The Gentle Rain

...George Gilder puts his faith in wholesome greed...

...They will be employed to counter already familiar charges similar to those lately advanced by Americans for Democratic Action, that "Some of the cruelest elements in Reaganomics are the cuts, made in the midst of a serious recession, in the social programs designed to help families weather a recession...

...Compassion is a human response, not a political tactic or an economic plan...

...His copanelists concurred that there is no hope for the poor unless the GNP starts moving upward and that to get it moving we must cut Federal expenditures(except, may the gods of war look benignly upon us, for arms) and encourage investment...

...his object is to alleviate today's suffering as quickly as possible...

...Murray, less of a preacher than Gilder albeit on his wavelength, noted that prior to the Great Society programs, the effort in Washington was to reduce the number of people dependent on government handouts...

...our political condition has not proved able to tolerate it...

...if they have to try that hard to lighten their image, then the image must indeed be dark...

...But a plan that cannot meet the test of reality must ultimately be counted a failure...

...There was no disagreement about the premise of the meeting: The public, receiving its information through such dubious sources as the New York Times, Newsweek and the nightly news shows, was being given the impression that the Administration, in Lenkow-sky's phrase, "is playing Robin Hood in reverse...

...But the politics of the supply-side may be a pandering to the well-to-do that lacks both judgment and compassion...

...Some of the criticisms from the Right of the Great Society have considerable force...

...and if they are that uncomfortable in the company of hard luck, then they probably avoid thinking too much about it...

...The false rumor has been spread that Reagan & Co...

...The Gleaming City Such are the arguments we shall be hearing from Republicans as the midterm elections approach...

...they cannot hope to be considered compassionate by the jobless...

...Nathan Glazer, the Harvard professor of education and sociology identified with the neoconservative cadre...

...It is from this painful condition that the supply-siders would extricate us...

...For better or worse, the compassionate person is not one to weigh the sufferings of the present against some greater good to come...

...Nancy seemed more at ease hobnobbing with British nobs at Windsor than trying to make conversation with the commoner kind of commoner at home...

...Charles A. Murray, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, who has lately completed a book on social policy under recent administrations...

...compassion may be translated as demagogic pandering to the instant satisfaction of the mob...

...and George Gilder, program director of the conservative Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, which sponsored the gathering, and the author of Wealth and Poverty, a theological case for supply-side economics...

...Yet the blame was not laid entirely on the bad old media...

...There is no guarantee that social programs inspired by the most compassionate spirit will be well planned or well administered...

...With the expansion of social programs, many more people who were not "truly needy" became candidates for one sort of program or another and expenditures rose even as the gross national product fell...

...Now, this may or may not be prudent policy...

...The problem, as he saw it, was that in working day and night for the public weal, he and his colleagues had neglected to take time out to educate the public in positive thinking...

...But with the elections looming, the minds of Reaganauts are naturally on Image...

...If they begin burbling about their compassion, that's only going to get them a laugh...

...The politics of compassion may conceal a void of judgment...

...some of its programs have been more successful at bringing prosperity to middle-class middlemen those troops of doctors, teachers, therapists, social workers, and consultants through whom "services" to the poor must pass than at attacking the pathology of poverty...

...the Administration came in for its share...

...Can an Administration that is so conspicuously of the rich and by the rich be for the poor...

...The panelists were Michael J. Horowitz, associate director for law and policy in the Office of Management and Budget, David Stockman's domain...

...People have recognized this feeling in such otherwise different sorts of politicians as Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey and Robert Kennedy...

...the call was for a forum on "Social Justice and the Reagan Budget...

...One may have compassion for the elderly, yet recognize that Social Security is in a bad fix...

...The Lesser Society Come now the Reagan supply-siders with the news that the politics of compassion is a flop, that for the good of the country compassion need not be "enthroned in the hearts of kings...

...Whether this sort of attack is justified or not, the problem facing defenders of an Administration containing so many millionaires is that the quality of compassion, like mercy, is not strain'd...

...Kevin Phillips, an observer on the Right, declares flatly that Reagan has failed...

...They may be right in challenging, as the invitation to their meeting put it, "the notion that there is but one way to achieve social justice, which is through income redistribution...

...He did not go into how strenuously the Administration had fought for the tough cuts, or mention the accommodations made in deference to Republican Congressmen...

...Reagan may well be a more courteous and kinder person than either Kennedy or Johnson, but those attributes don't have much "reach...

...Former Representative Robert F. Drinan, now head of ADA, wrote: "We have seen your 'gleaming white city on a hill' and we know it is reserved not for the many but for the wealthy few...

...A sudden visit by Ron or Nancy to a black family or to handicapped children seems awkward and calculating...

...If it is to carry conviction, it has to flow naturally...

...Supply-siders may put on long faces and say that it is regrettable, temporary, for the greater good of the nation...

...The only sort of tribute Reagan can expect is the sort that Herbert Hoover received when the poor of his time called their shack towns Hoover-villes...

...To say that judgment should be tempered by compassion is mere truism...

...Unrepentant supply-siders may respond, with justice, that their faith has never been given a fair trial in the form that a David Stockman desired...

...yes, he's acting...

...That may get them an argument...

...The compassionate person is connected, in a personal rather than theoretical way, to the sufferings of others, a commodity always in plentiful supply...

...The parent who is all compassion is likely to turn out troubled offspring but what will the parent with little compassion turn out...

...Leslie Lenkowsky, research director of the conservative Smith Richardson Foundation...

...When he speaks of the down-and-out, it's always at a distance...

...The object of the meeting was not phrased exactly that way...

...Compassion is not a synonym for policy...

...They had better gird themselves, however, for the anger of those whose benefits are being reduced or eliminated...

...Game BY WALTER GOODMAN The Gentle Rain Some weeks ago, a group of men known for their compassion for Ronald Reagan's economic theories gathered in New York City to ponder why so many Americans seem to feel that the present Administration lacks compassion...

...An awful lot of people who don't need it get an awful lot of money out of the Federal government," said Glazer...

...But there is no hope of convincing people who are having trouble getting along that the buffeting is for their own good...

...Having come to power with the thesis that a misconceived compassion has been ruinous, it must try to play out its hand...

...Horowitz, giving loyal voice to the gospel of David Stockman, retorted that the Administration had made efforts to cut middle-class programs, but had been rebuffed by the Democratic Congress...

...For the Administration at this stage, there is one reasonably honest course to follow...

...have it in for the poor...

...Lenkowsky said it offered no coherent economic policy...

...Gilder and Murray argued that a true perspective would take into account the social programs dating from the Great Society, which had brought the nation to its present deplorable pass- and had, to borrow Gilder's typically high-pitched language, resulted in the "virtual destruction of the black family in the slums," through subsidies to illegitimacy, broken families and shunning honest labor...

...Glazer, who in this group found himself on the Left, observed mildly that the Administration had made "politically easy" cuts in programs like Food Stamps and the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act, both designed to benefit the poor, while drawing back from "sacrosanct" cuts in programs that help the middle class, like Social Security...