Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 27, 1994 TAG: 9402270096
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARGARET EDDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
On Capitol Hill, Jim Miller was testifying before the House Budget Committee, urging members to stay the course with the Reagan Revolution. Tax increases were a bad idea; the President would not compromise, he said.
Miller was wrong. Before the day was out, Reagan had agreed to a summit, which would eventually produce a tax hike, and the portly economist who was his budget director had typed a letter of resignation.
The letter was never delivered. But the little-known story may become a campaign staple if Miller passes the first formidable test of his current bid for the U.S. Senate: wresting the Republican nomination from Iran-Contra luminary Oliver North.
If he reaches the general election for the seat held by Democrat Charles Robb, Miller's greatest challenge may be explaining his role as budget chief for the president who presided over the most dramatic increases ever in the national debt.
Was the man who would deliver Virginia from Ollie and Chuck appropriately nicknamed "Miller Lite," as critics dubbed him during the Reagan years?
Or was he the conservative market-economist of the resignation vignette, arguing for principle when circumstance forced even the president to cave?
With his booming voice and gung-ho manner, Jim Miller is reminding Williamsburg's Heritage Republican Women's Club of who he is - and is not. "I'm somebody you can trust. I've kept my head about me. I've stayed true to principle. I've not let my friends down. I've been true to Ronald Reagan. . . . I've behaved myself," he says.
One can agree or disagree with Miller's conservative philosophy, but among political friends and foes, there is little dispute that he is, as he suggests, loyal, unpretentious, forthright.
"He's not your typical Washington person, looking pompous, acting important," said former Rep. William Gray, D-Pa., who headed the House Budget Committee during Miller's tenure at the Office of Management and Budget. "He has a frank, honest, substantive personality."
At 51, Miller's waistline and hairline have both seen better days. His campaign slogan could be "not just another pretty face." His charisma has been compared to a slide rule's.
But there is an energy and an earthiness about him that tweaks the stereotype of a think-tank academician and economic analyst - jobs that, combined with directorships and speeches, brought Miller an earned income of over $650,000 between Jan. 1992 and Nov. 1993.
This could be heady fare for a man who was the first in his family to graduate from college, raced cars as a youth in Conyers, Ga., married his wife of 32 years at age 19, and whose grandfathers were an illiterate blacksmith and an auto mechanic.
Longtime acquaintances say he has remained conscious of those roots, however, even as he has gone on to produce a resume that fills 11 pages.
Miller, who lives in McLean and has a weekend retreat in Greene County, is a prodigious worker. He has authored or contributed to eight books, spanning subjects from airline deregulation to revamping the Federal Trade Commission, and dozens of scholarly papers.
He edited his first book, a compilation of articles endorsing the volunteer draft, as a graduate student of economics at the University of Virginia in 1968. Printed in paperback after Miller found a publisher, the book was endorsed by economists Milton Friedman and John Kenneth Galbraith and sold 35,000 copies.
"The extra knack he had was to conceive of a result and plan his way to get to it," said Roger Sherman, a U.Va. professor of economics and Miller's dissertation adviser. "He can imagine how things will turn out."
Miller's career has taken him back and forth between Washington and universities in Texas, Georgia, and Virginia. Attracted to the Republican Party by Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign, he worked for Richard Nixon and came to Washington as senior staff economist for the U.S. Council of Economic Advisers in 1974.
He chaired the Federal Trade Commission from 1981 to 1985 and was tapped by Reagan to head the Office of Management and Budget in Oct. 1985. He resigned three years later and today earns most of his income from three sources: consulting; Citizens for a Sound Economy, a grassroots lobby pushing for deficit reduction; and the Center for Study of Public Choice at George Mason University.
While many of Miller's jobs have been largely faceless, OMB was an exception. Miller arrived a year into Reagan's second term, as the nation was beginning to notice some effects of the Reagan Revolution - soaring deficits and an out-of-control federal debt.
The Reagan agenda and the megawatt personality of Miller's predecessor, David Stockman, had turned OMB into a high-profile post. It was Stockman who had maneuvered the way through Congress, cutting corners, cutting deals, transforming the budget with stunning razzmatazz.
Along the way, a not-so-funny thing had happened. The federal debt doubled and the annual deficit rose from $74 billion in 1980 to $212 billion in 1985.
Under the three budgets submitted by Miller - including the nation's first trillion dollar budget, the deficit dropped substantially. It was $150 billion in fiscal 1987, $155 billion in fiscal 1988, and $152 billion in fiscal 1989, before jumping back to $221 billion in fiscal 1990, after Miller left.
Miller's defense is that he came closest to achieving what Reagan intended. "I want to knock that one out" of the ballpark, he replied, pantomiming a swing of the bat when a guest at a recent coffee asked about the "baggage" he brought to the Senate race.
"My deficit is the mark," he said, noting that the $70 billion drop in fiscal '87 was the largest ever in a single year. "The reason the deficit didn't get smaller than it did is the D-e-m-o-c-r-a-t-s," he said.
But there is both political debate about how much credit Miller deserves for the decline, and philosophical debate about the Reagan approach of stimulating growth with tax cuts. Miller remains wedded to supply-side economics, saying that he would roll back the tax hikes enacted by both Presidents Clinton and Bush.
Taking credit for a deficit that was double, rather than triple that of the Carter years is "like weight-watchers telling you that you lost weight because you gained 10 pounds rather than 20," groused one political adviser to North.
Nor was there consensus about Miller's effectiveness. Critics called him "Miller Lite," usually in comparison with Stockman, and noted that it was Treasury Secretary James Baker III who served as Reagan's point man in fashioning the deal with Congress after the stock market fell in 1987.
When Miller left, some Reagan buddies organized a tribute, saying that he'd been underestimated and underappreciated.
"Respect for Miller is much higher in retrospect," argued Arlene Holen, who worked with him then and now heads the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission.
Gray, who left Congress to head the United Negro College Fund, agrees. Miller was far less combative than Stockman, and "some people took that as a sign of weakness," he said. "But I look at substance, and from any way you cut it, Jim Miller is a substantive guy who produced some of the lowest deficits" of the Reagan years.
One of Miller's strongest selling points is the high regard in which is held by many former colleagues.
A former chairman of the Ronald Reagan Alumni Club, he is endorsed by many of the Reagan crowd: former Attorney General Edwin Meese, former Secretary of State George Schultz, former Navy Secretary John Lehman, former Reagan Political Director Lyn Nofziger, former National Security Council Director Frank Carlucci among them.
Of Reagan himself, Miller quips that he had to correct Reagan's pronunciation of "Keynesian" economics, a school that helped set the nation on the course of deficit spending, but that "Reagan's gut reactions are very good."
While Reagan is staying out of the nomination battle, he has agreed to campaign for Miller if Miller wins. "I don't think Ollie can say that," Miller adds.
Polls say Miller's prospects are improving, but the likelihood of Reagan getting to fulfill his offer remains slight. Most prognosticators believe North loyalists will dominate the GOP nominating convention.
"There's no way that juggernaut can be can derailed, and more's the pity," said Mike Salster, a former state party spokesman and Miller admirer. "Charisma gets you election, but after that, what is there?"
Keywords:
POLITICS: PROFILE
by CNB