Power Game

by Hedrick Smith

  “In the old days, it was show horses versus workhorses in Congress,” commented Thomas Mann, executive director of the American Political Science Association. “If you wanted to get something done, you had to work inside the legislature. And the show horses were just posturing to the public. That’s changed. Now, it’s seen that playing the media is an important resource in passing legislation. Serious members understand that they have to sell their story outside of the institution to have an impact inside it. They mobilize constituencies and communicate to each other through the media.

  “The Democratic leadership thinks long and hard about how to mobilize public support. That is a change, and O’Neill as the point man ought to get credit. O’Neill in effect ushered the House into a much more public posture. The Republicans saw O’Neill as a perfect foil, a perfect stereotype to hit in the media. But in time they found out he could use it, too. He had a way of reaching outside the House, a certain sincerity and consistency in his beliefs that communicated to the public.”26

  O’Neill’s most dramatic evolution came in the media game. He became the first media speaker. After his drubbings in 1981, he took on Tony Coelho’s media coach—Chris Matthews. “He rolled up his sleeves, those huge arms of his, just sat there, and looked at me like I was a stranger, a guy from a new era,” Matthews recalled. “He looked me in the eye and he said, ‘Tell me what I’m doing wrong and what I’m doing right. Let’s have a little conversation.’ And he basically listened. But he said, ‘You know, an old dog can learn new tricks.’ It was an amazing meeting.”27

  The media game was hard because O’Neill had always been shy of cameras. “They used to say, you know O’Neill, you know he’s big and fat and overweight, and he’s got gray hair and a bulbous nose and cabbage ears—he’s afraid of television,” the speaker admitted. “I never was afraid of the television. I always figure—anytime that I’m on television—I set the agenda here [in Congress]. I know more about the Congress than anybody up here.” But his defensive tone betrayed that old shyness.

  As speaker, O’Neill mostly ducked the Sunday talk shows, wary of a half hour’s steady exposure. Reporters liked him but knew he fractured grammar. In O’Neill argot, Reagan’s talk of a voluntary Social Security program came out as “Social Security volunteer”; the Nicaraguan rebels were not always contras but sometimes contadoras (nickname of the Central American group of mediators). O’Neill rarely gave the Democratic response to Reagan’s nationally televised addresses but tapped others.

  But O’Neill’s daily press conferences became his platform for attacking Reagan and setting out Democratic priorities. With Matthews crafting darts for O’Neill to toss at Reagan, O’Neill drew a good crowd of reporters. Television crews would catch him in the morning arriving at the Capitol. His jabs at “Beverly Hills budgets” and at other “lemons of Reaganomics” became political staples. By one count, he appeared on the nightly network news shows 120 times a year, three or four times as often his predecessors, Carl Albert and John McCormack.28

  With greater visibility, O’Neill became a more formidable figure, influencing the House as much by his public line as by institutional powers. Tom Foley, from Spokane, Washington, then Democratic whip, was fond of saying, “Sam Rayburn could have walked down the streets of Spokane without anybody noticing him, but Tip O’Neill couldn’t do that.” In 1981, the number of Americans who recognized the speaker shot up from forty-five percent early in the year to eighty percent in the fall, according to opinion polls. That did not put him on a par with Reagan, but it gave him national clout to press the Democrats’ case.

  O’Neill also learned from Reagan’s media game that a simple thematic message is vital. Normally, the opposition in Congress is a caterwauling babble. But by late 1981, O’Neill was framing a Democratic counterattack around the social and economic impact of Reagan’s program. He was setting up issues for the 1982 election, to protect the Democratic majority and blunt Republican realignment. “Fairness” was the theme that emerged from O’Neill’s skull sessions with staff and pollsters. The speaker pounced on Reagan as a foe of little people after Reagan’s bid to cut Social Security benefits—an issue which the Democrats milked hard in 1982. In the final 1981 budget vote, two or three dozen Republicans had voted to eliminate the minimum Social Security benefit, and Democrats used those votes against those Republicans in the 1982 campaign. On tax cuts, O’Neill and Rostenkowski had worked to make the Democratic bill better than Reagan’s bill for middle-income families with taxable incomes under $50,000. They called that the “$50,000 question,” arguing that Reagan’s tax bill tilted in favor of the rich. By fall 1982, the Democrats tied these issues together with national campaign ads declaring: “It’s unfair. It’s Republican.”

