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What about the next 100 months?

Think Tank Transcripts:What About the Next 100 Months?

ANNOUNCER: 'Think Tank' has been made possible by Amgen, recipientof the presidential National Medal of Technology. Amgen, bringingbetter, healthier lives to people worldwide through biotechnology.

Additional funding is provided by the John M. Olin Foundation, theRandolph Foundation and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.

MR. WATTENBERG: Hello, I'm Ben Wattenberg. The first hundred daysof the new Republican Congress are over. Most of the 'Contract withAmerica' has been passed by the House and awaits scrutiny by theSenate and the president. But is that all? Is this the beginning ofthe end, or just the end of the beginning? Are we perhaps moving intoa new political era, into uncharted political territory?

Joining us to discuss this notion are William Schneider, CNNpolitical analyst, professor of political science at Boston College,and resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute; ThomasMann, director of governmental studies at the Brookings Institutionand coauthor of the book, 'Renewing Congress'; James Pinkerton,author of the forthcoming book, 'What Comes Next? The End of BigGovernment and the New Paradigm Ahead,' and lecturer in politicalmanagement at George Washington University; and Jeffrey Eisenach,president of the Progress and Freedom Foundation.

Well, we know about the first hundred days, so now the questionbefore this house is: What about the next hundred months? This weekon 'Think Tank.'

The late Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill said, 'All politics islocal.' Well, it may be that the new speaker, Newt Gingrich, hasturned that dictum on its head.

When the Republicans announced their 'Contract with America,' itbegan turning the 1994 election toward a national referendum aboutthe Democratic-controlled Congress, about President Clinton and aboutthe contract itself. The Republicans won overwhelmingly, takingcontrol of both houses of Congress for the first time in 40 years.

Gingrich wasted no time converting the perceived referendum into amandate for action. The Republicans said they would honor theircontractual vows. The Democrats attacked. But 9 out of 10 contractitems passed the House, everything but term limits.

Some analysts say that the first hundred days was show biz, andthat over the next few years, tougher issues may well tear theRepublican coalition apart, issues like: abortion, a flat tax, schoolprayer, affirmative action, tax cuts, and big spending cuts. Otheranalysts say that what Gingrich and the Republican Congress have donesignals a sea change in American thinking and a turn towardprogressive conservatism.

It's been an astounding political time, and now we should ask whatis next, what is going to happen in the next hundred months? Andlet's go around the horn once quickly, starting with you, JeffEisenach. Where are we going?

MR. EISENACH: This is a revolution. It's a people's revolution. Itis not yet clear whether it will be a Republican revolution. For ahundred days, they have acted like a majority. If they continue toact like a majority, like the new majority party they might be, theymay be the majority party. What is clear, though, is the people aregoing to have a different kind of government.

MR. WATTENBERG: All right. Jim Pinkerton, formerly the deputydirector of policy for the Bush administration.

MR. PINKERTON: Well, Gingrich has clearly moved the bully pulpitfrom the White House to H.204 in the Capitol. He's got enormouspolitical momentum moving him now. It remains to be seen if thepolicy agenda that the contract touches on will equal the challengeand the mandate that he sought for himself.

MR. WATTENBERG: Tom Mann, Brookings Institution.

MR. MANN: Americans don't take very kindly to revolutions. They'rea pragmatic, practical lot. They want government to get a littlesmaller, work a lot better, but revolutions are for the French, notfor the Americans.

MR. WATTENBERG: All right, Bill Schneider, of CNN, and mycolleague at the American Enterprise Institute.

MR. SCHNEIDER: Ben, I think there is a new majority coalitionthat's governing that's really in power now in the United States.It's a diverse coalition of interests that have one thing in common:they all have a grievance with big government.

Middle-class taxpayers want lower taxes, gun owners don't want thefederal government to take their guns away, racial backlash votersidentify the federal government with promotion of the civil rightsagenda and they're getting a payoff with the attack on affirmativeaction, religious conservatives want less judicial activism, businesspeople want less regulation. They will hold together as long as theysee a liberal threat, which they did in Bill Clinton, and that's whythey materialized as a majority.

