Playing Catch-up in Europe
SCHORR, DANIEL
Washington Notebook BY DANIEL SCHORR Playing Catch-up in Europe President Bush's first State of the Union address could be characterized, on the domestic side, as "Read my lip service."...
...Domestic pressure—the chilly reception Congress gave his defense budget —probably played a part in that decision...
...The hotel is partially owned by A. Bruce Rozet, a Jackson supporter who is in the business of managing government-subsidized housing for low-income tenants...
...Tactics probably played a part, too...
...Its godfather, ironically, is Secretary of Defense Richard B. Cheney...
...We've got to go to the question of introspection, without being defensive or feeling that to talk honestly about these issues somehow compromises the race...
...A senior official said it was because "events were running ahead of the negotiations" in Vienna...
...East German Prime Minister Hans Modrow proposed, undoubtedly with Gorbachev's encouragement, that a unified Germany be neutralized...
...Budget Director Richard G. Darman has found in the government such things as money-gobbling Cookie Monsters and hidden Pacmen...
...But the pressure came mainly from events in Europe...
...But the visions seemed out of sync with a Reaganesque budget that, if adopted (and it won't be), would not advance the country very far toward the goal of a gentler and smarter America...
...long maintained that allegations of drug usage made against him were a racist smear, until he was videotaped with the "smoking gun" in the form of a smoking pipe of crack...
...Nor did President Bush, while boasting in the State of the Union speech about his education budget being "a record high," think to mention that in "constant dollars" it indeed amounts to a decrease...
...charged "racism" in the investigation by the House Ethics Committee—headed by Representative JulianC...
...The Soviet Union, grudgingly conceding the inevitability of reunion of the two Germanies in order to assist that threatened species, the East German Communist Party, in its election campaign, was obliged to face up to the issue of the future of foreign forces in Germany—380,000 Soviet and a quarter-million American troops, plus some British and French...
...Finally, after having stated only two months earlier, following the Malta summit, that he wanted to see a troop reduction agreement "in the bank" and being carried out before discussing further cuts, he came up with his sudden proposal to leap ahead to a lower ceiling...
...He therefore does not have to account for being beholden to a slumlord campaign contributor...
...The superpowers, as they are still smilingly called, will have to scramble more than once to keep their forces out of the political crossfire...
...Former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Samuel R. Pierce Jr., facing investigation by an independent counsel (special prosecutor) on allegations of favoritism in awarding millions of dollars in housing contracts, has not seen fit to charge racial bias...
...Nevertheless, it is already a weapon of political warfare that threatens to change the terms of the increasingly heated debate on America's priorities...
...Yet if it walks like a dove and coos like a dove, then why isn't it a peace dividend...
...Heofferedusbytheyear2,000 (is there something he hasn't told us about running for a third term...
...The peace dividend talk took off last November when he announced that, looking at developments in Eastern Europe, he was planning to seek cuts of $ 180 billion in the military budget over the next six years...
...Since that is unacceptable to Chancellor Helmut Kohl's government in West Germany, it brightly suggests the neutralization of East Germany alone: Soviet troops would leave, and Western troops would stay out...
...Jackson is not a mayor (and says he doesn't want to be one), nor a senator (which he would like to be from a 51st state...
...Since Jackson delivered that sermon, it has been disclosed that he is himself involved in an ethical problem...
...Secretary Kemp says he would like to know why, despite the government subsidies Rozet received, his tenants "are still required to live like rats...
...The Reverend Jesse Jackson raised the question of self-criticism during a recent Sunday sermon on inner city violence...
...NowRozethas been suspended from further HUD contracts...
...But this may invite the kind of introspection that Jackson recommends...
...Juan Williams, in a tough article in the Washington Post about the "bloated, ineffective and corrupt system of government that Barry has led for 12 years," observed that "his is a modern-day version of the same dirty political organization that Mayor [Richard J.] Daley [of Chicago] had in the old days...
...Dixon (D.-Calif...
