Reagan critics, such as Representative Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, were delighted. “In every beauty parlor and barbershop in the country people were saying to themselves, ‘I finally understand this dense-pack thing and it’s the stupidest idea I ever heard of!’ ”
Congress agreed. Meeting in a lame-duck session called by the President, the House voted to postpone the MX issue until the following spring. The lame ducks had disposed of the sitting ducks!
But the President was not ready to give up. Having failed to sell the MX on its merits, he reversed field. Rather than fight his critics, he joined them—rhetorically, that is.
Yes, the arms race needed to end. Rather than stockpiling more nuclear weapons, the United States and the Soviet Union should be reducing the number of their missiles. In fact, we should work toward eliminating such weapons entirely.
Yes, his critics were right about the matter of vulnerability. The big multiheaded missiles like the MX should be replaced by small, single-headed missiles that could be concealed on mobile launchers.
This second concession was showcased in a report by the President’s Commission on Strategic Forces, chaired by General Brent Scowcroft, which acknowledged the need to deemphasize the multiwarheaded missile. It said that Midgetmen, which could survive a first strike, were the wave of the future. In fact—now hear this!—deployment of the MX was an essential catalyst of the transition. To get Midgetmen, we needed to deploy MX as an “interim” approach, a bargaining chip in moving the Soviets toward more “survivable” weapons.
And with this, Reagan carried the day. Congressional moderates were so thrilled with their success in “educating” the President on their new-breed Midgetman doctrine that they buckled to his demand for the MX.
Such congressmen as Wisconsin’s Les Aspin and Tennessee’s Albert Gore, Jr., proud of their arms-policy sophistication, fell hook, line and sinker for the presidential ploy. In exchange for a philosophical concession applying to the future, they bought the President’s position on the only tangible issue on the table. Within a few months it became clear, however, that the Administration had no intention of pursuing the reformers’ approach. When the arms reduction talks began, the President’s negotiating team let it be known that the single-warhead, mobile missile would be the first item up for elimination.
The result was embarrassing. In voting to deploy the MX, key members of Congress adopted a policy of eliminating big, land-based, multiheaded missiles and a program of deploying them. Fifty “bargaining chips,” each carrying the explosive power of two hundred Hiroshimas, would crouch ready for action under the windswept plains of Wyoming.
The popular view is that Ronald Reagan was a last-minute compromiser who waited until the eleventh hour of a negotiation before grudgingly agreeing to the other side’s demands. Actually, the compromise was far less than met the eye: it was a surrender not on the substance but on the principle at stake; he gave the impression of compromise by telling his adversaries what they wanted to hear. Oftentimes, he simply recast his final argument in his opponents’ words.
By conceding the main theories at issue, Ronald Reagan turned a defeat in late 1982 to a spring victory in 1983. By packaging his objective in the language and premise favored by the opposition, he carried the day.
Another case in point was Reagan’s lobbying for military aid to the rebels fighting the Communist government of Nicaragua.
The press has often looked upon Reagan’s championing of the tax cut in 1981 as one of his greatest triumphs. Common sense should have told them that cutting taxes is about as hard as handing out free beers at a midsummer baseball game. Getting Congress to fight some murky civil war in Central America is another matter. Here the President was dealing not with Americans looking for a break on April 15, but with a public increasingly wary of “another Vietnam,” and a guerrilla force seen as both brutal and ineffective, its cause fatally entangled with the forces of the earlier Somoza dictatorship. The fact that Reagan succeeded even temporarily is testament to his clever negotiating tactics.
As in the case of MX, the Administration first tried the hard sell. In the spring of 1986, White House communications director Patrick Buchanan let loose a fusillade at those Democrats opposing the President on Nicaragua. In an article appearing in The Washington Post, he branded them as “co-guarantors of the Brezhnev Doctrine in North America”—in other words, of voting the Moscow line, taking their signals from the enemy.
The article was a blunder. Rather than forge a consensus, it helped polarize the debate. House Democrats stood their ground and voted down the Reagan Nicaragua policy. Many who did cited Buchanan’s vitriolic attack. The campaign for military aid seemed headed for defeat.
In June, the President reconnoitered and, just as in the MX case, shifted tactics. He ceased arguing for military aid to the “contras” and started to sound like a critic of the policy. In a televised address, given on the eve of a key congressional vote, he once again conceded on principle:
Yes, the United States has had a sorry history in the region. “I ask first for help in remembering our history in Central America so we can learn from the mistakes of the past. Too often in the past, the United States failed to identify with the aspirations of the people of Central America for freedom and a better life.”
Yes, there has been brutality by the rebels. “I know that members of Congress and many Americans are deeply troubled by allegations of abuse by leaders of the armed resistance. I share your concerns. Even though some of these charges are Sandinista [government] propaganda, I believe such abuses have occurred in the past and are intolerable.”
Yes, we must end the Somoza connection. “As President, I will insist on civilian control of all military forces, that no human-rights abuses be tolerated; that any form of corruption be rooted out; that American aid go only to those committed to democratic principles. The United States must not permit this democratic revolution to be betrayed nor allow a return to the hated repression of the Somoza dictatorship.”
