Once to every man

National Review, June 16, 1997

PRESIDENT Clinton, worried about his place in history, is expected to announce this month a major initiative on race, which he calls America's "constant curse." If Mr. Clinton's past is any guide, look for rhetorical feints in all directions, coupled with a determination to maintain the policy status quo, especially with respect to racial preferences: "Mend it, don't end it," as he has said before. His isn't the only reputation on the line. How Newt Gingrich responds to the President will decide whether conservatives can any longer count him as reliably one of their own.

For decades, America's races have lived in a house built by liberalism, on a blueprint of quotas and preferences. These have helped blacks only to the extent of stuffing them into make-work government (and, increasingly, corporate) jobs. Most other indices of black social health have plummeted. Preferences discriminate against whites, and against non-black minorities like Asian-Americans. Most ominously, they are the template for multiculturalism: the project which aims to transform America into a latter-day Ottoman Empire. So dominant and damaging have preferences and their multicultural twin become that even an old-style liberal like Arthur Schlesinger Jr. has begun to worry about American unity, while a proto-neocon like Nathan Glazer has decided to make his peace with what he sees as the inevitable.

Newt Gingrich has often behaved as if he, too, thought preferences inevitable. He came to prominence in the supply-side wing of the GOP, which hoped that tax cuts would make discussions of unpleasant cultural issues unnecessary. During the 104th Congress, he put the issue on the back burner. (Even Bob Dole did more, co-sponsoring Rep. Charles Canady's bill against quotas in federal contracts.) He campaigned for California's Proposition 209, but belatedly. This January, he invited Jesse Jackson, not Ward Connerly, to be his guest at the State of the Union address. Last month he said on Meet the Press that "affirmative action" was necessary until we can "reach out" to black children.

Conversions are possible: Newt Gingrich converted House Republicans into a governing party. But the power to govern should be bestowed on those who are willing to address pressing national issues with truth and force. What Republicans, conservatives, and indeed all Americans need is a spokesman who can step up, after President Clinton's revival meeting, and say that the daydream of "affirmative action" has been baseless and damaging and the quota system must be dismantled. If Mr. Gingrich cannot say that -- and back up his words by supporting early passage of the Canady bill -- then Americans will conclude that the GOP has lost all sight of its moral bearings.