Bush Promises to Name Special Ethics Counsel

Vice President George Bush, fighting to distance himself from questions about the Reagan Administration’s adherence to rules of ethical behavior, promised Tuesday to appoint a special counselor responsible for ethics and said his Administration would send an “unmistakable” message that public employees must be held to “an exacting code of conduct.”

“The test for appointment to office in the Bush Administration . . . will be unquestioned character, integrity, talent, and, yes, dedication to public service,” he said.

In a long-promised address spelling out his view of ethics in government and steps he would take to maintain high standards, Bush, the nearly certain Republican presidential nominee, said the same standards that are applied to the executive branch of the government should also be applied to the Congress, stating: “The practice of Congress to legislate rules of conduct for others and not for itself is without justification or excuse.”

‘Double Standard’

“To exempt Congress from any of these rules, as does current conflict-of-interest law, is to establish a double standard that breeds suspicion, breeds cynicism, and in my judgment breeds abuse,” he said. “No one, no institution, no body of government should be above the law. That is not the American way.”

The remarks by the vice president, in which he endorsed the concept of an independent counsel to investigate government ethics violations and recommended extending the counsel’s domain to Congress, were his most extensive, although unspecific, on the subject in recent months.

Meanwhile, Michael S. Dukakis, the Democratic presidential nominee, said that the American people “are embarrassed and ashamed by some of the things that they see” in the Reagan Administration.

While Bush himself has not faced questions about his personal behavior, and his personal ethics have not become an issue in the presidential campaign, the subject has become one of sensitivity in his campaign because of the number of senior Reagan Administration officials who have left office under a cloud.

“I think the whole question of all the people who have gotten in trouble in the Reagan Administration is something the Democrats will pound,” said a Republican political consultant who is close to Reagan. Because no single issue has emerged as one of top priority at this point in the presidential campaign, he said, “this will be one of the factors.”

More than 100 people have left the Reagan Administration under some form of suspicion, have been nominated for posts and been defeated or have withdrawn their nominations, and the Pentagon procurement scandal has returned the issue of Reagan Administration ethics to front pages.

Reagan Aides Convicted

Among the more notable recent examples were the convictions of former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Michael K. Deaver for perjury and of former political assistant Lyn Nofziger for illegally lobbying former White House colleagues. Both have appealed their convictions. In addition, independent counsel James C. McKay concluded after a lengthy investigation that Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III probably violated federal conflict-of-interest and tax laws on four occasions while serving as the nation’s chief law enforcement officer. But McKay cited several factors in deciding not to prosecute him.

Dukakis, speaking at a news conference in Boston, said that after two senior Justice Department officials reported to Reagan and Bush in April that the attorney general may have broken the law, and was hampering the department, it was time for the President to demand Meese’s resignation.

“When that happens, I don’t think there are any further questions. He’s got to go and he’s got to go immediately. Instead, they continued to defend him and with their support he continued to serve as attorney general,” Dukakis said.

The vice president chose an audience of congressional interns for his message, telling the students assembled in an auditorium of the Library of Congress that his Administration would promulgate a conduct code that would be “clear and uniform” but not “overly technical,” to replace what he described as the existing “confused quilt work of executive policy statements, administrative regulations and criminal laws.”

“What is intuitively right--what your conscience tells you--that will invariably be the written rule,” he said.

But Bush gave no examples of what conduct would be allowed or prohibited in his Administration, and he walked off the stage without taking any questions from the several hundred students.

He said that in establishing an office of special counselor to the President whose “first responsibility will be ethics,” he intended “to ensure that my standards and my Administration’s standards are the highest.” Ethics questions in the Reagan White House have generally been handled by the White House counsel, the President’s chief lawyer.

The special counselor would direct a White House Ethics Office overseeing legislative proposals and White House adherence to codes of ethical conduct, and would brief senior White House officials annually on the federal ethics law. Many such responsibilities already fall to the White House counsel.

Expansion of Ethics Laws

Bush also called for an expansion of ethics laws, to lower the threshold of judging such conduct beneath that of a felony. Thus, he said, the standard would not be simply whether a criminal offense had occurred, but whether a government official “has exercised honest, unbiased judgment and scrupulously avoided any appearance of impropriety or conflict of interest.”

In raising the ethics issue, Bush was seen by his own advisers and White House aides as moving, in their word, to “inoculate” himself against potential political damage.

In other matters, Dukakis, at his news conference, said he:

--Favored spending $2.2 billion for day care programs--Bush suggested on Sunday creating a $2.2-billion program giving tax credits to working mothers, particularly those with low incomes. But the Democrat said local governments and private business should pick up some of the tab, and that the initial cost would probably not be as high as Bush proposed.

--Planned to continue as governor during the campaign, squelching rumors in the Massachusetts Statehouse that he was preparing to resign to concentrate on the presidential race. He said if he is elected President, he would resign his governorship only after being inaugurated.