Power Game

by Hedrick Smith

  By contrast, the tribal warlords of Capitol Hill play a different power game entirely. “They carefully choose one piece of organizational terrain, slowly dominate it, strengthen it, and gradually extend it outward, increasing the scope of that special area,” said Weatherford, who watched the process as an aide to Ohio’s Senator John Glenn. “Theirs is a patient game of slowly adding staff in one certain area year after year.… Theirs is also the game of the career legislator willing to spend the remainder of his life in Congress and to eschew the glitter and fame of the White House. Even though the Warlords may be the least-known Congressional powers to outsiders, they ultimately have the clans that stretch furthest from Congress and into the bowels of government, exercising an influence that far outweighs the more media-oriented politicians.”17

  The differences are not purely generational, but they do generally match the generational lines. For television is a natural medium for modern political shamans whose most potent magic is mood, image, and symbolism—whether they be John Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, or the political new breed in Congress. Jealously, the old-warlord breed deride them as mere “show horses.” Rather disdainfully, Christopher Matthews quipped that “the new-breed guys will go to a seminar and talk issues, but the old-breed guys like Danny Rostenkowski would never go to a seminar—they want to know when you’re going to pass a bill.”

  That’s a bit overdrawn; some older politicians have learned the tricks of the new-breed game, and some younger politicians have proven their skills at old-breed inside politics. For example, House Democratic leaders, such as Tip O’Neill, Jim Wright, and Tom Foley, have learned to master the media, and Rostenkowski ran economic seminars to get his committee to pass the 1986 tax-reform bill. And the best of the new breed have been extremely able legislators, politicians such as Dick Gephardt of Missouri, Leon Panetta of California, and Bill Gray of Pennsylvania on the House Budget Committee.

  But unquestionably, television has helped the new breed get ahead much faster than newcomers used to. Some of the best and the brightest of that class of ’74—Tom Downey and Stephen Solarz of New York, Henry Waxman of California, Tim Wirth of Colorado, Chris Dodd of Connecticut—ignored Sam Rayburn’s old rule that in Congress “to get along, you go along.” The Rayburn rule dictated silent apprenticeship for junior members and a slow climb up the ladder, but the new-breed leaders were quick to carve out important issues and become spokesmen—Downey on arms control, Solarz on South Africa and the Philippines, Waxman on health, Wirth on the breakup of American Telephone and Telegraph, Dodd on Central America. Indeed, the dispersal of power in Congress meant fast advancement, because old congressmen were retiring, and the two shock elections of 1974 and 1980, with their unusual numbers of upsets, pushed out many others. By Reagan’s inauguration, a majority of House members had served no more than four years, and fifty-five senators were still in their first terms. The new breed were taking over.

  More broadly, video politics of the constant campaign invaded the very operations of Congress. In 1979, the House started televising its floor proceedings; in 1986, the Senate followed suit. In both bodies, tele-wise junior members have taken to making brief topical morning speeches, hoping for a pickup by the networks. During debates, some members show up with huge graphic blowups, mounted on easels, for good video viewing.

  Along with changing political styles came a fleet of consultants who sailed into the inner councils of politicians—not just during campaigns but during governing sessions as well. They, too, altered the Washington power game. These are the real political shamans: the media advisers, political strategists, pollsters, direct mail operatives. And they have replaced the old political bosses.

  It’s no longer news that Carter and Reagan in the White House rarely gave a major speech without consulting their pollsters (Patrick Caddell for Carter and Richard Wirthlin for Reagan), sometimes down to the most minute detail. But few people know that old-breed House Speaker Tip O’Neill formed an inner sanctum of half a dozen political consultants to give him advice on overall Democratic legislative strategy, to help figure out how to oppose Ronald Reagan without offending the voter.

  Also, I remember sitting in the office of Peter Hart, one of the best Democratic pollster-strategists, shortly after the 1981 elections in which his candidate, Charles Robb, had been elected governor of Virginia. The phone rang, and Peter talked for about ten minutes. It was Robb asking Hart for detailed advice on how to set out his agenda as governor and how to craft his inaugural address.