As long as they perceive a liberal threat out there, thatcoalition is going to hold together and it's going to be verypowerful.

MR. WATTENBERG: All right, let me ask one question now. We alllive in this sort of insular community that over the last 20 years orso has spotted a sea change each week -- you know, 'My God, the worldis changing.'

Is it possible and plausible that this one is for real?

MR. SCHNEIDER: Forty years -- 40 years it's been since theRepublicans had control of both houses of Congress. That's a prettybig change to me.

MR. PINKERTON: I think it's also fair to say that people in theirbones sense that bureaucratic organizations, whether it's the SovietUnion, IBM or the federal government, are in the process of collapse,and that that's -- the sense of slow-motion panic that people feelover that is much of what underlay the Republican victory in 1994,just like it caused Bush to lose in '92.

MR. EISENACH: I'd second that, and come back to what Tom said. Ithink this is a very pragmatic revolution, that what people have seen-- since 1976, they have elected reformer after reformer afterreformer. Jimmy Carter was a reform president, was going to bring inzero-based budgeting. Ronald Reagan promised to fix it all. Bush saidhe'd continue that. When Bush failed, they brought in Clinton; hefailed.

What they have is they have a government that is wildly out ofstep with everything they see working around them. And in that sense,I think this is very pragmatic, but the change is not a small one.They've tried small changes.

MR. MANN: The old Democratic coalition has been dead for a longtime, Ben, and it hasn't been able to muster a majority, really, inpresidential elections since Lyndon Johnson. But finally this time,they managed to lose their base in the House of Representatives, sothat is a major change. I think people are more skeptical ofgovernment. In a sense, they're more inclined to think of themselvesas conservatives than liberals, and therefore there is an opportunityfor Republicans now. There is a real market for change.

But Republicans run the risk of thinking Americans are economiclibertarians. They're not ideologues, they're pragmatists. They maybe skeptical of government, but they're solicitous of government aswell. And so we're going to have to see whether the Republicans seizethe opportunity or, in fact, whether some more centrist solution, oneactually identified originally by Bill Clinton in his presidentialcampaign, manages to move into that open space.

MR. WATTENBERG: Jeff, you are the president of the Progress andFreedom Foundation. You have been a longtime associate of now SpeakerGingrich, and a conservative spokesman. Could you tell us, what isthe nature of this particular modern conservatism? We're sort ofagreed that there is a sea change. It's a sea change toward what, ifyou had your way or in your judgment?

MR. EISENACH: I think it's a sea change away from bigbureaucratic, centralized institutions of government actually hiringpeople, spending money to accomplish things, towards a governmentwhich is much leaner, but ultimately much more effective and muchless ambiguous.

I mean, one of the things people know about our bureaucracy is youcan't -- it's not that you get the wrong answer, it's you can't getany answer. There's nothing out there but a sea of ambiguity. I thinkwhat this revolution will do, if it works, is it will bring in a muchclearer and cleaner sense of what the law is and how it'simplemented. And that'll happen a lot, I think, through the tax code,it will happen with legal reform, with tort reform, with regulatoryreform, so that what you'll end up with is a government which works alot better and is a lot smaller in terms of the number of peopleworking for it.

MR. MANN: But the rhetoric isn't that pragmatism. The rhetoric is,'Government is terrible. Let's knock it down. Government is theproblem.'

Americans don't think the Social Security Administration is a big,bad bureaucracy. They think it works just fine in getting theirchecks out to them on time. So sometimes the rhetoric of the Gingrichrevolution gets away from the realities of Americans' encounters withthat government.

MR. PINKERTON: Tom, you're peddling a little bit ofinside-the-beltway wisdom here. I mean, look at the polls that showthat young people think that they're more likely to find a UFO intheir backyard than they are to collect their Social Security.

MR. WATTENBERG: Maybe they're right. (Laughter and cross talk.)Everything else is changing, right.

