Carter always had so many priorities that he seemed to have none. He suffered from what political scientist James MacGregor Burns of Williams College called “strategic myopia.”7 In the 1976 campaign, Carter had attacked the American tax system as “a disgrace to the human race” and promised reform, but it did not materialize. In his inaugural, he voiced the hope that “nuclear weapons could be eliminated from the face of the earth.” That first spring, Carter advanced a dramatic new arms proposal, but dropped it when the Russians roared their disapproval. With technocratic enthusiasm, he asserted that “zero-based budgeting” would force every government program to be justified anew, as a means of controlling deficits and creating new efficiency, but deficits rose anyway. He repeatedly pledged a sweeping consolidation of many federal agencies but wound up adding the departments of Energy and Education.
Carter’s administration seemed a series of economic programs, one nostrum following another. One early gambit was to offer a fifty-dollar tax rebate for every taxpayer; that plan was scrapped in less than three months. In that first year, Carter had a welfare-reform program which died stillborn. With ringing rhetoric, he promised to attack the nation’s energy crisis with the “moral equivalent of war,” but his program was so modest that Russell Baker, in a New York Times column, mocked Carter’s pussycat program with the acronym MEOW. Whenever I would ask White House officials for Carter’s top priorities, the list would run past a dozen items. The focus of the Carter presidency was not clear.
Of course, Carter later had major achievements: the Panama Canal treaties, the Camp David accords, his battles for human-rights policies. But before getting to the heart of what he wanted to do, Carter got entangled with Congress in an ill-considered fight over pork-barrel funding of public works and water projects, a perennial legislative favorite. However noble Carter’s attack on such questionable largesse, it was a sure loser. That fight soured his relations with Congress right away and kept him from getting to his own pet items. Carter began the agenda game off-center and never fully gained command.
This was a lesson which the Reagan team took to heart. Its takeover was crisp.
Supreme power shifts abruptly. What the public observes is Ronald Reagan taking the oath of office and a twenty-one-gun salute confirming his ascendancy to the highest office in the land. In that same split second, the first wave of Reagan’s political commandos captures the flag. They literally “seize the White House,” claiming the inner citadel of power on Reagan’s behalf.
Until that moment on January 20, 1981, the White House had been deserted, almost desolate.
Through the night, the Oval Office and the White House Situation Room in the basement had been throbbing. President Carter, Vice President Mondale, Hamilton Jordan, Jody Powell, and White House Counsel Lloyd Cutler had been working frantically to secure the release of the American hostages in Iran. Carter desperately wanted them freed on his watch. By late morning on Inauguration Day, the Oval Office was empty. A Carter rearguard had retreated to the Situation Room to pursue the hostage release.
A ghostly silence reigned over the West Wing—the honeycomb of high-powered offices for the president, vice president, and the top staff. In the Oval Office, the heavy, ornate desk first used by Rutherford B. Hayes stood idle, its top bare, its drawers vacant. In every office, tables were naked. The normal clutter of papers and phone banks connected to other power centers were gone. In-boxes were empty. Bookshelves were bereft. The throb of power had ebbed. The whole area was as lifeless as some eerie, abandoned place in a science-fiction movie, where everyone has died from radiation or suddenly vanished.8
As noon approached, cleanup crews and painters moved into the deserted offices. Eugene Eidenberg, secretary to Carter’s cabinet, was saying farewell to White House guards, housekeepers, and the manager of the mess: the people who stay on from one president to the next. The guard at the basement entrance gave Eidenberg a friendly warning that his political lease was rapidly running out and he’d better not be late in leaving.
“Gene,” the guard kidded, patting the gun on his hip, “you only got a couple of minutes. If you’re not out of here by noon, I’ll have to throw you out.” Eidenberg took the hint and left. He was one of a handful of high officials who had a special red phone installed in his home, connecting him directly (without dialing) to the White House switchboard. His daughters, Danielle and Elizabeth, tried the red phone at quarter to twelve and it still worked. But precisely at noon, the line went dead.
