Chris Matthews Complete Library E-book Box Set: Tip and the Gipper, Jack Kennedy, Hardball, Kennedy & Nixon, Now, Let Me Tell You What I Really Think, and American

by Matthews, Chris

  Moments before the swearing-in ceremony in the House chamber, I stood by the Speaker’s chair prompting Tip O’Neill with a brief biography on the member-to-be. There was only one point that I figured would be important. I told the Speaker that the new gentleman from Pennsylvania had long been a trusted aide to O’Neill’s old colleague Congressman William “Digger” Byrne, the man who had represented the same Philadelphia district a decade earlier.

  The feudal tradition ran deep. Byrne himself had succeeded his father in serving the area, first as head of the family funeral business—its friendly motto, Byrne used to joke in the cloakroom, was “We Let You Down Easy”—and later in the congressional seat. The Speaker asked me whether “the Digger” was still alive. I told him that he had died a few years earlier.

  Only someone schooled in the mysteries of street-corner political loyalty could decipher the exchange as the Speaker came face-to-face with the new Congressman from north Philadelphia.

  The Speaker: “So . . . how’s the Digger?”

  Representative Smith: “Oh, he died two years ago.”

  The Speaker: “Yes, I heard.”

  To the casual listener, this might sound like the dialogue from an Abbott and Costello routine. But to an ear more finely attuned to the basic protocol of the street-corner politician, Tip O’Neill was not inquiring about a dead man’s health. He was saluting another man’s coat of arms. “How’s the Digger?” was his way of saying, “I know where you came from. I know your loyalties.”

  From the outside, politics seems a cutthroat world. Those who run for office stop at nothing. They will question an opponent’s motives, his patriotism, even his character. What seldom gets noticed is the deep, feudalistic code that binds the combatants together. To fight the good fight, you need to know that your back is covered.

  “Loyalty is everything in this business.” From a Tip O’Neill—from any of the old breed—this is not Pollyanna. If you travel to Washington, D.C., you will be struck by one great difference from the other great cities of twentieth-century America: not the presence of monuments, but the absence of smokestacks. Unlike other capitals whose politics visibly depends on a sprawl of factories and assembly lines, Washington produces just two things: the paper currency that we all use and the political currency that politicans use. Deals are what people make in Washington, deals pure and simple. A senator tells his colleague that he can count on him for support in getting funding for some crucial public-works project in the other senator’s state. He is expected to deliver. If he doesn’t, his word becomes worthless. The value of making a deal with him becomes worthless; so does his seat in the Senate. If he doesn’t deliver, he can’t deliver for his people at home. His “effectiveness” begins to get questioned around his state.

  If there is one mighty lesson to draw from politicians, it is this: nobody trusts a traitor. A man can be a great fighter for his country, he can play a decisive role in a brilliantly decisive battle, as one great American did in the War for Independence, but if he betrays his friends, he becomes a Benedict Arnold.

  Even in the age of corporate head-hunting, it is one thing to change jobs, and another to show lack of loyalty to someone you once served. Nothing is more self-defeating than trying to win the faith of a new employer by betraying the trust of a former one. Nothing is more impressive than the fierce competitor drawing the line on such betrayals. As Senator Eugene McCarthy once said approvingly of speechwriter Richard Goodwin, who had served him and then had gone to work for his adversary Robert Kennedy when the latter entered the presidential race, “Dick’s the kind of man who changes uniforms without giving away the signals.”

  One of Ronald Reagan’s great strengths and the foundation of his durability as a politician was his long-standing ties to the conservative movement within the Republican Party. Beginning in 1964, when he gave his memorable speech on behalf of the desperate Goldwater campaign, Reagan hammered relentlessly at the same themes. Avoiding the counsel of those who saw more votes in the middle of the road, the Gipper continued to run down the rightward side of the field.

  This earnest stumping for conservative causes paid Reagan enormous political benefits. It saved him when less ideologically observant candidates fell by the wayside. A case in point was his Lazarus-like resurrection in the 1976 North Carolina primary. Given up for dead by the pundits, Reagan reached back into his ideological arsenal and won the hearts of the GOP hard-liners. Here in the patriotic South, where mothers and fathers raise young boys to be officers and gentlemen, the loyal conservative reached for the heartstrings. Fighting Communists was tough business, he declared, and Gerald Ford just wasn’t tough enough.

  Reagan came back from the dead again in 1980, after his defeat by George Bush in the Iowa caucuses, winning in New Hampshire because the old-line conservatives, the party faithful who had been listening to his radio commentaries for years, stuck to him just as he had stuck to them.

  Once president, Reagan continued the courtship instead of taking the marriage for granted. He made a special effort to promote such conservative journals as the National Review, by attending its anniversary, and the Washington Times, by regularly calling on its correspondent Jeremiah O’Leary at press conferences. He prided himself on sticking with his old crowd through victory as well as defeat. Unabashedly, he appeared at rallies of the most passionate conservative fringe. Speaking to a convention of ideologues in 1985, Reagan said, “I always see this as an opportunity to dance with the one that brung ya.”