  At the high tide of Reaganism in August 1981, O’Neill’s team was preparing to turn legislative losses into campaign advantages. That is a classic opposition-game tactic: Make the White House pay when its victories bring bad consequences. “A recession brought about by tight money is at hand,” Kirk O’Donnell predicted in a strategy memo to O’Neill on August 4. “The economy is no longer our burden [emphasis added],” O’Donnell advised. “It is a Republican Economy. The economic program is uniquely Reagan’s and his party’s. By not choosing to compromise with House Democrats, Reagan has assumed total responsibility for economic recovery.”29 O’Donnell cited NBC polls indicating that American voters were already having second thoughts about Reagan’s moves. The polls had shown fifty-eight-percent support for the Reagan program in May, but only thirty-eight-percent support in July. O’Donnell urged that Democratic-led committees hold hearings around the country to generate news coverage about ill effects of Reagan’s budget cutbacks in housing and education. It was a new game: The media presidency had spawned a media-oriented opposition.

  On the advice of pollsters such as Peter Hart, Pat Caddell, Bill Hamilton, and Dottie Lynch, the speaker began attacking Reagan as Herbert Hoover with a smile. That was an important tactical shift. O’Neill’s strategists had concluded that the middle class was far more worried about recession than budget cuts. Hoover carried echoes of Depression. By late 1981, O’Neill was charging Reagan with pursuing the “same old trickle-down tax policies” of Hoover and Coolidge and turning “an economic recovery into an economic disaster for millions of American workers.” O’Neill sharpened his class attack on Reagan’s tax cut as a windfall for the rich while the poor were getting socked by budget cuts. Reagan, he allowed, “is warm and congenial and a genuinely attractive personality. Unfortunately for Americans there is nothing warm and congenial about his policies. His policies hurt people.” With an economic downturn visible on the horizon, O’Neill accused Reagan of fighting inflation with a deliberate recession.

  In the inside game, O’Neill sought to heal his party’s rifts. In midsummer, mainstream Democrats had been demanding punishment of the Boll Weevils who had defected to Reagan’s cause. By fall, fifty loyal Democrats petitioned the leadership to discipline fifty renegades. Instead, O’Neill and Majority Leader Jim Wright granted a political amnesty. Much later, Phil Gramm and Kent Hance, the two Texas Democrats who had connived with the Reagan White House, were deprived of their choice committee posts. But in general the defectors were invited back into the fold. Said Wright, “We welcome the sinners back.”

  1982: The Confrontation Game

  O’Neill was now pursuing a second goal in his opposition game. The first was to protect his party’s base; the second was to gain enough leverage to force Reagan to bargain with him or to retreat on policy—to dent Reagan’s image of invincibility. Gradually, shrewdly, O’Neill was regaining strength. Each step was crucial—allowing Reagan’s program a fast legislative track, pushing Democratic alternatives, moving to unify House Democrats, taking the president head-on in the media. Finally, rising recession and Wall Street’s sinking confidence in what O’Neill derisively labeled “Reaganomics” had forced Reagan to recognize that he needed O’Neill politically and to try to
bargain with the speaker. The politics of patience had paid off.

  Early in 1982, the president approved three-cornered negotiations between the White House, the Senate Republican leadership, and the House Democratic leadership to seek a genuine bipartisan budget to curb runaway deficits and to calm Wall Street. Reagan and O’Neill stayed in the background while their lieutenants labored from January through April 1982. Always, the negotiations foundered on Social Security, taxes, and defense.

  When all else had failed, the president and the speaker met face to face to try to break the deadlock. The public, its hopes fanned by the drama built in the press, puts great stock in “summit meetings,” expecting leaders to break through deadlocks and strike agreements. It does happen that way—but rarely. There is a much better chance for success for top leaders when their aides have made headway and all that is needed is a final push for full agreement. Moreover, bipartisanship does not spring up instantly between two adversaries. It has to be patiently nurtured, as President Eisenhower had nurtured it with Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson in their private talks.

