Fitzwater Describes Gephardt as the ‘Maxwell Smart’ of Politics

Bush Administration officials Wednesday ridiculed House Majority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) as the “Maxwell Smart” of American politics after he criticized its cautious approach towards changes sweeping Eastern Europe, and they said his proposal to offer direct economic aid to the Soviet Union is premature.

Testifying before a House subcommittee, Secretary of State James A. Baker III said the United States should encourage political and economic reform in the Soviet Union through expanded technical cooperation, guaranteed grain sales and liberalized trade. But he noted that Moscow has not requested direct economic assistance and said the Administration has no plans to offer any at this time.

“What they need from us is help with respect to how a free market economy works, what the principles are and what you need to do,” Baker said.

While Baker sought to remain aloof from the political squall stirred up by Gephardt’s criticism of the Administration’s East European policies, Republican leaders and other Administration officials quickly jumped into the fray.

Senate Minority Leader Robert Dole of Kansas characterized Gephardt’s proposal as typical of the “Democrats’ knee-jerk response to any situation,” while White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater derisively likened the House majority leader to the bumbling secret agent on television’s 1960s comedy series “Get Smart.”

“He’s hard to believe,” Fitzwater said of Gephardt at a White House press briefing. “He’s the Maxwell Smart of politics. Do you believe he wants to raise taxes on the American people to give money to the Soviet Union?”

Laying down the Democratic gauntlet to the Republican Administration, Gephardt on Tuesday criticized what he characterized as President Bush’s overly cautious and unimaginative leadership style, which he said was blinded by an obsession with public opinion polls and a short-sighted fixation on immediate political gain.

“What we are left with is a government of the polls, by the polls and for the polls. . . . The Bush foreign policy is adrift, without vision, without imagination,” Gephardt said in a speech at the Center for National Policy, a liberal Washington think tank.

Unveiling a Democratic alternative on Eastern Europe, Gephardt outlined a broad initiative to support the reforms being carried out by Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev through increased aid to emerging East Bloc democracies and through a proposal to send U.S. food aid to the Soviet Union itself.