  “Today, you don’t use your brain or your gut, all you use is your pollster and your filmmaker,” groused Senator Thomas Eagleton near the end of his third term. “They’ve replaced the party boss. In the campaign, they have taught you something and the play continues afterward. If you’ve had a good pollster and a good filmmaker, they have told you how to craft issues and then how to get them into the public media in thirty-second clips. You’ve learned what will get on the nightly news in St. Louis or Kansas City. You’ve learned what press release, properly captioned, will play on page three of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. So they’ve taught you. So once you’re here, you say, ‘Well, I’ve got to continue to play the game.’ ”18

  Indeed, when the Senate decided to televise its proceedings, the staff worried that the mustard color of the walls was too drab a background for video and proposed blue or some earth tone. Some senators, including Robert Dole, complained that the angle of the four cameras in the gallery was too steep and unflattering. Roger Ailes, a well-known Republican media consultant, was summoned; at least a third of the Republican senators met Ailes secretly to get his advice. Here was a media consultant telling senators, not how to craft a campaign commercial, but how to behave as senators, on the Senate floor!

  I was told that Ailes lectured the senators like a parent talking to children. He minced no words, warning senators that they would have to change their habits. He chided them for their tendency to rush onto the floor from very busy schedules, often appearing ill-prepared and then doing their business hastily, with an air of boredom.

  “Listen, you’ve got to be at your best on the Senate floor from now on,” Ailes told them. “Treat a floor appearance the way you would a major speech. There are four cardinal rules: The public won’t forgive you if you’re not prepared, if you’re not committed, if you’re not comfortable, and if you’re not interesting. If you want to be liked, you yourself are the message, not just your words—your message, your energy, your eyes, your clothes, your everything. If you want to project likability, project commitment. In general, the public likes commitment. That is a very winning trait.”

  The implication was that the lure of the live camera would draw senators away from dusty committee deliberations and put new zip into floor debates. This presented yet another set of pressures on career patterns of the Old Senate Club, accustomed to doing its main business in back rooms or in committee. Televised floor debates opened the door for good performers and independent operators to gain a leg-up with the voters and thus perhaps with their own colleagues. Even before the coming of TV, the Republican majority had picked Bob Dole as their leader in 1985; one clear reason was Dole’s agility on camera. Dole combined old-breed skills as a legislator with new-breed skills as a communicator. Robert Byrd, the Democratic leader, faced a revolt in 1985 because he was too much of an inside player with well-honed parliamentary skills but a reputation as weak on TV. To protect himself, Byrd spruced up his camera style enough to survive.

  Playing the Press and TV Gallery

  Clearly the media politics of the constant campaign have become a staple, not only for the politics of survival, but for ambitions of higher leadership. Six of the class of ’74 Democrats have been sharp enough to move to the Senate: Timothy Wirth, Christopher Dodd, Paul Simon, Tom Harkin, Paul Tsongas, and Max Baucus. The presidential field for 1988 is thick with new-breed candidates from several recent congressional classes: Dick Gephardt, Jack Kemp, Paul Simon, and Albert Gore, each of w
hom has fashioned a TV image.

  Even those who have stayed in the House work the media game for career advancement; they play not only to the folks back home but to the galleries in Washington—the press and TV galleries.

  One of the sharpest headline hunters is Stephen Solarz, a bright, articulate Brooklyn Democrat from the class of ’74, who has specialized in foreign policy, especially on the Middle East. Solarz worked the press assiduously during the Philippine political crisis. In August, 1983, Solarz flew hastily to the Philippines after Benigno Aquino, the opposition leader, was assassinated and managed to get himself photographed looking into Aquino’s open coffin. That made the cover of Newsweek’s international edition.19 When Corazon Aquino was elected president of the Philippines, House Speaker Tip O’Neill wrote her a letter saying that if she were ever in Washington, he would be pleased to have her address a joint session of Congress; O’Neill gave Solarz, as chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Pacific and East Asian Affairs, his letter to forward. Within hours, Solarz called a press conference and, stretching the point, said that O’Neill had invited Aquino to Washington and had dispatched Solarz to Manila to deliver the invitation. Off he went.

