Reagan Lauds Wilson, Tags Democrats as Weak Hitters

President Reagan, comfortable in his new role as his party’s designated hitter, took up the cudgel for Republican Sen. Pete Wilson Tuesday and swung away at the Democrats.

“The Republican Party has shown America who talks and who delivers,” Reagan said. “America is not going to trade away our winning team for third-stringers with a weak defense, a foreign policy of errors, curve ball campaign promises, a set of policies to be named later, and billions of dollars in higher taxes.”

Earlier in the day, in answer to a reporter’s question, Reagan commented on the controversy surrounding his party’s vice presidential candidate, Sen. Dan Quayle of Indiana. Reagan described Quayle as “a fine man and well qualified” who should not be dropped from the Republican ticket.

Reagan spoke on Wilson’s behalf at a $500-a-plate luncheon celebrating the senator’s 55th birthday at the Irvine Hilton. Some of the better known guests included Mickey Rooney, Glenn Ford, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jaclyn Smith, Buddy Ebsen, Efrem Zimbalist Jr. and Betty Hutton.

Reagan described Wilson, who is running for reelection, as “a Teddy Roosevelt Republican who wants to conserve the natural beauty and resources of our land and who also wants a strong America that maintains a strong presence abroad.”

It was generous praise from a President who has not always agreed with Wilson, particularly on environmental matters.

Wilson broke with the White House, opposing oil drilling off the California coast. Wilson also voted to override Reagan’s veto of the 1987 highway bill, legislation that included $867 million for the Los Angeles Metro Rail subway, and he did not agree with the Administration’s support of the Midgetman missile. Wilson first got off on the wrong foot with Reagan in the 1976 Republican presidential primary, when he forsook his fellow Californian in favor of incumbent Gerald R. Ford.

Despite steering his own course in California, Wilson has worked closely with the White House over the last six years, especially on fiscal and defense matters. As a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Wilson, along with Quayle--who is his good friend--have led the fight for full funding of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), commonly referred to as “Star Wars.”

Wilson took in $450,000 from the luncheon, his campaign manager, Otto Bos, said. Wilson enjoys a healthy lead both in fund raising and in public opinion polls over his Democratic opponent, Lt. Gov. Leo T. McCarthy.

McCarthy has worked hard to dispute Wilson’s claim of being a moderate on environmental issues. The lieutenant governor, who has been endorsed by the Sierra Club, cites Wilson’s failure, so far, to support a bill that would grant wilderness status to millions of acres of California desert.

Reagan’s speech resounded with the anti-liberal rhetoric that aides say he will employ as he campaigns for Vice President George Bush and other Republican candidates across the country.

Reagan accused the Democrats of running “stealth campaigns,” engaging in “covert liberalism” and “using the language of conservatism in order to conceal their true beliefs.”.

Earlier Tuesday, in a ceremony at Long Beach harbor, Reagan signed the omnibus trade bill into law.

The President said the bill, designed among other things to curb the record trade deficits run up in the last eight years, will aid in opening foreign markets and protect American patented products from “international thievery.” The signing of the 1,128-page bill, three years in the making, signals that the government “now speaks with one voice in calling for a free and open trading system, one committed to fair play for all participants,” Reagan said.

Reagan declined to name one of the bill’s prime sponsors, Texas Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, the Democratic Party’s vice presidential candidate.

While President Reagan was signing the trade bill, Sen. Lloyd Bentsen was pushing the fact that he had been the bill’s prime author in the Senate. Page 18.