In short, the most vital ingredients of power are often the intangibles. Information and knowledge are power. Visibility is power. A sense of timing is power. Trust and integrity are power. Personal energy is power; so is self-confidence. Showmanship is power. Likability is power. Access to the inner sanctum is power. Obstruction and delay are power. Winning is power. Sometimes, the illusion of power is power.
Take visibility: A president has many legally established powers—the power to purge the top echelons of government and put in his own allies; the power to appoint scores if not hundreds of federal judges; the power to issue executive orders and to make administrative decisions; the power to launch planes against Libyan terrorist camps or to make arms proposals to a Soviet leader; the power to reward political friends and punish enemies by approving programs, granting favors, or withholding benefits; and sometimes, the political power to affect the survival of other politicians by throwing his personal weight for or against them in campaigns.
Yet few presidential powers are more central to success than a president’s ability to command public attention, or in Theodore Roosevelt’s phrase, to mount the “bully pulpit” and preach his cause. No such power is granted in the Constitution. Yet the president can request and usually receive network television time—the coin of the realm in the new power game. As can no one else, the president can attract an audience in the tens of millions to put forward an agenda, to spell out priorities, to use the nation as his sounding board, to move the political system in the direction he wants; in short, to persuade.
Position makes the president preeminent, but it does not grant him a monopoly. We have seen others steal the stage and use it to change the agenda or to redefine reality and thus force the president’s hand. I believe it happens more readily in the new game of instant mass communication than it did in the old closed-circuit politics; television gives others a platform and a megaphone that magnifies their power.
One case in point is the change in American foreign policy, to support Corazon Aquino after the Philippine election on February 7, 1986. That change came in no small measure because Indiana Senator Richard Lugar shrewdly worked the leverage of his visibility. President Reagan’s sympathies clearly lay with President Ferdinand Marcos, whom he regarded as an old friend, an anti-Communist ally. Reagan tried to cling to Marcos. Before the Philippine election, Lugar had warned that the administration was tying itself too closely to strongman rulers such as Marcos. As the respected Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Lugar went to Manila heading a U.S. delegation to observe the fairness of the election.
At the first reports of fraud by the Marcos side, some American observers discounted it as no worse than a Chicago election. Lugar was more critical. After a very slow count and after computer operators walked out of the election commission charging they had been ordered to change vote counts, Lugar concluded that Aquino had surely won the election. He felt the time had come to change the Philippine government and American policy. Aides said he pressed that argument in a private session with President Reagan on February 11. Reagan suggested there had been fraud on both sides, but Lugar insisted that he had seen it only on the Marcos side.2 That night, Lugar was stunned to hear Reagan tell a press conference there was “the possibility of fraud … on both sides.” The next day, Lugar pointedly told reporters the president was “not well informed,” and the White House backed down. Reagan went incommunicado—to be unseen by reporters for several days. Lugar filled the vacuum, arguing in television interviews that Marcos “ought to step down.”
On Sunday, February 23, Lugar took center stage. He appeared on all three network television interview shows (Meet the Press, Face the Nation, and This Week with David Brinkley). Other politicians called it the “hat trick,” the feat in hockey of scoring three goals in one game. From that television platform, Lugar called on Reagan to telephone Marcos to ask him to resign, and his television appearances had impact. The next day, Senator Paul Laxalt of Nevada—Reagan’s close friend and intermediary with Marcos—talked with the Philippine leader by phone and told him to “cut, and cut cleanly.” Said Laxalt, “I think the time has come” to resign.
Reagan had been forced to shift. His position had been undermined both by televised scenes of massive fraud and by Lugar’s highly visible charges that the election was stolen and Marcos should go.
Similarly, when the tax bill backed by Reagan fell victim to a House Republican revolt in December 1985, Speaker Tip O’Neill put Reagan under the gun by declaring publicly that Reagan would be a “lame-duck” president if he could not muster fifty Republican votes to help a majority of Democrats pass the tax bill. Like Lugar, O’Neill used his visibility to define political reality and the terms of success, forcing the president to respond. On the tax bill, Reagan got the votes. But in the tactics of power, O’Neill, like Lugar, had forced the president’s hand. Both of them stole the bully pulpit from Reagan. Their leverage came from appealing to a wider audience.
