ON POLITICAL BOOKS: Bootlick for Bonzo
Corn, David
Bootlick for Bonza What Ed Meese’s morning-in-America memoir won ’t tell you. by David Corn never thought I would be nostalgic for Edwin IM eese 111, but the attorneys general succeeding him...
...the demise of heavy, high-wage industries...
...Recent evidence has shed light on Savimbi’s brutality...
...It was those damned pragmatistsRichard Darman, Michael Deaver, David Stockman, and James Baker--who persuaded Reagan to pave the way for a tax increase in 1982 to counter the deficit-causing tax cut of 1981...
...What Meese leaves out could fill a chapter-and it does, in the report filed by the congressional Irancontra committees...
...Meese kept McKay busy...
...He also disingenuously attributes the United States’ success in the Gulf war to the Reagan defense budget, but he forgets to discuss the Reagan administration’s attempt to cozy up to Saddam Hussein...
...Conveniently, Meese cannot recall many, and when he does, he is quick to assign culpability to those who would riot let Reagan be Reagan...
...frightening to think that White House decisions could have turned on UIG acolyte, Meese uses this episode to show that the fault lay with the aides, not the star...
...Remember the messenger whom security guards barred from entering the Justice Department because his T-shirt was emblazoned with that catchy statement...
...He has little to say about the deficits that Reagan bequeathed to America-xcept to note that the Democratic dunderheads in Congress did not cut spending enough...
...This “Debacle of 1982,” Meese writes, was “the greatest mistake we made during the Reagan administration...
...I am prepared to accept that Reagan was in charge -even though he needed scripts for his photo ops with Girl Scouts...
...But the chart covers disposable income per capita, and not everyone makes the per capita amount...
...One can engage in a statistical duel with Meese...
...What of the errors and failures...
...and failed to take notes during key interviews...
...Meese, on the other hand, was the nation’s top law enforcement officer...
...When he notes Watt’s resignation, Meese does not refer to the controversy that precipitated it...
...My favorite statistical sleight-of-hand is his reliance on a chart that tracks disposable personal income...
...Regnery Gateway, $24.95...
...For helping the company (by using his White House contacts), Wallach eventually received compensation worth more than a million dollars...
...Meese obviously believes that an in-control Reagan deserves nothing but laurels for all that occurred during his administration...
...He claims the Reagan-era military build-up not only brought the Soviets to their knees, but delivered the victory in Grenada and the 1986 raid against Qaddafi...
...But for those who long for the good old Reagan days (and you know who you are), Meese’s book offers a chance to relive them...
...As he portrays it, his investigation was conducted merely to reconcile conflicting statements from administration officials and was responsible for unearthing evidence that Oliver North had diverted funds from the Iran weapons deal to the contras...
...Who in the Bush years could inspire so memorable a slogan as “Meese Is a Pig...
...Through David Corn is the Washington editor of The Nation...
...Spending billions on such white elephants as the B-1 and B-2 bombers weighs not an ounce on his conscience...
...When E. Robert Wallach, a close friend and law school classmate, asked Meese to use his influence to help a private company (which later became Wedtech) obtain a federal contract, Meese, then counselor to the president, put one of his deputies on the case...
...They even went so far as to prevent Reagan from seeing copies of his favorite magazine, the archconservative Human Events...
...Oddly, there is scant mention of George Bush, and Meese has nothing to say about Nancy Reagan...
...President,” Casey supposedly exclaimed, “you can’t have the biggest leaker in Washington as your national security adviser...
...Yet Meese certainly did his bit for a certain pal who tried to suck money from the teat of government...
...Moreover, in listing the ills of Washington, Meese rails against “consultants, lawyers, public relations people, and others” who make a living off the federal government...
...But Meese barely addresses major changes that occurred while Reagan ran the nation: the increase in the trade deficit...
...let’s at least grant him partial credit for all of this...
...He assails Secretary of State George Shultz for, among other things, not supporting aid to Jonas Savimbi and his anticommunist Angolan rebels...
...In 1989, it was 42 percent...
...ignored Siiultz’s warning that the Iran initiative and the contra operation were linked...
...Darman and Deaver, he claims, blocked administration officials who opposed a tax hike from access to the Oval Office...
...Reaganomics, in Meese’s view, heralded the “longest peacetime economic expansion in the history of our nation”-a mantra he chants repeatedly...
...In a supplement to the Iran-contra report, four Democratic members of the House Iran-contra committee (yes, a partisan lot, but they argue persuasively) concluded, “Because of the attorney general’s failure to act promptly to preserve documents and to conduct thorough interviews -and in some instances, any interviews-of the major actors in these events, we may never know the answers to many of the key questions that have been raised by this affair...
...After learning that an illegal bribery scheme might be afoot, Meese took no steps to terminate U.S...
...force of will and firm adherence to his conservative ideology, Meese’s boss engineered a historic economic boom and the end of communism...
...James Watt, the secretary of the interior with a taste for his own foot, is a “brilliant lawyer...
...The independent counsel also investigated the management of Meese’s blind trust...
...There has been no S&L debacle and no HUD scandal...
...and the explosion in speculative, parasitical business activity...
...In 1979, 31 percent of American households had an income of $25,000 a year or less...
...As for Reagan’s 1983 blunder in ]Lebanon, which ended with 241 Marines killed by a suicide bomber, Meese touches on this tragedy only bang enough to pin the blame for the deaths on the State Department, not on the decisive commander-in-chief...
