Eminentoes: The Payoff
Gold, Victor
EMINENTOES by Victor Gold The Payoff I can't imagine why Harold Ickes, Junior, thought the president he helped re-elect would appoint him White House chief of staff, but was hardly surprised when...
...C onceded, I have not always been this canny about the unreliability of elected officials...
...As you can well imagine, the cost of campaigning was such in the final days of the race that we ended up with an unanticipated deficit...
...In any case, my days as an Alabama lawyer/campaign-consultant were numbered...
...What distinguishes Ickes from Buckingham, of course, is the naked honesty of Buckingham's purpose...
...Having indulged his generation's vanity of equating personal interest with a Higher Calling, he took his setback with a kvetch heard 'round the Beltway: 0 the times, o the ways, whatever happened to political loyalty...
...Discouraging, but I had yet to learn the most fundamental lesson in the art & science of campaign management...
...Nor did Buckingham, double-crossed, go running to his friends at the London Times...
...What goes around comes around...
...Too many old on the bench...
...EMINENTOES by Victor Gold The Payoff I can't imagine why Harold Ickes, Junior, thought the president he helped re-elect would appoint him White House chief of staff, but was hardly surprised when the appointment failed to materialize...
...Did I get the job, pack my bags on graduation and head for Montgomery...
...Which is precisely how it played the following afternoon when Connor, as he'd said he would, dropped by...
...No palaver here about vision, outreach, the honor of helping Richard build a bridge to the sixteenth century...
...Breath-freshening his intellect...
...SJ: That you'll see what you can do...
...He is simply one more in an endless line of political functionarVICTOR GOLD is The American Spectator's national correspondent...
...Some say he's probably an ex-drunk...
...Under a Republican administration, of course...
...I want you to know how much I appreciate all you did on my Harold Ickes should have worked for Bull Connor...
...That's what you want to do, isn't it...
...Of course not...
...Your help in making this up, in the form of a contribution of anywhere from $25 to $1,000, would...
...Did I feel guilty...
...I didn't even rate an invitation to the inaugural...
...See Richard III, Act IV, Scene II: BUCKINGHAM: I am thus bold to put your grace in mind/Of what you promised me...
...But my law practice being what it was those early years, I found myself working for other candidates around the state, with enough success to acquire a small reputation as a campaign consultant with a winning touch: two congressmen, half-a-dozen members of the legislature, even another governor...
...That quick, that simple, for a campaign in which I had done absolutely nothing...
...The official excuseallergies—is highly suspect, perhaps because Bill's tongue is known to be cleft from tip to boot...
...BC: Yeah, but you got friends...
...But more important in his campaign scheme, I was president of the Birmingham Young Lawyers Association...
...The conversation, as I recall from a forty-year distance:44 My recollection from a Louisiana childhood is of Ickes Sr...
...Inspired by the fact that he looked me in the eye when he said it, I went to work as his University of Alabama campaign manager with a fair idea of who the Man Who Kept His Promises had in mind to get his youth movement rolling...
...A consolation prize —say, room-service in the Lincoln bedroom...
...Naive, to a fault...
...And so forth...
...Slick Willie, in fact, was a pre-teen when I wentto work for an earlier model of the Southern breed, a candidate for governor of Alabama who ran under the slogan, "He Keeps His Promises...
...Enter T. Eugene (Bull) Connor, best remembered at that time for having stalked out of the Democratic national convention of 1948, bellowing his opposition to Yankee integrationists, then telling a Time reporter that as long as he was around, there wouldn't be any blacks and whites "segregatin' together in this man's city...
...A man like Bull would take it personally, and you want to practice law in this town...
...The last I heard from my candidate that year was an urgent wire, sent to all campaign deputies, warning that unless we re-doubled our efforts, Stalin, or possibly Jacob Javits, would sail up Mobile Bay in a submarine...
...C onnor was elected four weeks later, to the day...
...All this because Bill Clinton failed to do after an election what he indicated he'd do before it...
...SJ: Nothing...
...Given the logic of the game, he might, like his father, become a Cabinet member yet...
...What did Ickes expect...
...I am not in the vein...
...My recollection from a Louisiana childhood is of Ickes charging our sainted senator, Huey Long, with having "halitosis of the intellect," after Long had called him "a Chicago chinch-bug...
