COLUMN RIGHT/ TOM BETHELL : Iran-Contra Episode Shows Lack of Faith : The GOP acted with secrecy, despite the law, rather than publicly to change the law.

It is difficult not to feel ambivalent about President Bush’s Christmas Eve pardons. It was a relief to see the President finally summoning the courage to act boldly in the domestic arena. He defied the political-media Establishment to call him names (“Milhous” has been hurled at him) and let it be known that he did not fear hostilities. If he had shown a little more of this combative spirit earlier, we no doubt would be awaiting a second Bush term.

At the same time, the episode, including the earlier policy machinations that gave rise to the pardons, leaves one almost in despair about the Republican approach to governing. The entire episode tells us that the Republican leadership of the last 12 years has been profoundly uncertain about the legitimacy of its political preferences, and so felt that it had to act with secrecy, despite the law, rather than with publicity, to change the law.

It has been clear for some time that the lengthy inquiries of the independent prosecutor, Lawrence Walsh, had taken on a vindictive and politicized hue. Material politically damaging to the President was released a few days before the election. Walsh’s assistant, James Brosnahan, has contributed to Democratic causes. The investigation repeatedly belied claims of nonpartisan independence. In fact, the whole notion of an “independent” response to such high-level political activity is dubious. Walsh’s investigation all along has been political and funded by a Democratic Congress. It was high time that the Republicans responded in kind. The pity is that, as far back as 1986, they so easily acquiesced in the charade by agreeing to a special prosecutor.

Walsh’s principal modus operandi was to search for discrepancies between the documentary record and sworn testimony before Congress; then to pounce with perjury charges. Since this standard has rarely in American history been so rigorously applied, it is reasonable to characterize it, in Bush’s words, as the criminalization of policy differences. The reputation of so distinguished a public figure as former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger was also put in jeopardy by an overzealous application of the perjury law. What he wrote in his diary (about Saudi contributions to the Contras), he later told Congress he didn’t recall. If the failure to recall what one has earlier written is a felony, then all writers belong in jail.

As for the more junior officials pardoned by the President, they had played little role in formulating the contested policies and were, surely, singled out for strict scrutiny by prosecutors eager to justify their vast expense of time and money. A special vindictiveness was reserved for Elliott Abrams, the feisty former assistant secretary of state, who was humiliated with community service for “withholding information.”

At the same time, there is something highly unsatisfactory about the whole episode, revealing a grave defect of Republican policy-making. If Ronald Reagan and those around him believed that negotiating to free U.S. hostages and arming anti-communist guerrillas were worthy goals, they might have considered that the American people could have been brought along with them. They might then have considered publicizing the policy differences between them and the Democrats, and making political hay out of them.

Reagan surely had reason to believe that the public shared his anti-communist views, and so could have used the Boland Amendment--intended to make aid to the Contras illegal--as a weapon with which to belabor Democrats. The news media apparatus, which is uniquely at the disposal of the President, could have been used to embarrass leftward-leaning Democrats. Instead, the Reagan Administration acted secretly, in opposition to the spirit and perhaps also the letter of the law.

In this as in other instances, Republicans seemed to feel that furtiveness was their only realistic policy option. Like it or not, senior Republicans seemed to feel, the law was something that would have to be worked around. Changing it was a pipe dream. It was, after all, written by Democrats and so was thought of as an immovable obstacle. As Ollie North and his operatives flitted across the policy arena by moonlight, the Republican leadership was reduced to the pathetic hope that congressional investigators and media watchdogs weren’t looking.

What’s embarrassing about this is that it is so reminiscent of Watergate. And now the Bush pardons only reinforce that association. Are the Republicans incapable of learning that the people might actually support them if they would but dare take their case to the public? The answer is that the Republican leaders now passing from the scene have indeed shown themselves incapable of learning any such thing. Which is why they are leaving.