Bauer Power
BARNES, FRED
Bauer Power Washington's Most Formidable Conservative By Fred Barnes On December 9, Gary Bauer was a guest at Hickory Hill, the Virginia estate of Robert Kennedy's widow Ethel. The occasion was a...
...Reed wanted social and religious conservatives to be part of a broader movement under Republican control...
...Though he once worked for the Republican National Committee, Bauer is bent on creating a broad coalition that includes Democrats and promotes conservative social values...
...The president, Bauer says, should lean on Hollywood producers and directors to stop propagandizing on behalf of gays in movies and TV shows...
...I happen to be tolerant...
...As a Reagan aide, he often infuriated first lady Nancy Reagan...
...The policies you recommend will produce aggressive nationalism...
...And the federal government should declare flatly that sexual preference is not a protected category under civil rights law...
...I am saying the transition from what exists now to a moderate state . . . should be one of the objectives of American foreign policy...
...Bauer says he'd run only to make sure social issues are discussed...
...Next, Bauer plans to reject the flat taxes proposed by House majority leader Dick Armey and Steve Forbes and the national sales tax favored by Bill Archer, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee...
...That prompted loud applause, but some of the politicians looked squeamish...
...As Dole stumbled toward defeat in 1996, Bauer and friends began talking about his running for president in 2000...
...Abortion, homosexuality, pornography, the role of religion in public life—these concern millions of Americans, but most politicians, including conservatives, are too queasy to address them...
...Being independent, he's open to finding allies (or enemies) in unusual places and taking up new causes...
...The question is whether someone as socially conservative as Bauer can be elected...
...Also, "all federal subsidies of the gay-rights agenda" should be halted, Bauer says, and the secretary of education should stop pressure on school officials to introduce gay issues in the classroom...
...Charles Canady, a Republican from Florida, about overriding President Clinton's veto of a ban on partial-birth abortion, when Gephardt walked in...
...The other guests were mostly Kennedys—including Democratic lieutenant governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend of Maryland and Kerry Kennedy Cuomo, wife of housing secretary Andrew Cuomo—and members of liberal human rights groups...
...Bauer's own agenda on homosexuality is stern stuff...
...I'll argue with him about a lot of things, but I won't argue with him about that...
...Fred Barnes is executive editor o/The Weekly Standard...
...Where are our leaders...
...To the extent you were seen as having a following, it strengthened you inside...
...Nancy Pelosi, a liberal Democrat from California, and Jeff Fiedler of the AFL-CIO...
...Before taking the post, Bauer got shrewd advice from Michael Horowitz, legal counsel at the White House budget office: Don't succumb to pressure to be at every meeting and never to stick your head out of the foxhole, Horowitz said...
...But Dole soon flip-flopped, and Bauer accused him of breaking his word...
...Both instincts are wrong...
...Bauer also sends a daily fax to 7,000 people and delivers a brief radio message on about 300 Christian stations...
...After he announced that the president, though a lame duck, would vigorously push an ambitious right-wing agenda in his final two years, using executive orders when needed, Bauer was called in by Don Regan, chief of staff...
...Bauer: Mr...
...He's hired two political strategists, Jeffrey Bell and Frank Cannon, to help him...
...Okay, said Regan, but crossing Nancy is "a big mistake...
...Kissinger, suggesting nationalism is on the rise in China, asked whether Bauer's severe policies might lead to "a nationalist, isolated China" that threatens the United States...
...Since then, Bauer has relentlessly gigged Gingrich on China...
...Because the president has said on the record that he's the most pro-gay-rights president in the history of the United States...
...The 41 state organizations loosely affiliated with the Family Research Council give him a built-in national network...
...FRC, by the way, recently received an anonymous gift of $1 million...
...Ralph would try to prevent a confrontation with the Republican leadership," says another conservative activist...
...Gingrich also clashed with Bauer at a testy private meeting on MFN...
