Editorials/A Memo to George Bush
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
EDITORIALS A MEMO TO GEORGE BUSH To: President Bush From: R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. Re: The State of the Union 1991 I t has been my honor to be your friend. Early in the presidential sweepstakes I...
...Additionally, it is time to return the child deduction to the level of the late 1940s, putting it in constant dollars at $6,000...
...Finally let us address the problem of the poor, not for the votes but out ofsimple decency...
...I disagreed on an issue or two, but that's life...
...They have turned Congress into a feeding trough...
...Return to your campaign for lowering the capital gains tax along the 10 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1991 lines suggested by the chairman of The American Spectator's publications committee, Ted Forstmann...
...Now take on the Old Order's last political redoubt, the parasitic Congress...
...After two generations as the special concern of welfare state Democrats America's poor are more wretched than before the soi-disant Liberals discovered them...
...Get the economy growing again...
...Otherwise, (a) the government's enemies will train their fire on it, and (b) the needs of the people will not be met...
...It seems to me that you have no other alternative but to return the enemy's fire...
...In the State of the Union, take on the fatuous in Congress who let you down in the budget negotiations...
...The Old Wing is the wing of competence...
...R. Emmett Tyrreg Jr is editor-in-chief of The American Spectator...
...You have doubtless noted that wherever this phony Liberalism gains the ascendancy, confusion and demoralization-follow...
...You were the best qualified...
...nterior to that, of course, it is critical that you bring your party together...
...I believe it is unseemly to take on the blues unless one stands knee-deep in, the surf with solid sandy beach beneath one's feet and a beer nearby...
...The other wing is the conservative wing...
...A President should have budgetary tools the equal of those now granted forty-three governors...
...Call it the Thatcher wing of the Republican party...
...Their sole conception of government envisages a gigantic milch cow with multitudinous teats awaiting the arrival of ever more Democratic constituents...
...They believe in the status quo, which in politics is dangerous...
...Another stimulant to economic growth would come from a cut in the payroll taxes of working Americans, which, if need be, could be balanced bycuts in Medicare benefits and farm subsidies paid to affluent Americans...
...There is, then, no alternative to an agenda that builds on the growth of the 1980s—at least no alternative that will allow the country to prosper and you to return to the halcyon days of a few months back...
...The ideas percolate today in distinguished think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the Hoover Institution...
...Thatcher's response to her critics: "You, sir, would feed the mob's baser impulses by making the rich less well off, even though by so doing the poor are also made less well off and less capable of self-reliance...
...You had loyally and competently assisted in the Reagan Revolution...
...The ideas that it brought to government in the 1980s were developed over a period of thirty years by men like Nobel laureates Milton Friedman and James Buchanan...
...Let us by all means have term limitation...
...Their response was to raise spending, raise the deficit, and then to imply that you had just lied to your constituents...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1991 11...
...Remembering how they dishonored their 1982 promises to balance tax cuts with budget cuts during the TEFRA negotiations and how profoundly partisan they are, I believed that your gentlemanly demeanor in these negotiations would be used against you, leading to insignificant budget cuts, a higher deficit, and tax increases that would only impede economic growth...
...One minute all is peaceful, and the next minute you are living in a fortress under enemy fire...
...Come out for the "empowerment" package, for choice in schools, for privatizing public housing, for workfare, for removing thugs from the streets of the inner city, and against any policy that smacks of quotas, which only perpetuate injustice and bigotry...
...Get control of the budget with the line-item veto...
...Banish the special interests that have made Congress a lifetime appointment...
...Then, too, you were elected by a political majority that recognized economic growth as the key to scotching poverty and maintaining the American way of life...
...In this State of the Union address I urge you to identify Congress as the enemy of prosperity and the source of the deficit...
...You were negotiating with cads...
...It has two wings and it needs both to fly...
...If you will add to this coalition the poor now fortified with hope . . . well, you have got for yourself the New Deal coalition revived, and Senator Mitchell is stuck with the Old Order...
...In response to Senator Mitchell's bathos about "fairness," may I prescribe a variation on Mrs...
...They have no theory of how wealth is created in a country, aside from the rudimentary notions of the late Robin Hood...
...Its members get things done...
...All the Liberals by R. Emmett TYrrell, Jr...
...Banish the PACs...
...consider the university...
...You ran a fine campaign that promised a continuation of the Conservative Revival...
...You believe in casting for bluefish from an open boat...
...Its members have the passion, the energy, the numbers, and the ideas that made the Republican party the power that it was in your first year and a half...
...You were a perfect gentleman in abjuring your no-new-taxes vow...
...The other wing of the party recognizes that government must move...
...Early in the presidential sweepstakes I was glad to throw my personal support to you...
...This time around I urge you to remind the citizenry that you walked the extra mile with the Democrats and that they tripped you...
...In your 1990 State of the Union address, you magnanimously offered your hand to the Congress...
...Lower that tax to, say, 15 percent on capital gains held at least a year and eliminate it on all sales of assets held longer than three years, and stabilize the dollar by linking it to a basket of commodities including gold...
...Unfortunately they are not very reflective as to what is to be done...
...If they can trip you in the Middle East, they will do that too...
...Your first year and a half were boffo by me...
...This policy will encourage savings, investment, risk-taking, and increased productivity...
...They run government well but have not over the past decade or so absorbed what it is that government ought to do...
...Only the Thatcher wing of the Republican party has anything new to offer...
...Its members get out the vote...
...Over the past fifteen years it has become ever more apparent that your party is the party of ideas, of competence, of working Americans, and of entrepreneurs...
...In sum: pull your party together,take on the enemies of productive America now roosting in Congress, revive the economy with tax cuts and a sound dollar, and raise the spirits and the self-reliance of the poor with a hand up, not a handout...
...They work the campaigns...
...For this decision my colleagues on the right esteemed me an ass, but your subsequent accomplishments validated my judgment...
...And just as Ronald Reagan had earned the nomination in 1980, you had earned the nomination in 1988...
...You were elected in 1988 partly because you were recognized as the defender of the people against the entrenched interests of the Old Order...
...Consider the inner city...
...They are circulated in our illustrious, heroic, beautifully edited, and reasonably priced intellectual reviews...
...Twelve years is long enough for any solon, and as head of your party do all that you can to see that the redistricting of congressional seats reflects the electorate and not merely the regnant political order...
...A more consequential disagreement developed when, in the recent budget negotiations, you acted so chivalrously toward the Democratic spendthrifts...
...They are as unlikely to practice budget restraint as they are to attend a decent Swiss finishing school without incident...
...There is no substitute for the Thatcher wing's energy and there is no alternative to its ideas...
...This the Liberals have demonstrated...
...Their leaders include the likes of Kemp and Gingrich...
...Commence hostilities with the Democratic spendthrifts...
...have been able to come up with over the past decade are more of the same blowzy boondoggles that have rendered Harlem and other poverty centers ever more desolate and pitiable and the budget more bloated and dangerous to our economy...
...Summon the nation to democratize Capitol Hill...
...The White House is a deceptively tranquil manse...
Vol. 24 • February 1991 • No. 2
