Power Game

by Hedrick Smith

  For one thing, they wanted Reagan’s promise to pursue build-down vigorously. For another, they wanted assurances that American arms proposals would promote the safer single-warhead Midgetman and penalize multiwarhead missiles. Third, they wanted Reagan to make arms concessions in areas where the United States was ahead of Moscow: strategic bombers carrying nuclear-tipped cruise missiles. Chief arms negotiator Ed Rowny was talking about building up to eight thousand air-launched cruise missiles, nearly four times the level permitted by the 1979 SALT II treaty. To achieve progress in the arms talks, the gang of six argued, Reagan would have to trade off areas of American advantage for areas of Soviet advantage, and not just demand Soviet concessions.

  The White House found it hard to accept trading American advantages in bombers and cruise missiles for Soviet advantages in ICBMs. Reagan always drew a distinction between “fast flyers”—meaning missile warheads that can cross oceans in thirty minutes—and “slow flyers”—meaning bombers and cruise missiles which take hours. Bill Clark tried a fuzzy-sounding proposal on the gang of six on September 30, but Cohen brushed it aside as “weasel worded.”

  “That isn’t good enough, it’s no commitment at all,” he complained. “It’s got to be made a lot firmer.”54

  When Clark tried coaxing, Cohen refused to be budged.

  “We can’t satisfy this guy,” said Clark in some irritation.

  “Not with crap like that,” Cohen retorted.

  Ron Lehman, an aide to Clark, suggested that the administration had gone the last mile; Cohen shot back: “You’d better not have, or you’re not going to have me with you.”

  At another point, Nunn declared. “We’re in a position to provide support now, but not if the administration doesn’t keep its part of the bargain.”

  Three days later, Reagan himself met the gang of six. Again, they pressed him to pledge that his negotiators would “seek” trade-offs of American bomber cuts for Soviet missile cuts. A new White House memo said only that American negotiators would “explore” the subject. Cohen was still dissatisfied.

  “I want the administration to actually go out and do this,” he insisted. “I know what explore means in diplomatic language. It’s like mercury on a mirror. Nothing gets resolved.”

  To bridge the gap, Ron Lehman suggested saying that the administration would “negotiate” a bomber-missile trade-off. Reagan bought it; so did the others. Once again, the moderates had shifted Reagan’s stance—at least on paper.

  The very next day, Reagan announced that he was incorporating a “series of build-down proposals” into his strategic-arms package and “we’re also prepared to negotiate limits on bomber and air-launch cruise missile limits below SALT II levels.” That meant about two thousand, a far cry from Ed Rowny’s eight thousand. Also, Reagan said he recognized “there will have to be trade-offs” between areas of Soviet and American advantage. His public statement sending American negotiators back to Geneva was a paean to bipartisan consensus. Pleased by those shifts, the House moderates helped defeat an attempt by liberal Democrats to block initial MX production. On November 18, 1983, the House voted $2.1 billion for production of the first twenty-one MX missiles.

  That was the high-water mark for the trading game of the House Democratic moderates, for partnership across party and philosophical lines is hard to sustain: The moderates felt their arms proposals never really got a fair hearing in Geneva. “They were dumped in the Atlantic on the way over to Geneva,” Cohen groused. The Russians, frustrated by American deployment of intermediate-range missiles in Europe, walked out of the arms talks, not to return until 1985. By then, President Reagan’s commitment to strategic defenses had become the central issue, overshadowing build-down and the single-warhead missile.

  By 1984, the collaboration of House moderates and the White House collapsed under the partisan pressures of an election year. No issue exists in a vacuum. Several key participants, including Brent Scowcroft, felt the fragile partnership on MX was derailed by Reagan’s zigzags on the use of American Marines in Lebanon and Speaker O’Neill’s feeling that Reagan double-crossed him. In 1983, O’Neill had prevented the MX from becoming a highly flammable partisan issue. But in 1984 and 1985, O’Neill and his House Democrats beat Reagan on the MX, and there is reason to believe that happened because O’Neill felt burned on Lebanon.

