Looking for a leader - the search for a Republican National Committee chairman - Editorial

For the first time in 16 years, Republican Party leaders will vote, on January 29, to decide who will be chairman of their national committee. It is a crucial choice, not simply for internal party reasons - on which national review would not rush to comment - but also for the health of the two-party system. Despite the growth during the 1980s in the number of voters identifying themselves as Republicans, the GOP has come nowhere near matching the electoral strength of the Democratic Party nationwide. It missed opportunity after opportunity in the last decade to turn admiration for Reaganite policies into Republican votes. And now that it has lost the White House, it is deprived of its sole compensation for this miserable performance. Alas, the revival of Republican fortunes cannot be left to an able but essentially uninspiring establishment figure like Senator Dole. A vigorous, imaginative, and trusted RNC chairman is needed.

Who should it be? The ideal RNC chairman would possess three characteristics: the nuts-and-bolts ability to run a political organization; the combination of affability and toughness needed to unite the fractious brethren; and the public standing to be an effective national spokesman. None of the candidates possesses all these virtues; each has some basis for claiming the post. Haley Barbour is a skilled, experienced, and amiable political technician; Bo Calloway is a good ol' boy, a shrewd Southern political warhorse who would have made a fine RNC chairman in a different era; John Ashcroft was an excellent governor and is a principled conservative; and Spencer Abraham, no less conservative, has a successful record at virtually every level of political organization from the precinct up.

In our view, though all four have good credentials, the choice for conservatives is between Mr. Ashcroft and Mr. Abraham. Mr. Ashcroft's record is good. He would certainly be an effective public spokesman and a competent organizer. Unfortunately, however, his backers include the current chairman and other veterans of the Bush campaign. The fact that he is backed by the wizards who gave us a severe and needless Republican defeat promotes the suspicion that he would blur rather than clarify any new Republican agenda. At a time when the GOP trumpet needs to send forth a clarion call, that is not a risk the party can take.

We believe Spencer Abraham's elevation from chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, where he did fine work, to chairman of the RNC would be the better bet. His focus would be on building the party's base to give it organizational strength and on choosing competent candidates not only for races in 1993 and '94, but well into the future. He would wed his uncontested administrative skills to the sound conservative principles he demonstrated as a founder of the Federalist Society. Nor is that all. Mr. Abraham is no Beltway insider, but in the short time he spent at the national congressional committee he encountered - and learned from battling with - the inertial power of the Washington establishment. His approach, combining a quiet, self-confident conservatism with targeted organizational hard work, was the precise opposite of the direction-less vapidity of the Bush campaign. That approach is what the Republican Party needs today. In our view, Mr. Abraham is the best man to provide it.