Power Game

by Hedrick Smith

  In turn, candidates have sometimes become creatures of their campaign Svengalis. In The Candidate, a movie in which Robert Redford plays a media-manufactured candidate for the U.S. Senate, Redford turns to his campaign manager the morning after his victory and asks rather pathetically, “What do I do now?”

  If that lampoon was an exaggeration, real politicians have their own bitter assessments of the harvest of the current campaign system. Warren Rudman, an able and outspoken Senate Republican, offered this tart judgment: “One third of the members of the U.S. Senate know why they’re here, know what they want to do, and know how to do it. The second third know why they’re here, know what they want to do, but don’t know how to do it. And that last third—I’m not sure why they’re here.”32

  As Rudman was implying, some members just carry on campaigning in office because it’s what they know how to do. No one can discipline them but the voters. And clearly, as election campaigns have become less party based and more candidate centered, the winners behave independently in office. The highly independent campaign style of the political new breed makes them less pliant to party leaders in Congress.

  Finally, the centrifugal forces of PACs have helped seduce politicians away from the cohesion of political parties. The PACs are a potent force both in campaigns and in the new lobbying game. Some PACs reinforce parties, especially big-labor PACs, which regularly line up behind the Democratic party or the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and corporate PACs, which steadily back the Republican party.

  But most PACs exert cross-pressures, independent of party. They finance members of committees that are of special interest to the PACs’ constituencies, regardless of party, and then lobby these members hard after the election. PAC special interest politics work against the general interest compromises and coalition building of parties. These pressures compound the fragmentation of power in Congress created by the reforms of the 1970s. In sum, as Leon Billings, former executive director of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, put it: “PACs have forced members of Congress to serve too many masters in the constant search for more and more TV advertising dollars.”33

  Under such pressures and with the independent style of campaigning, new-breed politicians get more payoff with the voters by playing the media game than by being team players. The main test of success becomes exposure, not legislation. In Sundquist’s telling comment the new-breed politicians are “self-selected, self-organized, self-propelled, self-reliant, with no habit of being deferential to the established and the powerful and they will not be so in Congress, either in committee or on the floor. When there were enough of this type of member in Congress, the nature of the place was bound to change.”34

  The Impact on Washington

  From their nadir in the 1970s, the political parties have made a modest comeback in their national organizations, though not at the grass roots among the voters. During the Reagan era, the national parties—especially the Republicans—became big-budget service organizations for their candidates. They have raised money, financed get-out-the-vote drives at the state level, paid for opinion polling and training for congressional candidates, and mounted multimillion-dollar nationwide media campaigns. Both have erected and equipped lavish new media centers on Capitol Hill to help their incumbents play video politics. In the 1985–86 election cycle, the two major parties raised about $260 million at the national level.35

  As a polarizing political figure, President Reagan has produced strong partisan voting in Congress at times, rallying Republicans and provoking majorities of Democrats into opposing his assaults on social programs. Reagan was confronted by two partisan speakers of the House, Tip O’Neill and Jim Wright. Moreover, the decline of the moderate wing of the Republican party once represented by Governor Nelson Rockefeller and Senator Jacob Javits of New York has given the congressional Republican party a more consistently conservative hue. Institutionally, the party caucuses—especially the House Democratic Caucus—have grown somewhat stronger than in the early 1970s.

  But as many politicians and political scientists have observed, the rehabilitation of the party system has a long way to go. If parties are raising a lot of money, PACs are raising even more: $353 million in the 1985–86 election cycle, about $100 million more than the two national parties. And recently, PACs have provided a larger share of congressional candidates’ campaign money (twenty-eight percent) than the national political parties (an estimated ten to fifteen percent).36 As Larry Sabato commented in PAC Power, “the parties remain less influential than they would have been otherwise because alternative sources of funding are available to candidates. And the most available ‘alternate source’ for incumbents … is in PACs.”37

  In Congress, the perpetual disarray of filibustering, delaying tactics, score upon score of amendments, and turf squabbles indicates that partisan ties are insufficient for party leaders to discipline the legislative process. On spending bills, Congress gets so bogged down every year that it gives up on its regular appropriations process and resorts to one omnibus catch-all bill (in part because President Reagan contributes to the deadlock). Sometimes, Speaker O’Neill would achieve party unity less by leading than by sensing where his rebellious troops were headed (as on Gramm-Rudman) and rushing to find the front of the parade. The Senate regularly gets so waylaid by tactical quorum calls, filibusters, and delaying amendments by unruly factions that Missouri Democrat Tom Eagleton protested in late 1985 that “the Senate is now in the state of incipient anarchy.”38

  “There is a breakdown in the Congressional machinery,” moaned David Stockman. “There are 100 gauntlets and 1,000 vetoes on Capitol Hill. You simply can’t sustain any kind of policy through that process, whether it’s the conduct of foreign affairs, the shaping of the budget or the management of the fiscal affairs of the nation, because there are 180 subcommittees with overlapping jurisdictions and huge staffs.”39

  Some experienced politicians, including former President Ford, who spent a lifetime in the House, fault weak party ties, as well as institutional fragmentation. The leaders, they say, lack the lever of party discipline to impose sufficient order.

