He was not on the list.
Former House Republican leader Bob Michel, who died Friday
two weeks shy of his 94th birthday, should be remembered as a brave veteran of
the Battle of the Bulge, a patriotic public servant, a thoroughly decent man —
and, yes, contrary to some public impressions today, a conservative hero. For
young conservatives ignorant of Michel’s actual record, especially those who
like to cite him as an example of weak, accommodationist non-leadership, it is
that last assertion that may sound controversial. It shouldn’t be. Civility
isn’t weakness. Personal decency isn’t a character flaw. Respect for the
institution of Congress is not a sign of unsound political philosophy. And long
public service is no proof of being polluted by the “swamp.” Michel spent eight
years as a congressional aide and 38 as a congressman, six of them as minority
whip and 14 as minority leader. By any fair accounting, those last 20 years
were ones of great achievements for conservatism and country — achievements for
which Michel deserves a significant share of credit. Michel became whip at the
absolute ebb tide of Republican politics, in the wake of the horrendous 1974
near-wipeout of the GOP after Watergate. Still at 142 seats in 1978, the House
leadership team, Michel included, embraced the then-radical Kemp-Roth tax cuts
as a central mission. With Michel whipping votes from the minority side and
Democrats looking for cover, the proposal looked poised for House passage —
this, two years before the “Reagan Revolution” — until President Jimmy Carter
issued a strong veto threat. The bill failed, but the predicate was laid:
Republicans gained 15 House seats, starting its long climb back to House
supremacy. Michel took over as the GOP House leader at the same time Reagan
took the presidency. Even after increasing their seats to 192 after the 1980
elections, Republicans were still 26 members short of a majority. It took more
than just Reagan’s charm and persistence to enact the Gipper’s program: The
hard work of crafting bipartisan majorities from a minority-party numbers fell
to Michel. For anyone around at the time, there was absolutely no doubt Michel
was a conservative and an enthusiastic and essential part of Reagan’s team.
People forget now just how stunning a set of legislative achievements ensued.
It wasn’t just the Reagan-Kemp-Roth tax cuts in the midst of incontinent
spending; Reagan and Michel and company also rolled back domestic discretionary
spending again and again. Non-defense discretionary spending was cut from $167
billion in 1980 to $138 billion in 1982 — a nearly mind-boggling 17 percent
reduction in actual, pre-inflation dollars. (In a time of rampant inflation, if
one accounts for the inflationary value of those dollars, the cuts were even
greater.) It took more than just Reagan’s charm and persistence to enact the
Gipper’s program: The hard work of crafting bipartisan majorities from a
minority-party numbers fell to Michel. Michel was not just a rider on the
train; he was an engineer (as recounted in The Deficit and the Public Interest,
by Joseph White and Aaron Wildavsky). When moderate Republicans balked at the
early budget resolution, he exploded at them and held them in line. When the
first rounds of cuts passed, Michel boasted: “Let history show that we provided
the margin of difference that changed the course of American government.” As
each round of cuts went through the process, Michel repeatedly intervened to
find ways to keep recalcitrant members in line with White House goals — “to
develop a package,” as White and Wildavsky put it, “from which no Republican
would defect.” Throughout the Reagan years — the tax cuts, the non-defense
budget savings, the military buildup, the rollback of Communism — Michel was no
mere risk-averse, go-along-to-get-along, don’t-anger-the-Democrats minority
leader. He was an aggressive and skillful fighter for conservative policies. (A
lifetime American Conservative Union rating of 85 over 38 years, by the way, is
hardly the score of a “squish.”) It wasn’t a matter of capitulating to
Democrats but of winning them to our side on individual issues or on
legislative procedure. As Speaker Newt Gingrich graciously said to Politico’s
David Rogers, “Michel could co-opt [Speaker Tip] O’Neill and [committee
chairman Dan] Rostenkowski to get a lot done for Reagan. I could never have
done that.” Note that Michel co-opted them, not vice versa. That Gingrich later
brought a different, much-needed skill set and brilliantly effectuated a
Republican takeover of the House for the first time in 40 years should not
negate the value, the difficulty, or the success of Michel’s role. As
exhaustively reported in just about every news obituary of Michel this weekend,
that skill set included an innate and palpable personal decency and sense of
goodwill, a resolute and principled patriotism, and an acute understanding of
what it really means — in a phrase popular but perhaps misused these days — to “make
good deals.” Rick Santorum, whose four years in the House of Representatives
overlapped with Michel’s final two terms, told me, “He was a dear man with a
big heart, but was from an era where the differences between the parties were
more muted.” If those virtues made Michel ill-equipped to finally bring House
Republicans into the Promised Land, well . . . Moses spent two years longer in
the wilderness than Michel did in the minority, and Moses didn’t get there
either. Yet let’s not forget that Michel did not retard Gingrich’s efforts — he
encouraged them. Sure, maybe Michel was unnerved by ethics offensive waged by
the young “Gang of Seven” against House Democrats during 1990–94, but he
supported aggressive efforts to lay down legislative markers in those years.
And, contrary to ex post facto accounts in which Michel is portrayed as having
been opposed to the Contract with America, led by Gingrich and Dick Armey,
Michel actually applauded it. Indeed, part of the idea for its unveiling on the
Capitol steps came from Michel, recalling a similar congressional House rally
for candidate Reagan in the fall of 1980. Michel was, by the way, the opening
speaker at the Contract’s unveiling (video here; wind it back to its opening)
on September 27, 1994, vowing that the document would indeed lead to a GOP
House majority — and to an institution he said would therefore be “transformed,
reformed, and renewed.”
Read more at:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/445062/bob-michel-minority-leader-conservative-stalwart-dies-93-remembrance
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