BAUER POWER

Bauer once would have been surprised to find himself treated so well in such company. But a few weeks earlier, he had appeared with actor Richard Gere at a rally across the street from the White House to protest the official visit of Chinese president Jiang Zemin. When Bauer approached Gere on the podium and tapped him on the shoulder, the actor swung around and greeted him enthusiastically: “Gary, my main man!” That night, they had dinner together.

A few months before, in the runup to the vote in Congress on renewing most- favored-nation trade status with China, Bauer made still more strange, new friends. He held a joint press conference with Rep. Nancy Pelosi, a liberal Democrat from California, and Jeff Fiedler of the AFL-CIO. He strategized by phone with House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt on how to defeat MFN (they lost). Weeks later in the cloakroom just off the House floor, Bauer was talking to Rep. Charles Canady, a Republican from Florida, about overriding President Clinton’s veto of a ban on partial-birth abortion, when Gephardt walked in. Spotting Bauer, he rushed past a cluster of Democrats to chat with him. Canady stood awkwardly by.

Gary Bauer, president of the Family Research Council, is not lurching to the left. Nor is FRC — the think tank and lobbying organization that operates out of a new, six-story building in downtown Washington — abandoning its agenda of social conservatism. But Bauer, 51, has added fresh issues (China, Social Security, taxes) to that agenda, embraced new allies, and transformed himself into the most influential social conservative in Washington — and perhaps in America. This has not endeared him to all conservative leaders, especially not to those preparing to seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2000. Hearing rumors Bauer himself might run for president, former vice president Dan Quayle invited him to New York on December 2 and spent more than two hours explaining why he shouldn’t enter the race. (Bauer declined to talk about his conversation with Quayle.) Earlier, Bay Buchanan, who managed her brother Pat’s presidential campaigns in 1988 and 1992, called on Bauer to warn him conservatives were Pat’s constituency, not Gary’s.

No one is more apprehensive over Bauer’s rise than economic conservatives, notably libertarians. Bauer first broke with them when he denounced schemes to privatize Social Security in an op-ed in the New York Times in January 1997. That prompted a visit from Grover Norquist and Peter Ferrera of Americans for Tax Reform. But they failed to assuage Bauer’s concern that Social Security privatization would hurt families with stay-at-home moms. Then, Bauer bucked the Washington conservative establishment and the business community by mounting a combative campaign to block MFN for China. Next, Bauer plans to reject the fiat taxes proposed by House majority leader Dick Armey and Steve Forbes and the national sales tax favored by Bill Archer, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. Instead, he will promote a ” family-friendly fiat tax” that would tax workers’ income no more heavily than income from investments in property.

Bauer increasingly strikes fear in the hearts of Republican leaders. When word leaked to Roll Call last October that Armey had whined about Bauer at a private meeting in Texas, Armey sheepishly phoned Bauer to apologize. Bauer says his relationships with Armey and House whip Tom DeLay are fine. House speaker Newt Gingrich is another story. Bauer blames him, along with other Republicans and business lobbyists, for trying to water down the $ 500- per-child tax credit and expand business-tax breaks in last summer’s budget deal. At one point, a lobbyist Bauer knew dropped by his office to gauge his reaction. Republicans, the lobbyist said, were afraid Bauer might create a firestorm, but he’d assured them Bauer is a team player who understands the need for compromise. “You’re wrong and they’re right,” Bauer responded. “I’ll make their life miserable if they water this down.” They didn’t.

Gingrich also clashed with Bauer at a testy private meeting on MFN. Since then, Bauer has relentlessly gigged Gingrich on China. Mentioning the speaker by name, Bauer declared in a National Press Club speech on October 27: “I cannot understand why the leaders of my party, the party of Lincoln and Reagan, are silent” in the face of human rights “outrages” by China. Bauer and Gingrich will battle again in a special open primary for a House seat in Santa Barbara, California, on January 13. Soon after Democratic congressman Walter Capps died in October, Gingrich anointed moderate state legislator Brooks Firestone as the GOP favorite. In defiance, Bauer has allocated $ 100, 000 for TV ads attacking Firestone for voting against a state ban on partial- birth abortion. Bauer’s PAC, the Campaign for Working Families, is backing conservative Tom Bordonaro.

