For precisely this reason many members of Congress profoundly regret that several years back they indexed Social Security benefits—pegging them automatically to rises in the cost of living—thereby depriving themselves of the opportunity of proclaiming in their quarterly newsletters that Congress had once again increased benefits for the hard-strapped senior citizen. They may also soon wish that they had not indexed the tax system: before, they won much credit for cutting taxes, when all they were really doing was lessening the pace of “bracket creep.”
This was a lesson not lost on Representative James A. Burke of Massachusetts. Soon after his first election to Congress in the 1960s, he was asked by his Massachusetts colleague House Speaker John W. McCormack whether there was anything the Speaker could do to help in his district. Yes, said Burke, there was one thing: he wanted to have the federal government restore the home of John Quincy Adams, who after leaving the presidency had represented the district in the last seventeen years of his life. This would make Jimmy Burke a hero among his constituents.
McCormack asked how much it would cost. “Oh, about seventy-five thousand dollars,” Burke replied. McCormack smiled. Given the importance of the project, Burke could count on getting the full amount appropriated that session.
At this point, Burke became concerned. “Could you make it just thirty thousand for now? I don’t want to finish the whole job in one year!”
In the early 1970s, Congressman Henry S. Reuss of Wisconsin introduced a bill to create a federal ombudsman to help people cut through government red tape, freeing House and Senate offices of the sometimes frustrating task of helping constituents back home deal with the federal bureaucracy. It sounded like a great idea. Dozens of congressmen enlisted as co-sponsors of the bill. But it went nowhere, because there was no way in hell that the senior members of Congress were going to let some nonelected bureaucrat grab credit for helping people with their governmental problems. That is what congressmen and senators get reelected year after year for doing.
Back in 1932, James A. Hagerty, then a sage political reporter for The New York Times and later President Eisenhower’s press secretary, offered a similar bit of advice to Jesse I. Straus, the president of Macy’s. Straus told Hagerty that he intended to make a major contribution to Franklin D. Roosevelt because he not only supported FDR’s candidacy, but also because he wanted a presidential appointment once the Democrats took office. He was prepared to give FDR $15,000 up front—a huge amount measured in today’s dollars.
Hagerty was appalled. “That’s a substantial contribution,” he said. “Don’t give it all at once. Give five thousand at the start and indicate they can come back for more if they need it. Halfway through the campaign, they’ll be back. This time give them another five thousand and indicate that that is all you intend to contribute. About a week before election, they’ll be so desperate for money that someone will suggest that maybe you can be induced to come to the rescue. They’ll hesitate to put the bite on you, but they will, reluctantly. That’s the time to give them the last five thousand. They will be very grateful, much more than if you gave it all at once and they spent it early.”
Straus served for many years as FDR’s ambassador to France.
Lobbyists, of course, are professionally adept at stringing out such exchanges. You will never hear a high-paid “Washington representative” tell his corporate client that the consumer movement has peaked, that the legislation the industry had long feared has been permanently tabled. “I think what we’ve been able to do is contain that particular problem,” he will tell his clients in ominous tones, “at least for the time being. But with the right kind of campaign and resources we can keep the matter stabilized.” As H. L. Mencken once warned, “Never argue with a man whose job depends on not being convinced.” Don’t ask a plastic surgeon to compliment you on your youthful appearance.
A good lobbyist learns that his job depends upon his keeping himself necessary. He’s not being retained for old times’ sake!
Martin Agronsky, who had been covering Washington since the 1940s, told a New York story that illustrated the city’s “What’ve ya done for me lately?” syndrome rule as well as any.
There was a bagel lady who worked for years on Madison Avenue. For years, a man would pass her little corner stand each morning and drop a quarter into her tin. Not once did he ask for a bagel. After fifteen years of this, the old lady finally stopped him one day and said, “Do you mind if I ask you a question?” Startled, the man replied, “I suppose you are going to ask me why all these years I’ve been giving you a quarter and never even asked you for a bagel.”
