Letter from Washington

During the preparation of the State of the Union message, two opposing camps vied for the President’s nod. The first, led by Chief of Staff Don Regan and his aide Dennis Thomas, enlisted Bill Bennett and Bill Brock, Secretaries of Education and Labor respectively, to take part in White House drafting sessions and come up with initiatives on education, welfare, industrial competition, worker retraining, etc. The second, led by veteran speechwriter Ken Khachigian and longtime California Reagan friend and counselor Stu Spencer, advocated classic, soft-core Reagan rhetoric. Khachigian/Spencer got the Reagans’ (Nancy’s too) go-ahead. Thus, Mr. Reagan glossed over the concrete with the desultory “I will be sending the Congress a complete series of special messages—on budget reform, welfare reform, competitiveness, including education, trade, worker training and assistance, agriculture, and other subjects.” In the wake of Iran and the loss of the Senate, the speech, though well written and vintage Reagan, sounded dated and etiolated. The message seemed to have been constructed on a gravely mistaken assumption: that blue-sky prose could galvanize a nation put off by the Iran affair.

The Republican Party is beginning to pick up the pieces after its crushing Senate losses in November. At the Republican National Committee (RNC), high-level officers are now advocating changes in both the method and the message of the party. Former General Chairman Paul Laxalt blasted the misuse of money for high-tech tactics. “We’ve got too much money and too many political operatives,” Laxalt told the RNC. “We’ve got far too few volunteers and far too little enthusiasm.”

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During the preparation of the State of the Union message, two opposing camps vied for the President’s nod. The first, led by Chief of Staff Don Regan and his aide Dennis Thomas, enlisted Bill Bennett and Bill Brock, Secretaries of Education and Labor respectively, to take part in White House drafting sessions and come up with initiatives on education, welfare, industrial competition, worker retraining, etc. The second, led by veteran speechwriter Ken Khachigian and longtime California Reagan friend and counselor Stu Spencer, advocated classic, soft-core Reagan rhetoric. Khachigian/Spencer got the Reagans’ (Nancy’s too) go-ahead. Thus, Mr. Reagan glossed over the concrete with the desultory “I will be sending the Congress a complete series of special messages—on budget reform, welfare reform, competitiveness, including education, trade, worker training and assistance, agriculture, and other subjects.” In the wake of Iran and the loss of the Senate, the speech, though well written and vintage Reagan, sounded dated and etiolated. The message seemed to have been constructed on a gravely mistaken assumption: that blue-sky prose could galvanize a nation put off by the Iran affair.

The Republican Party is beginning to pick up the pieces after its crushing Senate losses in November. At the Republican National Committee (RNC), high-level officers are now advocating changes in both the method and the message of the party. Former General Chairman Paul Laxalt blasted the misuse of money for high-tech tactics. “We’ve got too much money and too many political operatives,” Laxalt told the RNC. “We’ve got far too few volunteers and far too little enthusiasm.”