The White House Sensitivity Gap

Caring about the underdogs is not quite enough

A President caught in a political blunder can always resort to a familiar gambit to diffuse criticism: mixing candor and contrition. That was the tactic adopted by Ronald Reagan last week as he tried to stem the anger caused by the decision to allow tax exemptions for private schools practicing racial discrimination.

The controversial tax decision, announced on Jan. 8, seemed to align the Administration with enemies of the civil rights movement. Reagan's aides initially created the impression that the President had acted with little notice and less information in advance of the change. Reagan disposed of that dodge at his press conference. "No one put anything over on me," he said. "The buck stops at my desk. I'm the originator of the whole thing." He conceded that the matter had been poorly handled. But now he was vigorously, if belatedly, urging Congress to pass legislation that would deny tax breaks to schools that discriminate racially. "Don't judge us by our mistakes," Reagan said. "Judge us by how well we recover and solve the situation."

Unfortunately, there is ample evidence that the Administration fumbled the issue even more than was initially supposed. But beyond that, a President who finds it necessary to reassert his belief in racial equality as often as Reagan does ("I am opposed with every fiber of my being to discrimination") has a problem more basic and enduring than any specific controversy. Indeed, Reagan frequently finds himself on the defensive on other issues that concern America's underdogs. The President is a politician whose human instincts on most matters are acute. Why are they so dull when the stepchildren of society are involved?

The tax-exemption question turned out to be a paradigm of the problem. The Supreme Court was preparing to rule on a case involving two Southern church-related schools that had been denied tax exemptions by the IRS. Earlier federal court decisions had upheld the authority of the IRS, which was derived from civil rights legislation of the 1960s and which had been sanctioned by three previous Administrations. The case before the Supreme Court would be irrelevant if the Government removed its support of the IRS policy. This is what was asked of Reagan in an Oct. 30 letter from Republican Congressman Trent Lott of Mississippi, who contended that the IRS practice was unconstitutional. When a summary of Lott's letter came to the President, he wrote in the margin, "I think we should" (make the policy change). That informal O.K. finally produced the Jan. 8 announcement.

Officials now concede that the Administration never intended to propose legislation that would authorize the IRS to withhold the tax exemptions. That decision came only after the protests charging that the White House had sided with racists. Further, while the legislation is working its way through Congress, the two schools involved in the litigation will be eligible temporarily for tax exemption.