“No,” she said. “My question is, do you happen to know that the price of a bagel is now fifty cents?”
PART II
Enemies
5
* * *
Keep Your Enemies in Front of You
Better to have ’em inside the tent pissin’ out than outside pissin’ in.
—Lyndon B. Johnson
In The Godfather, Part II, Michael Corleone barely escapes death when his Lake Tahoe compound is riddled by assassins’ bullets. Cloaking his suspicion, the young mafia don pays a quiet, friendly visit to the man he believes gave the order to kill him. “Keep your friends close,” his father had taught him, “but your enemies closer.” This warrior’s wisdom, captured here by author Mario Puzo, has deep historical roots.
The Battle of Saratoga was the decisive victory of the American Revolution. When it was over, and General Burgoyne had given his sword to General Gates, the two armies’ officers sat down together at a dinner opulent even by today’s standards: ham, goose, beef, lamb, “great platters overflowing with many vegetables,” and plenty of rum and hard cider.
Had I read of this quaint scene when I was younger, it would have struck me as absurd. Here, after all, was a group of presumably passionate warriors, who just hours before had been aiming their muskets at each other’s heart, sitting around a table having a pleasant supper together.
That was before I spent almost three decades working among politicians.
When you look at that meal at Saratoga from a politician’s viewpoint, the scene in the American “winner’s tent” makes perfect sense. What better way to dampen the fighting passion of the Redcoats than by sending the message that losing isn’t so bad after all? Those Yanks aren’t such bad blokes once you sit down and share a cider with ’em.
First-rate politicians often take on Horatio Gates’s attitude. Just as he had “Gentleman Johnny” Burgoyne over to his tent for that delightful get-acquainted evening, so the great congressional pros have awed me over the years by their sheer capacity to deal with opponents of diametrically opposed views. On countless occasions I have seen a member cross the chamber of the House of Representatives and, having just exchanged red-hot words with an adversary, pat the same guy on the back, trade some irreverent joke, ask about the family and head out through the lobby.
Once again there is more at work here than good fellowship. “We have no eternal allies and we have no perpetual enemies,” the nineteenth-century English prime minister Lord Palmerston said. “Our interests are eternal and perpetual.” Like great countries, great politicians remain on speaking terms even with their fiercest opponents, and for very sound reasons. First, it shows strength. Nothing can be more unsettling to an opponent than some casual chitchat from a guy whose head you have just tried to tear off. Second, it offers useful information. The more you meet and listen to the other side, the more you learn what they’re thinking, what they’re feeling about you and your side as well as about theirs. Most important, you might just have to work with that guy someday. The opponent in one fight is often the valued ally in the next. The astute politician always keeps the lines of communication humming. As Kirk O’Donnell, Tip O’Neill’s trusted counsel for many years, put it, “Always be able to talk.”
The smashing success of Ronald Reagan’s first term is a testament to this rule of power—and no one knows th
is better than those of us who were on the other side of the Capitol Hill firing line.
Before going to the White House in 1981, Reagan had spent most of his career in large organizations. As a contract actor with Warner Brothers and other big studios, as an executive of the Screen Actors’ Guild and as a corporate spokesman for General Electric, he had been taught that each member of a big organization has his own part to play. Unlike Jimmy Carter, who except for his tour with the Submarine Service had spent most of his adult years running a small farm and warehouse, Reagan had never been a lone entrepreneur.
This difference in professional background typified their presidencies. Where Carter spent a good part of his day in self-imposed solitude, doing huge amounts of paperwork and listening to classical music, Reagan worked with a team. As a corporate man, he knew right up front that he did not have to, indeed could not, run the whole thing himself. He never had. When he did Knute Rockne or The Santa Fe Trail, there was a producer to pull things together, writers to knock out the scripts, directors to keep the action moving, publicity boys to do the hype. The star, of course, was at the center.