Until the summer of 1996, Bauer was neither a major factor in Republican policy calculations nor a heavyweight in Washington. True, he’d built the Family Research Council into a force for marketing conservative positions on social issues and keeping them on the national agenda. When Bauer took over the FRC in 1989, it had seven employees, a mailing list of 3,000, and a $ 200, 000 budget. Now, it has 90 employees, 455,000 members, and a $ 14 million annual budget. Bauer also sends a daily fax to 7,000 people and delivers a brief radio message on about 300 Christian stations. One of his faxes prompted a California man to get a “paycheck protection” referendum on the state ballot next June to limit use of union dues in political campaigns. And last year, the wealthy DeVos and Prince families in Michigan financed the new FRC headquarters across from the National Museum of American Art. Still, Bauer was only a face in the crowd of conservative activists in Washington, and overshadowed among social conservatives by Ralph Reed, then executive director of the Christian Coalition.

Then Bauer took on Bob Dole. Well before the 1996 Republican national convention in San Diego, Bauer and other conservatives had obtained Dole’s pledge not to single out abortion as the platform issue that would illustrate the GOP’s tolerance of dissenting views. Instead, tolerance language would apply to the whole platform: It would be written into the preamble, not the abortion plank. But Dole soon flip-flopped, and Bauer accused him of breaking his word. Responding angrily, Dole said: “I don’t know where Gary Bauer’s been all his life, but I’ve always known we have had prochoice Republicans and pro-life Republicans. . . . If he’s not tolerant, he ought to say so. I happen to be tolerant.” Maybe so, but Dole was forced to knuckle under when the platform committee convened in San Diego. Bauer, in alliance with Reed, Bay Buchanan, and Phyllis Schlafly, prevailed on abortion and every other issue.

Bauer’s new prominence in the platform deliberations made him a celebrity. But it took two developments in 1997 to give him real clout in Washington and see him emerge as a national political figure. The first was Reed’s decision to quit the Christian Coalition, move home to Georgia, and become a political consultant. Reed had played John E Kennedy to Bauer’s Richard Nixon. Reed is witty, charming, telegenic, and eager to be liked. Bauer, from a working- class background in unfashionable Newport, Kentucky, is disciplined and aggressive, and more inclined to win an argument than woo an audience. “Ralph would try to prevent a confrontation with the Republican leadership,” says another conservative activist. “Gary welcomes it. And you never saw Ralph seeking out homosexual issues, as Gary does. Gary doesn’t mind having the edge. Ralph doesn’t want the edge.”

As conservative leaders, they have set drastically different goals. Reed wanted social and religious conservatives to be part of a broader movement under Republican control. Though he once worked for the Republican National Committee, Bauer is bent on creating a broad coalition that includesDemocrats and promotes conservative social values. He’s hired two political strategists, Jeffrey Bell and Frank Cannon, to help him. Bell worked for Reagan in 1976 and 1980 and with Cannon for Jack Kemp in 1988. But in 1996, both were ready to jettison their GOP ties to manage a bid for the Democratic presidential nomination by former Pennsylvania governor Bob Casey, an economic liberal but social conservative. (For health reasons, Casey decided not to challenge President Clinton.)

With Reed gone and his successors at the Christian Coalition, Don Hodel and Randy Tate, unable to match his sway, Bauer is the number-one social conservative. Instantly, that raises his visibility on TV. “When Crossfire or any other show is looking for a social conservative, it’s Gary,” says a conservative lobbyist.

It was the second development of 1997 — Bauer’s bold seizure of the China issue — that brought him respect in the political community and policy circles. Bauer had to be persuaded by Bell and Cannon that he would be taken seriously on China. “I was skeptical I could get through the gatekeepers in Washington,” he says. His advisers contended that by attacking the mushy China policy of the Clinton administration and top Republicans, Bauer “could occupy unoccupied ground.” So he began studying articles and policy papers on China. To gain credibility with policymakers, he published op-eds, first in the Washington Post in April (“Why People of Faith Must Challenge China”), then in the Washington Times (“Trading in Slavery”) and the San Diego Union-Tribune (“Promote Freedom, Not China’s Army”). Bauer says the final confirmation of what he’d been able to accomplish came six months ago “when William Buckley’s people called”: For a PBS debate on October 14, they asked Bauer to head the team in favor of interrupting trade with China.

On the show, Bauer not only made a powerful case for punishing China for human rights abuses, he also flummoxed former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, architect of dente with China. Early in the debate, Kissinger harrumphed over the accusation he looks fondly on China because of his consulting contracts there. When the critical exchange with Bauer came, he looked even more irritated. Kissinger, suggesting nationalism is on the rise in China, asked whether Bauer’s severe policies might lead to “a nationalist, isolated China” that threatens the United States. Bauer responded that ” certainly this century has taught us that when dealing with aggressive nationalism . . . the last thing to do is fall away in the face of it.” Then, they went back and forth:

KISSINGER: My point is . . .