MR. PINKERTON: Well, if that's the case, then the politicians whoare defending a system that is going to rip off an entire generationof young people are going to wind up with their heads on pikes beforeall is said and done.

MR. EISENACH: But I'd say something else, and that is -- because Ithink your point's well taken, but the welfare debate, I think, was amajor steppingstone for this new majority, because for a week ofdebate, you have Republican after Republican stepping up and insteadof talking about how we've got to starve a few kids to save a fewdollars, which is what this party has been saying for 30 years, youhad the entire Republican Party standing up and saying, We'rereforming welfare to do the right thing.

MR. SCHNEIDER: Well, people want to solve problems, I agree withTom. They want to solve problems, and Bill Clinton was elected with amandate. He said he could make government work. He had people withimpressive credentials, long lists of degrees. They were very smart.He won on brain power. George Bush didn't have a clue -- sorry. Butthat was what elected Bill Clinton. This was the brain power. He wasit.

MR. WATTENBERG: It was Pinkerton's fault. We know that, right,right. (Laughter.)

MR. SCHNEIDER: And the deal was, we want this guy because he'ssmart and he says he can make government work. The message in '94 wasit ain't working.

The Republicans were elected with a mandate to solve problems withless government. They said, We know how to solve these problems, wecan do it with less government.

I think the skepticism that Tom is talking about is sometimes theygo towards the rhetoric of saying, We're going to fix things even ifthey're not broken. That's the image of the school lunch program --what's broken there? And transportation and environmental protection.

MR. WATTENBERG: All right, let's go over some of the things thatRepublicans in this new conservative wave have been saying over theyears. One of the things, and we sort of dealt with that, is, We'regoing to get the government off our backs. Everybody seems to beagreed that that at least is a goal, although how far that would goremains to be seen.

What about that one about ending the welfare state? They have saidthis is -- the contract is going to roll back the welfare state? Isthat going to -- I mean, is this where we're headed?

MR. MANN: May I make a prediction? A hundred months from now, theSocial Security system will be paying out a lot more money than it isnow, the Medicare program will be paying out a lot more money than itis now, and welfare recipients will not be greatly changed from whatthey are now.

Republicans are promising a sort of withdrawal from -- in somerespects -- from this system will transform these recipients. And youknow, the hard truth is it's going to take a lot of work and a lot ofmoney to help get people on their feet and working in jobs. And thatrequires even government administration to get it done.

MR. EISENACH: This is standard liberal dogma. I testified --

MR. MANN: No, it's conservative. It's called big-governmentconservative.

MR. EISENACH: No, excuse me. I testified today before the BankingCommittee on the question of how -- the Department of Housing andUrban Development. And there were Joe Kennedy and Barney Frank upthere criticizing, in the most vehement, vicious terms, HenryCisneros for trying to move in the direction of vouchers andempowering people, essentially defending the old system. And theywere making the point that Tom's making: everything's terrible,things are going to remain terrible, nothing that you can do to tryand make things better is going to make any --

MR. MANN: No, no. I'm not saying that.

MR. EISENACH: Well, you said there will be just as many welfarerecipients, Medicare won't be -- MR. MANN: I mean I support vouchersand decentralization and there's much --

MR. EISENACH: Well, but none of it will make a big difference. MR.WATTENBERG: Tom, hold on. If in the year -- if a hundred months fromnow, in the year 2003, we have got the same welfare system, adisaster that everybody across the spectrum agrees with that isharming people -- forget the wasted money; that is harming people --if we have the same sort of a welfare system, but a little bit lessin 2003, then this is no sea change.

MR. SCHNEIDER: There's the welfare system and there's the welfarestate. The welfare system will be changed. Even President Clinton waselected on a mandate to change the welfare system.

MR. PINKERTON: Exactly.

MR. SCHNEIDER: What the welfare state means is entitlements. Now,that the Republicans have made some headway towards at least tryingto change.

