Appointment of Cavazos Is Hollow Gesture Now That Reagan Has Gutted Agency

There he goes again.

Probably because of his background as an actor, Ronald Reagan has always liked making melodramatic gestures in his political career. He did it once more on Tuesday, when he became the first President to nominate a Latino to serve in his Cabinet. But, while the appointment is worth noting, it is little more than shallow symbolism.

In nominating Lauro F. Cavazos, a Mexican-American from Texas, to be his new secretary of education, Reagan beat both Democratic presidential nominee Michael S. Dukakis and Vice President George Bush, the probable Republican presidential nominee, to the punch. In an election year in which both political parties are avidly courting Latino voters in key states like Texas and California, both Bush and Dukakis have promised to name Latinos to their Cabinet, if elected.

Of course, Reagan’s decision to name a Latino was not without its political ramifications, too. It will clearly help Bush, who has been getting a lot less attention from Latinos lately than has Dukakis, who has been proudly displaying his fluent Spanish before Latino audiences and who picked a Texan with strong Latino support, Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, as his running mate. The best that Bush has been able to offer so far is the fact that his son Jeb is married to a Latina.

But aside from the transparent and crassly political reasons for Reagan’s nomination of Cavazos to succeed outgoing Education Secretary William J. Bennett, there are more important reasons why most Latinos are going to look at this appointment as symbolic at best, and downright cynical at worst.

For one thing, if Cavazos is confirmed by the Senate, he will take over from Bennett in September, giving him only four months in office before the Reagan Administration ends. Confirmation seems likely because Cavazos has an impressive background. He is a professor of anatomy and physiology who is both president of Texas Tech University and head of its Health Sciences Center. Before that, he was a dean at Tufts University in Massachusetts and taughtat the University of Virginia--two highly regarded institutions.

Cavazos is so impressive, in fact, that it is worth asking why it took Reagan so long to find him, or another Latino like him, for a Cabinet post. During his seven-plus yearsin the White House, Reagan has named 33 persons to 13 Cabinet-level jobs, and they have included some real duds. Does anyone remember former Interior Secretary James Watt ( “I have a black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple”) or ex-Secretary of State Alexander Haig (“I’m in charge here”) or an assortment of old Reagan buddies like Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III, who will leave Washington trailing sleaze so thick that it has tainted the entire Justice Department?

And does anybody remember that Reagan came into office thinking so little of the Department of Education that he wanted to abolish it altogether? He couldn’t pull that off, but most teachers and other education professionals whom I know think that he did the next worst thing--practically dismantling the place and gutting its programs.

Reagan cut federal support for public education from 2.5% of the federal budget in 1980 to only 1.8% this year, according to the National Education Assn. And, in a move that was especially painful to Latino families, Reagan slashed federal student-aid programs that helped many poor and working-class students attend college. All this while pouring billions of tax dollars into cockeyed schemes like a “Star Wars” missile-defense system that many physicists think will never work.

In opinion polls taken this election year, Latino voters consistently mention education as the public issue that they consider most important. So they would probably take Cavazos’ appointment more seriously if they thought that he could reverse the anti-education trend in the Administration. But even the most politically naive Latino knows that it won’t happen in four months.

Reagan himself inadvertently showed how lightly he takes the Cavazos nomination when he concluded his announcement of the appointment by using a trite Spanish phrase that is his favorite cliche in addressing Latino audiences: Mi casa es su casa (My house is your house). The President has been using that hackneyed line since he was governor of California. In fact, waiting for him to say it, yet again, has become a running gag--and an embarrassment--even among loyal Latino Republicans.

If Cavazos performs only one public service during his tenure, he should teach Reagan a new Spanish phrase that Latinos are using a lot these days: Por favor, ayuda nuestras escuelas!