At 12:01 P.M., John Rogers, a crisp, officious twenty-four-year-old, arrived at the Southwest Gate of the White House leading a seven-car caravan with files from Reagan transition headquarters.
Within moments, Rogers, chief administrator of the new Reagan White House staff, was efficiently rearranging furniture in the Oval Office, to set it up the way Reagan wanted it. The couches were placed facing each other instead of back to back. End tables were moved. New phone lines were installed to link Reagan directly to Jim Baker, Ed Meese, and Mike Deaver. While television sets broadcast Reagan’s inaugural address, a carpenter screwed nameplates for the new president and his cabinet on the backs of chairs in the cabinet room.
Swiftly, the political symbols that adorn the White House were transformed. Portraits of Thomas Jefferson and Harry Truman came down in the cabinet room; they were immediately replaced by portraits of Calvin Coolidge and Dwight Eisenhower, two Republican symbols admired by Reagan. The portrait of Republican Abraham Lincoln was kept. In the Oval Office, the busts of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin stayed, but a bust of Harry Truman was carted off. Suddenly the walls of the West Wing blossomed with huge color photographs of the Reagan campaign, the Reagan staff, Reagan rallies, President and Mrs. Reagan.
“What we wanted,” said John Rogers, “was a total change of image, to get the imprimatur of Ronald Reagan as president, by the time everyone came back from the inauguration.”9
In an hour or two, a trickle of other Reaganites started settling in the White House offices. As the Reagan troops filtered into their new quarters, a phone rang in one office. Someone was asking for Hamilton Jordan, and Mike Deaver’s secretary, Shirley Moore, answered that he was not there anymore. The caller then asked for Jack Watson. “I’m sorry,” Moore said, “he doesn’t work here anymore. In fact, they’re all gone now. We’re the new folks in town. We’re the ones in charge now.”
The Tactics of a Fast Start
From the stroke of noon, January 20, 1981, Ronald Reagan conveyed a confident new sense of direction, as Franklin Roosevelt had done in 1933. Reagan’s ability to cast the nation’s political debate in terms of his agenda, and thereby to achieve his central political objectives, has been one of the two singular achievements of his presidency. The other achievement was his restoration of the power of the presidency after a long period of deadlock and drift and amidst worries that special interests were rendering the country ungovernable. Reagan was able to achieve so much, especially in his first year, because of his skill, and that of his top team, at the agenda game.
Reagan himself has never been known as a good manager or strategist. His great political talent is as a visionary leader, painting themes and values broadbrush and in bold colors and thereby capturing the public imagination. Since 1964, when he made a celebrated television address for Barry Goldwater, Reagan had crisscrossed the country in three presidential bids of his own: 1968, 1976, and 1980. By the time he took office, his basic agenda was well known: less government, lower taxes, more defense, global anti-Communism. But in that 1980 campaign, other objectives clouded the old agenda: a balanced budget by 1983; early arms negotiations with Moscow; free trade, but help to Detroit’s auto industry; eliminating the departments of Energy and Education; restoring prayer in schools and stopping abortions.
Reagan’s vision needed focus and programmatic content. Reagan’s men, having watched Carter’s frayed beginning, understood full well that their president’s game plan had to be clear, his priorities had
to be winnowed. Clamoring factions among the conservative movement pushed rival objectives on Reagan, but his top strategists knew that their president could not succeed if he dissipated his energies chasing too many conservative goals. In the campaign, he had hit hardest on economic recovery, and that was a natural overriding priority, given skyrocketing interest rates and high unemployment. The framework had been set in the five-point economic program that Reagan outlined in a major economic policy speech in Chicago on September 9, 1980.10 That meant pushing almost all other campaign promises to the back burner; some were let slip entirely. That was crucial—a narrowly focused agenda was one key to Reagan’s stunning legislative blitzkreig in 1981 and to the aura of purpose and invincibility that buoyed him afterward.
