Congressmen’s Advice to Bush: Attack Congress

WASHINGTON —  If George Bush wants a second term in the White House, he has to aim beyond Bill Clinton and target another enemy--the Congress of the United States.

That’s the prescription for Republican victory offered by Orange County’s five conservative congressmen. In interviews last week, the five Republicans all urged the faltering President to drop his Yale decorum and, in effect, start acting up--like a Democrat.

“The President has to start behaving like Woodrow Wilson did with the Congress, like Harry Truman did with the Congress,” said Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach), citing two Democratic Presidents who made history by taking on Republican legislators.

“I think he should take a page out of the book of Harry Truman,” concurred Rep. William E. Dannemeyer (R-Fullerton), one of the most conservative members of Congress, whose support of Bush has been tepid since the President abandoned his “no new taxes” pledge in 1990. Dannemeyer is the only local representative who is not seeking another term.

Caught in an apparently hopeless struggle for reelection in 1948, President Harry S Truman embarked on a whistle-stop tour of the nation to rail against a “do-nothing Congress.” When the votes were counted, Truman stunned the country by defeating GOP candidate Thomas E. Dewey.

With the November election less than 100 days away, the reelection prospects for Bush seem as dim as they did for Truman. Just last week, an independent poll showed the incumbent President trailing Democratic nominee Clinton 43% to 22% in Orange County, one of the nation’s Republican strongholds. Bush is faring even worse statewide. But none of the congressmen seemed worried that the President’s troubles will damage their own reelection prospects.

“I don’t believe that we’ve found the President’s coattails in the past very long to help, and I don’t believe they’re going to be very long to hurt,” said Rep. Ron Packard (R-Oceanside), who represents South County. But the representatives said they will have to work much harder than they had expected to promote Bush in Orange County.

“I’m going to have to do a lot more work to help the head of the ticket than I was planning on,” said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach). “I will be moving to help George Bush rather than looking to George Bush to help me.”

Bush is “in as much trouble as Harry Truman was in ’48. And that’s a lot of trouble,” said Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove), who has been one of Bush’s strongest supporters in the gallery of doubting congressional conservatives. “On the other hand,” Dornan pointed out, “Truman won.”

To achieve the same result, the congressmen said, Bush must confront the Democrats who control the House and Senate. That would allow him to underscore the Republican message that Congress, and not Bush, has created the legislative gridlock in Washington, they said.

“President Bush can say to the American people, ‘If you want to change America, you have to change the control of the Congress,’ ” Dannemeyer said.

Cox said he has urged Bush to begin by vetoing the $2.8-billion legislative appropriations bill, which finances the day-to-day operations of the Senate and the House. Such a move would give the President a platform to argue that a bloated and wasteful Congress, controlled by Democrats, is incapable of making even the smallest move toward bringing federal spending under control, Cox suggested.

In addition, Cox said, the President could, in effect, unilaterally cut the capital gains tax. Treasury Department regulations would permit the President to eliminate the tax on that part of asset appreciation that is due solely to inflation.

“It’s a Treasury regulation,” Cox said. “(The) cost (of an asset) can be defined by the Treasury to be real cost, not nominal cost,” eliminating the effect of inflation on the value of stocks, bonds or real estate. The action would be certain to infuriate Democrats who have staved off a capital gains tax cut, contending it would benefit only the wealthy at the expense of the poor and the middle class. But Cox argued that only that kind of confrontation can win back the anti-government, anti-Washington voters who buoyed the short-lived candidacy of Ross Perot.

“The Ross Perot candidacy was entirely a creature of Ross Perot’s apparent willingness to get things done,” Cox said. “There’s gridlock in Washington and we need to break it.”

Rohrabacher went further, saying that Bush should issue an executive order ending affirmative action “quotas” throughout the federal government, and “put out a policy statement saying that all government administrators are instructed to do their utmost to ensure that illegal aliens are not participating in government programs.” Those moves would appeal to so-called Reagan Democrats, Rohrabacher said.

“Those Democrats who voted for Ronald Reagan have gone back home. George Bush has to figure out why they went home and bring them back to the Republican Party. He has to appeal to working-class, conservative Democrats, who are not public employees.”

There are some signs that the President is beginning to take some of the conservative advice. In campaign appearances last week in Texas and Southern California, including a stop in Orange County, Bush hurled his sharpest criticism yet at a Congress that he blamed for costly inaction on the economic-growth program he unveiled in late January.

The local representatives said he must do even more. But if there is opportunity in that hard-line strategy, there also is risk, several political observers said. Bush could alienate moderate voters if he hews too closely to the conservative agenda outlined by Orange County’s congressmen, according to one political operative. At the same time, he would likely invite Clinton to argue that the only office really in need of a new occupant is the presidency.

Despite their concerns about his low standing in the polls, Bush has a fighting chance to retain the White House, the congressmen said. “The question is whether, being behind as much as he is, whether he can get enough of a jump start from the (Aug. 17-20 Republican) convention to regain much of the ground he lost after the free fall,” Packard said. “I personally think he can. He’s a great campaigner.”

Said Cox: “The President needs to use the powers of his office to get the job done. He has to perform between now and November. If he does not, (the election) will be Clinton’s to pick up. But Clinton cannot be the President between now and November. George Bush can.”

Dornan underscored the point when he dismissed suggestions that moving Secretary of State James A. Baker III back to the White House, or to the Bush campaign, would dramatically improve the President’s reelection chances.

“Baker’s not going to win this campaign,” he said. “Has Baker got a ‘vision thing’ in his pocket to hand to Bush? Only George Bush at this point can win the election for George Bush.” And, Dornan noted, he has fewer than 100 days to do it.

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