Will Ron Brown’s death keep the Department of Commerce alive?
White House spokesmen said they didn’t want to talk about it.
Capital Hill Republicans said it was not the highest priority at the moment.
Still, the question resonated, even if only in whispers, out of respect for the dead.
At the time of Secretary of Commerce Brown’s death, along with 34 others who were aboard his plane when it crashed into a Croatian hillside Wednesday, Republican members of Congress were determined to trash his department and parcel out its functions to other departments.
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In the path of House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s frontal assault on bloated government, the Commerce Department always looked like easy pickings. Few Americans cared very much about it. Few know what it does, including many of those who benefit from it. Of those who do know, many wonder whether it deserves cabinet-level status. To conservatives, it quickly came to represent unnecessary government intrusions into the decisions private businesspeople could better make for themselves. If anything looked like a prime target for conservative Republican wrath–perhaps even more than the Departments of Energy or Education–this was it.
But, even after the customary pause out of respect for the dead, it is going to be much more difficult for this Congress to kill Commerce, precisely because of the way Brown, as an inside player and outside bridge-builder, made his Cabinet post matter.
As an inside player, he was the only Cabinet secretary to be invited to Clinton’s coveted weekly strategy meetings with other inner-circle advisers like James Carville, Harold Ickes and George Stephanopoulos–who, according to news accounts, wept openly after Brown’s death was announced.
As an outside bridge-builder, Brown worked tirelessly to mobilize corporate support behind the department’s survival. He brought the perfect skills to the job. The son of a Harlem hotel owner and graduate of an exclusive, predominately white eastern college where he became the first black fraternity member, Brown brought to the National Urban League the important people skills Atlanta-based Rev. Andrew Young brought to the southern civil rights movement. Brown, like Young, believed that once you won a room full of top business executives over to your side, you could change the world.
At the same time, Brown could win the confidence of the angriest rebels. As Democratic National Committee chairman–the first black to hold the post in any major American party–he reeled in Jesse Jackson, Jerry Brown and the rest of the party’s left wing to smooth the way to a Clinton victory in 1992.
Besides good sense, Brown also brought a formidable presence to the job. He brought what Washington politicos cherish as “gravitas,” that winning combination of personal charm, charisma and leadership that enables a John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan or Colin Powell to get his way, even when outnumbered by critics.
But, despite Brown’s personal popularity among big businessmen, their support for his department remained soft. Many budget-minded executives quite naturally agreed with Republican proposals to downsize government the way many of them were downsizing their businesses. The most popular Republican plan calls for cutting the department by 6,000 jobs and $6 billion over seven years to reduce the deficit.
But, those cuts are no longer as necessary as they used to be. A happy consequence of Clinton’s inability to agree with Congress over a budget in recent months is that the deficit has been going down all by itself. In fact, were it not for interest payments on the national debt, the federal budget would be in surplus.
In a tearful memorial ceremony at the Commerce Department after the tragic news was announced, Clinton promised employees he would continue Brown’s fight for the department. If so, he need look no further than Brown’s track record. Brown’s last mission symbolized his vision of the role government should play in maximizing skills at home and trade abroad in the post-cold war world.
He organized the trip to explore business opportunities in the reconstruction of the former Yugoslavia, building peace through commerce in the war-torn Balkans. Back home, he tirelessly promoted similar efforts to build peace through commerce in depressed American neighborhoods.
Both of Brown’s missions are crucial as America faces a new century. They must not be allowed to die with him.