Letter from Washington

Conciliation is in, confrontation out. “The Administration wants partnership, not pique,” a White House aide told a Republican senator. “We’ve taken the edge off; we’ve quit talking vetoes, and we’re pumping accommodation.” Cases in point: South African sanctions, unilateral U.S. penalties against foreign textile and steel exporters (to ward off protectionist legislation by Congress), and the softening position on aid to the Farm Credit System. “Don Regan has put his Jim Baker uniform on.”

Faced with a runaway legislative agenda that would have squandered his political capital and blurred his tax-reform focus, the President and his staff (Don Regan, Dennis Thomas, Max Friedersdorf, M. B. Oglesby, Mitch Daniels) concluded last weekend that the only way to manage the flying debris on the Hill was to funnel huge chunks of it through the deal-making chute, and clear the decks of everything except tax reform. In the same way, potential mavericks could be kept in line. “If the White House doesn’t do something on farm credit, we’d jump ship completely,” averred one of the fifty GOP members of Congress (eight senators, 42 representatives) from farm states who are up for re-election next year.

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Conciliation is in, confrontation out. “The Administration wants partnership, not pique,” a White House aide told a Republican senator. “We’ve taken the edge off; we’ve quit talking vetoes, and we’re pumping accommodation.” Cases in point: South African sanctions, unilateral U.S. penalties against foreign textile and steel exporters (to ward off protectionist legislation by Congress), and the softening position on aid to the Farm Credit System. “Don Regan has put his Jim Baker uniform on.”

Faced with a runaway legislative agenda that would have squandered his political capital and blurred his tax-reform focus, the President and his staff (Don Regan, Dennis Thomas, Max Friedersdorf, M. B. Oglesby, Mitch Daniels) concluded last weekend that the only way to manage the flying debris on the Hill was to funnel huge chunks of it through the deal-making chute, and clear the decks of everything except tax reform. In the same way, potential mavericks could be kept in line. “If the White House doesn’t do something on farm credit, we’d jump ship completely,” averred one of the fifty GOP members of Congress (eight senators, 42 representatives) from farm states who are up for re-election next year.