Republican Richard Thornburgh

A popular governor worries that while his party feuds over ideological concerns, Democrats will steal away with the issues of economic growth

 

A year from now, Republicans and Democrats will meet in New Orleans and Atlanta to anoint their respective nominees for President of the United States. Perhaps no election since 1932 will focus so intently on economic issues, nor be of more consequence to an American economy now in the throes of an exciting and painful transition. To better frame those issues, INC. has sought the advice of two former governors, one Republican and one Democrat, both of whom found creative ways to team state government and small business in stimulating economic growth. Their comments will appear in this section this month and next.

The voice of Republicanism is that of Richard Thornburgh, for eight years governor of Pennsylvania until his retirement in January. When Thornburgh took office, Pennsylvania state government was awash in corruption and red ink, while the state's economy was hopelessly dependent on heavy industry, reeling toward depression. Today Pennsylvanians praise Thornburgh as the governor who brought efficiency and integrity to state government, balanced the budget, brought unemployment below the national average, and reoriented the state's economy from the past to the future. Best known among his initiatives is The Ben Franklin Partnership, which links universities and government in an ongoing conspiracy to translate basic academic research into new companies and new jobs (see box, "The Pennsylvania Story").

Thornburgh delights in the contradictions of his career. He is a popular Republican from a state known for its Democratic machines, a self-described conservative who was downright aggressive in involving government in the stimulation of the economy. Now the director of the Institute of Politics, in Cambridge, Mass., he holds a Yale degree but draws a Harvard paycheck -- "the best of both worlds," he quips. And in this Year of the Governor in Presidential politics, Thornburgh has set aside his own Presidential ambitions and decided to sit it out.

Thornburgh spoke with writer David Osborne and editor Steven Pearlstein about Republican prospects and policies in the post-Reagan era.

INC.: In 1984, the Democratic Party was rejected by the voters because it was perceived to be the captive of special interests. Now, there are some who are saying that 1988 will be a Democratic year, in part because the Republican Party and the Republican candidates have become captives of another sort -- captives to a rather rigid right-wing ideology.

THORNBURGH: No, I don't think '88 is necessarily a Democratic year. But I might agree with you when you say that, at the national level, there has been too much of an emphasis on some of the more highly charged ideological issues. I don't happen to believe that a Presidential campaign based on -- and I'm using these only as examples -- the gold standard or abortion or supply-side economics is going to carry the day in 1988. And the best evidence of that, perhaps, is that these did not carry the day in the 1986 Congressional elections.

INC.: If 1986 was such a bad year for Republicans, even before the Iran-Contra affair, why should 1988 be any better?

THORNBURGH: But that's the point: 1986 was not such a bad year. One of the untold stories of 1986 was that while the national Republicans were losing control of the Senate, at the same time there was a net gain of 8 Republican governors. And it didn't happen by accident. Back in 1985, a group of us -- some Republican governors, a few congressmen, and some political consultants -- got together at the Blackberry Farm in Tennessee and asked ourselves, "What are the kinds of things that governors get elected on?" And of course one of the answers was economic development. So we put together a kind of cookbook of very practical things that the 16 Republican governors had had success with, and that were consistent with Republican principles, and we presented these as a kind of platform to the Republicans running for governor. The press, the national Republicans -- they scoffed at us when we said we would win a majority of the statehouses. But we nearly did just that: the breakdown now stands at 26 Democrats, 24 Republicans. The issues and the programs that these Republicans presented to the electorate at the state level in 1986 were vastly different from those put out by the Reagan Administration and the senatorial candidates.

INC.: But to hear the various Republican candidates for President, to a man they seem to be using the vocabulary of the national Republicans . . .

THORNBURGH: To an extent.

INC.: . . . while it is the Democrats, including several of your fellow governors, who are sounding like the pragmatic practitioners of economic development.

THORNBURGH: Today you have Democrats running around the country talking about economic growth and the virtues of the free enterprise system, and the need to balance budgets and reduce deficits. These are sound Republican principles, the kind of principles that we Republicans have had thrown back in our faces all these years by people who have said that the Republican Party is the party of business. We've dodged and bobbed and weaved and tried to avoid that label as if there were something wrong with it. But today, with an economy that is in the throes of a very difficult transition, with world markets that are thrown into disarray by tremendous trade imbalances, people are realizing that somebody better be the party of business. And what an irony it would be if, by preoccupation with all these sideshow issues, we were to let shrewd, competent Democrats come in and steal that birthright of the Republican Party. And there is a very real threat that that could happen.

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