Bring on the Veto

FEW ADMINISTRATION officials have acted more consistently to show the ugliest features of Reaganism than White House counselor Edwin Meese III. It was Meese who recently raised anew the Reagan government's callousness and insensitivity, when he questioned concern over hunger in the country, and implied that many people in soup lines were really not impoverished. It was Meese who led the Administrations push for tax exemptions for colleges that racially discriminate. And it was Meese who has worked actively to enact the President's notorious directive of March 11, 1983, which seeks to create what is essentially a lifetime censorship system for more than 100,000 top government officials who have access to classified information. Certainly, if there is a "thoughtful" side to Reagan's rock ribbed conservatism, Ed Meese hasn't done much to highlight it.

And now Reagan wants to make Meese Attorney General, supposedly the country's foremost proponent of the rule of law and justice. That role has been sliding into obsolescence under the stewardship of William French Smith, the Californian crony of Reagan's who served as Meese's Justice Department accomplice in his tax-credit government secrecy seams. It seems destined for the dustbin, if Reagan gets his way on appointing the at table-but highly ideological ex California D A as Smith's successor.

The rejection of a Presidential nominee to a Cabinet or Cabinet level post has historically been a rate thing, and well it should. The President has a general right to have his own people fill his senior positions. But when that right gets bastardized by the appointment of someone who lacks all qualification for his jobs-a la a Kenneth Adelman or a William Clark-or of someone who has demonstrated an avowed antagonism to the principles he is supposed to serve-a la a James Watt and now Edwin Meese-the Republic is diminished. And Congress must step in to prevent it.

The story of Cabinet appointments in the first three years of Reagan is a sorry one indeed. Following the perfectly reasonable rule of giving the President his men. Congress has been steam rolled into acquiescing in the creation of one of the least distinguished Cabinets in history, one fraught with incompetence and a degree of corruption that would have seen previous Presidents run out of office.

To his credit, Ed Meese's name has not been linked to the sort of sordid activity associated with colleagues like Ann Burford, James Watt, Paul Thayer, Rita Lavelle, Charles Wick, or Ray Donovan. Nor can he be derailed for his stands on issues like busing or affirmative action; while we disagree with his opposition to these principles, they are not enough to reject his nomination. Yet Meese's role in many White House actions suggest an ideological rightist view of the law that goes beyond principled conservatism. Not only did Meese push tax exemptions for racist schools and Reagan's secrecy campaign, he also did all he could to gut the independence of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, to cut off legal aid for the poor, and to go as far as to call the American Civil Liberates Union a "criminal's lobby."

It seems almost ironic to call for the rejection of Meese as Attorney General. His removal from the White House represents the final routing of the hardline conservatives from Reagan's inner circle, and in that sense we welcome the move. But his appointment as Attorney General would only serve to hasten the further demise of the once-great office. Can Congress do anything other than reject this man's nomination-resoundingly?