Capitol Ideas/Sonny California
Bethell, Tom
Sonny California by Tom Bethell T he California Republicans held a convention at the Burlingame Hyatt this winter, and I'm afraid I have been a little slow in getting around to telling you about...
...I'm sure Bush never has...
...Still others were turned away disappointed, despite queuing for hours...
...Herschensohn's support is likely to be more intense than Campbell's, however, and so he might win...
...Sonny California by Tom Bethell T he California Republicans held a convention at the Burlingame Hyatt this winter, and I'm afraid I have been a little slow in getting around to telling you about it...
...No one else seems to know for sure...
...The problem is that he is inclined to disparage the whole economic worldview (studying the way incentives affect our behavior with respect to scarce resources), in favor of a morally driven outlook that emphasizes "values...
...Otherwise, incumbents will get away with their old tricks as easily as conjurers at a child's birthday party...
...Bono himself was standing alone in the middle of the room, not talking to anyone...
...Buchanan should not have allowed Jerry Brown of California to run, surprisingly effectively, with the potent flat-tax issue...
...It would be nice if there were such a clear distinction between the two parties, of course...
...I'm going to be speaking in Houston," he said...
...Bob Dornan in an elevator...
...The American Spectator July 1992 15 Campbell has the quality of earnest and sincere ambition that is probably required in big-state politics...
...For some reason he started to tell me about the toupee worn by one of the candidates...
...I met Rep...
...Savers are confiscated by taxation, earners are gouged to fund programs that reward irresponsible behavior, and so on...
...In an endless display of political ineptness that is in some respects baffling, Bush has freely discarded the remaining issues that once distinguished Republicans from Democrats—taxes, spending, and quotas, for example...
...Then he headed off down the corridor, roaring out the names of everyone coming in the opposite direction...
...Brest here surely identifies the real basis of liberal enthusiasm for Gorbachev...
...The remedies he has offered—cracking down on immigrants, getting tough with the Japanese, taking a hard look at imports—not only do not address the economic mess that we are in, but might actually make it worse...
...He's less the pol and more the idea man with a strongly conservative bent...
...But that is all he has held the line on...
...The defense issue, which worked powerfully for Republicans in the last three elections (think of Brezhnev, Andropov, Dukakis in his tank), has now dissolved along with the Soviet Union itself...
...But in order to correct a mess of this magnitude the dismal economics, in addition to the askew values, must be cogently addressed...
...The main problem with U.S...
...An L.A...
...Sooner or later he's liable to show that he doesn't really understand the way the system operates...
...At least it's worth a try...
...Politicians...
...inside, too, the Buchanan table was kept under surveillance by conservatively tailored gents...
...I'm told also by elected Republicans sympathetic to Herschensohn that in recent years he may have been a tiny bit too comfortably ensconced at Musso and Frank's Grill on Hollywood Boulevard...
...Over a four-month period, however, Buchanan's primary percentage steadily declined, even though he was (through accumulating publicity) becoming better known to the public...
...Tom Campbell: "I've written ten hit songs, and I know this, Tom...
...In the end, 9,500 people were admitted to the (outdoor) Frost Amphitheater...
...In answer to a question about the Endangered Species Act he said without further explanation: "In my city of Palm Springs, the fringe-toed lizards are the biggest landowners...
...Buchanan deserves great credit for running—for at least trying to give the GOP the jolt it so badly needs...
...As far as the other Senate race is concerned, it seems all too clear that Bill Allen, a thoughtful black conservative and a professor of government at Claremont, and Congressman William Dannemeyer, will split the conservative vote...
...I met him only briefly—in his hospitality suite, where he was surrounded by a great crush of people...
...Home-grown pols were no doubt grateful that Gorby wasn't running for a Senate seat...
...Bruce Herschensohn, the Los Angeles radio commentator who came close to winning the Republican Senate primary in 1986, cannot quite pull this off, is my impression...
...T he Democratic and GOP presidential contests were all but over before the California primary...
...Moreover, utopian liberalism, still very much in the saddle in the United States, has written these bad values into law...
...This could be the downfall of Ross Perot...
...But there were debates, balloons, buttons, and hospitality suites...
...He ran as an outsider," said his 1988 mayoral campaign manager, "and 24 hours after the election he was one of the Establishment that he was crusading against...
...He roared out my name and thrust out a hand so aggressively that I thought he was going to punch me in the stomach...
...an improvement over the peanuts and pretzels to be found in the Dannemeyer suite...
...This will permit the appointed and not very inspiring incumbent, John Seymour, to walk down the middle untouched...
...My main impression was that Buchanan has greatly enjoyed running for President...
...He did effectively transmit the message that he would keep George Bush's broken promise—no new taxes...
...How do they do it...
...As to the spelling, he thought it was toad-lizards...
...By the time you read this, most of the candidates will have been eliminated...
...This suggests a growing disappointment on the part of an electorate that was eagerly looking for someone other than Bush, but more and more realized that Buchanan was not the man...
...Maybe not...
...As I write, however, Campbell has raised $2 million more than Herschensohn for those indispensable TV commercials...
...Until recently, he was the mayor of Palm Springs, a desert city where for some reason rich people like Bob Hope and Kirk Douglas love to live...
...But by the time you read this, Sonny Bono surely will be out of the running for the Senate and back running his restaurant in Palm Springs...