What has Clinton accomplished as president? Really, two things:deficit reduction -- he reduced the deficit by one-third every year,and free trade. Those are the two biggest items on his agenda. Thosearen't exactly radical. He got in trouble for what he --

MR. WATTENBERG: And not exactly Democratic.

MR. SCHNEIDER: And not exactly Democratic. So why did he get introuble? I've spoken to a lot of conservatives and they'll alwaysgive you the same list: gays in the military, Lani Guinier in theJustice Department, the economic stimulus plan, comprehensive healthcare reform, big new crime-prevention spending, the energy tax.

You know what? He got in trouble for things he proposed. He didn'tdeliver a single one of those things. And liberals were dismayed.They said, We liked that agenda, but you didn't deliver any of it.That's why he was in so much trouble. He got in trouble because heproposed things that sounded like big government. Look at health carereform.

MR. EISENACH: Absolutely.

MR. WATTENBERG: All right, hold on one second. You have touched onan interesting point here. We're just kind of going through whetherwe're going to see the fulfillment of certain bits of thisconservative rhetoric. We've talked about getting the government offour backs, we've talked about rolling back the welfare state.

What is also said about this revolution is that it is going tochange from a social welfare state to a social police state, and wehear stuff from mainstream Democrats and more liberal people that thefight against abortion, the treatment of homosexuality, schoolprayer, pornography, TV censorship, that this is all embedded,implicit in the Gingrich revolution. Comments.

MR. EISENACH: Not part of the majority agenda. If the RepublicanParty chooses to be the party of social oppression, it will notchoose to be -- it will be choosing not to be the majority party, andI don't believe that's possible.

MR. SCHNEIDER: The Republicans get in trouble -- they got introuble, I think, in Houston when their convention was perceived orinterpreted -- there's a lot of discussion about whether it reallywas stigmatizing, but it was perceived as stigmatizing.

Democrats always made the mistake in the past of glorifyingunconventional minorities --homosexuals, single mothers. Republicansget in trouble when they seem to stigmatize those same groups, andthat's why they want to steer clear of that.

Religion is an issue that drives a wedge right through the heartof that Republican coalition, just as race does to the Democrats.

MR. PINKERTON: The 'Contract with America' was an explicitlysecular document. There's almost reference of any kind on abortion oranything like that. The only chance I think that Clinton has, asBill's saying, is, you know, a few more Henry Fosters, you know,really could -- the Republicans could rise to the bait and say, Aha,here's our chance to take Houston back into the people's --

MR. WATTENBERG: You think Henry Foster is going to hurt theRepublicans?

MR. PINKERTON: I think there's -- the danger of things like thatis that it brings out, you know, the Christian coalition saying, youknow, We're against Henry Foster -- and, by the way, we insist on anall pro-life ticket in '96.

MR. SCHNEIDER: He said it under pressure from anti-abortionactivists who are enraged by the nomination of Foster, and Clintonand the Republicans didn't really want to -- the Republicans did notwant to talk about abortion, and my guess is Ralph Reed didn'teither, from what he subsequently wrote. He was forced into itbecause the anti-abortion constituency was furious, outraged that thepresident would nominate a surgeon general who had performedabortions.

MR. EISENACH: Ben, I do want to say this, and that is, theChristian coalition, I believe, is a coalition of people who feeloppressed by government imposing values on them that they disbelievein very deeply. And what I believe they are looking for is freedom,which is why education choice is so far at the top of the agenda, whythey're pulling their kids out of schools and asking for their moneyback so they can do home schooling. If that's what the agenda is allabout, then I don't think there is any conflict here at all. And I,frankly, just don't see much of the Christian coalition saying, Hereis the prayer your kids have got to say in school, and we want topass it into law.

MR. SCHNEIDER: That is the way they see themselves. That's not theway others see them.

MR. EISENACH: Absolutely. MR. SCHNEIDER: Others see them asattempting to take over government to Christianize the country.

MR. EISENACH: Absolutely, that's the perception.

MR. MANN: Churchgoers are the most important group within theRepublican Party. Their interests are diverse, I agree with you, butthey will create a fissure within the Republican Party. It can't beglossed over.