  The only time that Reagan’s two-way loyalty to the Republican right ever faltered was in his handling of the 1986 Iranian arms affair. The scandal hurt Reagan more than it might have another leader for the simple reason that this was one time he didn’t dance with the conservative partner that had brung him. He was caught dancing with the Ayatollah Khomeini.

  Loyalty is not simply a virtue, but a building block of political strength. We saw in the earlier chapters how we can come to command strong alliances by (1) learning the interests and ambitions of others, (2) mapping our way toward helpful relationships, and (3) cementing those relationships with reciprocal support and benefit. Loyalty is the linchpin of this network of support.

  More is at stake here than political retail. Betrayal not only destroys relationships, it destroys a reputation.

  Some might assert that in the age of media politics, when public records are sold on television, interpersonal ties and loyalties play a decreasing role. What matters, they will argue, is the individual appeal, the ability to communicate an appealing image on the television tube. Recent history suggests just the opposite.

  Arguably two of the most charismatic figures in recent American history were John B. Connally of Texas and John V. Lindsay of New York. Both men had first-rate minds and proven skills as media performers. “Big Jawn” was a tall Texan like LBJ, a man’s man like Johnson, but everything else was a media adviser’s dream: as handsome as his colleague was not, as polished as Johnson was crude. John Lindsay, mayor of New York, lit up the tube like no one since Jack Kennedy; at the same time he was such a showbiz natural that he served as substitute for Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show.

  Then governor Connally gained national prominence in 1963, when he was hit by the same spray of bullets fired by Lee Harvey Oswald at John F. Kennedy. Nine years later, he won temporary fame once again, leading “Democrats for Nixon.” But when tall, handsome, presidential-looking Connally switched parties to run for the 1980 GOP nomination, nothing happened. He ended up spending $12 million only to elect Ada Mills of Arkansas as his sole delegate to the Republican national convention. More than his connection with Watergate-era scandal, it was Connally’s image as a political turncoat that did him in.

  The Connally phenomenon happened in reverse when Lindsay, a Republican, tried to become a Democrat. Lindsay, at least, had an excuse for switching. As a candidate for reelection in 1969, he was denied renomination by his own party. To win a second term, he had to run under the banners of
the Liberal Party and his self-created “Urban Party.”

  When Lindsay announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1972, there was a great deal of media interest. What no one counted on was the problem of political “identity.” As the chairman of the New York State Democratic Party put it, “We’re just trying to establish his credibility as a Democrat.” It didn’t work. In the pivotal Florida primary, where Lindsay’s New York connection should have come in handy, Lindsay was mocked for having switched sides. As an opponent, Senator Henry Jackson, put it, “Here’s a fellow that’s just joined the church demanding to be a member of the Board of Deacons.” Lindsay came in fifth in Florida. The next time out, in Wisconsin, the media star came in sixth.

  Both men, Connally and Lindsay, it should be pointed out, defected for ideological reasons. But that didn’t matter to the voters. Ironically, the more the differences between the two parties seem to narrow, the more important party loyalty becomes to the voter. People may not know the philosophical nuances that separate Republicans from Democrats and may often switch their own vote from column to column, but they know an opportunist when they see one. As a “Democrat for Nixon,” Connally had shown star quality. As a sleek liberal under the Republican banner, Lindsay had political sex appeal. He was the pretty girl in the tight bikini. By ending his political tease, he revealed himself as just another liberal Democrat.

  Connally and Lindsay are the exceptions that prove the rule: loyalty is the norm in political life. A private citizen can change parties every day of the week, and no one will even notice; this is not the case with a person whose career has advanced on the shoulders of others. The only honorable, acceptable way for an officeholder to switch parties is to first resign the office to which he has been elected. In 1983, Congressman Phil Gramm of Texas did just that. He resigned his seat, which he held as a Democrat, then contested it in a special election running as a Republican. His success was so dramatic that he was elected to the Senate the following year. By giving back what was given, by evening the books with his constituents and his party, he found a way to avoid the Benedict Arnold taint. He had crossed the lines under heavy fire; his place in the other army was won, not bought.

  There are two important corollaries to the “Dance with the one that brung ya” rule.

  First: You Hire Your Boss.

  When you take a position, in politics or in any other line of work, be very careful. Once you establish a relationship of loyalty, it is hard to back out of it. If you join the wrong side, you will be stuck with the Hobbesian choice of cutting and running or dying in a ditch with a man or a cause that you would never want to be seen alive with.

  When I first went knocking on doors on Capitol Hill, I came within a whisker of such disaster.

  As mentioned earlier, I was advised by a certain Texas congressman to focus my job search on members from a region and background similar to my own. Following my ethnogeographic hunch list, I walked into the outer office of an Irish Catholic Democratic congressman from New Jersey. As a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, he seemed like someone who might have a place for a graduate of Holy Cross with recent, firsthand experience as a Peace Corps volunteer in Africa.

  So you can understand, given my desperation, why my adrenaline began to run hot when this charming Knights of Columbus type walked over to the reception desk and asked whether he could help me.

  When I told him that I was just back from Swaziland and was hoping for a job on the Foreign Affairs Committee staff, he cut me short. “No. You should be working as a legislative assistant in my office.”

