Power Game

by Hedrick Smith

  But Washington is a city engaged simultaneously in substance and in strategems. Principles become intertwined with power plays. For Washington is as much moved by who’s up and who’s down, who’s in and who’s out, as it is by setting policy. Politicians are serious when they debate about Star Wars, arms control, a fair tax system, protectionism, and welfare reform. But they are no less serious when they devise gambits to throw the other team on the defensive, when they grandstand to milk a hot issue for public relations points and applause. They pursue the interests of their home team—their constituents. But in the special world of Washington, they also hotly pursue their highly personal interests in the inside power games—turf games, access games, career games, money games, blame games—each of which has an inner logic of its own that often diverts officeholders away from the singleminded pursuit of the best policy.2

  Politics in Washington is a continuous contest, a constant scramble for points, for power, and influence. Congress is the principal policy arena of battle, round by round, vote by vote. People there compete, take sides, form teams, and when one action is finished, the teams dissolve, and, members form new sides for the next issues. Of course, team competition is our national way of life, but rarely does the contest take place at such close quarters, among people who rub elbows with each other, professionally and socially, day in and day out.

  The lingo of games rings naturally on the playing fields of political combat. For analogies, our politicians often turn to the argot of the sports arena, the track, the boxing ring, the playing field, or the casino. Richard Nixon, as president, would not dream of operating without “a game plan.” Jack Kennedy, comparing politics to football, told his press secretary, Pierre Salinger, “if you see daylight, go through the hole.” When Gerald Ford was the House Republican leader, he could not resist using football clichés; hardly a major vote could take place without Ford’s warning that the ball was on the ten-yard line and the clock was running out. More recently, Ronald Reagan’s campaign strategists, like ring handlers coaching a prizefighter, tapped a “sparring partner” to warm up Reagan for the 1980 presidential campaign debates. They chose David Stockman as the person to prep Reagan for debates with John Anderson and Jimmy Carter. Later, Secretary of State Alexander Haig was dropped from the Reagan cabinet because the White House felt that he was not “a team player.” Both admirers and critics saw how Henry Kissinger approached our national rivalry with Moscow as a global chess match, with other nations serving as his pawns.

  The power game echoes Las Vegas and the daily double. Howard Baker, as Senate majority leader, fashioned the image that Reagan tax-cut economics was a “riverboat gamble.” Politicians are forever citing the long odds against them, talking about front-runners and dark horses. Political reporters are kin to sportswriters, indulging in political locker-room talk: We compile “the book” on leading contenders and often devote more attention to the advance handicapping, the pace of the favorite, and the skill of his campaign trainers than to the issues and the national agenda.

  But the purpose of this book goes beyond locker-room jargon and game analogies for American politics. The game metaphor helps to explain the patterns and precepts that skilled politicians live by, regardless of party or administration, as well as the consequences in all of this game playing, for all of us. Actually the Washington power game is not one game, but an olympiad of games, going on simultaneously, all over town. My aim is to take that olympiad apart, play by play, game by game, player by player, so that the overall game of governing is revealed.

  Seeing the inner workings of Washington as a power game is a way of following the action amidst the babel. It’s a metaphor for understanding what makes famous people—and faceless people, unknown but powerful—do what they do. Sometimes it explains why some good people don’t play the game better, why they don’t win. It helps in spotting the tricks of the political trade used by the winners, for seeing why some politicians succeed and others fail.

  Knowing the rules of the game, the right moves and countermoves, is crucial to success. Some politicians like to say that the power game is an unpredictable casino of chance and improvisation—“lightning hitting the outhouse” is the way Senator Alan Simpson puts it. But most of the time politics is about as casual and offhand as the well-practiced triple flips of an Olympic high diver. The appearance of a casual, impromptu performance may add to its political appeal out in the country, as Reagan’s TelePrompTer speeches and rehearsed press conferences do. But the real pros, like chess masters, rarely trust true amateurism in politics. They usually have a pretty good feel for how certain policy lines and maneuvers will play out, before they start.

  Politicians themselves know that there are advantages for those who understand the rules and the moves, the power realities and the winning gambits, and for those who are savvy about the traps and escape routes of modern politics. The rules of the game apply from one administration to the next. To pick just a few examples, a modern handbook of political tactics would say:

  • The smart White House chief of staff knows that you don’t let the president get committed to an all-out fight with Congress unless he has enough votes in advance for near-certain victory; then you complain constantly about the uphill battle, to disarm the opposition and to make the president’s triumph more dramatic.

  • The wise cabinet secretary knows you build a partnership with the chairmen of the Congressional committees that watch over your department, even if they come from the opposite party.

  • The clever press secretary knows that you dump the really bad news on Friday night when it’s too late for the television networks and sure to be buried by the print press in lightly read Saturday newspapers.

  • The shrewd bureaucrat knows that the best way to control a program is to keep everyone else in the dark about it; then no higher-ups or Congressional committees will know enough to change the program or challenge the bureaucracy.