“We recognized early on when we went for a simple agenda, we were staking Reagan’s presidency on one issue,” David Gergen, Reagan’s director of communications, explained much later. “If it failed, we didn’t have a big fallback. If it succeeded in terms of legislation, that would give us a second burst.”11
Focus was the first priority; speed was the second. The Reaganites knew that time is short for a new president to make himself a winner and to convince the voters that he is a leader. In policy terms, the Reagan team wanted a transfer of power as clean and as swift as their physical takeover on Inauguration Day. Their catechism was to “hit the ground running,” for they understood that vigor and purpose would draw a sharp contrast with Carter. They knew the political window for dramatic budget and tax cuts was preciously brief.
The reasons lie not only in the ongoing institutional power struggle between White House and Congress, but also in the administration’s own human chemistry. The first flush of enthusiasm forges unity, before inevitable rivalries divide the White House into factions or set cabinet members at odds with each other and the White House.
“Everything depends on what you do in program formulation during the first six or seven months,” a former Nixon adviser told scholar Thomas Cronin. “I have watched three presidencies, and I am increasingly convinced of that. Time goes by so fast. During the first six months or so, the White House staff is not hated by the cabinet, there is a period of friendship and cooperation and excitement. There is some animal energy going for you in those first six to eight months, especially if people perceive things in the same light. If that exists, and so long as that exists, you can get a lot done. You only have a year at the most for new initiatives, a time when you can establish some programs as your own, in contrast to what has gone on before.”12
Understanding the time pressure, Reagan’s strategists began laying plans even before Reagan won the election. In October 1980, Richard Wirthlin and Richard Beale, two of Reagan’s strategists, started work on an “initial action plan,” which urged Reagan immediately to claim a “mandate for change” and to go for bold actions in the first ninety days. “The window of opportunity opens and closes quickly,” the study advised, “therefore, the President needs to take the initiative early and decisively.”13 For seven pages, the study charted week-by-week actions of presidents Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, and Carter from their election through their first hundred days in office. The charts showed legislative proposals, foreign trips, speeches, press conferences, meetings, television addresses, and unexpected developments such as the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion.
“We drew three broad conclusions,” David Gergen said. “One: In the first one hundred days, you have a chance to define your persona as president, to form anew in the public mind who you are and what your character is. Two: This is the critical time for setting the themes and agenda for your entire presidency. Remember, Ike went to Korea to begin to make peace during his transition [between election and inauguration]. Carter’s agenda was diffuse. And three: The first one hundred days was a time when you were vulnerable to a grievous mistake that would haunt you, like Kennedy’s Bay of Pigs. You have to avoid getting into mischief.”14
Along with focus and speed, Reagan’s game plan required staking an immediate claim to a sweeping popular mandate for his conservative program, for interpreting election results is a critical element in the Washington power game. Smart politicians know that one key to success in office is getting the press, rival politicians, and sometimes the public to accept your reading of what the vote meant.
But in 1980, could Reagan legitimately claim a big policy mandate? He was far from winning a landslide. Other presidents—Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, and John Kennedy—had won with less than fifty percent of the popular vote. Reagan had won fifty-one percent, but only 26.8 percent of the nation’s adult population had voted for him, fractionally fewer than had picked Carter in 1976 (26.9 percent). The reason was low voter turnout—fewer people voted; the 1980 turnout was the smallest since 1948. Only 52.4 percent of the eligible electorate voted. What is more, a good chunk of the Reagan vote was more anti-Carter than pro-Reagan. A New York Times /CBS News election-day poll found that three out of ten Reagan voters said their primary motivation was to get Carter out rather than to put Reagan in. But the Reagan team brushed aside the anti-Carter interpretation and simply claimed they had a public mandate for their man and their program.