The Republicans and the speaker did well in the first hundred daysin keeping these issues off to the side, but there will be demandsfor votes on difficult issues that will at times divide theRepublicans and potentially cause problems in the presidentialnominating politics. It's a reality. But they are so important to theRepublican Party that they have to make peace with them.

MR. PINKERTON: The issue for the Republicans on education, bothschool prayer and school vouchers, is leadership. Somebody is goingto have to get up and say to the Christians, say, Look, your idea ofschool prayer for everybody is not going to work. The idea that willwork is school vouchers. And that argument has to be sold not only tothe Christian right, but also to the rest of the country, which isimpatient with the stagnation of bureaucratic education in America.

MR. WATTENBERG: Let me ask you a question, something we mentionedin the setup piece, this Tip O'Neill idea that all politics is local.It occurs to me -- you know, we all sort of repeated that as a mantrafor so many years, 'Oh, all politics is local' -- of course, when youhave a liberal majority in the legislature, that becomes a veryliberal statement. It says, if you take care of the person's VeteransAdministration's check, if you see to his Social Security check, youcan do any damn fool thing you want to in terms of national policy,which is what ultimately got the Democrats in trouble.

Now, with the apparent -- underscore apparent -- nationalizationof the Congress, does that then become a conservatizing movementbecause you are talking issues, rather than did your VA check getdelivered?

MR. SCHNEIDER: Well, look, I think the election was nationalized,principally, not by the contract, but by President Clinton. I thinkhe was the central issue in all those races. What happened was --

MR. WATTENBERG: But you can't get the toothpaste back in the tube.I mean, the next time we go around and have national platforms,people are going to take them much more seriously.

MR. SCHNEIDER: If the Republicans believe they are going to getreelected without paying a lot of attention to constituency service,they're going to come in for a big surprise.

MR. WATTENBERG: No, I agree. MR. MANN: Politics is always acombination of local and national forces. National became moreprominent in '94 for a host of reasons. In '96, Republicans are goingto do well in the elections for the House and the Senate, partly onthe basis of their strength locally -- good candidates, lots of moneyand a story to tell.

MR. PINKERTON: Let's understand that a guy like Tip O'Neill couldget away with saying, 'All politics is local,' because he wasoperating within the paradigm that Franklin Roosevelt had set up.

What Gingrich is trying to do is -- well, the paradigm has alreadycrashed. The Democratic paradigm has crashed. What the Republicansare trying to do is create their own paradigm so that equallyordinary, run-of-the-mill Republican politicians --

MR. WATTENBERG: Everybody here seems to be convinced that theDemocratic paradigm has crashed, and so on and so forth. On the otherhand, as we speak, the polls for Clinton are going up, the pollsagainst Gingrich are -- the negatives are very high. The Democratshave launched a rhetorical counteroffensive about that this is reallya war on kids, they're balancing the budgets on the backs of thepoor, they're taking away school lunches. Isn't it plausible thatjust politically we are way out ahead of our supply lines and thatthe Democrats are going to come back with this stuff and terrorizethe country about taking away your school lunches? The old ketchupargument with Reagan.

MR. EISENACH: The notion that Washington, D.C., is going to gettoo far out in front of the American people is so silly on its facethat -- (laughter) -- but the truth is, I don't think the numbersshow that by any stretch of the imagination.

There were two polls in the last two weeks that were veryimportant and very under-attended to. 'The L.A. Times' came out witha poll the same week that 'The Washington Post' poll came out thatscared everybody saying that people were running away from theRepublican contract. 'The L.A. Times' the same week came out with apoll showing that 46 percent of Americans thought Republicans weren'tcutting enough, compared to 14 percent who thought they were cuttingtoo much, 29 percent thought they were doing about the right thing.Three to one, not cutting enough.

Next week you have a poll from 'Times-Mirror.' In December 1993,12 percent of Americans wanted an independent presidential candidate.December 1994, 18 percent. March 1995, that number is up to 23percent. I think those two numbers are related. I think people arelooking at Washington and the question they're asking isn't, arethese people going too far? The question they are asking is, are theydoing enough?