BAUER: The West deceived itself time after time after time [in the case of Germany and Japan] and we ended up, sir, with the war that you want to avoid.

KISSINGER: My point is you are producing aggressive nationalism . . .

BAUER: No, sir . . . the idea that the United States is what produces aggressive nationalism in China is to blame the United States for what is happening in China.

KISSINGER: The United States is not now producing aggressive nationalism. The policies you recommend will produce aggressive nationalism.

BAUER: Well, but sir, we have been following the policies that you recommend, and you just told me that you think nationalism is on the rise in China. What is it? Is it your policies that produce the nationalism or my policies?

KISSINGER: You’re just quoting — sort of debating points. I am saying the transition from what exists now to a moderate state . . . should be one of the objectives of American foreign policy.

BAUER: Absolutely.

KISSINGER: And this hysterical approach that one now hears will produce rabid nationalism rather than the moderate evolution that we should try to promote.

BAUER: Mr. Secretary, to object to an ad hominem attack and then to characterize your opponents as hysterical, I think, crosses the line.

Moderator Michael Kinsley banged his gavel to stop the exchange. Afterwards, Kissinger told Bauer his tough line represented an important strain of thought in America. It reminded him of Ronald Reagan’s view of foreign policy. Bauer, who served as Reagan’s chief domestic-policy adviser from 1987 through 1988, took this as an unintended compliment.

Reed’s departure and the China issue aren’t the only reasons Bauer, the son of a truck driver from a family of Democrats, has emerged as a man to be reckoned with in Washington. He’s followed a simple, four-step formula. First, he’s taken up sensitive social issues that people want to hear about. Abortion, homosexuality, pornography, the role of religion in public life — these concern millions of Americans, but most politicians, including conservatives, are too queasy to address them. So Bauer has filled a void. Social issues and the failure of the political establishment to deal with them are the crux of his message. And he delivers it ceaselessly, not only on TV and radio, but also in two or three speeches every week.

Plain-spoken rather than rhetorical and anything but glamorous, Bauer is a big draw. When he spoke to the Family Foundation in Richmond on December 1, he attracted a larger crowd than popular governor George Allen had drawn a year before. Governor-elect Jim Gilmore and his lieutenant governor and attorney general showed up. So did congressmen Tom Davis, a Republican, and Virgil Goode, a Democrat, as well as Jerry Falwell, scads of state legislators, and numerous businessmen. Bauer didn’t soften his message for the upper middle-class, professional audience.

He cited the case of a federal judge in Alabama who recently issued strict rules barring religious observance in schools. “Imagine if some federal judge issued an order and said there will be no more gay-rights activity in the schools,” he said. “Every liberal politician in America would have run to a microphone. Where are our leaders? Where are the people who are in power because of the votes of men and women like you, and why will they not speak out for our values?” That prompted loud applause, but some of the politicians looked squemish.

Bauer’s most reliable applause line involves his nemesis, Bob Dole. Instead of agreeing with Clinton, Bauer insists, Dole should have teed off when asked twice in the San Diego presidential debate about gay rights. According to Bauer, here’s the answer Dole should have given:

Ma’am, I’m going to do something right now a politician is never supposed to do. I’m going to tell you and anyone listening this evening that if the demands of the gay-rights movement are your number-one priority, then the president here is your man. Because the president has said on the record that he’s the most pro-gay-rights president in the history of the United States. I’ll argue with him about a lot of things, but I won’t argue with him about that. He is the most pro-gay rights. But if you’re concerned about the American family, the breakdown of standards of right and wrong, and what’s happening to our kids, then I’m your man. Next question.

Bauer’s own agenda on homosexuality is stern stuff. He wants politicians to “speak out for normalcy and for the values the overwhelming number of their voters have.” The president, Bauer says, should lean on Hollywood producers and directors to stop propagandizing on behalf of gays in movies and TV shows. And the federal government should declare flatly that sexual preference is not a protected category under civil rights law. Also, “all federal subsidies of the gay-rights agenda” should be halted, Bauer says, and the secretary of education should stop pressure on school officials to introduce gay issues in the classroom.

