TOO MUCH PRAGMATISM
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard fears
that Mr Bush may buy peace too cheaply
Washington THE United States is under a bizarre condominium. Ronald Reagan. has vanished into a black hole, taking the Powers of the presidency with him. George Bush, two months away from the White House, has the tasks of defending the dollar and deciding what to do about the Palestinian state. He has responsibility Without power, an unenviable mix.
The President-elect has been magni- ficently nonchalant, however. On the nightly news we find him pottering about With one grandchild or another; or gam- bolling out into the surf at the Florida beach house of William Stamps Farish III, equestrian and friend of the Queen; or shopping for Thanksgiving in the quaint little town of Kennebunkport, Maine, Where the Bush family have been fond chatelains since 1913. The President-elect was filmed coming out of the Kennebunk- Port video store with a cassette of Broad- cast News, wearing a baseball cap (was it?) and something that looked like a black motorcycle jacket with the presidential seal. There is no sign yet that Americans dislike what they see. The novelty will wear off, but even many Democrats seem agreeably surprised by this affable sports- man of few conceits. The election cam- paign is already in the rubbish bin, along With the allegations of McCarthyism. The Washington Post has given Mr Bush a three-star review for his handling of the transition, welcoming him as a natural member of the congressional culture. Con- servatives are faintly sickened, but not surprised. He has lived continuously in Washington ever since joining the Con- gress as a Representative from Houston in 1976, except for a brief stint in New York as Ambassador of the United Nations, and another as Envoy to China. He has troops of friends on Capitol Hill, and draws his tennis partners as happily from one party as the other. He is the first Washington 'insider' to be elected President for a generation. It's going to be cosy.
Foreign embassies should think twice, however, before sending glowing cables back to their governments praising Mr Bush for his pragmatism and his eagerness to restore consensus to American govern- ance. Pragmatism is an overrated quality. In Washington it tends to mean buying peace with Congress at the cost of pre- emptive concessions, and Congress is a menace to the world. Its natural condition is myopic and isolationist, with occasional bouts of what George Kennan called 'di- plomacy by dilettantism'. In 1930 it passed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act that led to a trade war, a drastic decline in exports, and the Great Depression. President Hoover considered vetoing the bill, which he strongly opposed, but decided against a pitched battle with Congress. 'An excep- tionally thin-skinned and easily bewildered man,' said Walter Lippmann contemp- tuously, 'who surrendered everything for nothing, out of fear of controversy.' Be- tween 1939 and 1941 President Roosevelt risked impeachment by secretly providing material aid to Britain in direct violation of neutralist congressional legislation. After the war President Truman had to bludgeon a Republican Congress into supporting communist containment in Greece and Turkey, and into funding the reconstruc- tion of Europe through the Marshall Plan at a time when many complained that further aid was 'money down a rathole'. So much for pragmatism.
Deadlock between the two branches of government is not a pretty sight either. The Reagan Administration was paralysed for nine months by the Iran-Contra show trials. But it is a price worth paying. What would the 1980s have looked like if Ronald Reagan had accommodated the Congress at every turn? The Strategic Defence In- itiative (Star Wars), the MX missile, and the B-1 bomber would all have been gutted, depriving the United States of its bargaining chips with the Soviet Union. The Reagan Doctrine would have withered on the vine, probably leaving the Afghan mujahedin without decisive support (and certainly without the Stinger ground-to-air missiles that have shifted the balance of power in the war). Unsinged, the Soviet Union might still be an aggressor.
President Bush faces a Congress that is slowly relapsing into isolationism. The lunatic Gephardt amendment (Smoot- Hawley II), which mandated that trade imbalances be corrected under threat of tariffs, actually passed the Democratic House of Representatives last year. In- dignation with Europe is rising to the boil after a series of quarrels with Nato allies over military basing rights, including attempts at extortion by Greece. Congress- men of both parties are disgusted that European banks are providing the Soviet Union with 'untied' credits and cash loans of up to $9 billion, some at interest rates as low as Vs over Libor. Ciriaco de Mita, the Italian Prime Minister, is calling for a Marshall Plan to bail out the enemy, at a time when Soviet military spending is increasing faster than that of Nato. Even Senator Bill Bradley, a liberal interna- tionalist, is losing his patience.
Bush seems committed to Pax America- na. As President he will have the power to resist the xenophobic spasms of Congress, if he is prepared to risk his political capital. He has a veto. He has patronage. He has the 'bully pulpit' of the presidency. And the Democratic Congress does not have such a mandate that it can ride roughshod over his policies. Although the Democrats gained one seat in the Senate, the chamber as a whole moved to the Right. Liberal excesses were not rewarded. There was no ideological change in the House, where the Democrats gained three seats, but the picture will be different after the 1990 census, when reapportionment shifts about 18 seats from the Democratic North to the Republican South and West. Moreover, Bush has a trump card: Jim Wright, the Speaker of the House. Wright has so enraged House Republicans with his parti- san chicanery that they have launched two investigations into his conduct: one for using a phony book deal to launder money from his campaign fund to his private account; the other for leaking and distort- ing intelligence secrets. He needs to spend a couple of years repairing his reputation in the House before he can turn his full attention to the harassment of the Bush administration.
The President-elect has plenty of room to manoeuvre. He is putting together a more experienced team than either Carter or Reagan had at the beginning. Conserva- tives are grumbling about most of them. However, they can no longer be called liberal Republicans, as they might have been eight years ago. The Reagan tide has pulled them into the conservative camp and blurred the distinction. They are for- midable men. They will rise to a challenge. They are not creatures of Congress. But collectively they seem to have little politic- al purpose or passion, which means that they may unwittingly fall under the influ- ence of Washington's permanent govern- ment and succumb, in fact, to the agenda of Congress. Politics is a struggle for the initiative. Lyndon Johnson put it in a nutshell: 'If you're not doing it to them— then they're doing it to you.'
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