Power Game (15 page)

But occasionally, other senators spot and grasp at those vapor trails. One example: In early 1986, Helms was pushing a protege, James Malone, for ambassador to Belize. After a long tussle, Shultz nominated Malone only to have two Democrats, John Kerry of Massachusetts and Ed Zorinsky of Nebraska, fight the appointment. They asserted that Malone had “falsely testified” to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about some of his past dealings, and they implied there had been a conflict of interest in his relations with former clients while he held a State Department post. The committee blocked Malone’s nomination, the first such action in this century. Helms squawked that he had been sabotaged by an “anti-Reagan faction” in the State Department, but eventually he had to give up on Malone.

So finally, the porcupine politician met porcupine power on the other side. But not without demonstrating many times that power can derive not only from mustering majorities to pass legislation, but also from the simple ability of a tenacious and cantankerous senator to withhold what large majorities want.

Robert Strauss is an archetypal Washington figure—never elected to national office, but supremely successful as a power broker. He was national chairman of the Democratic party in its dark days after the debacle of George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign; he was President Carter’s political tutor, Middle East negotiator, special trade representative, and finally, chairman of Carter’s unsuccessful 1980 campaign. In spite of his partisanship, Strauss, now a wealthy, silver-haired lawyer, has been nimble enough to stay close to high Republicans and to be tapped for bipartisan commissions by President Reagan. He is a favorite of both press and other politicians because of his political yarns and the irreverent humor he turns on himself and other politicians. Strauss is a high-stakes political player who knows the ins and outs of the power game and can laugh at them even while he’s playing the game.

“You know, power is an interesting thing,” Strauss grinned at me one day, his face flushed with a mid-winter Florida tan. “I used to think
political power was going to a political dinner. And then I thought political power was helping
put
on a political dinner. And then I thought it was being invited to stay at the candidate’s hotel in a convention city. And then I used to stand in the hall outside of Sam Rayburn’s suite at the political convention, and I thought
that
was something. And then I got to go into the living room of the candidate’s suite, and I thought that was something. And then I found out there that the decisions were all made back in the bedroom. And finally, I was invited in the bedroom with the last eight or ten fellas, and then I knew I was on the inside—until I finally learned that they stepped into the John. In the end, just me and Jimmy Carter and Hamilton Jordan made the final decision in the John.”
²

The moral of Strauss’s story is one that politicians live by. It is an element of continuity in politics unaffected by the new power game, for among all the yardsticks that Washington has for measuring power, access is primary. That is the law of organizational politics everywhere, more important probably in Washington than elsewhere because influence and persuasion are the currency of the Washington power game. A president cannot reward his top aides with handsome salaries, annual bonuses, or stock options. There is no profit-and-loss statement, no annual output of widgets to measure; that gives diamond value to access. It is both a channel for doing business and a symbol of trust and importance. It is a privilege to be treasured or a right to be jealously protected.

In Strauss’s story, the president was at the center of the access maze. But access counts at all levels, in all power pyramids and networks: Congress, Pentagon, Federal Reserve Board, Supreme Court, White House. To politicians, lobbyists, lawyers, journalists, staff aides, and high-level policymakers, access is bread and butter. There is always another circle of power to penetrate; access is the open door, the answered phone call, a couple of minutes with a key player in a corridor or committee room. The pressures of time make access precious; it spells the chance to talk to people who make decisions, draft programs, write legislation. Without it, your case doesn’t get heard; you can’t be a player in the power game. Obviously that’s why corporations, unions, and lobbyists of all sorts pay enormous fees for prestigious Washington lawyers or pump millions into campaigning: They are buying access, if not more.

But access in the power game is not merely physical; it is mental, too. It is not only entry to the inner sanctum; it is being in the power loop—being chosen to receive the most sensitive information, as fresh
grist for the policy struggle. Being “cut out” on information, or being “blindsided” as the power lingo has it, can be crippling.

People who think they deserve to be included, some at the very highest levels, are deeply embittered when access is denied, and often its absence is a serious omen. During Gerald Ford’s brief presidency, for example, the bad blood between Vice President Nelson Rockefeller and White House Chief of Staff Donald Rumsfeld was an open secret. Rumsfeld kept watch over who went into the Oval Office. That nettled Rockefeller. As the 1976 election approached, frictions mounted because Rockefeller was left in the dark about whether Ford wanted him as a running mate. Separately and privately, Ford and Rockefeller took political soundings about the upcoming campaign with Clifford White, who had masterminded Barry Goldwater’s 1964 campaign.

“Nelson would talk to me every once in awhile and get me to pass messages to Ford,” White told me. “I’d ride on his private plane back to New York, and we’d talk, mostly politics. He’d raise some issue and say, ‘You know, you ought to tell the president that.’ He left the impression that he wanted the message passed along, and he was having trouble doing it himself. He was very angry at Rumsfeld because he felt Rumsfeld was blocking him out. Having used staff to protect himself, Rockefeller knew how staff could keep others away. I told Rumsfeld about it, and his response was that Rockefeller should just ask for an appointment. But Nelson did not feel that as vice president, he should have to make appointments to see the president.”
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(An old problem for American vice presidents, one which foreshadowed Ford’s later decision to pick another running mate.)

In the Reagan years, Jim Baker, as chief of staff, took care of Vice President Bush. He had run Bush’s campaign in 1980, and he wanted to assure Bush clear access to Reagan. So, Baker arranged a private weekly luncheon between Reagan and Bush, with no one else present. It was a rich plum for Bush.

