Parties Reassess Role of Government in Prelude to ’88 Vote

“Government often does good things badly,” New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo admonishes his fellow Democrats. This from the current hero of the liberals, who have long exalted government cures for society’s ills.

Meanwhile, New York Rep. Jack Kemp, regarded by many as the true heir to President Reagan’s mantle of conservative leadership, reproves his Republican colleagues: “All too often we give the impression that we think government is the enemy of the people.”

Such stereotype-defying pronouncements typify the ferment as both political parties strive to use the lessons of the Reagan era to draft competing messages for the coming struggle for the White House.

In broadest terms, the Democrats, long the advocates of federal government activism to achieve social justice, are increasingly acknowledging the limitations of government. And the Republicans are more often recognizing that individual liberty and economic efficiency are not always sufficient to meet the responsibilities of government to its citizens.

Huge Stakes

It is a wrenching task for both parties, because it demands to some extent turning away from beliefs and policies deeply rooted in the past. But the stakes are huge: to establish an enduring sequel to the politics of both the so-called “Reagan Revolution” and the New Deal.

Toward that goal, Cuomo and other liberal Democrats urge tapping the resources of the private sector and of state and local government to redress inequities once deemed the exclusive province of Washington.

The Democratic Policy Commission, created last year by national party leaders to find fresh approaches to longstanding public concerns, asserts that Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis has dramatically cut welfare costs by offering job training and placement. It also touts another program launched by Arizona Gov. Bruce Babbitt, which enlists private community agencies to provide day care for needy children.

Incentives Pushed

Kemp and other Republicans, meanwhile, are promoting federal legislation to establish incentives for private efforts to deal with hardships that many conservatives hitherto regarded as none of the federal government’s business.

Among the ideas: tuition vouchers that would enable parents in low-income areas to direct tax revenue to the schools they want their children to attend, either public or private, and assistance for tenants in low-cost public housing to buy the units they live in.

One reason for the pervasive ferment is that the 1988 election is the first since 1960 in which the incumbent President has been constitutionally barred from succeeding himself, thus clearing the political stage for change.

Another factor is the profound impact of Reagan. His presidency may have done much to shatter the shibboleths of the liberal Democratic creed, but it also leaves behind some major new problems--notably a towering budget deficit and a record trade imbalance--and a persistent level of poverty.

‘Take Responsibility’

Republican efforts to chart the future seem markedly influenced by the disappointments of the Reagan Administration. “If you are going to take credit, you are going to have to take responsibility,” says Republican Rep. Newt Gingrich of Georgia. At the same time, Democratic ideological strategists greatly reflect the Administration’s accomplishments.

Democrats should require the government to do two things, Cuomo urged in a Manhattan policy forum earlier this summer: “One, insist that people help themselves as much as possible, and second, find intelligent, fair and effective ways to help people to help themselves.”

Dukakis’ 3-year-old welfare program in Massachusetts, nicknamed ET for Employment and Training Choices, is hailed by Democrats as a prime example of that approach. ET is reputed to have found jobs for 23,000 welfare recipients, at an average wage of $5 an hour. Skeptics point out that this accomplishment was made easier by the state’s thriving economy, which pushed unemployment to less than 4%.

Day-Care Centers

In Arizona, the day-care program organized by the state and drawing its main financial support from private organizations, such as YMCAs and PTAs, has won “rave reviews,” says Babbitt’s press secretary, Michael McCurry, though he concedes that profit-making day-care centers have complained that the free centers are taking away business.

Another Arizona innovation, cited as an example of “Democrats making it work” by the party’s policy commission, is free medical care for needy children, provided through the state’s Health Care Cost Containment System, a health maintenance organization. State payments to the HMO are less than those previously made to clinics and hospitals through the Medicaid program, and care has improved, Babbitt asserts.

“Democrats are still activists,” says Dukakis, chairman of the policy committee’s panel on the industrial economy. “But now we realize that the activism has to combine public resources and private initiative,” he says. Another part of the new Democratic approach, Dukakis aide John Sasso says, is that “many of the new ideas are coming from state and local levels, not Washington.”

Key to Raises

In their determination to shift ideological gears, some Democrats seem willing to risk offending traditional party constituency groups. Former Virginia Gov. Charles S. Robb, head of the Democratic Leadership Council, a group of centrist officeholders, talks of using increases in productivity and gross national product--instead of inflation--as the standard for raises in entitlement payments and wage settlements. That idea could raise hackles among Social Security beneficiaries and union members long accustomed to cost-of-living adjustments.