  During the controversy over corruption in the 1986 Philippine election and over the hidden wealth of the family of Ferdinand Marcos, Solarz was ubiquitous. By his staff’s count, he appeared on thirty-four radio and television shows and was quoted in eighty articles in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal in a five-month period. Solarz has been accused by some colleagues of media hogging, but he does not fit the caricature of a handsome, blow-dried, airhead TV politician. He is a brainy legislator, quick to master important issues and to make a policy point. By now, he has gained some seniority; but for years smart P.R. has made him better known than most of his elders.

  A different maestro of the media among House Democrats is Les Aspin, who in 1985 parlayed a largely media-built reputation into an uprising that made him chairman of the House Armed Services Committee over six senior Democrats. Aspin had worked in the Pentagon under Defense Secretary Robert McNamara before winning a House seat from Wisconsin in 1970. Like Solarz, he is genuinely knowledgeable. Moreover, with a constant stream of shrewdly timed press releases, Aspin has gotten enormous press attention over the years, becoming known as an informed, influential power on defense issues. Among many other things, he has exposed the army for conducting poison gas tests on beagle puppies, disclosed that the navy’s Phalanx missile had locked on a friendly American ship during a simulated firing test, blasted the Pentagon for a bloated pension system, and challenged the claims of the Reagan military buildup.

  Aspin’s techniques tell a great deal about how to play the press game. The fundamental rule, he asserts, is to provide genuinely fresh information. What that involves, Aspin says, is “staying ahead of the curve,” or anticipating where the news is heading and getting a step ahead of the story rather than chasing old news.20 A second fundamental rule is to time your news release for a slack news day. A typical Aspin operation includes some juicy Pentagon revelation, embargoed for release in Monday morning newspapers when there is little breaking news. The release is sent out to newspaper offices by two P.M. Thursday so that reporters can write it up on Friday and have their weekends free, but the Monday embargo insures that it does not get swamped by the heavy Sunday news flow. Aspin’s press agents send his material to reporters specializing in defense or arms control issues. I have known them to circulate copies of one release to five different New York Times reporters and editors, playing on competitive instincts to insure that someone gets their story into print. The tactic works.

  Finally, Aspin is unusual in this era of video politics because he prefers written press releases over televised press conferences for two reasons: First, his issues are complicated, and only print reporters have space to explain them fully; if they get good play in print, TV will follow. Second, with a written release accompanied by a fairly detailed study, Aspin sees greater chance that the story will emerge the way he originally cast it. Press conferences can take unpredictable bounces.

  “I don’t think press conferences work worth a damn,” Aspin told the Washington Journalism Review. “Somebody will ask a cockamamie question, and that will be the story. A well-lobbied study and press release are worth twenty press conferences.”21

  Among House Republicans, the new-breed guru with a knack for publicity, who has gotten attention far beyond his legislative power and station, is Newt Gingrich, a bullish, abrasive former history professor from West Georgia College with an original turn of mind and a zest for intellectual combat. Gingrich has his own special flair for video politics and his own slant on playing the game: be splashy; be original; be outrageous; be strident, even be inflammatory. He is a classic show horse, more interested in promoting confrontations and ideas than in passing legislation.

  Gingrich is a boyish forty-five-year-old with boundless energy, a mop of bushy gray hair on a lion-sized head, and a machine-gun tongue. He is given to grandiose pronouncements: “We need to rethink government”; “We are creating a revolution”; “I have an enormous personal ambition: I want to shift the entire planet and I’m doing it.” His vision, limned in a book, Window of Opportunity, is a curious mix of Adam Smith and high tech, of slashing government on earth but promoting a government-financed space program with manned moon factories and voyaging to the “Hiltons and Marriotts of the solar system.”

