[Random-bits] David Lawsky: Bush Advisors -- is current antitrust policy radical?

[James Love]

Wednesday August 2 7:06 PM ET Ex-Antitrust Chief Questions Bush Adviser's
Views  By David Lawsky  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An antitrust chief to former
President George Bush said on Wednesday that an economic adviser to Bush's
son was wrong Tuesday to call today's antitrust policy ``radical.''
Lawrence Lindsey, an economic adviser to presidential candidate George W.
Bush , had told Reuters television Tuesday at the Philadelphia Republican
National convention: ``We saw a very vigorous and radical antitrust policy
in this administration.''  Earlier this year a federal judge ordered a
break-up of Microsoft Corp. to remedy violations of the nation's antitrust
laws. The case was brought by the Justice Department.

But James Rill, a lawyer with Howrey Simon in Washington who served under
President Bush as head of the Justice Department antitrust division from
1989 to 1992, said it was ``certainly wide of the mark to call the current
policy radical.''  ``In the final analysis I doubt that Larry Lindsey is
speaking for the Republican Party or its candidate on antitrust policy,''
Rill said in a telephone interview.  However, Rill's predecessor in the job,
Charles Rule -- who served under former President Ronald Reagan starting in
1986 and briefly under President Bush in 1989 -- said Lindsey was right.
'Lack Of Trust'  ``The antitrust policy of this administration has gotten
increasingly radical and has exhibited a lack of trust in the wisdom of
consumers and the workings of the marketplace,'' said Rule, now a lawyer
with Covington & Burling.  Rule, one of the lawyers representing Microsoft
in its appeal of the break-up, said in the long run the Clinton
administration's antitrust policy will hurt consumers and curtail
innovation.  Lindsey, who served as a Federal Reserve governor, said a new
Bush administration would have ``greater sensitivity'' to ''respecting the
private sector and respecting the need for innovation and profitability
long-term.''  He asserted the Microsoft case was notable in part because it
marks ``the first time in history we're not busting a trust'' in the use of
antitrust law.

But Rill said Lindsey was factually incorrect because he was ``forgetting
about the AT&T case, which was brought by one Republican administration and
concluded by another 10 years later.''  The case lasted from 1974 until
1982, when antitrust authorities under President Reagan negotiated AT&T's
break-up into seven different operating companies.  Rill said that
Microsoft, another high-tech case, ``rests on a garden variety antitrust
principle that challenges a monopolist's ability to engage in exclusive
dealing to protect or expand monopoly power.'' Rill has on occasion done
work for the firm's rivals.  Lindsey said he preferred to ``let new
competition come in the form of creative innovation. That's better than
having the bureaucracy decide who should win.''  But Stephen Axinn, a lawyer
with Axinn, Veltrop & Harkrider in New York who consulted for the government
on the failed Worldcom-Sprint merger, said sometimes government must act
''where the market would not be able to dissipate the power of a single firm
monopoly because of that firm's ability to control innovation and bar
competitors.''  And Phillip Proger of Jones Day said it can take so long for
markets to solve problems by themselves that overcharges to consumers
``would never be recouped'' without government action.