“The president really enjoyed the Bush relationship because he’d sound off on a lot of things to George,” a Californian close to Reagan told me. Bush used the weekly luncheon as a vital channel for giving Reagan confidential advice (among other things, I was told, urging Reagan to travel to China in 1984 and to move quickly in 1985 toward a summit meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev). It was also a vital symbol for buttressing Bush’s claim—especially to the Republican right wing—that he is the rightful heir to the Reagan mantle in 1988.

Some cabinet officials wangled private sessions with Reagan through subterfuges, to get around the palace guard, the top White House staff.
Attorney General William French Smith and CIA Director William Casey were especially aggressive, citing their need to report privately to Reagan on national security matters, though White House aides suspected them of doing other business, too. “It was important to them and their staffs for them to be seen meeting with the President as often as possible,” one Reagan confidant remarked. “So they would think up inane reasons.”

This may sound like Trivial Pursuit, but something much more important than ego trips or displays of importance is involved. Access, especially the exclusive access that blindsides other players in the policy game, is a trump card. Access to the president means involvement in major actions and decisions. It is especially important with a president like Reagan with whom policy is affected by who talks to him last—as his top policy advisers have learned from experience. But that kind of access matters in every presidency. Listen to George Reedy, White House press secretary to Lyndon Johnson:

“For … White House assistants there is only one fixed goal in life. It is somehow to gain and maintain access to the president. This is a process which resembles nothing else known in the world except possibly the Japanese game of
Go
, a contest in which there are very few fixed rules and the playing consists of laying down alternating counters in patterns that permit flexibility but seek to deny that flexibility to the opponent. The success of the player depends upon the whim of the president. Consequently, the president’s psychology is studied minutely, and a working day in the White House is marked by innumerable probes to determine which routes to the Oval Room are open and which end in a blind alley.”
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Reedy could have extended his comment to cabinet members. Under Reagan, Secretary of State George Shultz insisted on private weekly meetings with the president, and high Pentagon officials accused him of using these private sessions to sell Reagan on questionable policy moves. On one occasion, I was told, Shultz blindsided both Casey and Weinberger by getting Reagan’s approval for Shultz to undertake a diplomatic mission to Nicaragua on June 1, 1984. On another occasion, Shultz angered the Pentagon by persuading Reagan to endorse a draft communiqué for the 1985 summit meeting with Gorbachev. Similarly, Donald Regan, as chief of staff, used his one-on-one access with the president in early October 1985 to sell Reagan on the Gramm-Rudman budget-balancing scheme before Shultz and Weinberger could warn Reagan of the jeopardy to Reagan’s military buildup.

On a less exalted plane, few things inspired more wild jealousy among lobbyists than Michael Deaver’s privilege, after leaving the Reagan White House in 1985, of keeping his White House security pass and getting a daily copy of President Reagan’s schedule. Those two perks—symbols of his continued links to the president—were probably worth millions of dollars to Deaver from clients who wanted to buy his access to Reagan. But there was such a public furor about Deaver’s access being excessive and improper that he had to surrender his privileges.

Politicians, bureaucrats, and lobbyists covet tokens of access and influence the way Eagle scouts collect merit badges. Senior White House officials scheme and fume over the location of their offices, their parking places, where they ride on
Air Force One
, and whether they have “POTUS phones”—direct lines to the president of the United States (POTUS). Only cabinet secretaries, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and half a dozen other officials qualify for “porthole to porthole”—daily door-to-door chauffeur service. Other high officials on an A list and a B list, divided by rank, can order government cars for official business.

Three or four top White House officials can have lunch served in their offices by Filipino mess boys, dressed like Yale Whiffenpoofs in blue blazers and gray charcoal slacks. The others, in descending order of rank, can eat in:

There are only slight differences in menu; the decor and the dining compartments convey the pecking order. Only about twenty out of probably two thousand people who work in the Office of the President can use the White House gym. And Jimmy Carter himself decided who could use the tennis court on the South Lawn.

But the size and location of one’s office is the main badge of status and a prime indicator of access. In any heirarchy—business, university, or military service—one’s office is an important symbol of rank and eminence; in the White House power game, it has acute significance. Proximity to power is crucial for both real and symbolic reasons. Only those closest at hand can readily walk into the Oval Office or be quickly summoned.

However, as most tourists are probably amazed to discover (I was), the White House is pretty small. Only the cream of the power elite can fit into about a dozen well-appointed offices on the first and second floors of the West Wing. In that highly prized terrain, the territorial imperative is as powerful as in the jungle. Most people in the Office of the President do not have offices in the White House; they work across the street in a handsome, baroque structure that was once the State Department and is now known as old Executive Office Building (EOB).

“People will kill to get an office in the West Wing,” Mike Deaver told me while he was still Reagan’s closest personal aide. “You’ll see people working in closets, tucked back in a corner, rather than taking a huge office with a fireplace in the EOB. God help you if you’re suddenly moved to the fourth floor of the EOB because that’s death row, as they call it over there. That means you’re on the way out.”
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Deaver and I were sitting in his office, adjoining the Oval Office. It is a room handsomely furnished with antiques, several oil paintings by Childe Hassam, a fireplace, and its own private patio. President Carter had made it his study, but Reagan had turned it over to Deaver, the trusted aide he wanted nearest to him. By Deaver’s account, the president had taken him into the study after the inauguration ceremonies in 1981.

“I want you to have this office,” Reagan told Deaver.

“I can’t do that,” Deaver demurred. “Where are you going to go if you want to get away?”

Reagan smiled and gestured toward the Oval Office, visible through the open door connecting the two rooms.

“I’ve been trying to get that round office in there for the last fourteen years,” he said. “Why would I want to get away?”