And, say what his critics will of him, the old trouper knew his strengths. When he arrived at the White House, the Great Communicator brought a solid crew with him, a crew recruited for the very purpose of making the most of the star’s own talents: good writers, plenty of PR help, even a good director, Michael Deaver, a master of camera angles and backgrounds out on “location.” It was Deaver who set the tone for the general-election campaign by picking that wonderfully evocative spot for Reagan’s Labor Day campaign appearance in 1980—the candidate in shirt-sleeves with the Statue of Liberty at his back. Long before Lee Iacocca had brought back its luster and its place of honor in our American myth, Deaver had seen the Lady’s patriotic launching potential. In a medium where pictures are worth a thousand words, Ronald Reagan had the best location scouter in the business.
Ronald and Nancy Reagan also knew the new President’s weaknesses. He had a huge administrative task before him: a giant bureaucracy to be tamed. That would take a kind of talent that Reagan had never claimed. He would need a strong chief operating officer who could run a tight ship and have the right kind of political strength. To keep the star looking good, he would need more than his conservative philosophy; he would need a good measure of moxie as well.
They already had their idea man, Michael Deaver, and their ideologue, Edwin Meese III. What they now needed was a genuine producer, the kind of guy who could pull everything together and throw a little class into the mix.
They found their man in James A. Baker III.
It was a brilliant recruitment. In the months ahead, it would be Baker who would field-manage the new President’s 1981 legislative triple play: the largest tax cut in history, the largest defense hike, and the largest cutback in domestic spending. Even old-time Reagan hands would admit grudgingly that the President could not have pulled off this feat without the gentleman from Texas.
What made the initial decision to hire Baker and then to move him into the top spot so spectacular was the man’s political background. For years, Jim Baker had been Ronald Reagan’s greatest nemesis.
The two initially faced each other from opposite ends of the playing field in 1976, the year of Reagan’s first serious run for the presidency. The incumbent was Gerald R. Ford, who had succeeded to the office on the resignation of Richard Nixon and now after a series of bloody contests was leading in the delegate count for the Republican nomination. With only a few primaries remaining, Reagan attempted an unprecedented coup: he named Senator Richard S. Schweiker of Pennsylvania as his prospective running mate.
Traditionally a candidate picks someone to run with him only after he wins the nomination. In breaking the tradition, Reagan said that he wanted to offer the convention a “balanced ticket.” His more immediate, tactical motive was to blockbust Schweiker’s otherwise pro-Ford home-state delegation, Pennsylvania, and stampede the convention. It was a bold, desperate move, worthy of a man who wanted to be president.
The Ford high command responded to this thrust as Eisenhower reacted to the German drive at the Bulge, throwing in everything they had. Jim Baker was dispatched to break the attack, cost what it might.
Baker was determined to deny the Reagan-Schweiker axis to as many of Pennsylvania’s delegates as he could. He launched a furious retail campaign to lure one delegate at a time back to Ford. Obscure state senators found themselves having dinner at the White House. Their families became mini-celebrities touring the Cabinet offices. Dams, bridges, hospitals fell manna-like upon their communities. Jim Baker, master delegate cowpuncher, rounded up practically all of the Pennsylvania strays for President Ford. Reagan ended up having traded his number one chit, the vice presidency, for a total of four delegates.
For Reagan that meant the end of the line. The nomination belonged to Ford. For Jim Baker it meant a battlefield promotion: overall charge of Ford’s fall campaign.
This was only a prelude to the ultimate test of wits between Reagan and Baker, who materialized in the next presidential campaign as manager for his old friend George Bush, with the top priority of saving America from “voodoo economics,” apparently not a priority shared by the American voter—not the Republican voter, certainly. After an upset victory in the Iowa caucuses, the Bush campaign’s “Big Mo” quickly fizzled. “Bush for President” placards were replaced by “Bush for Vice President” placards, and his manager began a quiet metamorphosis that would transform him in a few weeks from loser’s campaign manager to winner’s top advisor, from caterpillar to butterfly.
