by H. W. Brands
In subsequent days Reagan elaborated on what the attack revealed about the Soviet system. “Our first emotions are anger, disbelief and profound sadness,” he told reporters. The war in Afghanistan had shown the Kremlin’s continuing capacity for violence. “But this event shocks the sensibilities of people everywhere.” The despicable Soviet action made meaningful dialogue with Moscow nearly impossible. “What can we think of a regime that so broadly trumpets its vision of peace and global disarmament and yet so callously and quickly commits a terrorist act to sacrifice the lives of innocent human beings?”
Reagan’s outrage was genuine, but his response was calculated. The CIA and military intelligence soon concluded that the shoot-down was probably a case of mistaken identity: the Soviets confusing the Korean airliner with the American spy plane. Yet the president continued to treat it as deliberate. He convened top members of the executive branch to formulate the American reaction. The State and Defense Departments were represented, naturally, and the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but so were the Treasury and Transportation Departments, the United States Information Agency, and the Federal Aviation Administration. The deliberations resulted in a National Security Decision Directive signed by the president and crafted to maximize the damage to Soviet prestige and the corresponding benefit to the United States. “This Soviet attack underscores once again the refusal of the USSR to abide by normal standards of civilized behavior and thus confirms the basis of our existing policy of realism and strength,” the directive declared. Three objectives were defined as paramount. “Seek justice” was the first. “We must consult with, and help to lead, the international community in calling for justice,” the directive explained. “Civilized societies demand punishment and restitution to deter, and raise the costs of, future egregious acts.” The United States would lobby its allies and protégés to insist on a full accounting of what had happened, an official apology, and punishment of those responsible.
The second objective was to “demonstrate resistance to intimidation.” Here the aim was to “bolster the confidence of our Asian friends, and others, and demonstrate that Soviet intimidation will not achieve its intended end of discouraging our friends from cooperating with us, particularly on mutual security concerns.”
The third objective was to “advance understanding of the contrast between Soviet words and deeds.” The directive elaborated: “Soviet brutality in this incident presents an opportunity to reverse the false moral and political ‘peacemaker’ perception that their regime has been cultivating. This image has complicated the efforts of the Free World to illuminate the USSR’s true objectives.”
A sixteen-point checklist specified how these three large aims would be pursued and implemented. Some items combined diplomacy and public relations: “Seek maximum condemnation of the Soviet Union in the U.N. Security Council and provide wide dissemination of statements made in these sessions.” Others were economic and commercial: “Seek immediate agreement by as many countries as possible to stop Aeroflot flights into their countries, to cancel interline ticketing arrangements, and to take other possible measures to inhibit Aeroflot operations.” Still others endorsed actions the United States was already taking: “Reaffirm the existing U.S. sanctions against Aeroflot that predate the Soviet attack on KAL.”
Reagan led the way with a televised address to the American people in which he blasted the fumbling cover stories the Soviets concocted. “Despite the savagery of their crime, the universal reaction against it, and the evidence of their complicity, the Soviets still refuse to tell the truth,” he said. “They have persistently refused to admit that their pilot fired on the Korean aircraft. Indeed, they’ve not even told their own people that a plane was shot down. They have spun a confused tale of tracking the plane by radar until it just mysteriously disappeared from their radar screens, but no one fired a shot of any kind. But then they coupled this with charges that it was a spy plane sent by us and that their planes fired tracer bullets past the plane as a warning that it was in Soviet airspace.” Reagan provided evidence of the Kremlin’s duplicity, including recordings of radio transmissions from the Soviet pilot who fired the fatal missile. The president explained that the silhouette of the KAL plane, a Boeing 747, could not have been mistaken for the American RC-135 that had been in the area earlier—“on a routine mission,” he said. Reagan reasserted the heinousness of the Soviet action. “Make no mistake about it, this attack was not just against ourselves or the Republic of Korea. This was the Soviet Union against the world and the moral precepts which guide human relations among people everywhere. It was an act of barbarism, born of a society which wantonly disregards individual rights and the value of human life and seeks constantly to expand and dominate other nations.”
