U.S. Politics
Page 4 University Daily Kansan, July 15, 1982
Vice President hides from political spotlight
By JOHN SCARFFE Columnist
DOES ANYONE really know where George Bush? Some suggest he's headed for the mountains on a vacation with Reagan. Others work studiously in his White House office.
Still others are asking a more important question. Who is George Bush? Is he an obscure vice president who will fade unnoticed or an inspirational figure whose Warner Burke King or James Schoolcraft Sherman? Or is he more likely to follow in the footsteps of Lydian Baines Johnson, Gerald Ford or Richard Nixon? Is he a Republican team worker trying to keep Reagan in the limelight, or is he a Democratic team player mobilized around the White House further his own political goals?
ALTHOUGH the few and far bet between news reports about Bush aren't answering these questions, some things are known for sure about the man. He is a traditional, middle-of-the road Republican who would be in favor of continuing government pretty much as it is. He's a big fan of America, but he's the first top officer at the White House to have Hispanic-American grandchildren.
It is also widely known that he is interested in the 1984 Republican presidential nomination, and, in terms of involvement with the party, it has been the most engaged person in the Reagan administration.
His varied background includes Chief of Mission to China, U.N. Ambassador, Chairman of the Republic National Committee during the Watergate years, and CIA director. Yet all of this experience has not kept him one of the most obscure offices in the nation.
OBSCURE is an understatement. Daniel Webster rejected the office saying he did not want to be buried until he was really dead. Harry Truman said vice presidents “were all going through some problems.” Arthur Schlesinger Jr. said it was not only a meaningless office but a hopeless one.
Bush seems to have dropped into this vice president graveyard in the last two years, but his statements suggest this is all part of the grand design. He doesn't see the office as hopeless, and he expects to stage a resurrection.
"I've get plenty to do, and I feel comfortable in my job," Bush said in a December U.S. News and World Report interview, but a report in the back effective unless he is behind the background.
"WHAT I WANT is for people to wake up in two years and say 'You know this guy really did something.' he said in a January 12, 1981 Time interview. "But I will keep a low profile, and I will not have hurt feelings when people ask, 'What happened to George Bush?' How much I do depends on how little I have to say about it publicly."
These statements indicate that Bush's experience has paid off in a good deal of political horse sense, but they also reveal some resurrection motives. He is keeping a low profile so people will wake up around 10am, the election and say, "Hey, that George Bush is all right."
The Bush horse sense shows in his awareness of history. He does not want to do more than the president gives him to do because Nelson Rockefeller shut himself off from President Ford and his staff by trying to develop functions for the vice-presidency. He does not want to give up to him because Reagan's conservatives carry the current political clout.
DESPITE HIS CAUTION for developing too many functions, Bush has managed to gather more responsibility and power than many past vice presidents have had. He is privy to all secret information, attends all meetings of advisory groups, has access to all papers in the official records, seeks invitations to all subcommittee meetings of the National Security Council. When he travels he conducts business rather than just paying ceremonial visits.
And Bush has a full schedule. He arrives at his office around 7 a.m., meets with his national security attendee while his chief of staff is attending the White House staff meeting,
eats a bowl of cold cereal, drinks coffee and goes over important mail.
BY MID-MORNING Bush is at the vice-presidential office in the White House. He sits on in White House staff meetings and Republican committee meetings and attends the daily National Security Council briefing. On Tuesday he presides over the Senate. He often schedules one of his several appointments during his time as senator, will ball the Senate or House gym with congressional relations. His day ends about 7 p.m.
Bush has done much more in his two years in office than attend and hold meetings. He has headed three separate task forces, including the Presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief, which has had substantial impact on reducing the number of federal regulations, and he prepared the U.S. government for the Ottawa economic summit.
HE HAS LOGGED 10,000 miles aboard the vice-presidental jet visiting nine foreign nations and 31 states. He has raised over $45 million for the Republican Party, and he has received a large amount of Resign, who recently said, "He is the most loyal team member that anybody could want."
All of these accomplishments bring us to an obvious question. If Bush is doing all this, why isn't his name in the news more often? All that has appeared recently is a one-page Article in February and a brief reference to Bush's attendance at the memorial services for the late King Khalid in Saudi Arabia
And a few accusations have drifted his way. One of the most minor is the constant accusation by conservative observers of the Reagan administration. They maintain that Bush is trying to undermine the Reagan revolution by bringing in "non-Raganites" or "bush-wackers," such as James A. Baker, Bush's former campaign manager. On the other side of the fence, the moderates accuse him of fawning in his public praise of Reagan.