...There is literally nothing Meese cannot justify...
...After all, it was Meese who once said of criminal defendants, “You don’t have many suspects who are innocent...
...In fact, it i...
...Meese deems Reagan’s resolve to invade Grenada right after the Lebanon bombing “remarkable...
...And no cabinet member since has so embodied the administration he served...
...In the pipeline episode, Wallach informed Meese that Bruce Rappaport, a wealthy Swiss industrialist, intended to funnel pipeline profits to Israel’s Labor party...
...What of her efforts to court the torturing generals of Argentina...
...The table shows a 20 percent rise (in real terms) between 1981 and 1989...
...But James Baker suffers the worst of Meese’s sting...
...With Reagan: The Inside Story...
...But when he refused to kiss and tell, the house quite wisely lost interest...
...support for the construction of an Iraqi-Jordanian oil pipeline...
...But why be fair...
...After details about the Iran initiative-in which Reagan traded arms to Iran to pry loose the hostages and promote a strategic opening-began to emerge, Meese initiated his own probe into what had occurred...
...by David Corn never thought I would be nostalgic for Edwin IM eese 111, but the attorneys general succeeding him have lacked both his bumbling flair and symbolic poses...
...Its “citizens, allies, and security interests seemed everywhere in danger,” and the economy was just a step or two shy of doom...
...What is truly remarkable is that the Grenada action got Reagan off the hook for the Lebanon massacre...
...And what’s more, Reagan came on the scene just in the nick of time, because, as Meese sees it, America in 1980 was teetering on a precipice...
...Independent counsel McKay found no evidence of criminal wrongdoing in the MeeseWedtech business, but the investigation was hampered when four key witnesses, including Wallach, embraced the Fifth...
...If Reagan was in charge...
...Because he does not write about his travails with independent counsel James McKay, who investigated allegations of misdeeds by Meese, it might not be fair to cover that ground in this review...
...and Meese’s assistance to Wallach in the latter’s efforts to win U.S...
...Reagan was, Meese obsessively insists, a strong leader who knew his own mind...
...After the curtain fell on the Reagan era, Meese high-tailed it to a post at the Heritage Foundation and snagged a contract from a major New York publisher to write about his Reagan days...
...VicePresident Dan Quayle comes close to filling this role, but until he gains real power, it’s tough to take him seriously...
...Meese’s failure to report capital gains...
...The latest census figures indicate that the percentage of the population with a middle-class income has declined...
...In recounting a Baker-Deaver plan in which Baker would become national security adviser, Meese notes that at a meeting with Reagan, CIA Director William Casey vividly expressed his opposition to it...
...But in With Reagan, it still 11s morning in America...
...This is hardly a flattering account...
...Meese’s observations about fellow Reaganauts are thin...
...Later, around 1984, he provided Meese with free legal services when Meese’s nomination for attorney general stalled due to allegations of financial impropriety...
...Edwin Meese 111...
...Ultimately, this apologia offers little insight into Meese’s hero and his presidency...
...an unusual arrangement in which his wife’s salary at a charitable organization was donated by a friend of Wallach’s, a developer who hoped to keep the Justice Department as a tenant...
...Jeane Kirkpatrick, former ambassador to the United Nations, “spoke eloquently and forcefully in behalf of the rule of law...
...In addition to portraying Reagan as America’s savior, Meese’s main task is to prove that Reagan was in control-that he was not an out-of-touch figurehead vulnerable to manipulation...
...Problems of government ethics are overlooked, penny-ante military wins are transformed into glorious crusades, vital subjects are ignored-and all is well...
...In other words, Reagan the decisive leader was not fully responsible when mistakes were made...
...That’s contradictory...
...Reagan’s biggest domestic achievement, Meese argues, was cutting taxes his fiist .year in office...
...For instance, who benefited most from Reaganomics...
...Bootlick for Bonza What Ed Meese’s morning-in-America memoir won ’t tell you...
...He marshals a host of often dubious statistics to prove that Reagan revived a sagging economy...
...But in telling the story of that betrayal, Meese unintentionally undermines his own portrait of Reagan...
...Mince Meese Meese states early on that this is not a personal memoir...
...At one point, Meese himself telephoned Secretary of Commerce Malcolm Baldridge about the firm’s application...
...Of Meese and mendiacity In With Reagan, Meese devotes much attention to the Iran-contra scandal, but what appears to concern him most is how history will record his involvement in it...
...Meese clearly carries a grudge against the enemies within, the so-called pragmatists who encouraged Reagan to adjust to the established way of doing things in Washington...
...involvement in the pipeline project nor to notify any government authority...
...held important interviews alone...
...Between 1979 and 1990, the percentage of full-time workers whose incomes remained below the poverty line climbed from 12 to 18 percent, while the average salaries of millionaires rose 49.5 percent...
...According to the author, Reagan singlehandedly ushered in a golden age for America and the world...
...Meese took his business to conservative publisher Regnery Gateway, and the result is With Reagan: The Inside Story.* Meese is slavishly devoted to Ronald Reagan...
...the decline of inner-city economic life...
...delayed his confrontation with North...
...a conflict-of-interest involving decisions Meese made about the break-up of AT&T (Meese held stock in a Baby Bell company...
...As that report notes, Meese chose political appointees, not the FBI or the criminal division of Justice, to handle the investigation...
Vol. 24 • September 1992 • No. 9
