Reagan Aides Try To Remember KT McFarland

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The New York Sun

WASHINGTON – As Kathleen Troia “KT” McFarland seeks to defeat Senator Clinton on the strength of her leadership in the Reagan Pentagon, some prominent Reagan-era defense officials say they remember little about the personality or work of the latest Republican candidate for the Senate from New York.


“I don’t think she was a central person that everybody had an opinion about,” an undersecretary of defense for policy in the Reagan administration, Fred Ikle, told The New York Sun yesterday.


While most of the former defense officials interviewed by the Sun had few specific recollections of Mrs. McFarland or her work, those familiar with her by reputation praised the candidate as smart, capable, well qualified to represent New York in the Senate, and someone who could present a formidable challenge to Mrs. Clinton.


Yesterday, Mrs. McFarland, a 54-year-old Manhattan resident and stay-at-home mother, announced her candidacy against Mrs. Clinton, who has already seen the campaigns of two Republican challengers, Edward Cox and Jeanine Pirro, end in recent months. A former mayor of Yonkers, John Spencer, is Mrs. McFarland’s main rival in the race for the Republican nomination.


Mrs. McFarland, a speechwriter for a Reagan defense secretary, Caspar Weinberger, from 1982 to 1985, invoked her former boss while describing her Senate bid.


Denouncing “counterproductive ‘gotcha’ politics,” Mrs. McFarland wrote in a letter to supporters: “A man I once had the privilege of serving reminded Americans that we are better than that. To Ronald Reagan, America forever would be ‘that shining city on a hill,’ always noble, always striving, always hopeful. In that spirit, I will conduct my campaign for the U.S. Senate.”


Before she can successfully associate her campaign with President Reagan, however, Mrs. McFarland may have to overcome a name-recognition problem with former Reagan administration colleagues. When asked if he recalled a “KT McFarland” from his time in the Pentagon between 1981 and 1988, a former deputy undersecretary for defense, Stephen Bryen, said he didn’t know anyone by the name, and responded: “What color hair did she have?” Mr. Ikle, too, had no recollection of a KT McFarland.


Both men did recall a “Kathleen Troia,” as Mrs. McFarland was known during her Pentagon days before marrying Alan McFarland, although Mr. Ikle said he did “not really” remember her well, and described the campaign of any Republican against Mrs. Clinton as “a long shot.”


Mr. Bryen, now an aerospace executive, said that while he did not recall specifics about her tenure, the then-Ms. Troia “was a pleasure to work with.”


Her speechwriting experience, Mr. Bryen added, would likely prove a boon to her campaign. “If you have the ability to articulate policy in a way that people can understand and respect, that shows you really have a grasp of it … it’s a major asset she will have,” Mr. Bryen said. He also praised her political skills and endurance, recalling: “The Pentagon could be a formidable place, and to be able to operate there effectively and do well and to survive there is a real credit.”


Another Reagan defense official, Frank Gaffney, praised Mrs. McFarland’s grasp of American foreign policy. Mr. Gaffney, the president of the Center for Security Policy, also worked with Mrs. McFarland on the Senate Armed Services Committee under former Senator John Tower before their Pentagon years. Yet his principal recollection of the candidate, he said, was Mrs. McFarland’s preparation of Mr. Weinberger for his 1984 Oxford Union debate against a Marxist British historian, E. P. Thompson, on the topic: “Resolved, There is no moral difference between the foreign policies of the U.S. and the USSR.” Mr. Weinberger staged an upset victory in the debate.


Yet Mr. Gaffney cautioned that, despite Mrs. McFarland’s successes at the Pentagon, “Supporting principals in one capacity or another, that’s different than being out in front and having a personal record yourself.”


An assistant secretary of defense for international security policy in the Reagan administration, Richard Perle, recalled that Mrs. McFarland “certainly enjoyed the secretary’s confidence,” and was well respected by both superiors and subordinates in the Pentagon.


Yet beyond the candidate’s foreign-policy background, “One of the things that I admire about her is that she’s been interested in women’s is sues,” Mr. Perle said, citing Mrs. Mc-Farland’s service on the board of the 700-member Off the Record Lecture Series, a women’s foreign-policy organization.


“It wasn’t a lot of hand-wringing about the plight of women,” Mr. Perle, also a former Bush administration official, said. “Her approach was to create an organization where women could get together to discuss issues seriously, and enhance their own capacity to deal with public policy questions, so it was an admirable sort of hands-on approach to making women more significant in public.”


“I’m not into victimhood,” Mrs. McFarland told the Sun yesterday.


Mr. Perle also said that Mrs. McFarland’s foreign-policy strengths would illustrate gaps in Mrs. Clinton’s qualifications. “I hope they get involved in some debates,” Mr. Perle, now a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, said. “The spontaneity can be revealing.”


Requests for comment from Mrs. Clinton’s office were deferred to the New York State Democratic committee. A spokesman, Howard Wolfson, responded yesterday: “Come back to me when the Republicans have sorted out their nominating and primary process.”


The New York Sun

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