If Reagan had been a more calculating statesman—a Metternich or even a Kissinger—he might have said less on the inherent evil of the system that produced the KAL tragedy. He was, after all, trying to coax the leader of that system to the bargaining table, and insults—as they must have seemed to the Kremlin—could only complicate the task. Moreover, if the president did succeed in negotiating an arms agreement with the Soviets, he would have to persuade the Senate to ratify it and the American people to accept it. Americans have never liked bargaining with the devil, and by demonizing the Soviets, Reagan rendered a bargain more distasteful than ever.
Reagan wasn’t calculating, but he was canny. He was, in his own way, sincere, but he understood the difference between words and actions. Other administrations have played the bad-cop, good-cop routine by assigning the separate roles to different actors. The brooding John Foster Dulles was the heavy in Eisenhower’s administration; smiling Ike was the one the people liked. Zbigniew Brzezinski tried to stiffen Jimmy Carter’s spine; Cyrus Vance sought to make it flexible. Reagan played both roles himself: one in words, the other in deeds. He thundered against Soviet perfidy for the television camera, and he meant everything he said. But the substantive measures he took against the Soviets were remarkably modest. He suspended American landing privileges for Aeroflot, and he postponed negotiations toward some bilateral Soviet-American agreements. But otherwise it was business almost as usual.
The result was scarcely short of brilliant. Reagan credibly reiterated America’s claim to the moral high ground vis-à-vis the Soviets, benefiting himself politically and America in the eyes of the part of the world he cared about. But to Soviet leaders, who, he always contended, paid more attention to deeds than to words, he left open the door for future negotiations.
65
REAGAN’S FREQUENT REFERENCES to Franklin Roosevelt revealed a felt affinity for his Democratic predecessor, but that affinity was deeper than Reagan acknowledged or probably realized. Both presidents entered office in times of economic turmoil and national discouragement; each sought to strike the optimal balance between the public and the private sectors in American life. Roosevelt, the eastern Democrat, approached the problem from the left, building up the public sector in response to the collapse of the private sector in the Great Depression of the 1930s. Reagan, the western Republican, tackled the problem from the right, promoting the private sector in response to the floundering of the Great Society during the 1970s. Both Roosevelt and Reagan recognized the difference between rhetoric and action, between inspiration and achievement. Roosevelt’s stump speeches and Fireside Chats stirred the hearts of liberals, but his policies reflected a shrewd assessment of what the politics of his party and of the nation would bear. Reagan never departed, in his live remarks and televised addresses, from the core values that had made him the darling of conservatives in the 1960s, but as president he cut deals with Democrats and liberals when necessary to advance his cause. Roosevelt and Reagan were at once idealists and pragmatists. Each understood that a successful president provides a compelling vision for the long term while making concrete progress in the short term. Each understood that presidents are not czars; they must deliver what the people want, even as they try to make
people want something different and better.
Reagan didn’t ponder the parallels with Roosevelt; he was an intuitive student of history and politics rather than an analytical one. (Roosevelt wouldn’t have pondered the parallels either, had he lived to observe Reagan. He was as much the intuitionist as Reagan.) Yet Reagan certainly reflected on the fact that one of the major chores of his first term was the stabilization and extension of the signal accomplishment of Roosevelt’s first term. The Social Security system had for half a century defied every effort to rein it in; it was reformed several times between the 1930s and the 1970s, but each reform simply expanded coverage and payments. The reason for this was Social Security’s overwhelming popularity and deceptively modest cost. As long as working contributors greatly outnumbered retired recipients, the system suffered no serious cash flow problems. But in the mid-1970s payments began to exceed revenues, and analysts reckoned that before the end of 1983 the system’s pension checks might start to bounce.