  “Today, a President really does not have the kind of clout with the Congress that he had 30 years ago, even in matters that affect national security,” Ford lamented in 1980. “There is not the kind of teamwork that existed in the ’50s, even if the President and a majority of the Congress belong to the same party. The main reason for this change is the erosion of the leadership in the Congress. Party leaders have lost the power to tell their troops that something is really significant and to get them to respond accordingly.”40

  The loosening of party unity hobbled President Carter too. He was constantly embattled by fellow Democrats, delaying and dismantling his energy program, pushing through costly water projects, giving him an aircraft carrier he did not want, imposing tighter budget cuts than he had planned. Theoretically, party ties should have helped Carter, but the climate of independence was at its peak in the late 1970s. Moreover, congressional Democrats felt no political debt to Carter. Many pointed out that they had run independently of Carter in the 1976 campaign, and pulled larger votes in their districts than he had. So they felt confident to defy him when it suited them.

  Ronald Reagan used the appeal of partisanship more effectively than his predecessors, especially in 1981 when plenty of Republicans in Congress felt that Reagan had helped them win office. Reagan’s legislative triumphs in 1981 rode heavily on the back of Republican spirit and unity. The Republican party had run an unusually unified campaign in 1980, and not only the new president but fresh Republican shock troops in the House and Senate came into office proclaiming common themes. Republican campaign unity produced cohesion in government.

  But 1981 was a halcyon period; after that, Reagan had increasing troubles passing his program. In 1982, half of the House Republicans revolted against Reagan when he backed a tax increase; others helped override his veto of a supplemental appropriations bill. I
n 1985, the fractious House Republicans blocked Reagan’s top domestic priority, tax reform, from coming to a vote. Even with a humbling personal plea, Reagan got support from well under half of his troops on a mere procedural motion. Democrats provided Reagan’s victory. Year after year, his budgets were ignored or rejected by Republicans, once receiving only one Republican vote. Senate Republicans took their own budget initiatives in 1985, fighting Reagan much of that year.

  The Democratic victory in 1986, regaining control of the Senate, was not only a personal rebuff to Reagan but also to his ability as president to make government work effectively, on his terms. Quite obviously, a politically crafty president can use the promise of giving or withholding campaign support as leverage with Congress. But if his campaign support does not help his partisans, as Reagan’s failed to do in 1986, the president is sorely weakened in Congress, after the election is over. Indeed, in early 1987, thirteen of Reagan’s Republican senators looked the President in the eye and turned him down when he wanted just one more vote to prevent the congressional override of his veto of an $87.5 billion, five-year highway bill. Later, nineteen Senate Republicans defied the president on a trade measure, sixty-seven House Republicans on catastrophic health care, and a handful of Republican senators helped block his Supreme Court nominee, Robert Bork. The election returns had shorn him of clout.

  For the task of governing, Reagan’s inability to persuade voters to put his party in stronger command—in both the 1984 and 1986 elections—has disturbing significance. “The electoral connection between Presidents and their party members in the House and Senate has been decoupled,” Anthony King, an academic specialist, observed. “Members no longer believe that their electoral fortunes are closely bound up with the President’s or even with their party’s.”41 If that remains true for future presidents, it will compound the problems of governing.

  Addressing the Senate in late 1985, Republican Senator David Durenburger of Minnesota lamented the “withering away” of political parties and appealed for steps to restore them as power centers. Durenburger linked the disunity and disarray in Congress to the highly personalized style of modern campaigns.

  “As strong party loyalties have waned, the role of independent politicians, voters, and issue-oriented activists has expanded in contemporary elections,” Durenburger declared. “There has been an explosion of organized interest groups, single issue politics, and new group-related sources of campaign finance. These are important and in some respects disturbing trends, with important implications for how Congress operates, for the messages we hear, and for the kinds of laws we enact.”

  The parties, Durenburger asserted, “play an irreplaceable role. They begin the process of building coalitions, of identifying areas of consensus, of focusing attention on priorities. Far from limiting the role of parties in our electoral process, as we have done in recent years, we should be raising and removing limitations on party contributions in campaigns.”42

  Durenburger was advocating higher campaign spending limits for parties—on the theory that if they became more important sources of funding for candidates, that would help revive the cohesive power of parties. His idea, a sound one, was that candidates more dependent on parties for campaign support are potentially more responsive to party discipline in office. Durenburger’s broad goal was to rejuvenate the party system. Implicit in his comments, and those of President Ford, is the conviction that this country needs stronger parties—and particularly a single majority party—if our government is to function more effectively. The weakening of the parties, the absence of a clear majority party, and the divided government born of ticket splitting have all fed political stalemates and popular frustrations.

  19. Our Political Disconnect: Campaigning vs. Governing

  Once he is elected president, the president’s electoral coalition has … served its purpose. The day after his election, the size of his majority is almost—if not entirely—irrelevant to his ability to govern the country.

  —Samuel Huntington, political scientist

  By now, it must be apparent that something is seriously out of kilter in our political system—between our political campaigns and the needs of government. Nowhere is that dichotomy more stark than at the presidential level. The campaign skills and forces it takes for a presidential candidate to get nominated and elected are poorly matched to what it takes to lead the government, especially a divided government.

