The nation’s capital ordinarily would have been aflame in controversy last week over Solicitor General Ted Olson’s decision not to invite the Supreme Court into the Bell unbundling imbroglio, election-year crossfire and all things Iraq.
Official Washington is not easily thrown off of its routine. But the city came awfully close last week. Business gradually ground to a halt in preparation for the return of Ronald Wilson Reagan. There were lots of remembrances and talk of legacy, much of it generous.
It is not exaggeration to state that Reagan laid the foundation for arguably the most profound wireless policy reform since the Communications Act of 1934.
Mark Fowler, a Reagan-appointee who chaired the Federal Communications Commission in the early 1980s, broached the radical notion of a market-based licensing scheme at a time the Democratic-led House was at war with the White House over supply-side Reaganomics. As such, lawmakers at that time and into the next decade fought to preserve a costly and slow procedure to award licenses by comparative hearings and later a laughable lottery system of ping pong balls and massive fraud.
Spectrum auctions would not gain political credibility until 1993, when a pro-business Democratic named Bill Clinton entered the White House facing a monstrous budget deficit. Clinton’s auction proposal-included in a tax bill that preceded the big economic boom of the ’90s-was approved by the Democratic-controlled Congress. Auction heresy was transformed overnight into mainstream spectrum policy. The rest of the world took note and fell into line.
Reagan, like our current president, created deficits by slashing taxes and increasing defense spending. But since Reagan did not have the congressional support enjoyed today by President Bush, Reagan had to rely on the magic asterisk. It was an accounting gimmick concocted by then-White House budget chief David Stockman. Tucked into a gargantuan budget proposal, it essentially held that any budget deficit could be avoided by unspecified budget cuts announced at some later date by the president. It was, of course, a farce.
On the other hand, as Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson reminded us last week, Reagan succeeded in getting runaway inflation under control. Bush faces a similar, far less threatening challenge as the high-tech sector edges toward a recovery that policy-makers hope will express itself in increased consumer/business adoption of broadband and advanced wireless services.
In the end, Reagan succeeded in restoring American optimism. So with the seeds sown for a new generation of spectrum management, communism defeated and Republicans in charge of government, perhaps Reagan can now get a better look at the shining city upon a hill he could see only at a distance in life. And be forever rid of Sam Donaldson.