Reagan in his early political career had opposed Social Security on principle, contending that people should plan for their own retirements without government compulsion. As he advanced in politics and discovered the popularity of the program, he shifted his objection from philosophical grounds to tactical ones, and he spoke of saving Social Security rather than eliminating it. The spectacular failure of his first reform attempt in 1981 suggested the need for a new approach, and he adopted a favorite method of presidents facing controversial issues: he appointed a commission. The National Commission on Social Security Reform comprised fifteen members, five chosen by the president, five by the majority leader of the Senate, and five by the speaker of the House. Republican control of the Senate and Democratic control of the House, along with the provision that in each of the five-person groups no more than three members could be of the same party, ensured the bipartisan character of the commission. The commission was charged with making recommendations that would secure the financial integrity of Social Security over the long term, even as it provided appropriate benefits to participants. The commission was to deliver its report by December 31, 1982, safely after the midterm elections.
Reagan appointed Alan Greenspan, an economist and chairman of Gerald Ford’s Council of Economic Advisers, to chair the commission. The president’s other appointees were the chief executive of the Prudential Insurance Company, the head of the National Association of Manufacturers, and two business consultants. Howard Baker’s appointees were four senators and AFL-CIO president Lane Kirkland. Tip O’Neill tapped three members of the House, a former commissioner of Social Security, and a recent assistant secretary of health and human services. The commissioners were eight Republicans and seven Democrats.
The commission met nine times during 1982. It held no public hearings, lest they become a circus for lobbyists, but it interviewed numerous experts and consulted the dozens of reports on Social Security and related matters that had been produced during the previous decade.
Reagan kept hands off the commission while it deliberated. He was not especially surprised when it missed its deadline by two weeks; if anything, he was gratified that it came so close. And he was more gratified that the commission’s report arrived with the approval of both Republican Baker and Democrat O’Neill. “Each of us recognizes that this is a compromise solution,” Reagan said of the report. “As such, it includes elements which each of us could not support if they were not part of a bipartisan compromise. However, in the interest of solving the Social Security problem promptly, equitably, and on a bipartisan basis, we have agreed to support and work for this bipartisan solution.”
The solution disappointed those who, like the earlier Reagan, wanted to dismantle or privatize Social Security. “The National Commission considered, but rejected, proposals to make the Social Security program a voluntary one,” the report declared. It also refused to condition payments on need or to limit payments to what the individuals in question had themselves contributed. The essential structure of Social Security would remain as Franklin Roosevelt had designed it.
Nonetheless, the commission advocated substantial reform. The contributory base of the program would be broadened by including previously exempt federal and nonprofit employees. Receipts would be augmented by accelerating scheduled increases in Social Security tax rates, by raising the ceiling on income subject to Social Security taxes, by increasing taxes on the self-employed, and by taxing some Social Security benefits. Payments would be reduced by delaying cost-of-living increases and perhaps recalculating those increases.
Reagan began stumping for the Social Security package with his State of the Union address ten days later. “After months of debate and deadlock, the bipartisan Commission on Social Security accomplished the seemingly impossible,” he told Congress and the American people. Cynics had predicted that the commission would end in deadlock, as so many Washington projects did. “Well, sometimes, even here in Washington, the cynics are wrong,” Reagan said. “Through compromise and cooperation, the members of the commission overcame their differences and achieved a fair, workable plan. They proved that, when it comes to the national welfare, Americans can still pull together for the common good.”
Reagan quoted Franklin Roosevelt: “Throughout the world, change is the order of the day. In every nation economic problems long in the making have brought crises of many kinds for which the masters of old practice and theory were unprepared.” He quoted Roosevelt again: “The future lies with those wise political leaders who realize that the great public is interested more in government than in politics.” Roosevelt had established Social Security a half century past, Reagan said; Americans of the current generation must render it sound for at least another half century.
