The Nation's Pulse/Washington Rules

Barnes, Fred

THE NATION'S PULSE WASHINGTON RULES by Fred Barnes Last February, Donald T. Regan was run out of the White House in unimaginably ignominious fashion. His fall, engineered by First Lady Nancy...

...He had no interest in socializing...
...When the Iran scandal descended on Regan, Buchanan says, he had no one "to get his side out...
...Of course reporters did...
...He chose not to, and he paid a high price...
...Why should a conservative have to do that...
...You have to pay them their due," says Lyn Nofziger, Reagan's former White House political chief...
...There was no one to take his side...
...They like to write about how a policy was cobbled together, the political calculations involved, who balked and who didn't, and so on...
...The reason is not what you think...
...Regan operated on the faulty premise that his jury consisted of one person, Reagan...
...If they don't, Ads to sell books are supposed to go into enormous detail, lavish praise, long descriptions...
...Nor is the replacement of Regan in the White House by former Senator Howard Baker proof that, as Richard Viguerie puts it, "the Washington establishment always wins...
...Finally, there's Rule No...
...As chiefof staff, Regan was in a perfect position to recruit allies throughout the Administration...
...state sales tax Charge to ^ Mastercharge 4mi^ BankAmericard Account no Expiration date name address state zip MINIM MIME 11111111111M MEI= NJ PHONE ORDERS: 815/434-7905 rr he biggest complaint about the 1 rules of Washington is that they are unnecessary, trivial, kid's stuff...
...W1111111•111 AS XD111.111111AC6 111 To: Green Hill Publishers, Inc...
...In Policy Review two years ago, William Kristol examined three conservatives—William Bennett at the National Endowment for the Humanities, James Miller at the Federal Trade Commission, and Tom Pauken at ACTION-who were successfully running federal agencies...
...The three officials, Kristol said, were convinced that "neither the bureaucracy nor the media make Washington ungovernable for a conservative...
...If there had been, he might still be chief of staff...
...That's mindless cynicism, and it's wrong...
...Take it from Patrick Buchanan, the former White House communications director and a harsh critic of the press...
...When the press scoured Capitol Hill for comment on Regan, it was all critical...
...And when their source gets in trouble, they can be counted on to give him a fair shake, if only because that serves the reporters' best interest...
...His fall, engineered by First Lady Nancy Reagan, prompted lots of cheers and no weeping...
...He refused...
...Baker and his subordinates talked to them regularly and gave them information...
...But Lewis got what he was after, a high reputation with nearly everyone in Washington...
...The establishment doesn't always win...
...Bennett hasn't sacrificed his agenda by playing by the rules of Washington...
...Achieving conservative goals while following a few piddling liberal rules may sound silly, but politics is often silly...
...Success in Washington requires some equally demeaning activity...
...Regan's demise wasn't a fresh example of how Washington is cruel to conservatives...
...Reporters largely reflect what their sources tell them...
...Don't jump to the wrong conclusion...
...Mary Jo Kopechne did not die from drowning...
...Bennett, a smart guy with a good issue, might have been effective in Washington anyway...
...It had to be breathtakingly boring for him...
...Now, I doubt if Baker liked all the courting, but he did it...
...You're invited to examine "Death at Chappaquiddick" for 10 days on an absolute, no-strings-attached money-back guarantee...
...D ule No...
...Becoming a fixture on the Georgetown circuit is not the point...
...The FDR crowd proved that strong-willed outsiders with a substantive agenda actually have an advantage over the establishment, which Fred Barnes is a senior editor of the New Republic...
...It's Bill Bennett, the Secretary of Education...
...But the Washington establishment, characterized by Viguerie as "the congressional/bureaucratic/special interest axis," does win more often than not...
...Senator Bob Dole defended him on occasion...
...2 may be the hardest of all for conservatives: find some friends in the Washington press corps...
...The most effective conservatives have long since learned this lesson...
...What reporters need is regular access and inside information...
...I know, most reporters are liberals, you can't trust them, they are only out to dig up dirt and sensationalize, and so on...
...Evening after evening, he got into his limo and went to fundraising receptions for senators and House members, sometimes five or six in a night...
...But having good relations with some journalists is indispensable...
...The idea is to convey the impression that you're not too big to cozy up to the permanent Washington crowd...
...Instead, he cut off all contact with the press, "went into the rope-adope and that was it...
...In Bennett's early days as education secretary, he was described in the press as an ideological thug...
...You don't have to hand over the plans for deploying Star Wars...
...It didn't...
...Take Rule No...
...He also could have developed links to conservative activists in Washington...
...Nobody in Washington is more self-important than your average member of Congress...
...The three agreed that plenty of career bureaucrats were willing to go along with new policies...
...Some career types even liked conservative policies...
...Playing by the rules has made him all the more so...
...If it did, Reagan would never have made it to Washington in the first place and then been re-elected to a second term...
...Nobody is more bent on impeding or diluting or thwarting what Reagan Administration officials want to carry out...
...To many liberals and all pragmatists, this comes naturally...
...We don't, of course, expect you to take our word for that...
...The best at this was Drew Lewis when he was Secretary of Transportation...
...When James Baker was chief of staff in Reagan's first term, I used to hear conservatives in the White House complain about how reporters put out the Baker line...
...But conservatives, who tend to be holier-than-thou about their mission in Washington, often act as if they were too good to play by the rules...
...N early everyone, as a matter of sur- vival, handles the rules of the Washington game better than do conservatives in the Reagan Administration...