Ideas for change in party advocacy also come from such bulwarks of the Democratic left as Michael J. Harrington, who co-chairs the Democratic Socialists of America. Declaring that “Keynesian liberalism of the 1960s, the ABCs of the Democratic left, no longer works as it once did,” Harrington calls for “handsome tax subsidies” to big corporations--provided that they create jobs in high-unemployment areas.

Rebuttal on Weakness

On foreign affairs, many Democrats see the need to rebut charges of isolationism and weakness in the post-Vietnam era.

A foreign policy task force set up by the Democratic Policy Commission and chaired by New York Rep. Stephen J. Solarz asserts in its recent report: “The United States must never plunge into the needless use of force or shrink from its timely use when necessary to preserve our essential interests.”

More explicitly, Robb calls on Democrats to back “a two-track” policy in strife-torn Nicaragua--holding open the possibility of negotiations between the Sandinista regime and the rebel forces while providing the resistance “with the military support it needs to succeed.”

Just as many of the ideas proposed by the Democrats still reflect the party’s traditional bias toward government activism, the revisions in Republican policy approaches bear the mark of the GOP’s long-term preference for private enterprise. Indeed, a number of the GOP ideas fall under the rubric of “privatization,” a Reagan-era coinage for transferring federal government activities to the private sector.

‘Mechanics’ Argument

To many Democrats, privatization suggests that the GOP really wants to sell off the government. But Stuart Butler, domestic policies director of the Heritage Foundation, argues that privatization reflects the growing awareness of conservatives of the responsibilities of government.

“It gets conservatives out of the trap of sounding like they don’t want government doing anything at all,” he says. “We’re saying that government has the responsibility to get certain jobs done in society.” The only argument with liberals, he says, is over “mechanics”--whether the government fulfills its responsibility directly through a federal agency or indirectly through the private sector.

The idea of tuition vouchers for poor children, which would draw on government funds that now go directly to schools in low-income areas, is one controversial privatization proposal. Many liberals contend that the use of vouchers would undercut public schools and that the amount of funds available is not sufficient to be of much practical value.

Ties to Bureaucrats

But Gingrich, founder of the Conservative Opportunity Society, maintains that the opposition of liberals reflects their ties to bureaucrats with a vested interest in continuing present federal aid programs. By opposing the voucher plan, he charges, liberals are in effect “forcing blacks to go to schools where they are forced to become drug addicts or get shot.”

The proposal to encourage public housing tenants to buy their own homes, by offering them the right to buy at a deep discount with no money down, represents another aspect of privatization. The plan is co-sponsored by Kemp and liberal Democrat Walter E. Fauntroy, the delegate from the District of Columbia.

Supporters of the measure say a similar plan introduced in Great Britain by Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has enjoyed considerable success. But critics point out that public housing in Britain differs from that in the United States in that it has more single-family homes than apartments, is much newer than in the United States and many public housing tenants are better off economically than those in this country.

Economic Distress

Republicans must also be mindful of the economic distress in the Farm Belt and energy-dependent states, Gingrich says.

“We have to prove that rural America is as important to this Administration as is rural Nicaragua,” he says. “If the Republican Party cannot find powerful, convincing, effective steps to help the regions in pain, they will legitimately be angry at us.”

One possibility that Gingrich is looking into: federal funds for at-home job retraining to aid hard-pressed farm families.

Calls for reappraisal come not only from elected leaders of the GOP Establishment, but also from hard-line ideologues such as New Right leader Paul M. Weyrich, president of the Free Congress Research and Education Foundation. He contends that the New Right has been concentrating on a “trivial agenda” made up of symptomatic rather than fundamental issues.

“To many people, cultural conservatives have only two issues: abortion and school prayer,” he says. Although banning abortion would be “a great step forward,” Weyrich says, he argues that “the root cause of abortion would live on, largely untouched. The root cause is that a substantial and growing portion of the population believe that personal, often sensual pleasure is the highest good.”

To change these attitudes, Weyrich says, government must help implement such traditional values as self-duty, discipline and service.

Substantive Objectives

In the meantime, he believes that the New Right should put more emphasis on its substantive objectives: Reforming the criminal justice system through stricter sentencing and financial restitution for nonviolent offenders, changing educational approaches by giving parents wider choices in where to send their children to school and bolstering the family by revising welfare rules to create incentives for fathers to stay with their wives and children.

Although most of the ideas under discussion in both parties represent departures from the policies of the Reagan era, Reagan’s enormous popularity is an ever-present backdrop to the debate.

“Reagan proved that ideas matter,” says Richard Moe, a senior adviser to Walter F. Mondale’s 1984 campaign. “His idea was we had to reduce government and cut taxes and everyone would be better off. I don’t agree with that, but he put it in an appealing way, and it was this idea that underpins his presidency.”