  In the fall of 1983, the speaker had taken the heat for Reagan by getting the House to pass a resolution authorizing deployment of the Marines for eighteen months, O’Neill faced down sharp criticism from other Democrats, saying he had pledged Reagan his support. It was a mark of O’Neill’s traditionalism, his loyalty to the presidency on foreign policy, wherever possible. Reagan and McFarlane convinced him the Marines were on a peacekeeping mission that would stabilize the pro-Western Lebanese government and lead to withdrawal of Syrian and Israeli armies from Lebanon.

  “They hoodwinked me into going along with a bipartisan matter to put the troops in,” O’Neill recalled bitterly. “But they never told me the Marines were there for guarding of the airport. They were there as a symbol. Everything was supposed to have been put together and peace was going to come, but it never happened.”55

  O’Neill’s disillusionment deepened after the bombing of the Marine barracks on October 23, 1983, that took 241 lives. For several weeks, the White House denounced pressures for withdrawing the Marines as cowardly “cut and run” tactics. At the White House on January 25, 1984, O’Neill and Reagan got into a shouting match over the situation. Six days later, O’Neill and other Democratic leaders formally urged the “prompt and orderly withdrawal” of the Marines. The speaker told me he had protected Reagan as long as possible, and he went along with a withdrawal resolution only after being tipped off by a high administration official that Reagan had already approved a phased pullout and “the orders had been given and that it had been settled.”56 Reagan reportedly signed the pullout order on February 1—the very same day that White House spokesman Larry Speakes questioned the “patriotism” of Democrats calling for a pullout.

  What enraged O’Neill was a personal slam at him by President Reagan in The Wall Street Journal on February 2. Asked about O’Neill’s call for a pullout, Reagan snapped, “He may be ready to surrender, but I’m not.” Then he added: “If we get out, that means the end of Lebanon. And if we get out, it also means the end of any ability on our part to bring about an overall peace in the Middle East. And I would have to say that it means a pretty disastrous result for us worldwide.”

  Six days later, on February 8, the White House officially announced that Reagan had ordered the fourteen hundred Marines in Beirut to begin what was termed a phased redeployment—taking them out of Lebanon. The incident deeply embittered O’Neill. He operated by the old Irish school politics which say: Don’t get mad, get even.

  Politically, the MX was a good issue for O’Neill’s settling the score

  with Reagan. Since mid-1983, the pro-MX majority had shrunk. In the election year, O’Neill could turn up the partisan heat. Swinging a handful of votes was enough to fence the funds for MX missiles in 1984. The centrist swing group was dwindling. Foley and Cohen were unhappy with Reagan’s arms positions. Others, such as Nunn, Aspin, and Gore, felt gulled by the Pentagon’s endless delays on Midgetman. It took until December 17, 1986, for the administration to move ahead on full engineering and development of Midgetman. By then, the positive-sum game had collapsed. Reacting to Reagan’s failure to keep his part of the bargain, both Nunn and Aspin helped impose a ceiling of fifty MXs in 1985. Both sides, White House and moderates, accused the other of welshing on the deal.

  Even so, the trading game had paid off enough for both sides to get half a loaf—Reagan, fifty MXs; and the moderates, both Midgetman and some flexibility in Reagan’s arms positions.

  Rostenkowski: “To Get Along, Go Along”

  O’Neill’s head-to-head fighting with Reagan was a classic opposition game. The swapping game of the House moderates on MX illustrates a
contrary strategy. Danny Rostenkowski played a third style of opposition game on tax reform on 1985. Rostenkowski’s game was a throwback to the opposition politics of Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson with President Eisenhower. Rostenkowski found he could not force Reagan to retreat, as O’Neill had in 1982, and he could not afford to let Reagan overrun him or smother him in a Republican-run partnership that would hurt congressional Democrats with the voters.

  With the oncoming recession in 1982, O’Neill had had an advantage against Reagan; in 1983, the House “MX moderates” had a similar built-in advantage. In both cases, President Reagan had to meet the terms of the opposition. He was on the defensive, at the low ebb of his first-term power.