  • The smart bureaucrat also knows the best way to keep a program alive is to provoke the loudest political protests: by underestimating the program’s cost, leaking bad news about budget cuts to friendly members of Congress, and then making the cuts that cause the most political pain—not the least—to the program’s constituents.

  • The smart legislator knows that the best way to beat an objectionable piece of legislation is not to take it head-on in an up-or-down vote on the floor, but to water it down with amendments that reshape it, and then let it pass.

  • The smart legislative staffer knows that if he will just let his boss, the senator or the House member, take the limelight and get the credit, the staffer can quietly shape much of the policy.

  • The smart lobbyist knows that too.

  • The smart lobbyist also knows that the best time to schedule a political fund-raiser in Washington is right after a Congressional recess because, as Tommy Boggs, one of the smartest lobbyists, told me, “Everyone wants to get together and swap the latest gossip because they haven’t seen each other for two weeks.”

  Some of the most sophisticated people around the country often fail to understand the rules of the Washington power game, people who become cabinet members and even presidents and high corporate executives who frequently call at the White House. For instance, in late 1983, Thomas Wyman, former CBS board chairman, came to make a policy pitch to Edwin Meese III, who was then counselor to President Reagan. At the time, the television networks were fighting the Hollywood studios over control of the lucrative syndication rights for movies made for TV. It meant big money. Both sides went to Washington to get their way, and Wyman took his case to Meese, according to someone close to the Reagan inner circle.

  As it happened, Meese was unable to keep the appointment because he was caught up in a sudden foreign policy crisis with the president. As a courtesy, Meese had Wyman sent to the office of Craig Fuller, then secretary of the Reagan cabinet and a top White House adviser to Meese. Fuller offered to help Wyman.

  “I kn
ow something about this issue,” Fuller suggested. “Perhaps you’d like to discuss it with me.”

  But Wyman waved him off, unaware of Fuller’s actual role and evidently regarding him as a mere staff man.

  “No, I’d rather wait and talk to Meese,” Wyman said.

  For nearly an hour, Wyman sat leafing through magazines in Fuller’s office, making no effort to talk with Fuller, who kept working at his desk just a few feet away.

  Finally, Meese burst into Fuller’s office, full of apologies that he simply would not have time for a substantive talk.

  “Did you talk to Fuller?” he asked.

  Wyman shook his head.

  “You should have talked to Fuller,” Meese said. “He’s very important on this issue. He knows it better than any of the rest of us. He’s writing a memo for the president on the pros and cons. You could have given him your side of the argument.”

  Washington insiders know that the staff is often the key on any substantive issue. In this case, they would have known that Fuller, as brain truster for Meese and hence for the president, was the key figure. Fuller had already been thoroughly lobbied for the Hollywood studios by Nancy Reynolds, a former Reagan White House aide and a well-known lobbyist. Not that Fuller would neglect to give Meese both sides of the argument, but Wyman had lost a golden opportunity. Time with Fuller was actually worth more on that issue than time with Meese was, because Fuller was drafting the administration’s position.

  Wyman’s mistake was not unusual. Many people, not understanding how the game is played, are dazzled by political celebrities and feel they have to go to the top: to the president or his right-hand man, to the Treasury secretary, the senator, the committee chairmen. Washington insiders pay far more attention to the power and expertise of staff than outsiders do. The insiders pay their respects to the person with the title and then work the serious issues with less-celebrated staff people who actually draft policy. The wise game player always paves the way to the higher-ups through the staff person.

  Wyman’s experience was a small incident, but change the names and the issues and it happens hundreds of times every year, from the Carter administration to the Reagan administration to the next administration, not only in the White House but in Congress, at the Pentagon, at the Agriculture Department, all over town. It is not just a matter of understanding staff power; it’s also a matter of knowing whose economic figures to trust, which House leaders can pull together coalitions, which senators personally provoke opposition when they sponsor legislation, when to press the attack, and when to lay back and let the normal rhythms of politics pass by.

  Washington has its special political culture, its tribal customs, and its idiosyncrasies. These folkways can trip up not only an untutored network boss, but also a new president such as Jimmy Carter, a business titan such as Donald Regan, and sometimes even a government careerist such as former Secretary of State Alexander Haig. All because these people really didn’t know how to play the power game—or, in Haig’s case, because he hadn’t really absorbed the lessons of his own experience. These three men and others failed to understand the maxim that in political Washington, unlike in the military or industry, power is not hierarchical. Persuasion works better than unilateral policy pronouncements. Command is less effective than consensus.

  Even as skillful a politician as Ronald Reagan can run into pitfalls when he forgets the basic rules of the game. Reagan was masterful as a political leader in 1981 and as president. During the brilliant launching of his first administration, he understood the game, or he relied on others who did. He followed a near-perfect script for presidential leadership, especially in his critical first year, which fixed the country’s approving impression of his presidency for six years. So often, early on, Reagan made the right move, whereas Jimmy Carter, in the opening days of his presidency, made the wrong move, which lost his presidency ground that it never regained.

