Reagan medal is hypocrisy - George Bush's belated respect for his predecessor, former President Ronald Reagan, via the Medal of Freedom award - Column

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Feb 8, 1993 | by Arnold Beichman

President Bush's awarding of the Medal of Freedom to Ronald Reagan a week before the inauguration was an act of hypocrisy, monumental even by normal political standards. I wonder if Bush even realizes how hypocritical the belated award was.

From Inauguration Day 1989 onward, the Bush administration distanced itself from the Reagan years. The latest evidence is a Jan. 1 New York Times story that quoted -- not by name -- a Bush associate as saying: "The chance of accomplishing some substantive things before [President Bush] goes out has energized him. He sees the possibility of leaving his successor a much better situation than he found when he came in in 1989."

The anti-Reagan implications of this remark by a Bush "associate" are on a par with those in Bush's expressed wish to create "a kinder, gentler America." the statement can be interpreted as an attack on the Reagan presidency, since it implies that the country was in a mess when Bush took over.

Bush and right-hand man James Baker did everything they could to minimize Reagan's achievements, which were rarely, if ever, mentioned in presidential addresses or in statements by Bush's subordinates. It was obvious that the word had gone out.

Leading the crusade against Reaganism was Baker, Reagan's chief of staff, who became secretary of state and, later, chief of staff under Bush. Baker directed his leakage ostensibly against his predecessor, Reagan's secretary of state, George Shultz, particularly over negotiations with the Soviet Union. Obviously, attacking Shultz reflected badly on Reagan's abilities.

Another crusader against Reaganism was Samuel Skinner, Bush's transportation secretary and later chief of staff, who at a Cabinet meeting boasted that he was the first Cabinet secretary to completely purge his department of Reaganauts. So reports conservative activist Grover G. Norquist in an article in the winter 1993 issue of Policy Review titled "The Unmaking of a President: Why George Bush Lost."

It was not lost on Reagan's friends that Bill Clinton, during a postelection vacation trip to California, had an enjoyable visit with Reagan. A friend of Reagan's who saw a photograph of the two men laughing together remarked that Clinton had shown more respect for Reagan in one day than Bush had in four years. It was also noted that Clinton had yet to call on former Presidents Nixon, Ford and Carter.

The animosity between the Bush administration and the Reaganauts can be seen in a comment made to the New York Times by Martin Anderson, Reagan's former domestic policy adviser, about Clinton's December economic summit in Little Rock: "After four years of watching the Bush team amateurs, it's fun to watch the pros play again. Clinton has done a brilliant job of building support for whatever he wants to do."

Fundamental to the Bush administration was its abhorrence of the ideas that inform modern conservatism. Bush's administrators -- except for Jack Kemp, the former Housing and Urban Development secretary whom the White House kept on a tight leash -- had few ideas, nor were they comparable to Reagan-era conceptualizers such as Jeane Kirkpatrick, Elliot Abrams and Richard Perle.

Perhaps even worse for Bush's re-election campaign -- it was the economy, stupid -- was his shunning of economists such as Milton Friedman, William Simon and Paul Volcker, whom Bush and his advisers scorned as the ultraright, a wild exaggeration.

So Reagan got his Medal of Freedom, a small token of appreciation for one of the greatest presidential achievements in modern history -- presiding over the fall of the Soviet Union and the beginning of the end of the Cold War.