Visibility sometimes gives junior members of Congress more power than people many years their senior. In 1980 and 1981, it was Buffalo Congressman Jack Kemp’s high profile advocacy of a thirty-percent reduction in personal income tax rates that provided the basic outline for Reagan’s bill. Kemp’s visibility had more impact than did the patiently acquired expertise of the ranking Republicans in Congress on tax matters, Senator Bob Dole and Representative Barber Conable. Indeed, the clashing styles and philosophies of Conable and Kemp offer examples of what Washingtonians now call “inside” and “outside” politics. In recent years, sharp jealousies have developed between the “inside” politicians, whose power derives from their ability to craft and broker legislation, and the “outside” politicians, who exert their influence on policy through publicity and sloganeering.
Conable, who has subsequently become president of the World Bank, was an old-school Republican congressman. By 1981, Conable had seniority in the House, but he had much more. He had earned a reputation as a serious, thoughtful politician who knew the tax code inside out and was a skilled legislative craftsman. Elected first in 1964, Conable had worked up the ladder to become the ranking Republican on the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee. As an orthodox balance-the-budget conservative, Conable showed no enthusiasm for Kemp-style tax cutting, although he went along when President Reagan adopted it.
Kemp’s power base was not seniority but visibility. As a telegenic celebrity politician and former pro football quarterback, he had popularized the supply-side economic theory that cutting tax rates would boost growth and, ultimately, government tax revenues. His star quality and theme politics had given him more clout than the more cautious Conable, especially with the new Reagan team. I was told privately that Conable had complained bitterly at being handed the Reagan tax bill at the last minute by Treasury Secretary Donald Regan and asked to cosponsor it, although it had been conceived and written by others. In subsequent maneuvering, Conable got some vindication: He helped inject into the bill some probusiness breaks that he favored: faster depreciation schedules and a provision to index tax rates to inflation. But Kemp still got the larger public glory.
Again, in Reagan’s dramatic 1981 blitzkrieg of Congress, it was David Stockman, as director of the Office of Management and Budget, who stole the limelight, not members of the cabinet who theoretically outranked him. Stockman came from practically nowhere, a mere two-term Michigan congressman, thirty-four years old. But he dazzled Washington. He had answers for the questions practically everyone was then asking.
Knowledge was Stockman’s power base. Reagan offered a vision of cutting government, Stockman had the blueprint for how to do it. He was the whiz kid with the razor-sharp mind, master of both the impenetrable arithmetic of the budget and the intricacies of congressional procedure.
In the first blush of what partisans called the Reagan Revolution, Stockman was at peak influence because, in one of Washington’s most telltale phrases, he was “ahead of the p
ower curve.” Long after, Stockman confessed that neither he nor anyone else knew as much as he had pretended. But in the critical presidential transition of 1980, he knew better than anyone else where he was going, where Reagan wanted to head, and how to get there politically. The others were at sea. That was why people relied on Stockman. It was more than his understanding of the budget. It was his timing, his conviction, his road map. Stockman was bold and sure when others were hesitant, articulate when others stumbled. He sensed the moment to strike, and he showed others how to exploit the power vacuum.
Five years later, Stockman embarrassed Reagan by telling how he had “cooked the books” to make Reagan’s budgets look as though they would balance in 1984, and how little Reagan understood of the economic policies he was advocating. But even after Stockman’s first disloyal confessions in The Atlantic in late 1981, President Reagan did not fire him. Stockman was too indispensable: Knowledge was his power.
