Mountains Of Advice

By Richard Hornik

As busy as George Bush is these days, when two prior occupants of the Oval Office ask for an audience it would be impolitic to turn them down. Thus last week former Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter got 50 minutes of the President-elect's time to present the gist of a two-volume American Agenda report produced by a bipartisan staff of more than 300 experts and former Government officials. The message: reduce the budget deficit by $40 billion a year for the next four years, abandon the idea of a Star Wars defense that could totally shield the U. S., shore up the faltering savings and loan industry at an estimated cost of $50 billion, and allocate an additional $9 billion to $13 billion for programs aimed at underprivileged children. Most important, the former Presidents insisted, new taxes will be required to pay for these needed initiatives. Since Bush has refused to back away from his "read-my-lips, no-new-taxes" pledge, that idea surely fell on deaf ears.

If the President-elect listened to all the unsolicited advice that is being proffered by a small army of think tanks, public-policy experts, ex- bureaucrats and even an assortment of cranks, he would not have much time for anything else. The quadrennial orgy of new -- or warmed-over -- notions for fixing what's broken in the ship of state has reached an all-time high. According to Stephen Hess, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, the surge of ideas reached new levels this year because "this is the first time since 1968 that we knew we would definitely have a new President." (Not wanting to miss out on an opportunity himself, Hess revised and reissued his own 1976 transition book, Organizing the Presidency.)

Neither Bush nor the nation will risk serious damage if he ignores the recommendations of groups ranging from the archconservative Heritage Foundation to the Brookings Institution. Most of what is printed in the avalanche of reports is either terribly old or painfully obvious or both. Moreover, some of the authors seem more interested in attracting the limelight than in illuminating the issues facing the new President. Publication dates are set close to the election to ensure maximum press coverage. Said Hess: "These people are fighting for space in the press, to get a little publicity, to state an ideology."

One reason for the shortcomings of the reports is that they were prepared before it was clear who the next President would be. Had a non-Washingtonian $ like Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis won, he might have needed suggestions on how to set up an Administration and order his priorities. For Bush, such promptings are old hat. For example, by the end of last week he had at least begun work on each of the four "key decisions" listed in the 68- page foreign policy transition manual prepared by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Not only is Bush experienced but the governing team he is assembling is cut from the same cloth as those who are making the recommendations. In a few cases, they are one and the same. For example, Brent Scowcroft, named last week as Bush's National Security Adviser, was a member of the team that concocted the Ford-Carter American Agenda. Richard Darman, whom Bush tapped as head of the Office of Management and Budget, is a trustee of the Brookings Institution, which has produced two major transition reports.

Such appointments illustrate a truism pithily expressed by the counsel to Bush's transition team, C. Boyden Gray: "Personnel is policy." One outfit that has learned that lesson well is the Heritage Foundation, which last week deposited a ten-foot stack of resumes of some 2,500 would-be Bush appointees at the offices of the transition team. Sighed an already overloaded transition personnel director Chase Untermeyer: "What a wonderful gift."

But neither the curricula vitae nor the mountains of advice are likely to do much to advance the causes they represent. The budget deficit, notes Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute (which did not issue a transition report), means that "on a variety of problems the ground which we can till for new ideas is a pretty narrow strip." Whatever solid nuggets there are in the reports are almost impossible to locate in the hustle and bustle of the transition. Experienced mid-to-upper-level job hunters in Washington have long since learned that their prospects improve once a new Administration has had a chance to settle in; perhaps idea purveyors should take the lesson to heart. As a senior Bush adviser puts it, "There's just no point in pitching us on high substance in the first couple of weeks."

With reporting by Michael Duffy/Washington