by Jim Geraghty
“These guys?” Hargis’s eyebrows popped up. “You must have given them some song and dance, Humph.”
“Oh, you flatter me, Congressman,” said Humphrey, mugging humility. “I merely laid out the dire implications of delay on this matter, and how this particular threat to American agriculture required all deliberate speed.”
Wilkins couldn’t help himself. “You could say, now they’re Russian to find more money for it!” Humphrey shot Wilkins a silencing glare.
“Anyway, Mr. Ch—er, Congressman, I was hoping you could push through a boost in our funding.” Humphrey turned over a much shorter memo than the mountain of documents he used to strafe Bader. “You’ll find my recommended figures here, and on this sheet, you’ll see a more specific proposal. I was thinking that the community of Gail Bluff would make a fine location for a new AIS Halogeton Management Research Center.”
Wilkins had a hand in this part of the proposal; his job was to find the largest town in Hargis’s district that had not yet had any federal facility in it. The task was surprisingly difficult.
“Humphrey, you just make my day every time you come up here,” Hargis said with an approving nod. “I was just thinking about what I could do for all the poor folk in Gail Bluff looking for work—practically half the town’s on public assistance.”
I understand it’s a largely moonshine-based economy, Wilkins thought to himself. He opened his mouth to speak, but another look from Humphrey said simply: Shut it.
“I think there’s a darn good chance I can make this happen,” Hargis nodded, scribbling a note on the margin of the memo. “It’ll take some horse trading, but building coalitions is what I do. I’ll tie this to some city spending—food stamps or something—and I’ll get the rurals and the urbans together, and everybody wins!”
The men rose, and vigorous handshakes ensued.
“Congressman, may you live to be a hundred, and serve the rest of your days!”
“Humph, you know the only way I’ll ever leave this office is in a pine box,” Hargis laughed.
The additional funding for the Agency of Invasive Species sailed through smoothly, and Nicholas Bader’s attention turned to other departments and agencies. However, it didn’t take long for his spending-cut crusade to get stymied, and he began to think of the morning meeting with Humphrey as a critical misstep in his mission for budgetary discipline.
One month after the meeting, President Reagan was shot. Thankfully, he survived. But those who knew the president said he was a different man afterward, less energetic but clearer in his priorities, more focused on the Soviet threat and less focused on cutting the federal government where possible.
About a year into Reagan’s first term, OMB Director David Stockman went rogue, telling The Atlantic magazine that the president’s budget proposal included “snap judgments” and unnervingly confessing, “None of us really understands what’s going on with all these numbers.” He discussed using “magic asterisks” to make budgets appear more balanced by assuming additional unspecified cuts in the future. He complained that the president backed down on some of the biggest and boldest cuts and barely understood the decisions he was making. He painted a picture of an administration, bit by bit, making its peace with special interest politics and abandoning the dream of a dramatically scaled-back government unleashing the entrepreneurial spirit of Americans. Most administrations had at least one disgruntled staffer who aired all the dirty laundry, but Stockman did the unthinkable: He did it all on the record.
While Stockman remained at OMB, he quickly became regarded with suspicion and ridicule among the rest of the Reaganites. Bader was mortified to find that the reckless mouth of the man he once considered a rival had somehow tainted the good name of all the administration’s budgetary ax men, and the budget hawks found themselves torn by internal divisions. Bit by bit, cutting costs slid down the list of priorities. Bader found that for a lot of his fellow Reaganites, deficit spending represented an acceptable short-term tool to finance increased defense spending and much-needed tax cuts.
Two years later, after repeatedly pestering the Central Intelligence Agency for a briefing on the subject, Bader eventually learned that the Halogeton problem in the Western states was, in all likelihood, a natural occurrence and not deliberate Soviet sabotage. But by then, the increased infusion of cash from the 1981 budget proposal was now part of the baseline for the agency’s annual funding level. Humiliated, Bader did what he could to erase any record of him touting the AIS effort against the Soviets.
