of a small country like Iraq...

...In effect, he was Reagan's nominated successor, but it is clear now that he never understood the sources of Reagan's appeal...

...He had "serious regrets" about "being forced" to abandon his no-newtaxes pledge, he said two days after the election, and if Congress tries to do it again, "they're going to do it over my dead veto, or live veto, or something like that, because it ain't going to happen, I'll guarantee you...

...Most of our writers are cradle Catholics and a significant minority belongs to various other churches...

...Yet even now there are converts, of exceptionally high quality, and their number is increasing with the tenure of the present Pope...

...But he still didn't realize what it was that he had done wrong, the appointee told me...

...This, of course, is a formula for divided government, and it is what we have mostly had in recent decades...

...Of course, the division between legislature and executive does not have to be by party...

...Repeatedly we were told that the voters were in a mean and restless mood this year, eager to turn the rascals out, but when the votes were counted the percentage of rascals returned to Washington was as high as ever...