  As James MacGregor Burns, scholar of the presidency at Williams College, observed: “There’s an increasing disparity between the tests for winning office and what’s required in governing. The kinds of quick, dextrous ploys, mainly public relations ploys, that are called for in public campaigning are a very far cry from the very solid coalition building that is needed to make this system of ours work.”1

  Above all, a presidential campaign is an exercise in image making, in symbolic politics and the politics of personality, whereas governing is the business of decision making, the work of substance and programs, and the politics of coalition building. The campaign rewards debating skills and theatrical talents: the dashing, telegenic presence, the visual media event, the memorable one-liner for TV. But governing demands people skills: the less flashy crafts of persuasion, judgment, management, and negotiation. Campaign success often turns on exploiting temporary advantage; governing success needs patient year-in, year-out consistency and pursuit of policies. It is outside politics versus inside politics.

  The contrast between the whirling, emotional world of the campaign and the unyielding, sometimes boring reality of government lies in the difference between word and deed, between the quick hit and quiet discourse: the quick hit pitched to impress a mass audience versus the quiet discourse that engages support from political peers. It is rhetoric versus reflection, polished policy recipes and clever evasions versus hard-headed ordering of priorities and uncomfortable decisions. The campaign is a fairy tale, long on promises and short on the “how” of getting there and “with whom.” The campaign thrives on polarizing issues and personalities, on projecting the romantic illusion that one leader can make all the difference. It is factional, sometimes go-it-alone politics. But again, no single leader has that much power—governing cannot succeed without teamwork and compromise.

  In the campaign game, the winning presidential candidate builds a personal organization, but the successful president must work effectively with other organizations. He must work with other factions in his party, his party’s national structure, the leadership in Congress, sometimes the opposition. Indeed, several recent presidents failed because of their inability to deal effectively with rival power centers: Kennedy and Carter unable to forge durable governing coalitions in Congress; Nixon, Johnson and Reagan, overreaching for power, usually in disregard of Congress because they did not want to deal with organized opposition or modify their positions to gain wider support. The contrast between campaigning and governing is, ultimately, the difference between stagecraft and statecraft.

  The modern campaign marathon pits candidates against each other but rarely tests the ability to govern: to manage and manipulate the multiple power centers of our system. Established power brokers are bit players in the modern presidential campaign scenario. The whole process is oriented toward television appeal, lavish media campaigns, and thematic homilies and values, rather than substantive understanding or proven prowess in moving the system. Jimmy Carter, a newcomer on the national scene, ran outside the political establishment and won the nation’s top office without any track record for national leadership except one term as governor of Georgia, endless house-to-house politicking in Iowa and New Hampshire, a something-for-everyone pitch, a look of sincerity, and a memorable television smile.

  It is a cliché, of course, but an important one, that the modern campaign is mass marketing at its most superficial. It puts a premium on the suggestive slogan, the glib answer, the symbolic backdrop. Television is its medium. Candidates must have razzle-dazzle. Borin
g is the fatal label. Programs and concepts that cannot be collapsed into a slogan or a thirty-second sound bite go largely unheard and unremembered, for what the modern campaign offers in length, it lacks in depth, like an endless weekend with no Monday morning. “What evidence do you have that you can get Congress or the Kremlin to deliver on your promises?” is the kind of hard-headed question that needs constant asking. Yet as Election Day approaches, charisma and choreography seem to matter more than substance and competence.

  “Today choosing policy advisers is insignificant compared to lining up the right pollster, media advisers, direct mail operator, fund-raiser and makeup artist,” complained former Kennedy White House aide, Theodore Sorensen. “Today policy positions are not comprehensively articulated but condensed into bumper-sticker slogans and clever TV debate ripostes that will please everyone and offend no one. Today experience and intellect are no more crucial to the multimedia campaign than the candidate’s hair, teeth, smile and dog. Today volunteers have been replaced by computerized mail, automated telephone banks and other marvels of technology in an industry that has shifted from labor intensive to capital intensive. Today the news media rarely report what the candidates are saying on the issues. They report instead on a horse race—which horse is ahead, which one has the most physical stamina, which one is lame and which one is attracting the big money.”2

  Running vs. Ruling

  It is ironic that Sorensen should raise this sad litany because his boss, Jack Kennedy, began the modern campaign game. In an article for TV Guide in November 1959, titled “A Force That Changed the Political Scene,” Kennedy argued that television would alter campaigning by putting the main emphasis on the candidate’s image. Kennedy proceeded to create a personal mystique. By marketing glamour, wit, and personal style and conveying a sense of vitality and elegance, Kennedy irrevocably transformed presidential campaigning and even the presidency. As a senator, he had a lackluster record. As a candidate he coined a slogan, The New Frontier, and then sold the gossamer promise to “get this country moving again” without signaling a clear direction or laying out a clear program. Smiling Irish Jack, with his flat Boston brogue and his glamorous youth, was the first successful presidential candidate to rely on personal appeal rather than the party organization to win the top prize.