Yes, my critics are patriotic. “I know that even the Administration’s harshest critics in Congress hold no brief for Sandinista representations. I know that no one in Congress wants to see Nicaragua become a Soviet military base.”
The whole tone and construction of the address made it clear that there were Americans of goodwill on both sides of the Nicaragua issue. Many of those listening to the speech felt that in terms of language and sensibility, it could have been drafted by a Democrat.
The fact is, it was—specifically, by Bernard Aronson, a former speechwriter for Walter Mondale and Jimmy Carter. Quite literally, the President and his men, Buchanan included, had judiciously chosen to win their goal even if that meant making their opponents’ arguments. The maneuver worked. Thirty members of Congress shifted position and voted to release the money to the rebels.
By conceding the principle at issue, Reagan manipulated his critics into accepting his policy.
Smart move.
The conventional view is that politicians like to argue and that they like to win arguments. Actually, they often have other priorities. The smart ones focus less on the principle than on the objective, the tangible result at issue. When sitting down to deal, they always separate the principle at stake from the actual stakes. Then, with the air thick with melodrama, they concede on the principle—and rake in the chips.
As Machiavelli advised, a great leader must be both lion and fox. In cutting taxes, Reagan loved to play the lion. In prosecuting an immensely unpopular war all those years, he showed he could also play the fox.
PART IV
Reputations
10
* * *
Hang a Lantern on Your Problem
Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter? How can that be? I don’t even know Jimmy Carter, and as far as I know, none of my friends know him, either.
—W. Averell Harriman
Nineteen seventy-four—Jimmy Carter’s last year as governor of Georgia. Sharing
a beer one night in the Governor’s Mansion with his media adviser, Gerald Rafshoon, Carter was in a serious mood. He moved from the personal business they had been discussing to the big picture.
“We’ve got to really start thinking about the themes for this presidential thing. I think I’ve got them pretty well worked out,” Rafshoon recalled him saying. Then on a long yellow legal pad Carter wrote down what he saw as his assets:
not a lawyer
southerner
farmer
300 days a year to campaign (would be out of office)
ethics
not part of Washington scene
religious
That night and in the many months that followed, Rafshoon and the others in the small Carter cadre joked that most people would consider the points on that legal pad to be downright liabilities. “But I think we can make them into assets,” the Governor had said that night, and he went on to prove it.
Rather than hide those aspects of his background that would conventionally make him ineligible to run for president, Carter brandished them. In the two-year campaign that would take him to the White House, he perfected his litany: “I’m not a lawyer, even though I have great respect for them, and my son is a lawyer. I’ve never worked in Washington. I’m not a senator or a congressman. I’ve never met a Democratic president.”
He would even tease audiences with his reverse-chic credentials as a political dark horse by describing a recent poll that asked people about the various big-name Democrats currently “being mentioned” as possible presidential candidates. Carter would then recite the roll of honor in complete deadpan: Senator Hubert Humphrey, Senator Henry Jackson, Senator Birch Bayh of Indiana, Governor Hugh L. Carey of New York, Governor Jerry Brown of California.
“There’s even a Georgian on the list, who scored a one percent in the poll,” he would add with a smile. Pregnant pause. “His name is . . . Julian Bond.”
Carter knew the conventional view of what a presidential candidate ought to be: a lawyer, a senator or governor, someone with foreign-policy experience. He also recognized that public attitudes are more flexible. People would accept a candidate with a vastly different claim on the office. The important thing was for the candidate himself to explain his somewhat offbeat résumé.
Carter’s successor, Ronald Reagan, trusted the same political principle: it’s always better to be the bearer of your own bad news.
When Reagan met Walter Mondale in the first presidential debate of 1984, Reagan’s performance raised questions about his abilities. Most baffling was his contention that Social Security was somehow not part of the federal deficit.
But it was not a failure to grasp a particular fact in that first encounter that got people talking; it was his overall performance. Newsweek, for example, said he appeared “shaky,” that the seventy-three-year-old President might finally be showing his age. In the days immediately afterwards, the Monday-morning quarterbacks picked at Reagan with a vengeance. Even some presumed loyalists were critical. Howard H. Baker, Jr., the Republican leader of the Senate, told reporters, “What you saw in the debate was what you see in the Cabinet meetings and leadership sessions.” And it got worse. “If the point of this is to get an inside view, you got more of that tonight than I’ve ever seen in public with Ronald Reagan.”
Once the Republicans broke ranks, the recharged opposition could afford to show some unaccustomed restraint. Speaker Tip O’Neill just sprinkled a little pepper. “People in the White House tend to get old mighty quickly,” he said at his morning-after press conference. Another Democrat, lacking the subtle touch, said that the President had “drooled” during the debate.
The public furor over Reagan’s apparent loss of clarity peaked a few days later with a front-page story in The Wall Street Journal. “Is the Oldest U.S. President Now Showing His Age?” “Reagan’s Debate Performance Invites Open Speculation on His Ability to Serve.”
