AFFIRMATIVE ACTION FOR ALL

Acid-tongued Ann Richards, former governor of Texas, said that George W. Bush was born on third base but thinks he hit a triple. That’s a way of saying that he doesn’t realize what special advantages are enjoyed by him and other sons and daughters of the rich and well placed. They get into the right nursery schools and the right prep schools and colleges.

Their backgrounds and networks give them special breaks in school, sometimes in business, sometimes in war service and occasionally in politics. He is no doubt aware of this advantage but seems unwilling to view it in the same light as similar advantages for minorities.

President Bush was no doubt sincere when he came out against the University of Michigan’s modest policy of giving a break to minority applicants. His statement and his administration’s intervention in the pending Supreme Court case may have served his narrow re-election interests by catering to conservatives. But it misrepresented the university’s system by insisting that it imposes quotas, which were outlawed by the 1978 landmark case of University of California Regents v. Bakke.

In the Bakke case, the high court actually upheld affirmative action, while striking down quotas. Specifically it invalidated a medical school admissions system hat set aside 16 “special admissions” that went to minorities. Michigan, like many other institutions across the country, tried to comply with Bakke by avoiding numerical goals or quotas but retaining affirmative action. It gives applicants extra points for belonging to racial or ethnic minorities. Points go also to scholarship athletes, men applying for the nursing program, and applicants from underrepresented parts of the state, like Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, which is largely white.

Maine’s Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, joining with other moderate Republicans, had urged the president “not to support the position of plaintiffs that diversity can never be considered a compelling government interest.” Instead, he used a live television appearance to throw red meat to his conservative supporters, who had feared he would take a moderate approach. He denounced the Michigan race-conscious admissions policy as a quota system. While he advocated diversity and equal opportunity, he said “the old race-based approach” amounted to discrimination. As an alternative, he praised a system used in Texas, California, and Florida, in which top students from all high schools are guaranteed admission to college. But that system directly affects only undergraduate admissions, not graduate schools. And it relies on segregated high schools to affect diversity in college admissions.

Late the same evening, Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson submitted the administration’s briefs in the two similar Michigan cases. Instead of insisting that any consideration of race was impermissible, the briefs did not ask the court to overturn the “Bakke decision, which allowed race to be used as a ‘plus factor.'” The New York Times’ Linda Greenhouse said this was like denouncing abortion without asking for the overturn of Roe v. Wade.

The administration’s good-cop, bad-cop approach may have pleased the conservatives while appeasing moderate members of the court. Clever maneuvering, but it could lead to a sorry outcome. The court, which will hear arguments April 1, should leave in place an affirmative action system that has increased diversity in our colleges and universities and has been widely employed in the national service academies.