  But strangely, after Reagan’s reelection to a second term in 1984, he failed to follow his own successful game plan, and in 1985 he began to fare badly. His 1984 landslide with the voters did not, ultimately, have the dramatic consequences that were expected. But the way Reagan played the game did.

  Let me emphasize that the outcome in American government does not always depend on game playing. Obviously, the political environment affects the success or failure of presidents. For example, Jimmy Carter was handicapped by skyrocketing world oil prices beyond his control, prices that shot up the rate of inflation in America; whereas Ronald Reagan was helped immensely by the tumbling of those same oil prices, bolstering his campaign against inflation.

  Nonetheless, over the past half dozen presidencies, there is ample evidence to suggest that regardless of philosophy or motives, some politicians have played the power game well and largely gotten their way, and others have played it badly and seen their policies falter. Beyond that, there are some political games that are vital to the effective functioning of our system, others that delude us for a time, and still others that tie our government in knots and stall the whole process. There are trivial games and weighty ones—the turf games of a bureaucrat protecting his piece of policy, the image games of the video politician, the “perk” games of access and proximity to the team captain. There is the blame game—dumping responsibility on the other side. There are the “porcupine politics” played by mavericks who derive their power from being prickly, from harassing the majority. And there’s the political game that we, as citizens, most need for the players to play—the game of building coalitions.

  The examples in this book draw heavily on the past decade, especially on the Reagan period; this period amply illustrates what works well in the power game and what works poorly. It is full of both smart moves and foolish gambits. What is more, this period reflects the larger dynamics of the power game that have driven our system in recent years and are likely to drive it in the coming administrations. I’ve also drawn on experiences from the presidencies of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Jimmy Carter. But the Reagan period was particularly fruitful, not only because it is so fresh and it reflects the most up-to-date power techniques, but also because Reagan himself demonstrated some of the most skillful and triumphant game playing in recent American politics—and some of its most glaring failures. So did members of his cabinet, his staff, and the Congressional leaders during his presidency. Their patterns, their ways of winning, and the pitfalls of losing—the dos and don’ts—are likely to persist well into the next administration and beyond.

  In all of this, power is the mysterious quotient. Power is the ability to make something happen or to keep it from happening. It can spring from tactical ingenuity and jugular timing, or simply from knowing more than anyone else at the critical moment of decision. At its most clear-cut, power is President Reagan’s ordering the bombing of Libya in 1986 or, six months later, tabling a spur-of-the-moment arms-control proposal in Reykjavík. It is House Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill, Jr., and Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker striking a deal to push a tax increase through in 1982 and then putting that bill on the agenda for both houses of Congress. It is the stuff of headline news.

  But there are many other less orthodox kinds of power, for power operates in many indirect, invisible ways. Before presidential decisions are made or the final congressional votes are taken, their content is shaped by hidden hands. In Washington, as elsewhere, power does not always follow organizational charts; a person’s title does not necessarily reflect the power that he or she has.

  In Part One, my approach is to look, first of all, at the nature of power: how different it is from what it appears to be and how the levers of power have changed dramatically in the past fifteen years. Next, in Part Two, we look at the playing field on which the power game takes place. This is the terrain that the players take for granted: the folkways of Washington, the power networks, the odd couples, the rise of women in the power game. Then we will follow the various strands of the power
game: the world of the constant campaign in Congress, the pork-barrel and turf-cartel politics of the Pentagon, the modern techniques of lobbies and the channels of political money, and the hidden but immense power of staff. All of these together form the backdrop for the big games of Part Three: presidential agenda setting, the building of coalitions, the strategies of opposition, the making of foreign policy. And finally, in Part Four, we will look at the basic dilemmas of our political system and why it doesn’t work better: the deadlocks of divided government, the steep costs of the absence of a majority party, and the disconnect between our political campaigns and the very process of governing. My purpose, through it all, is to show how the Washington power game really works, and how it could work better.

  PART I

  The Nature of Power

  1. The Presidency and the Power Float: Our Rotating Prime Ministers

  The President … is rightly described as a man of extraordinary powers. Yet it is also true that he must wield those powers under extraordinary limitations.1

  —John F. Kennedy

  Let us begin in Huntsville, Tennessee.

  It would take years to find a more unlikely command post for an American president than Huntsville. Normally, Huntsville is a sleepy, peaceable mountain town (population 519), a classic slice of rural Americana set in the Appalachian forests of the Cumberland Plateau, nearly three thousand feet above the sea, and a sixty-mile drive northeast from Knoxville on sweeping, curving highways. It is the kind of tight-knit, little country community where, as one frequent visitor noted, “everyone knows when you come into town; and when you leave, they all know what your business was.”

  For well over a century, this upland neck of eastern Tennessee has been so staunchly Republican and so loyal to the Union that when Tennessee seceded during the Civil War, Scott County seceded from Tennessee. For much of this century, the staples of the local economy were strip-mining, lumbering, and prospecting for oil and natural gas. But the local folks say that environmental regulations have squeezed the life out of these industries and that the best jobs these days are making hardwood parquet floors at Tibbals Flooring, or working for B. F. Goodrich in Oneida, about seven miles up the road.