  I couldn’t believe my luck. As this down-to-earth guy showed me the plaque honoring his sponsorship of the original Peace Corps legislation, everything seemed to be clicking. Only later would I learn that the man had caught the country’s attention in a Life magazine account of purported mob connections and of the time he allegedly used these connections to have a body removed from his basement.

  As it turned out, after several trips to the office of the gentleman from New Jersey, I received word from his ice-cube top aide that “the Congressman wanted me to tell you that he couldn’t work it out.”

  Looking back on the case—within the year, the same congressman would be convicted of income tax evasion, the first of many legal entanglements—I like to think that this Irish charmer I had met in that long-ago reception area was trying to save my résumé from an association with a political career doomed to ever deeper trouble.

  One of the most important rules of loyalty is to commit it to the right person. Once you’re aboard, it’s hard to ignore the captain. Once you’ve served, it’s impossible to deny whom you’ve served.

  Second: What’ve You Done for Me Lately?

  A relationship of mutual trust can be shattered by something well short of outright betrayal. People lose faith in their allies long before they hoist the enemy flag. Ask any politician and he’ll tell you how fickle constituents can be.

  This is why smart politicians make repeated efforts to demonstrate their loyalty to the people who support them.

  Did you ever notice that swings in the economy neatly correspond to the political calendar? Recessions usually occur in the first year after a president wins an election. Recoveries are timed to reach full vigor as the country is poised for a new political season. A president knows that he must complete his term on an economic upswing. If he is going to squeeze out the inflation and cut some benefit programs, he’d better do it right up front so that the pain is forgotten by the next election.

  “Injuries should be inflicted all at once, for the less they are tasted, the less they offend,” wrote Machiavelli, “while benefits should be granted little by little, so that they might be better enjoyed.”

  The second part of this injunction explains why politicians not only try to get the dirty work behind them early but also ensure a regular flow of benefits in the months before election. Those entrusted with office must be seen providing loyal service at the time people are making their judgments on the quality of that service. In 1984, voters reelected President Ronald Reagan by a landslide. They judged him on the strength of the brisk recovery that began in 1983, not the recession from which they were still in the process of recovering. The converse is also true. If a politician is doing badly around election time, it doesn’t matter how good he was two years before.

  Case in point: Jimmy Carter. Despite the dangers of inflation, upon taking office in 1977 he moved to stimulate the economy through tax relief and various measures to reduce unemployment. It was not until the end of his presidency, in the very year he sought reelection, that he tightened the screws. Not only did he appoint the tough-minded inflation fighter Paul A. Volcker to chair the Federal Reserve Board, but he took the extraordinary step of withdrawing his annual budget plan and submitting one with dramatic election-year budget cuts. The only more flagrant case of political suicide was the one committed by former Vice President Walter F. Mondale when he announced at the 1984 Democratic national convention that if elected he would raise taxes.

  The classic account of the voter’s short memory was recorded by Senator Alben W. Barkley of Kentucky, who would later serve as Harry Truman’s vice president. In 1938, Barkley had been challenged for reelection to the Senate by Governor A. B. “Happy” Chandler, who later made his name as commissioner of baseball. During that campaign Barkley liked to tell the story of a certain rural constituent on whom he had called in the weeks before the election, only to discover that he was thinking of voting for Governor Chandler. Barkley reminded the man of the many things he had done for him as prosecuting attorney, as county judge, as congressman and as senator.

  “I recalled how I had helped get an access road built to his farm, how I had visited him in a military hospital in France when he was wounded in World War I, how I had assisted him in securing his veteran’s benefits, how I had arranged his loan from the Farm Credit Administration, how I had got him a disaster loan when
the flood destroyed his home.”

  “How can you think of voting for Happy?” Barkley cried. “Surely you remember all these things I have done for you!”

  “Yeah,” the fellow said, “I remember. But what in hell have you done for me lately?”

  The sentiment is universal. People judge the quality of a relationship in terms of recent evidence. Just as a Christmas card can maintain a personal or business tie, the lack of one can undo it.

  Politicians can teach us the importance of regular political fence-mending. When they campaign for office, they establish a symbiotic relationship with people and set the tone for an enduring bond: just as they are campaigning neighborhood to neighborhood, they will serve in office on the same basis, returning to the people, checking in with them, listening to what they have to say. Most important, they will keep the relationship up-to-date through a regular show of concern.

  Effective politicians know this. Soon after I went to work in the Senate, my boss, Frank Moss of Utah, decided to offer an amendment I had drafted. It dealt with the minimum wage. I had noticed that, over the years, the minimum-wage increases periodically approved by Congress consistently followed rises in cost of living and in productivity. The amendment I recommended to the Senator would have pegged annual minimum-wage increases to these two indices automatically.

  I expected it to attract considerable support from pro-labor senators on the Democratic side of the aisle, but it claimed just fifteen votes.

  Later I would learn the reason. Democratic politicians were not about to give up the opportunity to raise the minimum wage every few years, the kind of sugarplum that helped them with the working people of their districts and kept labor involved in the party legislative agenda. Putting such increases on an automatic escalator would deny both labor leader and politician these prized opportunities.