...ablack—of a claim that he sexually molested a Peace Corps volunteer in Zaire during a visit to Africa last year...
...a drugfree, crime-free, pollution-free America, with everybody reading and calculating like mad...
...But the issue was raised by Benjamin L. Hooks, executive director of the NAACP, when he suggested selective law enforcement in the Barry case...
...It is, in fact, still in the R&D stage...
...There is also a sense that blacks are simply doing what white politicians have long done—something like equal opportunity corruption...
...The answer is that, like the Stealth bomber, the peace dividend is very powerful but invisible...
...Hesaid: "It's all well and good to talk about oppression, but we've got to rid ourselves of that which we want our oppressors to be rid of...
...Rozet's firm has come under fire at the Department of Housing and Urban Development for short-changing its tenants...
...For another thing, and perhaps most urgently, the troop stationing question was becoming interlocked with the issue of German unification...
...Translated, that means that the President, unable to stay ahead of the pellmell rush of events in Europe, had been obliged to change course in an effort to stay in step...
...And, in truth, there was no peace dividend in the Bush budget because peace was hardly factored into it...
...President Bush assures us that he sees no peace dividend on the horizon—only debt reduction...
...Last summer, after having said that he was in no hurry for a summit session with the Soviet Union's President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, he felt impelled by whathelearnedonavisittoPolandand Hungary to propose the meeting eventually held in December off Malta, to reach some understanding on how to manage the turmoil in Eastern Europe...
...Why the new figure, and why such haste...
...ATime for Introspection Washington's Mayor Marion S. Barry Jr...
...All of this represents early maneuvering in an increasingly serious game...
...To be inflexible about a high ceiling would appear to be giving American endorsement to the presence of Soviet forces in those countries...
...Secretary of State James A. Baker III was expecting to hear a proposal for a lower ceiling during his visit to Moscow, and it must have seemed a good idea to beat the Soviets to the punch...
...Last spring, after having dug in his heels on the deployment of a new shortrange Lance missile in West Germany, he backed off with a last-minute compromise proposal effectively shelving the issue, just in time to save the NATO summit in Brussels from a serious German-American quarrel...
...The sense of status quo at home was, if anything, underscored by his rhetoric about a "New Era in the World's Affairs" and "the Revolution of '89...
...His 1988 Presidential campaign was released from a $30,000 debt by the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel...
...But the peace dividend he calls "a truly wonderland phenomenon...
...No Peace Dividend While observing the dismantlement of the Cold War and entry into the "new era," American politicians talk about an elusive "peace dividend...
...For one thing, Hungary and Czechoslovakia—in Poland the issue is in dispute—were asking for the removal of Soviet occupation forces...
...chairman of the Armed Services Committee, to James Schlesinger, former Secretary of Defense, asserted that more American troops could be safely removed from Europe...
...The Administration emphasized that Pentagon estimates were down 2 per cent from last year in "constant dollars" —that is, adjusted for inflation— but did not point out that they were up 1.9 per cent in the inconstant dollars we spend...
...Representative Gus Savage (D.-Ill...
...Congressman Savage has declared that "African-American elected officials are five times more likely to be investigated than their white counterparts...
...The headlines on the stories concerning the address went to a hastily tacked-on proposal for a ceiling of 225,000 Soviet and American troops in Europe, which was 50,000 below the figure Bush proposed last May...
...Soon the cooing of the dove was heard in the land, and the line started forming outside the government for pieces of peace dividend to do everything from helping poor children to fixing rickety bridges...
...It was not the first time George Bush found himself in this position...
...Although there is no evidence to support such prejudice, the perception itself is troubling and receives wide currency among blacks...
...Jackson intervened in 1989on behalf ofhis friend and financial backer with HUD Secretary Jack Kemp...
...Authorities from Senator Sam Nunn(D.-Ga...
...Cheney didn't make it clear enough that he was not talking of actually reducing Pentagonspending, but merely of cutting back from inflated projections of future spending...
Vol. 73 • February 1990 • No. 3
