Beltway Books: Beyond the soundbites

With an initiative to end affirmative action on the California ballot, racial quotas may become one of this year's hottest issues. In Ending Affirmative Action: The Case for Colorblind Justice, Terry Eastland, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, demonstrates how affirmative action, whatever its original purpose, now "makes a virtue of race, ethnicity, and sex in order to determine who gets an opportunity and who does not. To call it by its proper name, it is discrimination."

Mr. Eastland begins his fine book by listing some of the victims: The Memphis, Tenn., cop who found that black counterparts were always added to the promotion list above him; the woman refused admission to the University of Texas law school to make way for lower-ranked minority applicants; the Colorado Springs, Colo., construction company denied state business because its owner was a white male; the Piscataway, N.J., teacher fired because she was white when the high school had to lay off a teacher. These are the "gallant foot soldiers in the fight against a policy that by allocating opportunity on the basis of race and sex is dividing and damaging the nation," writes Mr. Eastland. There is much more in Ending Affirmative Action, but his most important point is that America's growing racial spoils system is unjust. Only colorblind law "respects the equal rights of all persons, all individuals," he observes.

The Clinton administration's ill-fated attempt to nationalize the American health care system is the subject of two new books. Haynes Johnson and David Broder have produced The System: The American Way of Politics at the Breaking Point, which covers the political battle in fascinating detail. The System reflects an "inside-the-beltway" view of the world ("a historic opportunity to improve the lives of all Americans was lost") but nonetheless remains an enjoyable read. There's arrogant, quirky Ira Magaziner, who believes that he can remake one-seventh of the U.S. economy. There's Hillary Clinton, who bulldozes all before her. And there are the left-wing interest groups, like the AFL-CIO which, as Lane Kirkland explained to President Clinton, wanted "to be your storm troopers." Mssrs. Johnson and Broder, Washington Post reporters, inadvertently show why the founders created a complex system of checks and balances.

Equally revealing is the extended whine from Harvard professor Theda Skocpol, Boomerang: Clinton's Health Security Effort and the Turn Against Government in U.S. Politics. She sees nothing wrong with Magaziner's 1,342-page Rube Goldberg contraption, and blames conservative activists for its collapse: "The national conversation was dominated by those who saw political advantage in using Health Security as one more occasion for attacking government." Shocking!

The case for attacking government is well made by author Susan Lee in Hands Off: Why the Government Is a Menace to Economic Health. As she writes, "It is fair to say that the more government does, the greater the chances that it will produce stupid, wasteful, and destructive results." But her critique goes beyond bureaucratic incompetence: "The plain fact is that government cannot fix economic problems." It usually exacerbates them.

Hands Off provides a surprisingly lucid look at economic policy. Ms. Lee reviews the impact of federal currency manipulation, the 1990 luxury tax, and a variety of regulations on job creation and economic growth. She closes with a persuasive plea that we "accept less government and more responsibility" and no longer run "to the government to fix things that we think fall short of perfect." That'd be a lot of running. Nothing's perfect.