  But Reagan’s tide had turned by the time of the power struggle over tax reform in 1985. Reagan’s enormous landslide reelection in 1984 made him look invincible once again. Also, Rostenkowski had tried wrestling Reagan in 1981 and had been brutally rolled. As chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, the big Chicago congressman had tried to bargain, but Reagan had rebuffed him. Then he tried to compete by offering an alternative tax-cut package, but Reagan had outbid him. The battle had bruised Rostenkowski.

  In 1985, Rostenkowski was again on the defensive. The Reagan crowd, Pat Buchanan at the White House and Congressman Jack Kemp, were trumpeting tax reform as a “realigning issue,” destined to lift Republicans to national dominance.

  Tax reform, declared Republican National Chairman Frank Fahrenkopf, “will go a long way toward making the Republican Party the majority party. What we’re reaching out for is the last bulwark of the Democratic party: working people, families—especially large families—and not only ethnics but blacks, Hispanics, Catholics. This is a reach by the conservative movement to bring these people into the Republican party.”57

  Rostenkowski’s task was tricky. Tax reform appealed to him; he wanted a bill that would refurbish his image as a can-do leader who could pass big legislation. But his opposition game was aimed really at keeping Reagan from taking the lion’s share of the credit. He had to blunt the Republican drive to use tax reform to build long-term Republican appeal with the voters.

  By instinct and habit, Rostenkowski fell back on the strategy Rayburn and Johnson had used with Eisenhower. Rayburn’s motto had been “To get along, go along,” and Rostenkowski adapted it to his situation. For junior members, that meant supporting the elders and working your way up patiently through seniority. For an opposition leader facing a popular president, it meant aligning with him publicly and then quietly revamping his proposals—keeping the brand name and changing the product inside the box. Remodeling: That’s what Rostenkowski did with Reagan’s tax-reform plan. His variation of the positive-sum game was proclaiming alliance with Reagan, putting a Democratic stamp on the tax bill, and then boxing the president in to accepting policy changes.

  Success required a clever balancing act. He had to fend off schemes of rival Democrats. Liberals wanted to sock a minimum tax to corporations and use it to cut the deficit. Second, Rostenkowski had to build a committee majority, playing on personal ties and team loyalties. Sheer doggedness paid off. Third, he and his staff had to maneuver the committee to rework Reagan’s plan and give it a Democratic flavor. Fourth, he had to keep Reagan quiet, at bay, and in harness even while revolt was rumbling in the Republican ranks. And finally, when Reagan waffled and Republicans mutinied, he and Speaker O’Neill had to pressure Reagan to rescue Rostenkowski’s bill.

  As an old-breed politician with twenty-six years in Congress, Rostenkowski played a different game from the one the new-breed moderates played. His long suit is not drafting policy papers, doing TV interviews, or writing op-ed articles. Substance is not his forte. He is a vote counter, a bargainer, a tactical leader. He works the insider’s skills in caucus and committee: horse-trading and bluffing, man-to-man talk, facing down recalcitrants, parceling out plums, protecting his turf, and playing to the peculiar pride and passions that remembers feel for their committees. He admitted he would rather have become House Democratic whip than chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, but O’Neill pushed him to take the committee job.

  “I like the floor action much more,” he told me. “You know, the maneuvering around the floor, the counting heads, getting people lined up. And then the Ways and Means Chairmanship just isolated me because I’m sitting there studying, trying to understand what the hell I’m doing.”58

  Ways and Means, one of the premier committees in Congress, became the symbol of Rostenkowski’s power and the key to his game. It was what forced Reagan and Treasury Secretary James Baker to deal with him. He commanded the gates through which any tax bill had to pass. But that committee can be hard to manage; its members run the ideological gamut. Since they write tax law, they are targeted by almost every lobbying group and are prone to protect state and regional interests. Despite a 23–13 Democratic majority, the unruly committee nearly trampled Rostenkowski but he managed to ride the tiger. “He played the committee like Yehudi Menuhin plays a Stradivarius,” Henson Moore, a Louisiana Republican, remarked admiringly.59

  Outside of Washington, people pay attention less to committees than to the televised debates on the House or Senate floor. But by the time legislation hits the floor, it has been shaped in committee. Usually, only a few choices remain: an up-or-down vote or a few big amendments.