...He started out in the 1950s driving a delivery truck on Sunset Boulevard, where he would drop off his own songs at the record companies...
...receives federal matchingfunds, and of course he has that attentive bodyguard...
...For this George Bush is primarily to blame, and Ross Perot the beneficiary...
...He travels about giving speeches, parts of which may be incorporated into the evening news...
...On learning that I wasn't aware of that political detail, he looked at me in downright amazement...
...A "vision of the same sort," Brest felt, "underlay Gorbachev's commitment to socialism...
...Legislators with such a background might be expected to appreciate and preserve an unregulated society...
...But at one point he brought the house down...
...In Sonny Bono's suite there were only seven or eight people...
...Flattering...
...I told him this, and he vaguely agreed...
...The U.S...
...Paul Brest, the dean of Stanford law school, compared Gorbachev to Thomas More, who saw greed as a fundamental barrier to a more just society, and in whose Utopia property was communal...
...Republicans believe in creating wealth, Democrats in redistributing it, Campbell said without a pause...
...and he grappled with the difficult but important idea of the rule of law...
...In the debate, Bono said to Rep...
...It overthrows the presumption of innocence—one of our most basic civil rights...
...politics right now is that we have a one-party system masquerading as a competitive system...
...He spoke at Stanford University in early May, and it seemed impossible to find a forum large enough to accommodate his admirers...
...I asked him if he would elaborate on that...
...Bureau of Land Management was the culprit, he said...
...It seems to me that praising Gorbachev is a small price to pay for the peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union—something I didn't expect to see—and for once I'm happy to join in the chorus...
...He has degrees in both law and economics and is tenured at Stanford University...
...Outside the restaurant there was a conspicuous contingent of Secret Service agents...
...He voted for the Democrats' version of the new civil privileges law, a modified version of which was enacted with Republican support...
...He has a proposal linking spending reductions to automatic income-tax rate reductions that might succeed in bringing the taxpayers to the bargaining table of budget deliberations...
...Whenever we have some growth in the city we have to dedicate some land to the lizards...
...We have eight of them...
...But early in May I had dinner with Pat Buchanan, his wife Shelley, and a couple of friends at the Hayes Street Grill in San Francisco...
...He is locally famous for his smooth reply to the former Soviet foreign minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, who asked him at a Hoover lunch to describe the difference between Republicans and Democrats...
...In the debate, Bono had caused much merriment by so conspicuously reading his answers from a thumb-indexed, loose-leaf folder...
...It turned out that he knew everybody else in the elevator...
...And my sense is that Buchanan's message has been flawed...
...One wishes our own political leaders would start thinking along such lines...
...Either way he would get the media...
...Congress needs more outsiders and certainly more who have risen as dramatically as Bono...
...I asked Buchanan if he was going to speak at the Republican National Convention...
...What other story would there be to cover...
...I was flattered because I hadn't seen him for years...
...When he meets you and grasps your hand you know, you really do, that you alone concern him at that moment—you and your valuable opinions...
...It's only a matter of which hall...
...If you can't deliver it, they won't deliver either...
...True, bad values are more fundamental, and do lead to bad economics...
...He was wearing huge specs balanced on the tip of his nose and a double-breasted suit, 1940s-style...
...In general he spoke warmly of Bush, and feels that his campaignsharpened Bush's own skills on the hustings...
...All the same, Gorbachev's speech was actually quite interesting, and one feels that "naive socialist" doesn't do justice to the man...
...Unlike some prominent (and anti-defense) Democrats, he did not resist the recommended closure of a military base in his own district...
...Which brings me to Mikhail Gorbachev...
...Voters will then suspect he won't be able to reform it...
...Times poll of California voters in mid-May showed Perot leading, Bush third...
...On the social issues, Campbell himself stands perilously close to Democratic territory, more or less following Pete Wilson's lead...
...He quoted the Russian philosophers Berdyaev and Soloviev, whose religious outlook was reminiscent of Solzhenitsyn's...
...Tom Bethell is The American Spectator's Washington correspondent and a media fellow at the Hoover Institution...
...Then again, to apply such a lesson to the political arena requires intellectual breadth, and Bono lacks it...
...Bush has held the line on appointments to the federal judiciary, which may be sufficient to warrant continued support from conservatives...
...Campbell is an immensely polished two-term congressman who represents Silicon Valley...
...Voters are looking for newcomers, but they must at least know what's going on...
...That should have been Buchanan's for the taking...
...You're not in tunewith California Republicans...
...I think it must be -toed lizards, but he could be right...
...a supporter of the flat tax, "sunset" legislation, and so on...
...A woman, maybe Mary, his fourth wife, was laying out portions of Tiramisu, "a luxury Italian dessert," and Amaretto cookies...
...In the Soviet Union they didn't have it, he conceded: law had there been reduced to "pure declaration" and "an arbitrary tool of politics...
...The problem is that running a statewide campaign here takes big money, and the people you have to approach to get it do expect to receive that heartfelt gaze...
...0 16 The American Spectator July 1992...
...Maybe...
...Then again, Campbell is much more intelligent than the average pol and is capable of seeing beyond the short horizons of special interest...
...But we're more undone by the reality of old taxes than the prospect of new...
Vol. 25 • July 1992 • No. 7