Democrats smelled blood. For the first time since the campaign began, there seemed to be a possibility of Walter Mondale’s upsetting the popular incumbent. If Reagan tripped in their second confrontation, a groundswell could emerge for a more nimble national leader.
Reagan’s own corner men were plainly worried. James Baker, White House chief of staff, released the President’s most recent medical report, attesting to the fact that he was still “mentally alert.” One of his key strategists, Lee Atwater, mapped a contingency plan, to be executed if the President did as poorly in the second debate as he had done in the first: a countrywide firestorm of attacks on Mondale’s support of big social programs and opposition to new weapons systems.
The Atwater memo also called for Reagan’s people to dismiss the debates as a “bizarre ritual” which had no place in a civilized choosing of presidents. The feared Reagan fiasco was to be smothered by a “fog machine.” The memo continued: “If it’s clear that the President did badly, then it’s our job to obscure the result. The single most important mission of the fog machine will be to shift the emphasis to Mondale, and to drive up his negative rating.”
Meanwhile, the stage was set for the second debate. There would be only one issue: age. There would be only one focus: whether Ronald Reagan showed any signs of his earlier “rambling.”
Henry Trewitt, a Baltimore Sun correspondent sitting on the debate panel, got right to the point. Citing the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, he reminded viewers that no president knows when he might have to face an endurance test of prolonged stress, one that would demand high energy and quick judgment. Did Reagan feel he “would be able to function in such circumstances”?
Reagan was ready. In a tone of mock seriousness he replied, “I will not make my age an issue in this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”
The election was over. Even Mondale had to chuckle—even though he knew that his campaign’s one brief, shining moment of opportunity was dissolving in the laughter and applause he heard all around him.
Reagan’s comeback had produced an irresistible ten-second “sound bite” for local and network news broadcasts, one that would be repeated and repeated in the days that followed. His own pollsters recorded a positive response from viewers that “went off the charts.” In one sentence, the old showman from Hollywood had killed the only issue that might have kept him from a second term.
In slaying the age issue, Reagan had also demonstrated an important lesson of politics: if a question has been raised publicly about your personal background, you need to address the issue personally.
“Hang a lantern on your problem” applies with equal force to cases where you’re selling yourself one-to-one and when you’re targeting a broader audience. Retail or wholesale, the one durable truth holds: when in doubt, get it out. If you’ve done something your boss is not going to like, it is far better that you yourself bring him the bad news. It gives him a perfect opportunity to let off steam. It shows that you are not trying to put one past him. Most important, it protects him from being surprised and embarrassed by hearing it from someone outside.
Bad news has a habit of spreading. It is always better to create your own trial scene than to let someone else rig one up.
In 1960 the Democratic candidate for president faced persistent questions about his Roman Catholicism. Many people believed there would be an inevitable conflict between JFK’s loyalty to the nation and his fidelity to his church. Never before had the voters of this predominantly Protestant country ever allowed a Catholic to gain the presidency. It was heatedly argued that on matters from education to foreign policy John F. Kennedy would be taking his marching orders from the Vatican.
Kennedy set out to disarm his opponents with his handicap. He went to a well-publicized meeting of a group of Protestant ministers in Houston. The staging of the event was important: traveling to Texas in the first week of the fall campaign, casting himself as the defendant in the case, submitting to be judged by the people who were considered hi
s most skeptical jury.
To underline the David-and-Goliath aspects, Kennedy’s people made two decisions. First, the candidate would go to Houston alone. Second—as Robert Strauss, who was advancing the event, remembers being ordered to do by Lyndon Johnson—put the “meanest, nastiest-looking” of the Texas preachers right up in the first row. The national television audience would have no trouble choosing whom to root for.
Kennedy’s message came across clear and appealing. He described America as a country “where no Catholic prelate would tell the President—should he be a Catholic—how to act and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote.” This is a country, he said, “where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.”
He concluded by saying that he would resign the presidency if he ever felt that his conscience conflicted with the national interest. That outlandish promise served a critical purpose. It gave a brilliant line of intellectual retreat to those whose concern about a Catholic president rested not on any visceral bigotry but on the easily imaginable tensions—divorce, birth control, capital punishment—between secular office and religious discipline.
By appearing before the Houston ministers and answering all reasonable questions, he left his opponents with only the unreasonable ones, such as, Does the United States really want a Catholic president? Anyone who opposed him on religious grounds now was simply a bigot. Sam Rayburn, a doubter before the Houston gambit, felt that Kennedy, the lone gladiator who had walked into the lions’ den, had not only avoided being eaten himself, he had triumphed. “As we say in my part of Texas, he ate ’em blood raw.”
Kennedy had brilliantly “hung a lantern on his problem.” He had established the terms under which he would be judged, had set his own trial date, and had assembled the jury. In an odd way, his own wonderful bit of daring made the judgment at Houston a peremptory acquittal.
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 101