  Reagan had not laid that groundwork with O’Neill. Since the inauguration, they had had only a couple of private encounters. Once in 1981, the president and Nancy Reagan had a gracious private dinner for the speaker and Millie O’Neill. The second time was the speaker’s sixty-ninth birthday on December 9, 1981; Reagan had him to lunch with only three aides, Jim Baker, Mike Deaver and Ken Duberstein. No politics or policies came up. They were just two Irishmen swapping stories until Reagan wistfully looked at his watch as if to say, “I don’t want this to stop. Why do we have to go back and run the country?” They walked to the elevator, arms on each other’s shoulders.30

  But that personal warmth was gone when they met head to head on April 27, 1982, in the President’s Room of the Capitol. The air was thick with distrust. Places had been set for them side by side, but the speaker—maintaining a posture of equality and the politics of confrontation—moved his chair on the other side of the table, opposite Reagan. Then the two men squabbled about what aides could be present. O’Neill, who was accompanied by Majority Leader Jim Wright and Rules Committee Chairman Richard Boiling, wanted to add his aide, Ari Weiss. Reagan, who had come with Ed Meese and Jim Baker, added David Stockman and Treasury Secretary Don Regan. Majority Leader Howard Baker and Reagan’s close friend, Paul Laxalt of Nevada, represented the Senate.

  Each leader wanted compromise from the other. Reagan was looking for O’Neill’s willingness to cut social programs and Social Security COLAs. O’Neill wanted Reagan to roll back some of his 1981 tax cuts and his proposed increases on defense. Both men entered the arena warily. Aides told me that neither had much desire for the meeting; both had to be coaxed into going to avoid the public appearance of blocking agreement. Their private exchange echoed their public confrontations.31

  After a rambling review of the spring’s negotiations, Reagan said he understood there were areas “where a little bit of give on everyone’s part could resolve the issue.”

  But O’Neill, still burning from last year’s defeats, was not going to let 1981 pass unmentioned. He wanted first “to evaluate the 1981 cuts and how they affect this year’s spending.” Last year’s budget, he asserted, was unfair to many Americans.

  Reagan, obviously nettled, parried firmly: “Our budget cuts have not done damage to America.”

  “Mr. President,” O’Neill shot back, “the damage is that you have a rapid defense buildup and massive tax cuts.”

  Reagan, his voice rising in anger, tartly reminded O’Neill of Jack Kennedy, who had held O’Neill’s congressional seat before him. Said Reagan: “Our defense spending as a percentage of the budget is much lower than in Kennedy’s days.”

  O’Neill shifted to another pet line of attack, accusing Reagan of “just advocating trickle-down economics” and putting the nation in a “fiscal mess” and the economy into a downspin. “If we don’t have agreement, there will be massive deficits,” O’Neill declared. “If you’re going to be in cement [unyielding], we are not going to get a budget.”

  Reagan’s response was equally sharp. “I’ve heard all that crap,” he burst out. “You have the first actual deflation in seventeen years. Interest rates are down.” And he ticked off gains from his program.

  For nearly two hours, they swung at each other—“big roundhouse exchanges,” Stockman called them, “about who betrayed the Roosevelt revolution and what was the Roosevelt revolution. Tip would say what made America great was the New Deal and all of the things that we have brought to the American people: Now everybody has a retirement pension; now everybody can go to college; people can get day care; they have health insurance. And then the president would say that we’ve been going to hell in a handbasket since 1932 when we started deficit spending and got government in all kinds of things it shouldn’t be in.”32

  The argument never got nasty, but it was frequently abrasive. It got hung up over who was responsible for the “going-in” paper setting out a possible compromise budget formula, including a controversial five-percent ceiling on Social Security COLAs. Stockman had prepared the paper, picking up something once suggested by Boiling. Had the mood been right, it could have been a joint proposal. But it was a political orphan—it carried no one’s name, least of all Reagan’s. The mutual mistrust made it the devil at the critical moment.

  Boiling smelled a political trap. O’Neill felt Reagan was trying to avoid taking political responsibility, and he asked whether Reagan was offering a Social Security proposal.

  Reagan, also fearful of being trapped, dodged the question. Instead of urging a joint approach, he protected himself. “I didn’t put this proposal on the table,” he said. “This is the proposal that came from Congress.”

