George Bush: Deep Down, the Moderate

Experts agree that the resounding Republican victory in November can be attributed in large part to two factors: Ronald Reagan’s immense popularity and George Bush’s willingness--a surprise for many--to wage a sometimes vitriolic campaign depicting his opponent as a dangerous liberal.

Such tactics surprised many GOP-watchers because, for some years, Bush was regarded as a liberal in GOP ranks, a high-minded sort who disdained such rhetoric. When Bush sought the nomination in 1980, they recall, he ran as the moderate alternative to Reagan.

His decision to accept the vice presidential spot and then to seek the presidency as a Reaganite confirmed suspicions that the fate of moderate Republicanism--once a powerful force within the party--had been sealed. The right-wing takeover that began with Barry M. Goldwater’s nomination 25 years ago was complete, it seemed, with party moderates routed.

Yet some Republicans dispute that notion, with good reason. Self-described moderates such as Sen. Nancy L. Kassebaum of Kansas, Reps. Lynn M. Martin of Illinois and Jim Leach of Iowa point out that the great majority of GOP governors are also moderates. So are a number of their Capitol Hill colleagues.

They insist, moreover, that deep down, Bush is one of them. As such, they say their prospects for influencing the party are better now than they have been for years--and will improve as Bush continues to emerge from Reagan’s shadow and shape his own Administration.

Leach, their most articulate spokesman and a close friend of the President-elect, remains confident that however reactionary the Bush campaign might have appeared, his Administration will be more pragmatic than ideological--and far more moderate than the one it succeeds.

“My feeling is that Bush was probably more embarrassed by the campaign than anybody,” Leach explains. “Sure it was negative--on both sides. But you’ve got to remember how Bush preempted (Michael S.) Dukakis on all of his major issues--on day-care, education, the environment. People forget the ways the Bush campaign was very positive indeed.”

Leach spent the Reagan years as national chairman of the Ripon Society, an organization of like-minded moderates named for the Wisconsin town where some historians say the GOP began. He predicts the Bush Administration will be “conciliatory, reasonable and realistic about what it can and cannot accomplish.”

Many moderates are convinced that, in some ways, Bush will be as progressive a Republican as their hero, Theodore Roosevelt. The days of revolutionary rhetoric and reactionary rule are past, Leach says. “In domestic policy, George Bush is serious about those issues he took away from Michael Dukakis and, in foreign affairs, he will be able to build on the progress--in arms limitation, for example--the Reagan Administration has made.”

The moderates consider Bush uniquely positioned to bring values they hold dear back into the party leadership. He is, they tell themselves, the son of the late Prescott S. Bush, the U.S. senator from Connecticut who said he was proudest of helping censor Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy.

Steeped in the genteel traditions of the Ivy League, the Kennebunkport preppie is, in his instinctive approach to politics, the kind of man GOP moderates have traditionally looked to for leadership. And do today. His closest friends in the party--men like Nicholas F. Brady, James A. Baker III and Leach--are all non-ideologues, and his Cabinet is more Washington insider than right-wing insurgent.

The rap on “moderate” Republicans has long been that, on almost any given policy, they’re content to split the difference with liberal Democrats. If Democrats want a new $40-billion domestic program that conservative Republicans don’t want at all, critics note, the moderates will cut its budget to $20 billion but vote for the program all the same.

“There’s some truth to that analysis,” Leach concedes, “but mainly for Eastern Establishment Republicans who once felt they had to compete with the Democrats, program for program or promise for promise. I don’t share that view.

“But I do believe, as George Bush does, that we need a ‘kinder, gentler nation,’ that we have to respond to social needs and that we must respect the individual--and the law. And in that sense, I feel that the Republicans I’m associated with-- (Atty. Gen.) Richard Thornburgh, Lynn Martin, (New Jersey Gov.) Tom Kean, (Pennsylvania Rep.) Bill Clinger--are more in the mainstream . . . than the right-wingers ever were.”

It is in the economic arena, Leach says, that the Bush Administration may surprise right-wingers most. “In many ways, this Administration is going to be much more fiscally conservative than the Reagan Administration,” he explains. “There’s no alternative than to exercise restraint when you’re facing a $150-billion deficit. I think Bush will use the veto much as Gerald Ford did and, in a gentlemanly way, of course, be ungentlemanly with the Congress.”

These are decidedly not Rockefeller Republicans. They are as likely to hail from the Midwest as from the Eastern seaboard, with few of the Establishment connections one used to expect from GOP liberals. Bush, in fact, may well be the toniest fellow they know.

For Leach, the orderly processes of government is as crucial to the preservation of freedom as a well-armed military: “What moderate Republicans believe in--the respect for law, the individual conscience, fiscal responsibility, limited government, equal rights--seems almost self-evident to me.”

Unfortunately, Leach sometimes fears that those values he considers quintessentially Republican have fallen out of favor with the GOP: “I can’t understand how a conservative who professes to believe in the individual can oppose the equal-rights amendment, nor how a conservative who believes the government is not above the law can condone an Iran-Contra scandal.”

His forthright criticism of the Republican right, ironically enough, is rooted in beliefs about the nature of government that are nothing if not conservative.

“I believe in respect for the law and a reverence for orderly change,” he explained, “in striking a balance between freedom and order, in avoiding extremes and achieving compromise.”

These are values that Leach says are also important to Bush. Right-wingers may make all the noise, but whatever course the Republican Party takes, militant moderates will have their say, too. How much they’ll be listened to is up to the next President.