  For most members (and lobbyists), the committee is the prime arena, the focal point for influence and action. But a committee is much more: It is a political home for members of Congress, an anchor of personal definition. Committees have their own personalities and identities: Agriculture; Armed Services; Energy and Commerce; Judiciary; Interior and Insular Affairs. They are hubs of members’ lives, the focus of work and ideas, the sources of power and advancement, cozy dens of camaraderie. Politicians gravitate to committees of interest to them personally or to their regions. Then, they spend ten years, fifteen years, their entire careers on one or two committees with the same colleagues. They virtually live together. Relations can be close or fractious. A chairman can be a boss, a team coach, a father figure, or his members can defy or ignore him.

  Rostenkowski—everyone calls him Rosty or Danny—runs the Ways and Means Committee like an extension of Chicago ward politics. Rosty is not only the congressman from Illinois’s 8th District, an ethnic (largely Polish) blue-collar enclave in Northwest Chicago. He is also the committeeman or boss of Chicago’s 32nd ward. His dad, Joe Rostenkowski, was the ward boss, too. As a boy, Rosty used to help his dad deliver Christmas packages to the needy, and some folks would write Joe Rostenkowski for President on their ballots. Rosty still lives in the brick home built by his grandfather across from St. Stanislaus Kostka Church. His wife and four daughters never moved to Washington, and Rosty commuted home on weekends.

  In an era of video politicians who rarely work the street or step inside a political clubhouse, Dan Rostenkowski is one of a declining breed: an organization politician. He was schooled in the machine politics of Chicago’s big boss, the late Mayor Richard Daley, who tapped Danny for the Illinois legislature and then for Congress. Rosty follows the rules of organization politics: A handshake is a firm deal; a politician’s word is his bond; play with your own team; never forget who crosses you.

  Rosty is a likable pile driver: six foot two, over two hundred pounds, with the brawn and force of a Chicago Bears linebacker. He has a gravel voice and sometimes the syntax of a stevedore. But he dresses Ivy League, in a trench coat, charcoal gray suit, a rep tie and button-down shirt. Now in his late fifties, his rusty hair is thinning, and when he smiles, his face creases and his eyes become little slits squinting beside his ski-jump Bob Hope nose. You notice his hands: They are big, strong, and constantly in motion, rapping the table, gesturing, pointing, persuading, directing. He acts out scenes. In a restaurant, telling me how he handled one foe, he reached across the table to jab a large index finger into my chest, and declared, “I’m targeting tax reform.” Or as he told how H
ouse Republicans opposed it, up went his big basketball hands, palms out, fingers spread, defying passage. He is such a natural ham that I asked whether he had done any acting.

  “Yeah,” he said, chuckling. He had at St. John’s Military Academy in Wisconsin. “I was never good. I was a football player and a basketball player, and the drama coach, he thought it was good to have all the basketball players and the football players do some theater. So we did. We were called the Swagger Stick Club.”60

  After two years in the Army during World War II, Rosty got a shot at playing professional baseball with the Philadelphia Athletics. At twenty-three, he was in the Florida Grapefruit League, and his dad wanted him to come home.

  “Are you gonna be Babe Ruth?” he needled Rosty. “Are you gonna be Lou Gehrig? You’re a late swinger. Forget it. You can’t hit the goddamn golf ball. Come on home and go to school. Your mother’s sick.”

  Rosty gave up baseball, went home, finished Loyola University, and went into politics. His decades in the Daley machine made him a staunch Democratic partisan. Ironically, they also made him receptive to alliance with Reagan, for that experience imbedded not only partisanship but awe of authority, especially of the presidency. Rosty was immensely flattered when, in 1981, Reagan shrewdly rescheduled his first State of the Union address to accommodate Rostenkowski, who had a long-standing speaking engagement in Chicago. Despite their clashes in 1981, Rosty spoke proudly of working with the president on trade legislation and aid to the Caribbean basin. As one pol sizing up another, he found Reagan an awesome stump politician. “He makes all the right moves,” Rosty gushed. In his macho way, he bragged about dealing with Reagan man to man on tax reform.