...Imagine if some federal judge issued an order and said there will be no more gay-rights activity in the schools," he said...
...True, he'd built the Family Research Council into a force for marketing conservative positions on social issues and keeping them on the national agenda...
...Bauer says the final confirmation of what he'd been able to accomplish came six months ago "when William Buckley's people called": For a PBS debate on October 14, they asked Bauer to head the team in favor of interrupting trade with China...
...It was the second development of 1997—Bauer's bold seizure of the China issue—that brought him respect in the political community and policy circles...
...Responding angrily, Dole said: "I don't know where Gary Bauer's been all his life, but I've always known we have had pro-choice Republicans and pro-life Republicans...
...Gary doesn't mind having the edge...
...They didn't...
...Bauer, the arch-conservative, was the odd man out...
...Fourth, Bauer has refused to be a team player...
...When the Washington Post ran a story on his remarks, Bauer was summoned to the White House...
...Canady stood awkwardly by...
...Third, Bauer is always willing to make people angry...
...Bauer's PAC, the Campaign for Working Families, is backing conservative Tom Bordonaro...
...Reed is witty, charming, telegenic, and eager to be liked...
...Mentioning the speaker by name, Bauer declared in a National Press Club speech on October 27: "I cannot understand why the leaders of my party, the party of Lincoln and Reagan, are silent" in the face of human rights "outrages" by China...
...Ralph doesn't want the edge...
...Bauer declined to talk about his conversation with Quayle...
...House speaker Newt Gingrich is another story...
...It's not as farfetched as you might think...
...According to Bauer, here's the answer Dole should have given: Ma'am, I'm going to do something right now a politician is never supposed to do...
...On the White House staff, Bauer was a loner...
...Republican candidates have to talk about abortion and gay rights before all groups, not just social conservative or religious ones...
...Bauer, of course, specializes in being presumptuous, and he made his animosity to MFN clear...
...The answer is yes...
...Bauer's most reliable applause line involves his nemesis, Bob Dole...
...The first was Reed's decision to quit the Christian Coalition, move home to Georgia, and become a political consultant...
...Every liberal politician in America would have run to a microphone...
...If he's not tolerant, he ought to say so...
...Bauer said he agreed with Beijing's characterization of the United States as a "moneybags democracy" and asked Wei what he thought about MFN...
...Bauer says his relationships with Armey and House whip Tom DeLay are fine...
...Yet he was treated respectfully as a key player in the fight for human rights in China...
...Still, Bauer was only a face in the crowd of conservative activists in Washington, and overshadowed among social conservatives by Ralph Reed, then executive director of the Christian Coalition...
...First, he's taken up sensitive social issues that people want to hear about...
...Bauer increasingly strikes fear in the hearts of Republican leaders...
...Bell worked for Reagan in 1976 and 1980 and with Cannon for Jack Kemp in 1988...
...Bauer, in alliance with Reed, Bay Buchanan, and Phyllis Schlafly, prevailed on abortion and every other issue...
...On the show, Bauer not only made a powerful case for punishing China for human rights abuses, he also flummoxed former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, architect of detente with China...
...Instead of agreeing with Clinton, Bauer insists, Dole should have teed off when asked twice in the San Diego presidential debate about gay rights...
...In defiance, Bauer has allocated $100,000 for TV ads attacking Firestone for voting against a state ban on partial-birth abortion...
...Governor-elect Jim Gilmore and his lieutenant governor and attorney general showed up...
...Gary Bauer, president of the Family Research Council, is not lurching to the left...
...Nor is FRC—the think tank and lobbying organization that operates out of a new, six-story building in downtown Washington—abandoning its agenda of social conservatism...
...As he left the stage, Bauer told Rohn Ritzema, the head of the school administrators: "I came tired, but I'm leaving with a full tank...
...He never soft-pedals his views on gay rights and abortion in public confrontations with homosexuals and feminists...