Month by month, Bader found himself increasingly on the outside of the administration’s inner circle. He wasn’t invited to the same meetings, phone calls went unreturned, memos missed him, he learned of administration decisions in the Washington Post. He expected to find himself the target of leaks in the Post and other publications, but sadly realized he was below the threshold of political relevance; he, his decisions, and his work simply weren’t important enough to leak about anymore.
In 1984, Bader left the White House and joined the Washington office of a private investment firm.
MARCH 1985
U.S. National Debt: $1.7 trillion
Budget, USDA Agency of Invasive Species: $45.4 million
Now earning good money in the private sector, Bader took his wife for an anniversary dinner at the restaurant atop the Kennedy Center.
On the car radio on the way there, a Norwegian trio urged listeners to embrace the potential confrontation, as the singer would be gone in a day or two. They parked and strode to the massive performance hall, enjoying the first warm night of spring. Bader knew he was supposed to be celebratory, but looking down the Mall at the Capitol Dome, just beyond the Washington Monument, reminded him of his task unfinished. He was making gobs of money now, but he still had that seething fury every spring as tax season approached.
His mood turned significantly worse when he entered the dining room and saw Humphrey, Mr. Halogeton Menace himself, finishing his meal. After the host brought Bader and his wife to their table, he excused himself and immediately began hunting Humphrey.
A moment later, he found him, standing upon the terrace, looking out at the Mall.
“Hey, Humphrey! Run into any Soviet spies in those cornfields lately?” Bader sneered.
“Come again?” Humphrey instantly recognized Bader, but feigned not remembering him for a few seconds. “Ah, yes, Mr. Bader! Formerly of the White House! How are things?”
Bader scowled. “I should have known everything you would say was absolute horsesh—”
“Mr. Bader, as I recall, everything I told you represented the very best information we had at the time. Don’t tell me that the intervening years have made you … less vigilant about the Soviet threat.”
Bader stepped forward, and for a moment, the patrons who noticed their tense exchange thought Bader would knock Humphrey’s teeth down his throat. But instead he merely jabbed a finger into Humphrey’s sternum with striking force.
“You humiliated me, Humphrey. I trusted you, you manipulated me, and I looked like a fool because of you! You tricked me into approving taxpayer money getting shoveled down that rat hole of yours! Nobody plays me for a fool.”
Humphrey couldn’t help himself. “You can’t say no one does something immediately after you declare that I have done that precise act.”
The veins in Bader’s neck bulged. “I will make you pay.”
“Oh, Nicholas …” Humphrey slowly backed away. “There’s no need to take a budgetary disagreement so personally.”
“I’m serious, Humphrey. I don’t care if it takes years: Someday I’m going to cut the budget for your agency to a great … big … zero.”
He stormed off. Humphrey chuckled, concluding that Nick Bader was more likely to sprout wings than to make good on his threat.
* * *
1 U.S. Department of Agriculture, Department of Farm Services, Bureau of Agricultural Risk Management, Agency of Invasive Species, Administrative Direc
tor.
2 Steven Hayward, The Age of Reagan, p. 47.
3 Editorial, “Fleeced Again,” Wilmington Morning Star, April 24, 1980.
4 Ronald Reagan’s radio commentary on “Government Cost,” November 16, 1976. Whether or not these figures are accurate, Reagan (and a Reaganite like Bader) believed they were accurate.
5 A slight exaggeration; in 1982, the comic strip Doonesbury portrayed a distraught EPA official crawling out onto his ledge in protest of ‘dismantling the whole enforcement team.’ Shortly thereafter, the real-life EPA administrator, Anne Gorsuch, issued a memo to all EPA employees protesting “windowsill politics.”
