BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON
In the spring of 1981 Office of Management and Budget Director David Stockman sat for weeks at a long table in room H-228 of the Capitol, his beady eyes peering over stacks of thick, black 3-ring binders containing the detail on most every federal program.
Stockman was holding over budget negotiations with his former colleagues in the House of Representatives. His mission was to cut spending, cut taxes, increase defense, and help his President, Ronald Reagan, usher in a new era of smaller, limited government, entrepreneurial innovation, individual freedom, and global prestige.
Piece of cake.
Few if any at the table, maybe with the exception of Jack Kemp, knew they were making history at the time. But they were, in the same way congressional leaders did for Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and Roosevelt’s New Deal and McKinley’s and Teddy Roosevelt’s regimes of political and regulatory reforms.
The leaders around that table in 1981 were not thinking much about history. They didn’t have time. They were too busy arguing over politically painful decisions on where to cut, where not to cut and why, economic consequences, how to explain it politically, and how they were ever going to move the Reagan agenda through a Democratically-controlled House and a Republican uncontrolled Senate.
They were light years away from the glittering generalities of campaigning, the easy answers and simple solutions the American electorate had bought into. The politicians were now legislators making the difficult transition from campaigning to governing.
The rest, as they say, is history, and it was truly historical. Over the course of the next few years, Reagan and Congress got the job done. They produced results. They, dare I say, compromised for the sake of congressional and national consensus. They made change rather than just ranting about it. Had they not made that choice, they would not have made history. They would have only made good political theater.
Reagan didn’t get everything he wanted legislatively, of course, but he and his compatriots in Congress did change the culture of governing, our world view, and how we looked at ourselves.
Reagan’s legacy is not just his vision for the country but that the vision became reality through governance.
Now 30 years later, the leaders of the 112th Congress may be on the precipice of another historical era in American government, but it will depend upon whether they make law or theater.
Passing a continuing resolution that extends spending through the remainder of the fiscal year, which has already consumed a lot of time and political capital, is the easy part. The next stage, passage of a transformational budget, like the one adopted in 1981, will be easier than implementing it, and it will be easier than moving policy to the next stage—tax reform and entitlement reform—and the next stage—energy independence, immigration and sustained job creation—and the next stage–realignment of our global role—and the next stage… You get the picture.
How can our leaders sustain the political discipline needed to meet these challenges, some of which, because of years of political neglect, will soon be crises? How does Congress do it and live up to the legacy of change left by Jefferson, Lincoln, McKinley, the Roosevelts, Johnson, and Reagan and Congressional leaders like Adams, Clay, Webster, Benton, Norris, Taft, Rayburn, Mansfield, Dirksen, Boland, Conable and Michel?
Oddly enough, a solution-centric government cannot be created by congressional and Presidential leadership alone. Good governance depends heavily on a responsible media, responsible interest groups, and an informed and educated public.
The media have got to get a grip. They really do. They have to get the facts straight and learn about how government really works and how to explain it. The carnival barkers on radio and television and the anonymous cowards on the blogs do not contribute to the public good; they contribute only to their own pocketbooks and their own egos. Walter Cronkite, where are you when we need you?
The interest groups that willingly abandon the public good in favor of inciting and exciting their fund-raising base with hyperbole and hate mongering need to be weaned off of their excesses. The individuals and organizations that pump money into their divisiveness should reroute their giving to the Salvation Army and the Heart Association.
The people need help. They aren’t getting the information they need to turn into the knowledge they must have to govern themselves. Instead the American people are being fueled by incendiary rhetoric, exaggerations, misinformation, oversimplifications and a false perception that we live in a society clearly divided among victims and villains. Their emotions are being fed and their intellect starved.
Finally, the people we elect must recommit themselves to deliberate with civility, to seek consensus that reflects the will of the majority in America, not just in Congress, and to act with courage and the conviction to talk less and do more. They must change the rules of the House and Senate, open up the process to more member participation as House Leader Bob Michel did in the Reagan years, and adopt strategies that lead to action, not just motion. They have to put down the flame throwers and pick up the sculpting chisels.
All of this is easy to say and hard to realize. That is why it is only once in every few decades that American leaders rise to the challenge of historical transformation. The opportunity doesn’t often present itself and the people who serve us are not always up to the job. We have both now.
Editor’s Note: Mike Johnson is a former journalist who served on the White House staff of President Gerald Ford, and as press secretary and later chief of staff to House Republican Leader Bob Michel of Illinois. He is co-author of a handbook for Congressional staff, Surviving Congress, and is currently a principal with the OB-C Group in Washington.