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PAGE
20
PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, DECEMBER
16, 1986
Presi&nt
&agax~
gives no indication of wilting before his critics, but
he 2onfessed his feelings to TIME magazine's Washington Contributing
Editor, Hugh Sidey, a journalist generally sympathetic to him:
I have to say that there is bitter bile in my throat these
days. I've never seen the sharks circling like they now are
with blood in the water. What is driving me up the wall is
that this wasn't a failure until the press got a tip from
that rag in Beirut and began to play it up.
I
told them that
publicity could destroy this, that it could get people
killed. They then went right on.... The frenzy in the
Congress is not unusual for them.... This is a Beltway
bloodletting
....
I'm not going to back off, I'm not going to
crawl in a hole. I'm going to go forward.
I
have a lot of
things to do in this job.
"
The word "Beltway" and the phrase "inside the Beltway" refer to
official, bureaucratic Washington. The capital is surrounded by an
interstate belt-highway network. The connotation
is
that of liberal and
highly gossip-driven officialdom out of touch with "real" America. It
is
the political version of the academic "ivory tower."
The news media knows there
is
still a large reservoir of public good
will toward President Reagan. Therefore they have been relative1
coating" which has warded off their barbs for
six
years
is
beginning to
wear thin.
\'
r
L
f
restrained
so
far. But they also feel that the President
d
s
"Te lon
Despite
Mr.
Reagan's efforts, the next two years will be difficult.
Some say the "Reagan' Revolution"--conservative economics, pared-back
governmental social services, a strong defense and heightened world
posture--already is dead. The President will certainly have a tougher
time promoting--or rather defending--his programs. Fred Barnes wrote in
the December
22
issue of THE NEW REPUBLIC:
NOW, after six reasonably productive years come two years of
- -
strife and drift. Whatever Reagan wants from Congress, if he
wants anything, he'-enormous
- -
trouble gettin%. He
s
as
7-
-
circumscribed as Gerald Ford was after pardoning Nixon.;..
In the next Congress, for example, the President may not be able to stop
dangerous trade legislation from racing through Congress, especially now
that the Democrats have gained control of the Senate. Last year, it was
the Senate that refused to go a1 n with a wildly protectionist bill
pushed through in the House.
/*
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c~-
Some influential Democrats have also voiced an opinion that taxes ma
have to be raised to cut the deficit (forget about cutting spending):
The new Congress may find it irresistible to tinker with the new,
simplified income-tax structure by "postponing" reduced upper-income tax
rates. That could cause a furor, since it would break the sensitive
compromise reached in the tax-reform process--namely that tax rates were
lowered in return for eliminating loopholes and deductions. The new
speaker
of
the House, Jim Wright of Texas, places cutting the budget
deficit (meaning raising taxes or slashing the defense budget) and
cutting the trade deficit (meaning some .form of protectionism) as two of
his priorities in the coming 100th Congress's two-year session.
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