"Compassion," as practiced by his liberal predecessors in the New York state government, actually harmed those with the fewest resources, Governor George Pataki contended in a recent speech on campus outlining the virtues of "compassionate conservativism."
Pataki, a 1967 graduate of Yale College, presented the first Chubb Fellowship Lecture of the academic year on Oct. 7 in the Law School's Levinson Auditorium.
The Governor was introduced by President Richard C. Levin, who hailed Pataki as a "distinguished figure in the life of our nation" and a "passionate friend of education," who is also "a Yale alumnus, a Yale parent and a devoted fan of Yale football." Levin noted that Pataki and his wife, Libby, "can be seen regularly at the Yale Bowl" cheering on the Bulldogs -- a pastime the President encouraged audience members to indulge in, as well.
Taking the podium, Pataki said he was proud to be a Chubb Fellow, noting it was an honor he never envisioned achieving during his undergraduate days at Yale. "My roommates would never have believed it," he quipped.
With tongue firmly in cheek, the Governor said it was clearly his "power and influence" that had netted him the prestigious fellowship -- pointing out that his daughter, Emily, a Yale senior, had ignored his guidance concerning her major and her living quarters, among other matters, "which shows what kind of influence I have." He added, however, that he was pleased she had accepted his advice to attend his alma mater.
Launching into his Chubb Lecture, Pataki said that while liberals have long been associated with "compassion" in government, the concept of "compassionate conservativism" has become a major focus of the current presidential campaign. He pointed to his own experiences as governor of New York to illustrate how compassionate conservativism works.
"In New York State, we had a 20-year unfettered experiment in liberal government under the regimes of my predecessors," Pataki said.
Under its liberal leaders, for example, the state's criminal justice system showed more "compassion" to offenders than it did to their victims, contended Pataki, pointing to lax sentencing laws and work-release programs for prisoners as examples.
When he became governor in 1984, New York State had "the highest rate of violent crime in America," Pataki said. Furthermore, it was not those who could afford to live in high-rise apartments guarded by a doorman or in gated suburban communities who were most affected by crime, but "poor inner-city residents who were most subject to its deprivations," noted the Governor.
Believing that "the root cause of violent crime is violent criminals," Pataki instituted tougher sentencing requirements for violent offenders and restored the death penalty, among other measures. Today, he said, inner-city families that were once afraid to let their children play in neighborhood parks "live in confidence."
New York's liberal leaders also had an "enormous compassion for government," which they demonstrated by creating an ever-increasing number of government programs, contended Pataki. As a result, he said, New York had the "highest tax burden in America" to sustain these programs and was "dead last in America in creating jobs."
It was not college-educated individuals with the means to move out of state who were most affected by the depressed job market, said Pataki, but less-educated, lower-income workers who were "trapped in a failed system."
Under his administration, said the Governor, the state has cut taxes 36 times and instituted other changes that freed up $80 billion in revenues and generated an "expansion of economic activity" that has benefitted small entrepreneurs and helped lure businesses to New York.
Turning to the state's welfare system, Pataki said his liberal predecessors "defined compassion as adding more benefits to those on the welfare rolls. ... They didn't see they were trapping people."
Pataki pointed with pride to the creation of New York's "workfare" program, which requires able-bodied welfare recipients to meet work requirements in order to receive benefits. This program has "restored people's confidence in their future" and helped many make the leap from welfare to full-time employment, said the Governor, noting that there are now about 714,000 fewer people on welfare than when he took office.
This shows that "our concept of compassionate conservativism works," said Pataki, noting that it isn't easy to bring about such policy changes "when you can be criticized as unthinking or unfeeling -- but what we're doing is changing people's lives."
Reforming the state's educational system, too, has been a top priority of his administration, said Pataki. Here again, he noted, those most harmed by the "failing public education system" have been low-income, inner-city residents who cannot afford to send their children to private schools. Pataki hailed the creation of charter schools in New York as a way of giving parents more educational options for their children and forcing public schools to become "more competitive." He added that he would also support a voucher system for the same reasons.
After his speech, Pataki fielded questions from the audience on a variety of topics -- from the Governor's support of cuts in capital gains taxes (a good way to boost the economy, he said) to his perspective on recent alleged incidents of police brutality in New York City (police must obey the law as well, he declared).
One individual asked the Governor what he thought were the major challenges facing the United States in the next century. Pataki responded that bolstering the nation's educational system, restoring U.S. military capability and developing an "intelligent strategy for using it" were top priorities -- as was strengthening the "economic climate" of the country.
Calling himself a great believer in "supply-side economics," Pataki -- as he had several other times times during his speech -- suggested that the "world-renowned economist behind me [Levin, who was sitting on the stage] might disagree" with his proposals. As he had at each previous reference, the Yale President simply smiled.
-- By LuAnn Bishop
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