Reagan’s listeners in the Capitol took heed of his words, which he repeated to influential lawmakers singly and in groups. And with a swiftness that demonstrated the power of bipartisanship when supported at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, the commission’s proposals sailed through Congress, with an added provision that incrementally increased the retirement age.
Reagan signed the resulting measure in April 1983. He saluted his hero once more, saying, “Today we reaffirm Franklin Roosevelt’s commitment that Social Security must always provide a secure and stable base so that older Americans may live in dignity.”
PART FIVE
A WORTHY ADVERSARY
1984–1986
66
REAGAN’S HUMOR WAS rarely sly. His jokes were the kind anyone could appreciate; his delivery, perfected in decades of speaking to actors’ groups, General Electric workers, Rotary Clubs, chambers of commerce, trade associations, political donors, and myriad diverse others, relied on no special knowledge or shared background. Yet in a key passage in the first speech of his reelection campaign, he allowed himself an oblique reference that almost eluded his listeners. The occasion was the January 1984 State of the Union address. Presidents had long kicked off reelection campaigns with the quadrennial-year annual message, and Reagan saw no reason to deny himself the incomparable platform. To the gathered legislators and the television audience beyond the House chamber he touted the progress his administration had made since his election. The economy was again on track, with the terrible inflation of the 1970s vanquished. Punishing tax rates had been slashed and suffocating regulation reduced. America had reasserted itself in foreign affairs, regaining its self-respect and the respect of the world. “There is renewed energy and optimism throughout the land,” Reagan said. “America is back, standing tall.”
Of course, more needed to be done. “We’ve journeyed far, but we have much farther to go,” Reagan said. “Franklin Roosevelt told us fifty years ago this month: ‘Civilization cannot go back; civilization must not stand still. We have undertaken new methods. It is our task to perfect, to improve, to alter when necessary, but in all cases to go forward.’ ” Spending on government was still too high; Reagan called for constitutional amendments mandating a balanced budget and grantin
g the president a line-item veto.
And the tax code had to be overhauled. “Let us go forward with an historic reform for fairness, simplicity, and incentives for growth,” Reagan said. “I am asking Secretary Don Regan for a plan for action to simplify the entire tax code, so all taxpayers, big and small, are treated more fairly.” Alluding unspecifically to people who weren’t paying their fair share, the president suggested that tax reform could capture the lost revenue. “And it could make the tax base broader, so personal tax rates could come down, not go up.” Reagan looked about the House and then into the camera. “I’ve asked that specific recommendations, consistent with those objectives, be presented to me by December 1984.”
Reagan smiled ever so slightly as he spoke the date. Yet the lawmakers didn’t catch on until he was halfway into his next sentence. “Our second great goal is to build on America’s pioneer spirit …” Hesitant laughter interrupted him, slowly gathering strength. “I said something funny?” he asked innocently. The laughter swelled, rolling across the room in two intersecting waves, one of Republican relief and the other of Democratic derision. The Republicans were relieved to hear that tax reform was being postponed until after the November balloting; the Democrats hooted at Reagan’s unwillingness to specify whose oxen would be gored while the voters could still act on the information.
Don Regan had a thin skin and selective sight and hearing. The Treasury secretary had battled within the administration for tax reform and apparently won; now he hardly noticed the Republican support on account of the Democratic gibes. “From my seat just below the rostrum where the president stood, I could see the faces of many congressmen and senators,” he recalled. “Their features shone with mirth. They shot knowing glances at one another. They were laughing at the president and at me. I suppose that some of them thought that the president’s proposal was an election-year gambit designed to get votes. Even as my blood rose, I realized that most of them were laughing because, like the men in the White House, they thought that true tax reform was a pipe dream. They may even have believed that the president thought so too, or else that he was a true naïf—for who else would believe that a measure that engaged the most selfish concerns of the most powerful interests in the nation could be accomplished by the deadline he had set, only eleven months in the future? The laughter swelled to a louder pitch. My anger rose. I said to myself, Just wait. I’ll show you guys.”
