Bennett, Bush Choice for GOP Chairman, Criticizes Affirmative Action Programs : Politics: The issue is likely to be a focal point of 1992 campaign. Party strategists see it as a way to divide the Democrats.

William J. Bennett, President Bush’s choice to be the next Republican national chairman, Monday declared his unequivocal opposition to the principle underlying most affirmative action programs, an issue that is expected to be a focal point for partisan debate in the 1992 struggle for the White House.

“I believe that the idea of affirmative action--giving people credit for a job in the absence of a showing of prior discrimination simply on the basis of their race--is wrong,” Bennett told reporters at a press luncheon here. This was his first public appearance since Republican sources disclosed over the weekend that Bush had chosen him to replace the ailing Lee Atwater as chairman of the Republican National Committee.

“I think it’s wrong to say to somebody in the absence of a showing of prior discrimination: ‘You are black you get X points, you are white you don’t”’ get any, Bennett said.

Asked how big an issue affirmative action will be in the 1992 campaign debate, the 47-year-old Bennett, who recently announced his resignation as director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, said: “It all depends how much Democrats want to do about it.”

But Republicans believe that the potential effectiveness of the issue was demonstrated during the recent midterm election campaign when Republican Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina used an ad accusing Harvey Gantt, his black Democratic opponent, of favoring racial quotas. The ad showed the hands of a white worker tearing up a job rejection letter.

Moreover some Democrats have accused Bush of setting the stage for Republicans to attack on this issue by contending that the 1990 civil rights bill that he vetoed would impose quotas in hiring and promotion.

Most affirmative action programs are designed to correct for deep-rooted and long-standing patterns of discrimination without requiring specific evidence in each case. But Bennett called this approach “a violation of our most basic values.”

Bennett indicated that he supports what he called “the original notion of affirmative action . . . to make sure that everybody has the opportunity to get their name in” when there is competition for jobs and promotion. But he said that he objects to the idea of implementing this principle by showing preference to a job applicant simply because of his or her race, religion or sex.

He said that most Americans “are troubled” by this concept and do not believe that “this is a recipe for improving race relations.”

As Bennett pointed out, he has long held these views on affirmative action and once set them forth in a book he co-authored called “Counting by Race.” But these opinions take on extra salience with his choice as party leader.

Republican strategists see affirmative action as what they call “a wedge issue,” a way to split the various constituencies, such as blacks and blue-collar workers, which in the past have made up the Democratic Party’s electoral coalition. Affirmative action is considered to be particularly important for the Republicans in 1992 because another wedge issue--abortion--has lost much of its potency for conservative candidates as a result of last year’s Supreme Court decision that energized supporters of abortion rights.

Meanwhile, the possibility of a recession is threatening the economic prosperity which was a mainstay of Bush’s appeal in the 1988 election.

Bennett was reluctant to discuss his views on political strategy until his choice by Bush is officially announced. That is expected after the President returns from his current trip overseas. But he pointed out that he campaigned for Helms and said that he considered the controversial “white hands” television ad used by Helms as “perfectly legitimate.”