THIS LACK OF coverage creates a problem for the American public. As a potential presidential candidate and current vice president, the public should know what Bush is doing and why he would only accustom all these tasks, who knows what else he's doing, and to what ends.
Worse than these complaints from outsiders are some accusations by unsatisfied staff members. Early this year two key staff members of the group were dismissed and a group, it seems that a woman who functions as his assistant for scheduling "has a strange hold on him and he has a total blind spot about it," says a Bush aide. Another aide said he had been instructed to go to Bush a long time to lose respect for him.
BESIDES THESE accusations, Bush played a minor role, although no one really knows how minor, in the recent resignation of Secretary of State Haig. Bush's squabbles with Haig began in April 1981 when the vice president was placed in charge of "crisis management," which is customarily handled by the National Security Adviser.
This brought on one of Haig's first fits of temper and one of his first resignation threats. When Haig did resign at the end of 1938, Haig came up again in Haig's list of complaints.
Once again, however, Bush's name was barely mentioned by the press. Although pages were devoted to the evil personality of Alexander Haig and his incorrect use of a weapon against his job, who is likely to be at least temporarily affected, rated only a couple of lines.
THE PROBLEM IS that these facts raise more questions than answers. Was Bush's part in the Haig shakeup minor? Is Bush's White House staff disaffirmed and falling apart, or is Bush simply pulling all of the strings he can? Is Bush abandoning his moderate stance and becoming the perfect team player, or is he simply plaving for the 1984 presidency?
No one seems to know the answers to these questions. Nor is anyone making much of an attempt to find the answers. Maybe someone should. The man holding the second highest office in the land, with aspirations for the highest office, should be watched and reported about carefully and completely. After all, a watched pot never boils.
Ancient ideological debates continue
By PATRIC QUINN
Ronald Reagan's relationship to John Loee is not immediately apparent to most Americans, but that relationship played a critical role in Reagan's presidential election.
Locke was a philosopher, and philosophers generally play little role in the gritty practicality of a political campaign. The 1980 Presidential contest, however, was one of those rare battles in which two diametrically opposed philosophies fought for the control of a nation, and its outcome restored John Locke to his rightful place at the political forefront of Western political thinking.
IT IS CURIOUS that a revitalized Republican party so openly conservative in policy and outlook can lay claim to the heritage of John Locke, the man universally acknowledged as the founder of political liberalism. The seeming paradox is the result of the fluid nature of the definitions of "liberal" and "conservative." Virtually everyone in America recognizes that Ronald Reagan is a conservative, but very few people can adequately explain what that means.
John Locke's two "Treatises on Government" established liberal political thought by attacking the authority of the monarchy in traditional tradition. They also presented a coherent theory of government founded on strict observance of property rights and individual liberty. This theory was transplanted to the New World in its predecessor, the American Republic.
OVER THE CURSE of philosophical history, however, liberal thought converted that original distrust of tradition into an advocacy of continual programmed change, a conversion that would have appalled Locke. This conversion explains why modern-day adherents of a Lockian social contract can be considered "conservative" or "liberal," but not liberal or liberal notion of social change for its own sake.
Philosophical conservatism rejects uncontrolled social changes and recognizes that the
past can teach us valuable lessons. In a political application this viewpoint dictates that significant change in any political system be avoided in the absence of an overwhelming need for that change. Conservative ideologies will thus vary in degree from one political system to another.
In a specifically American context, modern-day liberals and conservatives differ on the fundamental issue of the proper relationship between the government and the individual. Conservatives argue for minimal government interference in the lives of American citizens, believing that only with maximum freedom can any individual attain his or her full potential and thereby benefit society at large. Liberals vie for a large degree of governmental interaction with the populace, contending that only enlightened leadership can produce an enlightened society.
ALL OF THESE high-flow ideas can be traced to a collection of long-dead philosophers, but it is politicians, not philosophers, who determine the conduct of government. Americans tend to associate the labels 'liberal' and 'conservative' with individual political figures such as Edward Kennedy or Joseph McCarthy. This undermines the intellectual sophistication of liberalism by elevating the confusion of a Kennedy or the boorishness of a McCarthy to the level of solemn ideology.
Politicians can nonetheless espouse an ideology, and since World War II most American politicians have been energetic liberals. Conservatives spent the years from Roosevelt to Reagan and Bill Clinton, and are now embracing liberal philosophy happily generate an ever-larger, ever-more-expensive government. The United States went on a liberal binge, with virtually the entire population demanding that the government aid them in their search for "equality." So intense was the quest that no one paused.
IN RETROSPECT, it appears the only possible answer to the question would have been “everything.” Ignoring attempts were made to harass or eliminate educational equalization, vigorous employment, equalizing education, on
and on ad nauseam. About the only thing that liberal philosophy didn't want to equalize was opportunity. It became impossible to move through American society without slamming it into a mold. So the affirmative Action guideline. The ship of state began to founder in the sea of equality.