6 Associated Press, “Furniture Spending Questioned,” March 18, 1980.
7 Frank Corimer, “Government Waste? Here Is a Perfect Example,” Associated Press, July 19, 1979.
8 Associated Press, “Government Waste Described at Hearing,” March 16, 1979.
9 Actually, it was the General Services Administration under the Ford administration in 1975 that purchased a sculpture from Isamu Noguchi.
2
Agency of Invasive Species Administrative Director Adam Humphrey told his assistant Jack Wilkins about his run-in with Bader, and Wilkins laughed. He couldn’t believe how much he had once feared Bader. He chuckled about how little he knew when he came to work for Humphrey; all he really remembered was that he was desperate to get away from what he thought would be his dream job, working in the White House.
OCTOBER 1979
U.S. National Debt: $826 billion
Budget, USDA Agency of Invasive Species: $13.4 million
Wilkins had spent three years working as the lowest-paid, least-senior staff researcher in the Carter administration. His friends told him he looked like he aged a decade in that time. White House work had that effect on people, particularly among those too junior to really change anything, but still senior enough to get yelled at and to feel emotionally invested in the performance of the administration.
The trouble had started early. First Tip O’Neill threw a fit when his tickets to the Inaugural Gala at the Kennedy Center had been in the back row of the balcony, and had later complained about the skimpy continental breakfasts at White House meetings.10 The late 1970s turned into a blur of presidential disasters: Managing the tennis courts. Sweaters. Letters and phone calls unreturned. Throw in 18 percent inflation and gas lines. Now everyone at the White House was screaming about whether they should let the Shah of Iran come to the Mayo Clinic, as if letting a man seek a treatment for his cancer could somehow be a bad thing. Wilkins had sensed the need to push the ejector button and get out of politics and get into something quieter, safer, more stable and predictable. He decided he needed a safe job in the civil service.
Wilkins heard the administrative director in some obscure federal agency was looking for a new right-hand man—and so he ended up sitting before the desk of Adam Humphrey, Administrative Director, Department of Agriculture’s Agency of Invasive Species, serving under the Bureau of Agricultural Risk Management, under the Undersecretary of Farm Services, under the Deputy Secretary of Agriculture, under the Secretary of Agriculture.
The president appointed and the Senate confirmed the agency’s director—currently some congressman who desperately sought, and found, an excuse to avoid the judgment of his district’s disgruntled voters—but Humphrey was the real power.
“So why do you want to leave that most glamorous of workplaces, the White House, and come work at a place like the Agency of Invasive Species?”
“I want to serve my country in the civil service.”
“Very good, Mr. Wilkins, your utterly predictable textbook answer will be noted. So what’s the real reason?”
Wilkins stared for a moment, sighed, and figured he might as well reveal it all to see if his potential new boss sympathized.
“I’ve now had my heart broken twice,” he said, glancing out the window. “First as a volunteer for Teens for McGovern when he lost, then by Carter when he won. I figure there’s a 50-50 shot I may lose my White House job next January. Campaign work means long hours, candidates that forget to pay you, and low pay even when they remember, sleeping on the couch in the office and watching your candidate blow it all by saying he’s undecided on whether kids should start the day by reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. The Hill isn’t much better, and every two years your boss can get fired by fickle hicks who decide they like some smooth-talking local car salesman better—and that’s presuming he doesn’t get caught jumping into the Tidal Basin with a stripper.”
Wilkins watched Humphrey’s face for any sign of disapproval, but he simply saw a serene smile staring back at him.
“Plus, my girlfriend wants me to marry her, and I figure that means I need a steadier job. Regular hours, weekends off, less craziness, less stress.”
Humphrey’s smile turned into a chuckle and he put his fingertips together. “Ah, the civilizing influence of women.” He picked up Wilkins’s resume.
