Word: babbittism
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...Governors fret about losing control of the troops they like to think of as their own. More than half-a-dozen Governors have said they would rebuff Pentagon calls for Guardsmen to serve along the Honduran-Nicaraguan border. Some, like Maine's Joseph Brennan and Arizona's Bruce Babbitt, are reluctant to help the Reagan Administration in its support of the contras. Most of the reservations, however, arise from the Governors' determination to retain full authority to use the Guard in such politically popular activities as patrolling areas devastated by storms or restoring order in violent strike or riot situations...
...presidential hopefuls are arriving. They gorge on catastrophe. There is everybody to blame and no one responsible. Babbitt, Biden, Dole, Baker, Kemp, Bradley, Hart. They come like pallbearers in dark suits and white shirts and furrowed brows. It is plain that Iowa, uniquely distressed this summer because of its rural character (i.e., farms linked to small towns), will be the bloody ground on which the 1988 presidential nominations will be shaped...
...spite of his low national profile, Babbitt has begun to stir interest with his impressive record as a two-term Governor and his provocative ideas about national policy and the future of the Democratic Party. "There are two Democratic Parties," Babbitt declared at a hog roast in Red Oak. "One is our national Democratic Party, which has lost four of the last five presidential elections by increasing margins. The other Democratic Party has won 34 of the governorships and control of a majority of the state legislatures and county commissions. One party is failing. The other is a winner...
...Babbitt's politics are difficult to label, which could be a virtue for a Democrat seeking national office these days. When he called out the National Guard to quell a violent 1983 contract dispute in Arizona's copper industry, Babbitt stirred suspicions among some liberal Democrats that he is a closet Republican. A critic of government entitlement programs spawned by Democratic lawmakers, Babbitt proposes that most government benefits, from Social Security to farm subsidies, be "means tested." That idea, even when coupled with a pledge of support for the family farm, did not endear Babbitt to some of Iowa...
...Babbitt would not use the money saved from slashing benefits for the wealthy and middle classes to cut the federal budget. Instead, he would increase benefits for the poor. Yet this liberal-sounding proposition belies Babbitt's record of penny-pinching pragmatism in Arizona, where he has worked successfully with business and with the Republicans who control the legislature and where state spending is lower as a proportion of personal income than when he took office...