By putting Baker in the staff chief’s job, Reagan demonstrated that important rule of power: Keep your enemies in front of you. A shrewd politician does not banish his adversaries but follows the more primitive custom of taking hostages.
The appointment of Jim Baker was as much a triumph for the new President as it was for his first White House chief of staff. The crusading outsider had co-opted a prince of the powers-that-be, with close ties to the remnants of the party’s Eastern establishment and to the national press corps.
Jim Baker, who went on to become Secretary of the Treasury, will be remembered as a superb packager of Reagan’s legislative plan, smoothing his West Wing colleagues’ rough ideological edges and winning respect from the Washington media. To the congressional opposition, he was a courtly professional, the “good cop” in the Reagan White House. Many a potential irritation was avoided by a respectful and confidential drop-in at the Speaker’s office. To reporters, Baker was the “White House pragmatist,” someone who would give it to them straight.
In each respect, Baker’s abilities would shine far brighter in the later years of the Reagan administration, when his absence from the White House became painfully evident. As the smart politics and close-order drill of the first Reagan administration gave way to the dementia and chaos of the second, Jim Baker’s was the name uttered with the most intense longing. The poison of the Iran affair would never have seeped under the West Wing door had he still been in the building.
Reagan’s initial master stroke was not simply in hiring Jim Baker but in putting his old adversary in a position where he could not do well unless his president did well. In the West Wing, intercom distance from the President, Baker’s success would be measured entirely in terms of Reagan’s own accomplishments. Had he started out with his own department or agency, Baker would have had the opportunity to create his own fiefdom, to establish a separate reputation and constituency. The newspaper profiles of Baker might have been headlined “The One Bright Light in the Reagan Cabinet” while the President’s own agenda died in gridlock. As chief of staff, Baker was fully leveraged. Baker’s achievements could only enhance his boss’s; he had no choice but to make the Reagan Revolution a winner.
The idea of bringing old rivals into a new Administration did not begin with Reagan. Franklin D. Roosevelt defeated Wendell L. Willkie in the 1940 election, then made him spec
ial envoy to Britain a few months later. The purpose was clear: Willkie had attacked Roosevelt’s close support of Britain during the campaign; now he was being used to reassert a bipartisan thrust to FDR’s policies. Later in the decade, Harry Truman commissioned former President Herbert Hoover to oversee a complete review of the federal organizational structure. In tapping Hoover’s acute managerial and engineering ability, the Democratic President was also giving his Administration some needed credibility on the growing “waste and corruption” issue.
Yet it was Abraham Lincoln, operating under far more demanding circumstances, who made an art of co-opting his adversaries. Imagine the predicament the great man confronted. Threats to his life were so rampant in 1861 that he and his family had to enter the capital in secret. The military situation was even more dreadful. When he arrived in Washington, Lincoln could look across the Potomac River and see the Confederate flag flying over the port of Alexandria.
Even in the loyal states trouble ran deep. The first Republican President led a brand-new party composed of two conflicting elements: the radical abolitionists, who shared the spirit if not the tactics of John Brown, and what remained of the old Whigs. Before Lincoln could save the Union, he first had to weld together his own political factions.
Rather than assemble his entire Administration from among his own dedicated followers, the President-elect resolved to bring his enemies aboard. He put together a government by yoking together the fanatical Salmon P. Chase and the cautious William H. Seward, and brought forth a Cabinet said to be united on only two points: they all hated one another, and each member thought he would make a better president than Abraham Lincoln.
“They will eat you up,” the President was warned. “They will be just as likely to eat each other up,” he replied with an old hand’s detachment. He was shrewd, and tough enough to recruit strong men and put them into the right positions under his controlling eye. He was certain of success only when Seward and Chase both resigned and he kept them on, their letters of resignation now both in his safekeeping. “I have a melon in each corner of my sack,” he said.
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 Page 95