What gave force and legitimacy to the Reagan claim was the dramatic Republican takeover of the Senate for the first time since 1954. A stunning Republican net gain of twelve seats in the Senate and thirty-three in the House filled the air with Republican talk of a grand political realignment: the Republican dream of replacing the Democrats as the nation’s majority party. The Democrats, although still clinging to a fifty-one-vote majority in the House, were shattered and confused; they were in no frame of mind to dispute Reagan’s claim of a political mandate.
Republican control of the Senate was vital, moreover, to Reagan’s agenda game. Other recent Republican presidents had lacked that advantage. In the late 1950s, Eisenhower had to bargain with Democratic congressional leaders in order to get his proposals moving in Congress. In 1969, Nixon had trouble moving his congressional agenda largely because the Democrats controlled both Senate and House, and they opposed Nixon. Without the political anchor of a Republican Senate, the Reagan team could have organized the administration and then found itself at the mercy of a Democratic Congress. The president could have bills landing on his desk for signature or veto at the whim of the opposition and not according to his timing. Congress would dominate the agenda. The media would cover not a dominant president but a rebellious Congress, as it had under President Ford. With the Senate in Republican hands, the White House could develop timetables with Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker for its priorities and force the Democrats in the House to respond.
What is more, the political setting favored Reagan’s boldness. The powers of the presidency seemed at low ebb, and the nation yearned for a strong leader. The wellsprings of public confidence in government had nearly run dry. Across the land, there was a palpable longing for America to regain control of its destiny. For a decade, the seemingly endless agony of Vietnam had sapped the nation’s vitality and morale. Iran’s seizure of fifty-two American hostages had sharpened the pain of national humiliation; the hostages became a concrete metaphor for the nation’s sense of impotence.
Watergate had undermined public confidence in politics, and congressional assertiveness had thrown the presidency on the defensive. Some people were saying the government was in such trouble that the American political system had to be changed. Former Treasury Secretary John Connally proposed a six-year term to strengthen the president’s hand. Lloyd Cutler, Carter’s White House Counsel, urged that the president, vice president, and House members run on a “team ticket” in order to provide a more unified government. Some commentators worried that power had become so fragmented, and special interests so powerful, that the nation had become ungovernable. People wanted strong leadership.
Finally, Reagan was able to claim a mandate because the intellectual initiative had passed from the Democrats to the Republicans—and speci
fically to conservatives. Ideas do matter in politics. Commanding the intellectual initiative was a central source of political strength for Reagan. Conservative think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research and the Heritage Foundation, both in Washington, and the Hoover Institution in Stanford, California, had been pouring out policy prescriptions and policymakers for the new administration. Young Turk Republicans, such as Representative Jack Kemp of Buffalo and David Stockman, were preaching a new economic gospel.
In short, Reaganism profited from an intellectual vaccuum in Washington. There was a general loss of faith in the old assumptions and the old political prescriptions. Deficit-spending Keynesian economics had been politically discredited; so had the big-government approach of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs. American politics seemed to have gone off track, its direction no longer clear. Three presidents had ventured forth to do battle with the twin-headed monster of inflation and stagnant growth—nicknamed stagflation—and had ultimately been devoured by that dragon. The nation sickly careened from one malaise to the other. America’s aging industrial plants and stodgy managerial habits were losing out to foreign competitors.
The country and many politicians were ready to try new answers. The rumble of new thunder had come in 1978 with California’s tax revolt. A popular referendum passed Proposition Thirteen, slashing state property taxes in half. A year or two before Reagan arrived in the White House, the power game in Washington began to shift. Even traditional Democrats such as House Speaker Tip O’Neill and Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd had pressed multibillion-dollar budget cuts on President Carter in 1980, feeling Carter’s budget cutting was inadequate. Shrinking government, or rather slowing its growth, was fashionable.
And on national-security issues, the relentless Soviet strategic buildup during the 1970s had created a strong prodefense mood; many politicians feared the Kremlin was aiming for nuclear superiority. With the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, Carter began pushing his own strategic buildup. The political climate was receptive to Reagan’s message.
Power Game Page 47