Credibility
Washington has many yardsticks for measuring power. Two of the most common are money and people: The more people an official “owns,” or commands in his bureaucratic empire, and the larger his budget, the more powerful he is supposed to be. By that measure, the Defense secretary would automatically be the most powerful member of the cabinet. But that fails to explain the changing fortunes of Caspar Weinberger, who was riding high in Reagan’s first year or two and then was relentlessly besieged in later years. In part Weinberger fell victim to the shifting public mood toward military spending and the scandalous costs of spare parts. More fundamentally, Congress lost faith in Weinberger’s credibility. And in the intangible chemistry of power, no quality matters more than trust.
Credibility—trust—is the most important key to survival and influence. It lies at the heart of political authority, for without credibility a political leader or a high government official cannot make a persuasive case to others. Loss of trust forced Richard Nixon from office; it fatally wounded Lyndon Johnson; it drove Gary Hart out of the 1988 presidential race. As Bryce Harlow, Eisenhower’s legislative aide, liked to say: “Integrity is power—I’d put integrity first.”3
On a less exalted level, in an arena of constant controversy, the advocate who is too parochial, too partisan, or too political to be credible is not heard or heeded as time wears on. “This place depends very heavily on personal relationships and personal credibility—whether people trust and respect your analysis, your intellect, your fairness, and your word” is the way Senator Warren Rudman of New Hampshire put it.4
Over the years, for example, presidential estimates on the economy have largely come to be discounted by both houses and parties in Congress, because they are so often politically biased in the president’s favor. Over time, such mistrust built up in Congress toward Weinberger, though Reagan relied on him, and even the Republican-led Senate voted 95–0 to impose Pentagon reforms that Weinberger opposed. Even more so, the late William Casey, as director of Central Intelligence for six years, lost the trust of Congress and some colleagues in the administration—in a position where credibility is crucial.
From many, Casey got high marks for reviving CIA morale and for improving the quality of its intelligence analysis. Especially in the early years, Casey’s intelligence budgets grew significantly. But his penchant for aggressive covert military operations in Nicaragua, Angola, and elsewhere polarized Congress and fed running controversies with the Democratic-dominated House Intelligence Committee and with Senate Democrats such as Pat Moynihan of New York and moderate Senate Republicans such as Dave Durenburger of Minnesota. The congressional balance of support for the contra war in Nicaragua was always touch and go because of policy disagreements. But several key members of both houses blamed Casey personally for tipping the balance against the administration in 1984 and 1985 by showing arrogant disdain for Congress and by giving evasive, deceptive, and dishonest testimony to intelligence committees.
“Casey has a contempt for Congress,” Dave McCurdy, an influential, sometimes pvo-contra Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, complained in 1985. “Casey’s contempt is not even disguised. He feels Congress is interfering in his activity. He says Congress can’t keep a secret [although] the intelligence committees have kept plenty of secrets. But then his own credibility is lacking with Congress. He either mumbles when he’s not telling the truth or he avoids answering questions.”5
McCurdy vividly recalled one talk with Casey at CIA headquarters in 1983. “This is when he was telling us in committee that the contra aid was just for interdicting the arms flow from Nicaragua into El Salvador,” McCurdy told me. “So over breakfast, I asked him, ‘What’s our policy in Nicaragua?’ He said, ‘Whatever it takes.’ I said, ‘What does that mean—overthrowing the Sandinistas?’ And he said again, ‘Whatever it takes.’ So sometimes he slips and says what he really thinks. But after that, I knew I could not believe what he said in committee.”
Congressional mistrust of Casey reached a peak in early 1984 when Nicaraguan harbors were mined by Latin American commando teams trained and commanded by American CIA agents. Barry Goldwater, then Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, hotly protested that Casey had never informed his committee of plans for the harbor mining, though that was required by law. “I am pissed off,” Goldwater yelped. “Bill, this is no way to run a railroad, and I find myself in a hell of a quandry.… The President has asked us to back his foreign policy. Bill, how can we back his foreign policy when we don’t know what the hell he is doing? Lebanon, yes, we all knew that he sent troops over there. But mine the harbors in Nicaragua? This is an act violating international law. It is an act of war. For the life of me, I don’t see how we are going to explain it.”6
Eventually, Casey apologized to Goldwater. But privately, Goldwater fumed to other committee members that “Casey wouldn’t tell you if your coat was on fire.” Ultimately, the mining episode and Casey’s handling of it led to the cutoff of aid to the Nicaraguan contras in mid-1984. When nonlethal aid to the contras was renewed by Congress in 1985, the legislation passed only on condition that the CIA could not be the channel for the funding. Casey’s evasions had so undermined his credibility that some intelligence committees simply did not want to have to deal with him on contra aid.