...Plain-spoken rather than rhetorical and anything but glamorous, Bauer is a big draw...
...As conservative leaders, they have set drastically different goals...
...And he has a following...
...Instantly, that raises his visibility on TV...
...But in 1996, both were ready to jettison their GOP ties to manage a bid for the Democratic presidential nomination by former Pennsylvania governor Bob Casey, an economic liberal but social conservative...
...And last year, the wealthy DeVos and Prince families in Michigan financed the new FRC headquarters across from the National Museum of American Art...
...Bauer insisted he was only repeating a line of thinking the president had encouraged him to take...
...But Bauer, 51, has added fresh issues (China, Social Security, taxes) to that agenda, embraced new allies, and transformed himself into the most influential social conservative in Washington—and perhaps in America...
...Kissinger: You're just quoting—sort of debating points...
...BAUER: Well, but sir, we have been following the policies that you recommend, and you just told me that you think nationalism is on the rise in China...
...Bauer: Absolutely...
...But they failed to assuage Bauer's concern that Social Security privatization would hurt families with stay-at-home moms...
...Bauer and Gingrich will battle again in a special open primary for a House seat in Santa Barbara, California, on January 13...
...He stood like a rock," says Dobson, who hired Bauer to run FRC in 1989...
...Bauer cultivated a following of one inside the White House—the president...
...Soon after Democratic congressman Walter Capps died in October, Gingrich anointed moderate state legislator Brooks Firestone as the GOP favorite...
...Earlier, Bay Buchanan, who managed her brother Pat's presidential campaigns in 1988 and 1992, called on Bauer to warn him conservatives were Pat's constituency, not Gary's...
...This has not endeared him to all conservative leaders, especially not to those preparing to seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2000...
...Having risen so far, so fast, Bauer now wonders about rising further...
...Bauer was undeterred, irritating her again by seeking to block anyone who was HIV-positive from serving on the presidential AIDS Commission...
...He strategized by phone with House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt on how to defeat MFN (they lost...
...You're wrong and they're right," Bauer responded...
...Early in the debate, Kissinger harrumphed over the accusation he looks fondly on China because of his consulting contracts there...
...But if you're concerned about the American family, the breakdown of standards of right and wrong, and what's happening to our kids, then I'm your man...
...Lack of experience isn't Bauer's problem...
...What is it...
...And he would be a threat to candidates who expect to appeal to social conservatives—Buchanan, Quayle, and Sen...
...Maybe so, but Dole was forced to knuckle under when the platform committee convened in San Diego...
...He repeated in public the ideas that appealed to Reagan in their private sessions...
...And none is doing that, he says...
...Instead, he will promote a "family-friendly flat tax" that would tax workers' income no more heavily than income from investments in property...
...It reminded him of Ronald Reagan's view of foreign policy...
...He cited the case of a federal judge in Alabama who recently issued strict rules barring religious observance in schools...
...Social issues and the failure of the political establishment to deal with them are the crux of his message...
...When Crossfire or any other show is looking for a social conservative, it's Gary," says a conservative lobbyist...
...Is it your policies that produce the nationalism or my policies...
...It hasn't affected Gary Bauer a bit...
...A letter in the Washington Star defending Reagan's foreign policy pronouncements got him a job in the 1980 campaign...
...A few months before, in the runup to the vote in Congress on renewing most-favored-nation trade status with China, Bauer made still more strange, new friends...
...There was a constituency out there...
...As it turned out, Reagan had liked what he had read and wanted Bauer to be his chief domestic-policy adviser...
...Hearing rumors Bauer himself might run for president, former vice president Dan Quayle invited him to New York on December 2 and spent more than two hours explaining why he shouldn't enter the race...
...At one point, a lobbyist Bauer knew dropped by his office to gauge his reaction...
...Bauer, from a working-class background in unfashionable Newport, Kentucky, is disciplined and aggressive, and more inclined to win an argument than woo an audience...