All of this would have driven Locke into a quivering fit. Hammering so many diverse individuals into government-sponsored "equality" smacked of lowest-common-dominator social engineering. Complex income-redistribution schemes demonstrated a shrinking respect for property rights and did precious little to enhance individual liberty.
ALL BINGES END with a miserable morning-after, and the Golden Age of modern American liberalism ended with Jimmy Carter's stay in the White House. Grumpy and bleary-eyed, a hung-over America made a political U-turn in 1980.
What it turned to was the conservative philosophy of individual freedom, limited government, and a healthy caution toward magic solutions to long-term problems. Specific Reagan policies; whether they concern the budget or El Salvador; are products of this foundation.
For those of us with no direct memory of Herbert Hoover all this sounds a tad radical, but it would be old hat to John Locke. Locke, like modern American conservatives, recognized the fallible character of mankind and always preferred good reasoning to good intentions. Half-accent of liberalism triumphant demonstrated the lack of value of good intentions in the cold world of politics. It is left to Ronald Reagan to demonstrate the value of good reasoning.
IT IS UNLIKELY that when John Lock warned men of the evils of tradition he could guess that one day his own system would itself be tradition. It is even more unlikely that he ever imagined that the public champion of his philozoeism would be a political leader, such as the case is itself a demonstration of the rapid degeneration of liberal thought in America and the need for a viable alternative.
Democrats search for a heavyweight contender
By ALVIN REID Columnist
On the chilly November evening that Ronald Reagan became president of the United States, the democratic party was stunned by a solid right hook and has been reeling ever since.
midterm party convention finally started throwing some punches of their own.
BUT LATELY the democrats have begun getting their wobbly legs bummah them, and at their
And who is leading this rally? Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., of course. Teddy stole the show in Philadelphia with a rousing speech that he shared with Senator Hillary Clinton under a group of people who have been in a daze.
Fate is also playing a role in the resurgence of the Democrats. Reagan's name is mud in South America and the Middle East. America's shaky relationship with the Democrats, the middle of the Democratic Convention, Alexander Haig turned his resignation to Ronnie's White House Country Club. He was a charter member, too, which goes to show everything he did to the populists' corner as they would like us to think.
With the unemployment rate reaching record highs, gas prices soaring and the failure of the Equal Rights Amendment, the Republican Party is now in a position of enemies. And don't think it won't cost that next year.
"BUT WE KNOW now, and all America knows, that for us as Democrats . . . the dawn is near, our hearts are bright, our cause is right and our day is coming again," Kennedy said. Just makes you want to shout halleluja! doesn't it?
The Democratic party chairman, Charles
Manatt, said after Sunday's session that his party should pick up 15 seats in the House, and one or two in the Senate in this fall's elections. This would leave a Republican Senate for two more years, but we survived this long so we can stick it out a bit longer.
THE CONVENTION also served as a platform for the men interested in the Democratic nomination for president in 1848. Along with Kennedy were Walter Mondale, who also spoke at the convention, and Senators Alain Cranston of California, Helen Dahl of Kentucky, Harry Hart of Colorado and John Gleam of Ohio.
It's much too early to tell which of these men will win the nomination, but Kennedy and Mondale have to be considered the leading contenders.
The important thing is that at least someone wants to run. A few months ago it seemed as if finding a Democratic nominee for president was the farthest thing from the Democrats' minds; survival as a party was the biggest concern. Because those dark days have passed, the Democrats have not started to challenge the Reagan administration and the Republican-controlled Senate.
THE GOP still has the upper hand, and, most importantly, they still have the power. 89
fortune all the way until 1894. The Democrats should concentrate on a strong showing this fall and use this success as a springboard to 1894. Looking too far ahead is what got the party in trouble in the first place, and "the ones who forget the past are doomed to repeat it."
A sign of party unity was established during the debates on party platform. There was no sharp division between delegates as there has been in past years.
THE DEMOCRAT state in the platform that they are in favor of a nuclear freeze and a revision of Reagan's tax cut program. The party also stood behind the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, saying it would provide "lasting peace" and "greater security" in Israel.
BUT THE FIGHT is far from over, and to the tone of "Happy Days Are Here Again" the Dem-
There are a lot of folks out there who have been slapped around by Reaganism. These are people whom the Democrats have to reach in the next two years to make them understand that Reagan and all his money and power can be defeated in 1994. Democrats aren't fighting a battle; they're just fighting a bigger opponent who has kept them on the ropes during the early rounds.
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