...some conservatives: court Congress...
...In two years as President Reagan's White House chief of staff, Regan had developed no cadre of friends and allies in Washington...
...28 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1987 however, they aren't likely to be any party's presidential nominee...
...Regan didn't, except in the case of a few Republican leaders...
...The political cost is too high...
...So wooing them makes sense...
...Providing this isn't so unpleasant...
...True, the establishment is powerful and doesn't like the conservative zealots that Reagan brought to town or their ideological agenda...
...In fact, no President should...
...He's broadened his influence and become a national voice for conservative solutions in education...
...P.S...
...They become dependent on their source of information...
...But you do have to give reporters more than a defense of conservative policies...
...If this were so, he'd still be chief of staff...
...Rule No...
...But neither do lots of other officials who make the rounds in the Washington political community and mingle with lobbyists, public policy hucksters, consultants, and fundraisers...
...Box 738, Ottawa, Illinois 61350 Yes...
...And they rarely attack their sources...
...But in the crunch, when Nancy Reagan was after him and the press was breathing hard, Regan had no allies in Congress...
...The establishment in 1933 wasn't too keen on the New Deal, but Franklin Roosevelt and his aides prevailed anyway...
...Another reason for dealing closely with reporters is that everyone else is...
...There was simply no one to weep...
...You've got to build a clientele in the press of those who will be fair and honest and get your story out," he says...
...The contrast with Jim Baker was striking...
...And in his case, unlike Regan's, the establishment lost...
...He declined invitations to do that...
...Then they get the idea that you think they're unimportant...
...You've got to do that to survive...
...You have to play by the rules...
...That was precisely Regan's problem...
...It's a book you must have on your own bookshelf, preferably toward the front...
...You have to go out and pull people in," says Nofziger...
...According to an enduring conservative myth, this can't be done, since all the bureaucrats are big-government liberals...
...Reagan has proved the same thing...
...No President is going to save a single aide who has no visible defenders in a town full of bloodthirsty detractors...
...Another complaint is that they're liberal rules...
...Ignoring them doesn't...
...nue, true, true...
...Who's the big surprise of Reagan's second term, the guy who came out of nowhere to wield real clout...
...Baker, a very shrewd politician, devoted many hours to listening to senators and representatives...
...And James Watt would be Secretary of Interior...
...P.O...
...For most appointees (though not for those at the White House), building a base also means reaching into the federal bureaucracy...
...This was a negative achievement of the first rank, given that Regan had held so much power in a town that reveres power so much, and done so little with it...
...This was no easy feat for Regan...
...It's silly, after all, for presidential candidates to have to devote month after month of their lives to campaigning in Iowa...
...The 220 pages contain facts never before disclosed...
...prefers tinkering, compromise, and drift...
...He couldn't take the time to schmooze members of Congress, and they were painfully aware of the slight...
...In truth, he hasn't changed...
...3 goes against the grain of .1.N...
...But if conservative rules are the opposite—don't build a base, stonewall the press, snub Congress, and wall yourself off from the rest of Washington—they are amazingly destructive...
...Maybe...
...1: build a base of supporters...
...Washington journalists, no THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1987 27 matter how liberal, relish information and details that aren't routinely handed out by press secretaries...
...So what...
...Now, the press verdict is that Bennett has changed, that he really does favor improved education...
...Don Regan followed them, and look what it got him...
...He went to Capitol Hill to confer with them...
...We'll merely say that Thomas and Richard Tedrow have done an exhaustive job of research, their book is well written, carefully presented, and what you've suspected all along is true...
...If you don't, you give your opponents an edge...
...Regan thought all he needed to do was let Reagan be Reagan, and the rest would take care of itself...
...Regan could have done the same...
...Even the most lively fundraising event is a drag...
...It doesn't like anyone who upsets the comfortable status quo in Washington, even liberal zealots...
...Illinois residents add 5...
...When you think you're a prima donna and they don't matter, you get in trouble...
...4: be gregarious and inclusive...
...If you decide the book is not an invaluable investment, just return it within the 10 days, and we'll refund your $9.95 in full, no questions asked...
...Doesn't the Reagan agenda speak for itself and bring its own set of backers...
...Once trouble came in the flap over the Carter debate book that fell into Reaganite hands in 1980, reporters showed little passion for trying to implicate Baker...
...But there's more to success in Washington than unyielding adherence to an agenda...
...Send me the hard-cover Death at Chappaquid dick for 10-day examination Check or Money Order for $9.95 plus 955 postage and handling is enclosed...
...Still, the folks on Capitol Hill can kill you if you get on their wrong side...
...He returned their phone calls...
...The press has responded to Bennett's adept politicking...
...When the scandal hit, he had nothing to fall back on—no coterie of journalists ready to give him a sympathetic ear, no chums on Capitol Hill willing to defend him publicly, no network of officials in the Administration inclined to take his side...
...Not so...
...He had treated them well...
...Not automatically, and not personal backers...
...Don Regan didn't, and he got the boot, like so many other conservatives...
...Nobody is more fickle or more transparently interested in pursuing self-interest under the cloak of serving the national interest...
...Given a steady diet of this stuff, reporters thrive...

Vol. 20 • May 1987 • No. 5


 
Developed by
Kanda Sofware
  Kanda Software, Inc.