...I learned that the best job security was aggressively arguing for Reagan principles and avoiding any whiff of ethical problems," he says...
...When Bauer took over the FRC in 1989, it had seven employees, a mailing list of 3,000, and a $200,000 budget...
...No one is more apprehensive over Bauer's rise than economic conservatives, notably libertarians...
...He's followed a simple, four-step formula...
...Once the Cold War ended, younger, less credentialed candidates became credible: Clinton, Buchanan, Paul Tsongas, Ross Perot in 1992, Buchanan and Forbes in 1996...
...Bauer responded that "certainly this century has taught us that when dealing with aggressive nationalism . . . the last thing to do is fall away in the face of it...
...Speaking to 4,350 Christian school administrators and teachers in Sacramento on November 13, Bauer said he and his family (wife Carol, two daughters, and one son) had been "praying in recent months" about his possibly leaving FRC and "throwing my hat in the ring for the Republican presidential . . ." Before he could finish the sentence, the crowd surged to its feet and gave Bauer a sustained ovation...
...Weeks later in the cloakroom just off the House floor, Bauer was talking to Rep...
...Second in his four-step strategy, Bauer has made a career of speaking out loudly in public...
...With Reed gone and his successors at the Christian Coalition, Don Hodel and Randy Tate, unable to match his sway, Bauer is the number-one social conservative...
...Wei said it would be presumptuous for him to advise Americans on trade policy...
...Now, as a conservative agitator, Bauer never balks at zinging business leaders, something most Republicans are wary of doing...
...But it took two developments in 1997 to give him real clout in Washington and see him emerge as a national political figure...
...For health reasons, Casey decided not to challenge President Clinton...
...And you never saw Ralph seeking out homosexual issues, as Gary does...
...John Ashcroft of Missouri...
...Kissinger: My point is you are producing aggressive nationalism . . . Bauer: No, sir . . . the idea that the United States is what produces aggressive nationalism in China is to blame the United States for what is happening in China...
...That prompted a visit from Grover Norquist and Peter Ferrera of Americans for Tax Reform...
...Bauer might seriously obstruct their chances...
...Bauer blames him, along with other Republicans and business lobbyists, for trying to water down the $500-per-child tax credit and expand business-tax breaks in last summer's budget deal...
...I'll make their life miserable if they water this down...
...Instead, tolerance language would apply to the whole platform: It would be written into the preamble, not the abortion plank...
...Six years later, as undersecretary of education, he excoriated a group of mayors for "whining" that Reagan's military buildup had taken money from cities...
...Bauer first broke with them when he denounced schemes to privatize Social Security in an op-ed in the New York Times in January 1997...
...Bauer flouted the rule, broaching unapproved social issues and getting Reagan's assent to pursue them...
...Kissinger: And this hysterical approach that one now hears will produce rabid nationalism rather than the moderate evolution that we should try to promote...
...He wants politicians to "speak out for normalcy and for the values the overwhelming number of their voters have...
...Nancy didn't like his tone and didn't want to see further statements like that, Regan said...
...Afterwards, Kissinger told Bauer his tough line represented an important strain of thought in America...
...Next question...
...Where are the people who are in power because of the votes of men and women like you, and why will they not speak out for our values...
...Bauer's new prominence in the platform deliberations made him a celebrity...
...Well before the 1996 Republican national convention in San Diego, Bauer and other conservatives had obtained Dole's pledge not to single out abortion as the platform issue that would illustrate the GOP's tolerance of dissenting views...
...So did congressmen Tom Davis, a Republican, and Virgil Goode, a Democrat, as well as Jerry Falwell, scads of state legislators, and numerous businessmen...
...Until the summer of 1996, Bauer was neither a major factor in Republican policy calculations nor a heavyweight in Washington...
...Reed's departure and the China issue aren't the only reasons Bauer, the son of a truck driver from a family of Democrats, has emerged as a man to be reckoned with in Washington...