Early on, the intelligence committees came to count on Casey’s deputy, Vice Admiral Bobby Inman, to level with them; Inman had a rock-solid reputation for integrity. He became known for a nervous habit of tugging at his socks when Casey was misleading congressional committees. Unable to look committee members in the eye at such moments, Inman would bend over and pull up his socks. Once, during a Senate intelligence hearing, Goldwater made fun of him.
“You’re a three-star admiral,” he chided Inman. “Can’t you afford socks that don’t fall down?”
“I can’t help it,” Inman replied. “It’s a nervous habit.”
The next time it happened, Goldwater picked up the clue, pressing Casey on the point at hand.
“Bill, can you be a bit more precise about that,” Goldwater asked. Casey added some more detail.
At other times, Democrats such as Joe Biden of Delaware and Patrick Leahy of Vermont said they had learned to watch Inman’s telltale habit for clues to the veracity of Casey’s testimony and would press Inman to say whether he agreed with what Casey was saying.7
The mistrust in the Senate Intelligence Committee toward Casey was so imbedded that when Inman resigned in mid-1982, his successor, John McMahon, a career CIA official with a reputation for honesty, encountered deep suspicion of Casey among senators when he made his private courtesy calls on the Senate Intelligence Committee members before his confirmation hearing.
One Democratic Senator told McMahon he had only one question: “If Casey doesn’t tell us the truth, will you tell us the truth?”
It was an issue on many minds. “I’ll give you the same answer that I’ve given to each of the other senators who asked me just one question, the same one as yours,” McMahon replied. “M
y answer is: Yes, I’ll tell you the truth.”
But mistrust finally caught up with another Casey deputy, William Gates, because some members of Congress suspected Casey and Gates of hiding the Iranian arms deal from Congress, despite Casey’s written promise to Goldwater not to play such games. President Reagan nominated Gates to succeed Casey, who was taken fatally ill in early 1987. So angered was the Senate Intelligence Committee by Casey’s evasions and Gates’s failure to block the Iranian-contra deals or inform Congress of them that the committee refused to confirm Gates as CIA director. Reagan had to pull back Gates’s name and get someone who had the trust of Congress, former FBI Director William Webster.
The most damning indictment of Casey came not from Congress but from within the Reagan administration, from Secretary of State George Shultz. Not only did Shultz accuse Casey of deception in dealing with other officials but of slanting intelligence to support policies that Casey favored, such as the Iranian arms deals.
“I hate to say it, but I believe that one of the reasons the president was given what I regard as wrong information about Iran and terrorism was that the agency or the people in the CIA were too involved in this [operation],” Shultz told Congress. “Long before this all emerged, I had come to have grave doubts about the objectivity and reliability of some of the intelligence I was getting.”8
So devastating is that notion—of a CIA director slanting intelligence estimates to favor his pet policies—that Shultz and others advocated separating the function of intelligence estimates from covert operations and policy-making. For not only had Casey destroyed his own credibility in many circles of government, but he had so damaged the intelligence agency that he left others bent on reducing its power.
By contrast with Casey, much of the power of Paul Volcker, during his two terms as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, derived from his personal credibility—with Congress and with the financial markets. By casting himself as the number-one economic policymaker fighting inflation, one who was unwilling to bow to politics, Volcker enlarged his power and influence. Not only his position as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, also known as the “Fed,” but also widespread trust in Volcker’s integrity won him repeated selection as Washington’s “second most powerful official” behind the president, in annual reader polls by US News & World Report.
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