WAKEUP CALL: THE EMERGEING ROUTE OF A GOP ESTABLISHMENT

Many, including this writer, have commented on the differences between the administrations of Ronald Reagan and his successor, President George Bush. Writing in a recent issue of Forbes, economist and policy analyst Jude Wanniski offered a small but telling anecdote about former President Reagan that should resonate with most readers, rather in the manner Reagan's entire, eight-year presidency did. Wanniski says that former Gov. Reagan was told early in 1980 that his candidacy had been endorsed by only two Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of Fortune 500 companies, America's largest. "That's all right," Mr. Reagan responded, "I've got to be the candidate of Main Street, not Wall Street. I want to be the candidate of the entrepreneur, the shopkeeper, the small businessman."

Mr. Reagan made that comment at a time when scores of Fortune 500 CEOs were endorsing the candidacies of his rivals, men like a former CIA director and UN ambassador named George Bush; former Texas Governor and Treasury Secretary John Connally; and GOP Sen.s Bob Dole and Howard Baker.

America's largest circulation daily newspaper, the Wall Street Journal, recently offered some penetrating observations on the difference between the small business opportunity society Reagan revered, and that of the establishment Republicans of George Herbert Walker Bush:

".... The difference measures the two types of Republicans. Both administrations are pro-business and generally conservative. But by their habits and inclinations, the Bush folks are attuned to the preservation of capital. The Reagan folks were attuned to the creation of capital.

"Take the two presidents themselves. George Bush was president of his senior class at Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass. and a member of Skull and Bones at Yale. The son of the head of a big Wall Street firm and later a United States Senator, he distinguished himself as a Navy combat pilot and struck out on his own in the Texas oil fields ... Ronald Reagan, by contrast, was the son of a shoe salesman with alcohol problems and attended Eureka College in Illinois ...

"We would not make too much of this contrast, except for the remarkable uniformity of backgrounds in the Bush administration. Treasury Secretary Nick Brady grew up on an estate in Far Hills, New Jersey, next door to that of Clarence Dillon of the Wall Street firm Mr. Brady later headed. He attended St. Mark's School in Southboro, Mass., Yale and Harvard Business School. Commerce Secretary Robert Mosbacher was the son of a stock trader who made a fortune on the Curb Exchange and cashed in before the crash. He attended Choate School in Wallingford, Conn., and Washington and Lee University.

"Budget Director Richard Darman worked long summers in his family's textile mills. He was captain of the lacrosse team at the Rivers Country Day School in Weston, Mass., and attended Harvard and Harvard Business School. Secretary of State James Baker, son of the founder of Houston's largest law firm, attended the Hill School in Pottstown, Pa., Princeton and the University of Texas Law School ...

"What we have here is the most aristocratic administration since the collapse of the Federalist Party ..."

"What this recovery needs is a little entrepreneurial juice ... People who've made money feel this in their bones; their sons who inherit it usually don't ..."

Bingo. And who is this year's candidate of the Bush Republicans, the northeastern GOP establishment that has steered the party back to its Big Business moorings? Why, Richard Thornburgh of Pennsylvania, of course.

Well funded, overwhelmingly popular, twice elected governor, coming off three years as Attorney General of the United States, Thornburgh returned home in August to be anointed United States Senator. Richard Thornburgh is squeaky clean, the very embodiment of the modern GOP in the Keystone State; he enjoyed an "insurmountable" 44-point lead before Labor Day. At Thornburgh's announcement in August, he confidently announced he was "comfortable in the corridors of power," before actually using that stuffy phrase in campaign ads.

Well, any candidate doing so brilliant an imitation of Thomas Dewey, Harry Truman's turkey of a 1948 opponent, deserved to lose this year. And so he did, by a landslide to a feisty unknown named Harris Wofford. Wofford had been appointed in the spring by a Democratic governor to replace the late Sen. John Heinz, a Republican killed this year in a plane crash. Woffoord's late arrival allowed him to campaign as an outsider even though he is an incumbent. He made Thornburgh the candidate of the status quo. Against Dick "I Am Comfortable in the Corrdiors of Power" Thornburgh, Wofford ceaselessly hit on dometic issues that affect the middle class every day the economy, taxes and health care.

Pennsylvania is being widely cited by pundits as a wakeup call to George Bush for 1992. In reply, nervous Republicans cite the promising results of New Jersey and Mississippi. They overstate. In the Garden State, Republicans took veto-proof majorities of both houses of the legislature; down south, Mississippi elected its first GOP governor since Reconstruction. In the former, Republicans rode a wave of middle class disgust with huge tax hikes that have left Democratic Gov. Jim Florio with an approval rating bumping along at Nixonian Watergate levels. In Mississippi, a Republican will move into the mansion because of voter discontent with business-as-usual incumbents and racially discriminatory quotas in hiring and promotion.

Bush has kicked away both issues for a mess of inside-the-Beltway press clippings and adulation from liberals who hate him, his party and the center-right Reagan-Bush coalition that swept him into office. Cunning Democrats, who have never voted for Mr. Bush or any other Republican, and who are already working against him for next year, are ecstatic.

Meanwhile, despite the first big setback for term limits, in Washington State last Tuesday, they'll be on two dozen state ballots next year. Mr. Bush and his establishment cronies would do well to reflect on the example of Sir Winston Churchill. As Forbes reminds us this week, Churchill had just finished winning World War II, the mother of all wars, when restless British voters tossed him out over domestic issues they felt had gone too long ignored.