...Bauer, who served as Reagan's chief domestic-policy adviser from 1987 through 1988, took this as an unintended compliment...
...There's a culture in the Republican party that takes people [who rise to the top] and turns them into eunuchs," he says...
...Kissinger: The United States is not now producing aggressive nationalism...
...When Bauer approached Gere on the podium and tapped him on the shoulder, the actor swung around and greeted him enthusiastically: "Gary, my main man...
...At Monday lunches with Reagan, aides were supposed to raise only those issues cleared by senior officials...
...So Bauer has filled a void...
...Bauer's performance did impress James Dobson, head of Focus on the Family...
...If I'd tried to play the inside game, I'd never have lasted...
...When word leaked to Roll Call last October that Armey had whined about Bauer at a private meeting in Texas, Armey sheepishly phoned Bauer to apologize...
...Reed had played John F. Kennedy to Bauer's Richard Nixon...
...He expected to be fired...
...Moderator Michael Kinsley banged his gavel to stop the exchange...
...Then Bauer took on Bob Dole...
...And he delivers it ceaselessly, not only on TV and radio, but also in two or three speeches every week...
...At Ethel Kennedy's, he was highly critical of American business...
...Bauer had to be persuaded by Bell and Cannon that he would be taken seriously on China...
...To gain credibility with policymakers, he published op-eds, first in the Washington Post in April ("Why People of Faith Must Challenge China"), then in the Washington Times ("Trading in Slavery") and the San Diego Union-Tribune ("Promote Freedom, Not China's Army...
...Could someone who's never held elective office and only dabbled in foreign policy be elected...
...Bauer once would have been surprised to find himself treated so well in such company...
...When he spoke to the Family Foundation in Richmond on December 1, he attracted a larger crowd than popular governor George Allen had drawn a year before...
...Then, Bauer bucked the Washington conservative establishment and the business community by mounting a combative campaign to block MFN for China...
...He held a joint press conference with Rep...
...So he began studying articles and policy papers on China...
...When the critical exchange with Bauer came, he looked even more irritated...
...That night, they had dinner together...
...I was skeptical I could get through the gatekeepers in Washington," he says...
...Gary welcomes it...
...But a few weeks earlier, he had appeared with actor Richard Gere at a rally across the street from the White House to protest the official visit of Chinese president Jiang Zemin...
...Either way, Bauer is unlikely to change his views...
...Republicans, the lobbyist said, were afraid Bauer might create a firestorm, but he'd assured them Bauer is a team player who understands the need for compromise...
...Secretary, to object to an ad hominem attack and then to characterize your opponents as hysterical, I think, crosses the line...
...Then, they went back and forth: Kissinger: My point is . . . Bauer: The West deceived itself time after time after time [in the case of Germany and Japan] and we ended up, sir, with the war that you want to avoid...
...The occasion was a dinner for Wei Jingsheng, the dissident recently freed from prison in China...
...He's an effective fund-raiser, his PAC having collected $2 million this year...
...His advisers contended that by attacking the mushy China policy of the Clinton administration and top Republicans, Bauer "could occupy unoccupied ground...
...At the White House, Bauer ignored office politics and became an outside player...
...One of his faxes prompted a California man to get a "paycheck protection" referendum on the state ballot next June to limit use of union dues in political campaigns...
...Now, it has 90 employees, 455,000 members, and a $14 million annual budget...
...The most Wei would indicate is that he appreciated past efforts to re-link MFN to human rights progress in China...
...Spotting Bauer, he rushed past a cluster of Democrats to chat with him...
...Bauer didn't soften his message for the upper-middle-class, professional audience...
...At the least, Bauer could inject social issues in the presidential primary debate...
...I'm going to tell you and anyone listening this evening that if the demands of the gay-rights movement are your number-one priority, then the president here is your man...
...He is the most pro-gay rights...
Vol. 3 • December 1997 • No. 15
