This fall, with the reconciliation of the budget and debt limit, our leadership will be pushed back. If they are not pushed back, the [party's] new members will still be seriously devoted to these issues. And if the new members don't have their ideas accommodated by a major effort on the part of the leadership, then once again you're back to the point that I was talking about a year ago in National Review [the emergence of a major third party].
The Ross Perot phenomenon was not about a passion for a man with a squeaky voice and big ears. It was the belief that maybe politics-as-usual could be changed. There is no other explanation for such instantaneous support from 31 percent of the country.
When Ross Perot announced, the Bush people in the Republican Party didn't even remotely understand it. They said, "Well, since Perot said he wasn't going to run, all those votes will come back." They didn't come back. People had been liberated from that connection [to the Republican Party] and they were looking for a party that really had another idea about where government ought to go. Perot never really articulated that idea, but his vote didn't fall.
Republicans forget that we were born out of the ashes of the Whigs, a party in a time very much like this time, that could not take a position on the significant issue of the daythe abolition of slavery. The Whigs and the Democrats were two big-government parties who more or less accom modated each other and were arguing with each other about variations on a themewhich party would be the more kindly owners of slaves. It isn't that different from what the public perceives as the distinction between the Republicans and Democrats today.
Reason: You're a strong supporter of devolution, of decentralizing functions from the federal government down to the state or local level. What is the ultimate end in federalism?
Wallop: The ultimate end is a nation that lies under the concept of the Declaration of Indepen dence. The Declaration of Independence is such an extraordinary statementit was designed by people skeptical of government, local or national, but in particular national.
Then the Bill of Rights came along. The idea that government was supposed to be empowered by the people runs right through all those first 10 amendments. And the fascinating thing about that is that it's almost an instruction to stay skeptical. Not to believe the government has no place, but to believe that government's only place is the one that is generated by the will of the people, who are citizens of it, not subjects to it.
If the Republicans think that by having stated and even achieved most of the Contract that they are therefore entitled to the acceptance and favor of the American voter, they're crazy. We have a long way to go from the Contract to a government that accepts skepticism as part of its rationale, as part of its basis for governing.
You talked about national identity cards and the terrorism bill. We have made a government that has grown used to viewing us as subjects, has grown used to seeing its role as commanding us.
Reason: Congress has scheduled hearings on federal law-enforcement abuses at Waco and at Ruby Ridge. Could current elected officials or the press learn some lessons from these events?
Wallop: Oh yes. They already have. [FBI
director Louis] Freeh didn't demote [former Deputy Director Larry]
Potts for any other reason than that these hearings were coming.
ABC hasn't run a series of stories of how Waco might have ended in
a surrender for any other reason than these hearings were
coming.
Most Americans are frightened of their government. They're frightened of the IRS, they're frightened of the Federal Communications Commission, or the FBI, or the FAA, or whoever and whatever part of government happens to affect your life. People are actively trying to serve govern ment, lest it take notice of them. And they are resenting it big time.
The people are way ahead of politicians on this. And it's not rednecks, disaffected, disen chanted, angry white males, or militia men. It's ordinary people.
Look at the Endangered Species Act. You have this apparent contradiction: Seventy some percent of people say it's important to somehow maintain a specific species' presence on earth. But if you just ask if species, in general, ought to be preserved, nearly the same percentage of people say that you are entitled to be compensated for it, to have this burden of preservation shared with you by all the American people.
Until people are actually required to face that cost themselves, it's easier to think of property holders as being somebody like Donald Trump or some rancher than it is to think of somebody who owns 21/2 acres upon which they were going to build a retirement home.
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