MR. SCHNEIDER: Are they solving the problems? I mean, Clinton waselected to make government work. People said he didn't. TheRepublicans were elected to solve problems with less government.They're solving some problems, I agree -- welfare, unfunded mandates.They're creating other problems. People don't know why they'reattacking the school lunch program. That's becoming like midnightbasketball. It's a symbol of going too far. So I think Clinton mayvery well run the next election -- you were suggesting that theDemocrats are not sunk -- as a gigantic midterm election in reverse.Democrats used to get elected and reelected repeatedly during the1980s because they would say, You got Reagan in there, you got Bush,they may go too far, you got to elect us to make sure there's a checkand a balance.

Clinton may run a campaign, to the dismay of his Democraticcolleagues in Congress, and say, You're pretty happy with the way theRepublican Congress is going, but they threaten to go too far; you'vegot to keep me in there with my veto pen to make sure that doesn'thappen.

MR. WATTENBERG: All right, let me -- we are running out of time. Iwant to go around the horn one more time with the stipulation that noone, except perhaps me, knows the future, and hear from you an answerto the basic theme of this program, which is, is this the beginningof a new conservative era? And we'll start with you, Jeff.

MR. EISENACH: Absolutely. A hundred months from now, government,the federal government will be at or below 15 percent of grossdomestic product, compared with 22 percent today. A new majorityparty will be controlling both houses of Congress and the WhiteHouse, probably the Republican Party. That remains to be seen. And wewill be seeing, I think, dramatically faster economic growth, we willbe seeing dramatic drops in the number of people on welfare and, bythe way, Social Security will have been fundamentally reformed,because it has to be.

MR. PINKERTON: We're in post-bureaucratic era. It remains to beseen whether the Republicans or the Democrats can fill this void leftby this crash of big government. The other question is, can aconservative movement, which is in fact a right-wing movement, imposethe kind of leadership that takes the country forward?

MR. WATTENBERG: Tom Mann, yeah, go ahead.

MR. MANN: The Republicans have an opportunity to build a newmajority in this country, but to do it they have to deliver. Anddelivering means dealing with the root causes of insecurity andanxiety that Americans feel. I am not persuaded that simply saying'less government' will solve that problem. Americans are notideologues. Republicans in Congress right now are. Until theydemonstrate that they can deliver in a practical sense, they willlose that opportunity.

MR. WATTENBERG: Bill Schneider.

MR. SCHNEIDER: I agree with Tom. I think that the Republicans havean opportunity. We are entering a conservative era and I don't thinkwe're going to go back to big government. But suppose they don'tsolve the problems they were elected to solve, or create newproblems? What are Americans going to do?

Well, I think they're showing two kinds of responses. One is, ifthey figure the Democrats --they're very skeptical that the Democratscan make government work, and the Republicans cannot solve problemswith less government. They're going to say, What we have to do is getthe politicians out of there. That's why Perot was very attractive.You want to make government work? Get the politics out of government,is the popular belief.

Colin Powell is very popular these days -- the same appeal thatRoss Perot had. Not a professional politician, knows how to getthings done. A revolt against politics is in the offing.

The other thing they do is solve their problems for themselves.They move to suburbs and they buy their own governments that they cancontrol and put walls around themselves. They have their own schools,their own police, their own fire departments. They buy a privategovernment. That's another solution.

MR. WATTENBERG: All right. In other words, 'We're going to getunder the hood and fix it.'

Thank you, Bill Schneider, Jeffrey Eisenach, Tom Mann, and JimPinkerton. And thank you. Please do send your comments and questionsto: New River Media, 1150 17th Street, N.W., Suite 1050, Washington,D.C. 20036. Or we can be reached via E-mail at THINKTV@AOL.COM.

For 'Think Tank,' I'm Ben Wattenberg.

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Additional funding is provided by the John M. Olin Foundation, theRandolph Foundation, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. END

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