  O’Neill stiffened. If anything was to be done on Social Security, he asserted, it had to be done by both sides. He paused and waited. When Reagan did not seize that opportunity, O’Neill pulled back. “If the president isn’t putting this on the table, then I’m taking ours off the table,” O’Neill asserted.

  From then on, things went downhill. They all took a recess. The Democrats came back angry that reporters had been told by White House officials that the Democrats were proposing cuts in Social Security COLAs. Howard Baker, trying to salvage the bipartisan approach, came up with a complicated, staggered freeze in COLAs in exchange for a matching delay in Reagan’s tax cuts. “It feels like passing a pineapple,” said Reagan, who did not want to give an inch on his tax cuts, “but I’m willing to do it.” But it was an uneven deal. Financially the Baker plan had much greater long-term impact on Social Security COLAs than on tax cuts, and the Democrats rejected it as unequal.

  Jim Wright ventured another idea—leaving out Social Security entirely, but postponing Reagan’s tax cut for a year in exchange for domestic spending cuts and other measures.

  Reagan erupted. “You can get me to crap a pineapple”—he grimaced—“but you can’t get me to crap a cactus.”

  Silence. It was over. Neither Reagan nor O’Neill wanted to to get up first and take the blame for ending the meeting. Jim Baker broke the deadlock: “Let’s all get up at the same time.”

  The session had been ill fated. O’Neill complained that Reagan was never serious, and cited Donald Regan’s handing the president a prepared press statement as they left the room—evidence of advance planning for failure. The Republicans were equally critical of O’Neill as aggressively partisan and unyielding. Obviously, neither side was ready yet for a grand compromise on terms that would satisfy the other.

  “They were just two Irishmen going at each other,” Howard Baker told his aides later. “There was no way they were going to agree. They were not even close all day.”

  Eventually, with recession worsening, O’Neill got his way. Reagan had to give ground to try to tame the deficit. Congress took the initiative, Tip O’Neill allying with Howard Baker and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Robert Dole, to produce a three-year $98 bill
ion tax increase. It repealed important parts of Reagan’s 1981 tax cut, especially on the business side, and made cuts of roughly $150 billion in domestic programs. Reagan mistakenly thought he was getting a three-for-one deal, three dollars in budget cuts for every one dollar in tax increases. Actually, Stockman’s fancy arithmetic made it look that way to Reagan—a fateful problem because it blocked future attempts at a grand compromise.* Reagan complained for five years Congress gypped him in 1982. But Dole, O’Neill, and Howard Baker all insisted to me that Congress came up with the promised budget cuts. Stockman agreed. “It was totally a myth that we got gypped,” he said, “Totally.”33

  As opposition leader, O’Neill got the satisfaction of substantive triumph in 1982: Reagan’s swallowing a huge partial rollback of his 1981 tax cuts. That so enraged ardent Reaganites that half of the House Republicans voted against the big tax bill, despite Reagan’s backing it. Instead of Democrats being badly split as in 1981, Republicans were now factionally divided. Quick with public relations gimmickry, the White House hailed the tax increase as a Reagan victory—though Reagan had resisted tax increases for months. Substantively this was O’Neill’s triumph. His opposition game was working.

  In the 1982 elections, with the country plunging into the deepest recession since the 1930s, Democrats regained twenty-six House seats. They knocked off a batch of freshman Republicans who had voted loyally with Reagan in 1981. The Democratic comeback cooled Republican talk of realignment, for the time being. For Reagan, the 1982 election was a political low point; for O’Neill it was sweet vindication for his politics of confrontation.

  1985: Democratic Damage Control

  Two years later, after the drubbing that Reagan handed Walter Mondale in 1984, Tip O’Neill shifted to a cannier opposition game: selective confrontation. He did not fight Reagan head-on across the board as in 1981–82. He picked fights carefully and thereby raised his odds of winning, and he pulled many of the 1981 Democratic defectors back into the party fold. In early 1985, the speaker lay back in wait, but his tactics got more aggressive in the fall, when he zinged Reagan on South Africa, trade, the MX missile, and aid to the Nicaraguan contras.