Armey of the Right

Majority Leader Dick Armey may well be the next Speaker of the House. What's his agenda?

Carolyn Lochhead from the July 1997 issue

(Page 4 of 4)

Maybe--although truth and the political process typically run in different directions. While the press has raised questions about the Clinton's budget, they are likely to pick apart the Republican alternatives as well. What happens then? Will the Republicans acquiesce in the face of press criticism and a relatively popular president who has demonstrated an ability to punch all the right sympathy buttons, such as increased funding for child care and tax credits for college tuition? The Republicans have long failed to put a human face on their plans to cut spending and it is far from certain they will succeed this time around. Given the reality of the GOP's narrow congressional majority and the general consensus--however vague and abstract--that government spending must be reined in, the best-case scenario for this budget includes modest spending cuts and perhaps some minor, heavily targeted tax relief.

The next few months may shape up as the most important in Dick Armey's political career. If he is able to engineer even modest success on his terms, it could prove enough to kick him up to the speaker's chair (or to consolidate greater power within his current post).

Faced with the wild ride of Gingrich's speakership, many Republicans now concede it was a mistake to centralize so much power in one person. Instead of a giant, they are now simply looking for a tall man. "Our misperception of this whole thing now that we're in the majority is that the speaker or majority leader or any of our legislative leaders ought to be the Ronald Reagans of the 21st century," says one high-ranking House Republican. "In looking for the perfect combination of legislator, philosopher, strategist, vote counter, TV talking head, best-selling author, and movie personality, we're overstating the job description." When former Democratic leaders held less-overwhelming majorities, says the member, they saw their main job as getting a majority on any given day, a strategy that worked pretty well to slowly secure the sort of government they sought.

Oddly, it may turn out that a figure with a reputation as an uncompromising ideologue such as Armey will prove to be the sort of leader who can most effectively take some small steps toward reducing government. When it gets down to a battle of inches, a Speaker Armey might prove more likely to stick to his game plan of less government and lower taxes. Certainly, such principles provide a philosophical consistency that Gingrich has always lacked. One assumes there would be no courting of Alec Baldwin and the NEA, no intoxication with faddish futurism, no sudden abandonment of tax cuts.

Improbably enough, if the Republicans slowly dismantle the entitlement state one step at a time--a process that will require intense conferencing and tactful negotiation--it may well be because they elect a speaker best known for his philosophical inflexibility and reactionary reliance on a "two-note" mantra of less government and lower taxes.