  Politically, Gingrich has not only savaged Jimmy Carter, Speaker O’Neill, and the “liberal welfare state,” he has blasted Republicans, too. A purist Reaganite, Gingrich in 1978 scored Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford for “a terrible job, a pathetic job” and declared that in his lifetime the Republican party had “not had a competent leader,” including Barry Goldwater. Later, Gingrich roasted Robert Dole, Senate Finance Committee chairman, as “the tax collector of the welfare state.” (Dole fired back that Gingrich was “making a lot of noise, but I haven’t seen any impact.”) Many times, he has derided the House Republican leadership for being “eunuchs” with “a defeatist, minority mentality.”

  Gingrich arrived in the House in 1978 in a class of thirty-six Republican freshmen, the vanguard of a New Right swing toward Reaganite conservativism; their ranks were swelled by more young Republicans in the Reagan sweep of 1980. These were Reagan’s shock troops in his triumphant 1981 year.

  The political champion of these upstart Republicans is Jack Kemp, the handsome, ebullient apostle of tax cutting and the creed of economic growth and opportunity. Around the country, Kemp has led the new-breed attack on the traditional budget-balancing, austerity politics of old-breed Republicans. But in the House, Kemp’s approach has been fairly tame; Gingrich took the lead in brawling with Speaker Tip O’Neill and seizing the limelight.

  Gingrich stole a leaf from Aspin’s book—pick a slack time to grab attention. He made his mark by capitalizing ingeniously on some dead hours in the House schedule. At about seven P.M., after the regular order of business ends, the House goes into “special orders,” where individual members can give long speeches because the rest have gone home. Gingrich gathered a band of like-minded Republican right-wingers such as Vin Weber of Minnesota and Robert Walker of Pennsylvania, in the Conservative Opportunity Society. With the C-Span cable network still broadcasting House proceedings, they would preach their brand of Reaganism in these quiet evening hours. Cameras were focused on the lectern, leaving viewers unaware that the House chamber was empty. Gingrich claimed a C-Span audience of 250,000 plus daily.

  Gingrich’s tactic was to provoke a Democratic response and to get a fight going. In May 1984, Gingrich drew blood, causing a huge uproar and vaulting into public view. On May 8, Gingrich and Walker used special-order time to read a report by the conservative Republican Study Committee slamming the foreign-policy views of about fifty House Democrats, by name, accusing these Democrats of defeatism from the Vietnam War to Central America. Some were outr
aged and accused Gingrich and Company of innuendos reminiscent of Joseph McCarthy. Without warning, two days later, Speaker O’Neill ordered the House cameras to pan the chamber, showing the home audience that the Democrats were not present in the chamber to defend themselves against Gingrich’s charges. O’Neill denounced the Republican speechmaking as “a sham … for home consumption.”

  On a point of personal privilege, Gingrich demanded the right of reply and got the showdown for which he had been angling. He was given an hour of time on the House floor on May 15. During that hour, Speaker O’Neill asked Gingrich to let him speak and Gingrich agreed. But O’Neill got no more than two sentences out before Gingrich reclaimed his control of the floor, a slight to the speaker. In a few quick exchanges, O’Neill’s rage rose and suddenly he burst out: “My personal opinion is this:”—and the massive, accusing arm went up, finger out-stretched—“you deliberately stood in that well before an empty House and challenged these people, and you challenged their Americanism, and it’s the lowest thing I’ve ever seen in my thirty-two years in Congress.”

  In a shot, Trent Lott, the Republican whip, was on his feet demanding that the clerk “take down” the words of the speaker. That is a procedure requiring that the words be repeated and the parliamentarian decide whether Speaker O’Neill’s attack on Gingrich had violated House rules, which forbid personal attacks and insults. The parliamentarian ruled that O’Neill was out of order. Joe Moakley, a Massachusetts Democrat and a close ally of O’Neill, was in the chair; he was forced by the rules to issue a reproach against the speaker. It made headline and network news.

  By his cool, calculating style of video politics, Gingrich had gotten the better of the speaker and also won a national audience. Brash video politics had put Gingrich on the political map.