Second in his four-step strategy, Bauer has made a career of speaking out loudly in public. A letter in the Washington Star defending Reagan’s foreign policy pronouncements got him a job in the 1980 campaign. Six years later, as undersecretary of education, he excoriated a group of mayors for ” whining” that Reagan’s military buildup had taken money from cities. When the Washington Post ran a story on his remarks, Bauer was summoned to the White House. He expected to be fired. As it turned out, Reagan had liked what he had read and wanted Bauer to be his chief domestic-policy adviser. Before taking the post, Bauer got shrewd advice from Michael Horowitz, legal counsel at the White House budget office: Don’t succumb to pressure to be at every meeting and never to stick your head out of the foxhole, Horowitz said. Both instincts are wrong.

At the White House, Bauer ignored office politics and became an outside player. “I learned that the best job security was aggressively arguing for Reagan principles and avoiding any whiff of ethical problems,” he says. ” There was a constituency out there. To the extent you were seen as having a following, it strengthened you inside. If I’d tried to play the inside game, I’d never have lasted.” Bauer cultivated a following of one inside the White House — the president. He repeated in public the ideas that appealed to Reagan in their private sessions.

Third, Bauer is always willing to make people angry. He never soft-pedals his views on gay rights and abortion in public confrontations with homosexuals and feminists. As a Reagan aide, he often infuriated first lady Nancy Reagan. After he announced that the president, though a lame duck, would vigorously push an ambitious right-wing agenda in his final two years, using executive orders when needed, Bauer was called in by Don Regan, chief of staff. Nancy didn’t like his tone and didn’t want to see further statements like that, Regan said. Bauer insisted he was only repeating a line of thinking the president had encouraged him to take. Okay, said Regan, but crossing Nancy is “a big mistake.” Bauer was undeterred, irritating her again by seeking to block anyone who was HIV-positive from serving on the presidential AIDS Commission. Bauer’s performance did impress James Dobson, head of Focus on the Family. “He stood like a rock,” says Dobson, who hired Bauer to run FRC in 1989.

Fourth, Bauer has refused to be a team player. Being independent, he’s open to finding allies (or enemies) in unusual places and taking up new causes. On the White House staff, Bauer was a loner. At Monday lunches with Reagan, aides were supposed to raise only those issues cleared by senior officials. Bauer flouted the rule, broaching unapproved social issues and getting Reagan’s assent to pursue them. Now, as a conservative agitator, Bauer never balks at zinging business leaders, something most Republicans are wary of doing. At Ethel Kennedy’s, he was highly critical of American business. Bauer said he agreed with Beijing’s characterization of the United States as a ” moneybags democracy” and asked Wei what he thought about MFN. Wei said it would be presumptuous for him to advise Americans on trade policy. Bauer, of course, specializes in being presumptuous, and he made his animosity to MFN clear. The most Wei would indicate is that he appreciated past efforts to re- link MFN to human rights progress in China.

Having risen so far, so fast, Bauer now wonders about rising further. As Dole stumbled toward defeat in 1996, Bauer and friends began talking about his running for president in 2000. It’s not as farfetched as you might think. The 41 state organizations loosely affiliated with the Family Research Council give him a built-in national network. He’s an effective fund-raiser, his PAC having collected $ 2 million this year. (FRC, by the way, recently received an anonymous gift of $ I million.) And he has a following. Speaking to 4,350 Christian school administrators and teachers in Sacramento on November 13, Bauer said he and his family (wife Carol, two daughters, and one son) had been “praying in recent months” about his possibly leaving FRC and ” throwing my hat in the ring for the Republican presidential . . .” Before he could finish the sentence, the crowd surged to its feet and gave Bauer a sustained ovation. As he left the stage, Bauer told Rohn Ritzema, the head of the school administrators: “I came tired, but I’m leaving with a full tank.”

Bauer says he’d run only to make sure social issues are discussed. Republican candidates have to talk about abortion and gay rights before all groups, not just social conservative or religious ones. And none is doing that, he says. At the least, Bauer could inject social issues in the presidential primary debate. And he would be a threat to candidates who expect to appeal to social conservatives — Buchanan, Quayle, and Sen. John Ashcroft of Missouri. Bauer might seriously obstruct their chances.

Could someone who’s never held elective office and only dabbled in foreign policy be elected? The answer is yes. Once the Cold War ended, younger, less credentialed candidates became credible: Clinton, Buchanan, Paul Tsongas, Ross Perot in 1992, Buchanan and Forbes in 1996. Lack of experience isn’t Bauer’s problem. The question is whether someone as socially conservative as Bauer can be elected. Either way, Bauer is unlikely to change his views. ” There’s a culture in the Republican party that takes people [who rise to the top] and turns them into eunuchs,” he says. It hasn’t affected Gary Bauer a bit.

Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.