“Mr. Wilkins, your resume and references excited all of the right personnel people—such dedication to public service! Such a spirited drive to every task before you! But I saw a warning sign or two. I feared you might be some upstart, hell-bent on turning everything upside down in an impatient crusade to achieve your theoretical ideal overnight. As you no doubt saw at the White House, the wheels of government turn slowly. Deliberately. I envision great things for the future of this agency, but at a careful and measured pace! I prefer to consolidate our gains and carefully and methodically manage our steady growth and progress. Cabinet secretaries and agency directors come and go every few years. Comparably, we are eternal.”
Wilkins smiled at the audacious boast.
“If the young lady in your life desires you to be in steady work, we will fit that bill.”
Wilkins settled in within a few weeks.
Many of the mornings began with Wilkins keeping up with Humphrey’s deliberate stride through the labyrinthine halls of the Department of Agriculture.
“We’re lucky to work in this building,” Humphrey said thoughtfully. “We’re the only federal department on the national mall. More tourists see us, by accident, than the Pentagon or the State Department or any other cabinet department.”
“I feel like these hallways go on forever,” Wilkins said.
The Department of Agriculture’s headquarters actually uses up two massive buildings, the Administrative Building on the north side of Independence Avenue and the South Building, connected with two arched pedestrian bridges. Employees rarely if ever use them. The South Building is seven stories and includes 4,500 rooms in a precise grid; only the departmental auditorium and library interrupt the dizzying pattern. With floors, hallways, and closed office doors all looking the same, Wilkins found himself getting turned around and lost with surprising frequency.
“This was, until the Pentagon was completed, the largest office building in the world. Congress decreed that no building in the city could be taller than the Capitol—a rule, I suspect, designed to remind everyone where the power and the money was,” Humphrey explained. “Washington never had skyscrapers, and I suspect that shapes the way we work. Had the federal workforce been housed in giant towers, well … our office culture might have evolved like the ones of Wall Street banks or publishing houses. But instead of connecting our offices vertically we’re connected horizontally, and it creates a certain …”
“Inefficiency?” Wilkins guessed, noticing that he was wearing through the soles of his dress shoes in the new job.
“Geographic ambiguity.”
They turned a corner. “As you know, we have a new director.”
“I’ve been reading up on him,” Wilkins declared, hoping for approval.
“Most presidential appointees are being rewarded for years of loyal party service,” began Humphrey in one of his monologues of How Washington Works.
“The Secretary of Agriculture always goes to some farmstate senator or governor or member of Congress. Pr
esidents seem to think the primary qualification for the position is the ability to deliver a win in the Iowa caucus. The undersecretary slots often go to lesser friends and figures. A directorship is something of a snub, really. Our former director had been hoping for an ambassadorship to one of those Western European countries with rich food and women with high cheekbones. But our new one, like our first, is a former lawmaker, this one a longtime ally of the president from his time in Georgia. There are many advantages to having former legislators in the role of agency director.”
“They bring good relationships with the Hill with them?”
“Mmm, not what I had in mind. It’s more that they rarely have run very much beyond their congressional office, and thus have little sense of how to handle a large and complicated organization. Any new appointee spends his first months figuring out how everything works, and by that point, their interest in mucking around with things is … worn away by the sands of time. If we want something, we tell him we need it, and he will approve it. If we don’t want something, we tell him it will be impossible to implement, and he will move on. In time, even the strongest-willed appointee can be conditioned to accept our helpful guidance.”
Wilkins sensed something slightly Orwellian about the term “conditioned,” but nodded and waited.
“Information management is one of the keys. Ideally, our director, the secretary, and the deputy secretaries will be kept hermetically sealed from all potentially troublesome ‘flows’ of information. We screen the calls, sort out the letters, divert the unnecessary memos. Our management’s time is exceptionally valuable and one of our key duties is ensuring that none of their time is wasted by reading or hearing anything that we do not find productive. The old policy was that no one could see the AIS director without a scheduled appointment except the secretary, the undersecretary, myself, my assistant, the director’s personal secretary, and the director’s wife. Under the new policy, wives must call ahead.”