Means over ends

IN HIS BATTLE with congressional Democrats over their civil-rights bill, George Bush has again shown what he's made of by refusing to back down on charges that it is a quotas bill," which it certainly is. Indeed, the President's forcefulness in pressing the case against quotas is a big reason the Democrats aren't getting anywhere with this bill. The only reason they are able to press him at all is that he has insisted on the need for his own civil-rights bill. And to be fair to his critics, the Bush package is not all that different from what the Democrats want.

A little bit of history here. In the last few years the Supreme Court has made about six important civil-rights rulings that finally came down on the side of the Constitution; the most important of these, Ward's Cove Packing Co. v. Atonio, essentially held that statistical imbalance in the workplace alone was not enough to prove discrimination. These were the kinds of decisions conservatives had long hoped for, but the President's immediate reaction was to speak of legislative remedies."

Hence the Bush bill. In addressing the Ward's Cove issue, the President's alternative is not as clearly pro-quota as what the Democrats propose, but apart from that there are no major differences. Both assign the burden of proof to the accused employer. And now that the Democrats have agreed to cap damages, the dividing line is much fuzzier. All of which gives more impetus to the new "compromise" being put forth by Senator John Danforth (R., Mo.), which in its essentials would accomplish most of what the Democrats want.

But this is what you get when you elevate means over ends. Conservatives will always lose so long as they define things in terms of legislation and not outcome; just as diplomats who announce how badly they need a treaty lose their negotiating leverage. The President has allowed the Democrats to hold this issue over his head because he has let them know just how badly he wants to sign a civil-rights bill. The best outcome in this fight is not a compromise between the worst and the bad. The best outcome would be no bill at all and a conservative civil-rights strategy that would offer America's poor, of all races, not false "rights" but real opportunities.