Why America’s troubles are less grave than they appear

Press, 23 November 1987, Page 12

Why America’s troubles are less grave than they appear

THE UNITED States today is a fragile canoe bobbing about wildly on a boiling sea of troubles. Or so anyone might surmise from scanning the many headlines proclaiming “crisis." At the risk of breaking Journalistic rules, let me offer a yawn and a mildly upbeat assessment of things. It is hard to get the attention of the American people, but on those infrequent occasions when they suffered continent-wide nervousness, the cause usually has something to do with the presidency, or money, or both. Right now there is a sense that the economic problems reflect a crisis of confidence, here and abroad. That crisis Is blamed on the weak political pulse of the Reagan presidency. When a President is weak, there is congressional government. That means government by a fractious 535-person committee. The immediate fear is that Congress, having rejected one of Reagan’s Supreme Court nominees and whisked away another, has tasted blood and will go into a feeding frenzy passing protectionist legislation and doing other mischief. Today’s anxiety is the kind that occurs frequently, but this time it is the result of something that does not happen frequently. With metronomic regularity, this refrain is heard: America is ungovernable. It is afflicted with (pick one) paralysis, chaos, stasis, entropy. This time the refrain is heard partly because of something that has not occurred for 28 years. For the first time since 1959, there is a President in his seventh year in office. Part of the drama of American political experience is the combination of cultural dynamism and Institutional stability. The latter has become more remarkable as the former has become more pronounced. The only mild instability, if such it can be called, has been in the central office of government, the presidency. Before Reagan, Eisenhower was the last twoterm President. Not since Franklin Roosevelt has a party produced a President twice and then won the office in the next election. The last such achievement before Roosevelt was with the elections of McKinley (1896, 1900) and Theodore Roosevelt (1904). But this “instability" reflects a long tradition of balance. The United States has the oldest continuous two-party competition in the world. It began in 1856 and has been remarkably even. More than a billion votes have been divided 51 per cent to the Republicans, 49 per cent to the Democrats.

To govern is to choose and to choose is to cause discontent. This explains much of the attrition of strength that is a consequence of any long tenure in

George F. Will explains why the U.S, will weather the storm

office. Furthermore, in any President’s second term the nation’s focus turns towards the rising crop of candidates, making the President seem diminished. However, in American politics, overnight is a long time, and a week is forever. The field of American politics is littered with the bleached bones of those who, during the past 21 years, have underestimated Reagan’s skills, luck and recuperative powers. Today, in the Persian Gulf, his policy is working. The policy has been misdescribed as a mere defence of International law; freedom of the seas. Americans like to paste moral bunting on acts of power politics. The United States is acting like a super-Power, using part of Its 600-ship navy to do what such a navy is for. It is projecting power. The aim is to prevent any Iranian success that could destabilise the region. Congress is nervous, as usual, but, as usual, is not ready to enact its nervousness into serious restraints on presidential discretion.

Arms control is the last respectable superstition in an otherwise faithless age. The American public never met a control agreement it did not like, and summit conferences are boffo box-office. So Reagan is heading for a splashy triumph.

THE ARBITRATOR

Reagan has had two Supreme Court nominees, Robert Bork and Douglas Ginsburg, misfire. But that is not a sure sign of presidential anaemia. Nixon had two nominees rejected in short order, then swept 49 states in a reelection landslide.

The quick disappearance of the second nominee, in a puff of marijuana smoke from the seventies, virtually guaranteed a non-controverslal third nominee, and that, in turn, makes highly probable a freshet of rhetoric about an “era of good feelings" in Washington. The durability of those feelings will depend on the ability of the President and Congress to come to some sort of meeting of minds concerning deficit reduction. The moment Is ripe. If the stock market stagger brings on a recession, there will be a real crisis, in which the rest of the West will be Included. But so far the market’s volatility has underscored the resilience of financial institutions. The measures take since 1929 do prevent volatility from cascading ruinously throughout the economy.

When the market “crashed” last month, various newspapers invited financiers to pontificate on The Meaning Of It All, which they did, often at length. But one, a hero of concision, said: “Stocks

fluctuate. Next question.” Indeed. At the beginning of the month, the Dow Jones Average was exactly where it was last December 2, and 68 points ahead — yes, ahead — of where it was a year ago. Some crash. The stock market has delivered a message that Americans, being basically happy and hence inattentive, need to have repeated periodically. The message is that life is real, life is earnest One result of the market rollercoaster is a new sobriety about the Budget deficit which is a manifestation of our overpropensity to consume more than we produce.

But sceptical Americans who assume that entitlement programmes (social security, especially) are too popular to prune, may soon be surprised. On the eve of an election year. Congress and the Administration may agree to limit automatic cost-of-living Increases.

The mere fact that this is a possibility proves the extent to which the centre of argument has moved to the Right in the Reagan years and remains there even during Reagan's de-cres-cendo.

Censorious foreigners who wonder whether the United States has the kidney to raise taxes have not been paying attention. There is a new Congress every two years. The one now sitting is the fourth of this decade.

The first cut taxes substantially In its first year (1981) but in the

next year passed some significant increases. The second and third Congresses also raised taxes. The fourth will almost certainly soon do so. And — Reagan's reservoir of luck has not run dry — Congress will be blamed for having to do so. It took 39 Presidents and 98 Congresses 200 years to compile the first trillion dollars of Federal debt; it took the fortieth President, Reagan, five years to double it Although Congress has fiddled a bit with Reagan’s Budgets, it has approved approximately the sums he has sought Yet the average American blames Congress for the deficit Now Reagan seems likely to “surrender” to congressional pressure to negotiate a deficitreduction plan involving tax increases. This will be another dangerous victory for Democrats. They will enter 1988 appearing to pound on the President as he stands like Horatio, resisting the raging taxers. That is not fair, but as several Presidents have announced (with a sense of original discovery) life is unfair. And, at the moment it is perhaps too stimulating for comfort But is the republic in crisis? No, political fortunes fluctuate. Next question.

GEORGE F. WILL is an American commentator whose work appears in many newspapers in the United States and elsewhere. This piece is reprinted from the "Daily Telegraph."