...Forgot them, in fact, no sooner than they were uttered...
...VG: Right...
...That amenity, in this White House, is reserved for the likes of Hollywood stars and Asian entrepreneurs with deep pockets...
...My reward...
...Forewarned, we got out the vote sufficiently to win the day for our candidate without a run-off...
...He left, I breathed relief and called my mentor...
...BC: Don't have to, I'll drop by...
...Nor was I surprised by Ickes's bilious reaction to receiving the barbed end of the Arkansas shaft that he—not to mention his friends in the Washington media — should have known was coming...
...Dave Shiflett, writing from Denver in "Escapes From Clinton's America: A Symposium," TAS, JANUARY 1993 The American Spectator • January 1997 63...
...Politics, I learned (in any case, told myself), is a continuum...
...Just avarice, pure and simple: Gimme, you owe me...
...ies whose self-aggrandizing grasp exceeded their reach...
...But back to Young Harold: spawned as he was in a world of political hardball, how to explain his mewling and whining about Clinton's passing him over for Erskine Bowles, the North Carolina papershuffler...
...See Psalms 146:3 — "Put not your trust in princes [or duly elected officials...
...No chance...
...VG: I live in the suburbs, not the city...
...He understood the rules of the game, both risk and consequence...
...Young Harold should keep that in mind...
...OFFICER: Your commission...
...62 January 1997 • The American Spectator behalf and assure you that, barring a scheduling conflict, my door will always be open to you as I undertake the challenging assignment given me by the people of Alabama...
...though I neglected to mention Connor's parting words...
...He was for law & order and against Klan rallies that "stirred up trouble...
...One hour after that, as I sat listening to a client's story of how the Singer company had unlawfully repossessed her machine for non-payment, an officer of the law appeared at the door bearing a document I took to be a warrant or subpoena for another client...
...He knew me, first, as an Army acquaintance of his son-in-law...
...No sooner had Connor cleared the neighborhood than I headed for the courthouse, sought an audience, and told my story...
...Duly signed, ink still fresh, by the appointing authority, T. Eugene Connor...
...BC: Ain't lookin' for a consultant, just your support...
...Not so the Baby Booming Ickes...
...Young blood, oh yeah...
...It's all there in the Good Book so favored by my more rustic candidates...
...That, at least, was his pitch as he sat in my office seeking my support...
...What attracted me to Persons was his pledge to bring young people into his administration...
...Shocked, shocked...
...It had gone, I told him, exactly as he'd predicted...
...C onnor—to provide context to what Southern campaigns had become by the late 195o's — was the moderate in the police commissioners' race...
...It's an old story...
...or more to the point, officials I helped elect...
...With the help of thousands of dedicated workers like you, the forces of evil, sloth and avarice were turned back Election Day, a crucial crossroads in the history of our state...
...44BOY CLINTON FOUR YEARS AGO Here in the nation's interior, the election of Bill Clinton has led to some grumbling among barroom regulars, many of whom see his excessive teetotaling as yet another character flaw...
...Gordon Persons, Bull Connor, they're all the same...
...Clinton, after all, did not break new ground in disappointing a campaign worker...
...at the very least, it is odd having a dry in the White House...
...His father, Harold, Senior, was known as the Old Curmudgeon...
...VG: And what do I do...
...charging our sainted Huey Long with having 'halitosis of the intellect.' VG: I'm out of the campaign business...
...Ickes, Junior, unless I have been badly misinformed, qualifies on neither count...
...I get elected, first thing I'll do is bring in young blood...
...VG: (Pause) Tell you what, I have a client coming in, I'll get back to you tomorrow...
...OFFICER: Gold...
...The wording varied, but it generally ran something like this: Dear Vic: We did it...
...VG: So what do I tell him...
...His name was Gordon Persons and the year he ran produced a relatively small class of gubernatorial candidates by Alabama standards, a mere ten...
...What has Ickes been doing the past four years...
...SJ: You're sure you don't want to get into it...
...The calling, given the transmogrification of Southern politics after Brown v. Topeka, had grown ugly, to the extent that the contest for Birmingham police commissioner in 1957 came down to the issue of whether Klansmen should or should not be allowed to hold their rallies on public grounds...
...Don't be ridiculous...
...There was a Sage Judge in Birmingham at the time who served as mentor to young lawyers seeking the light (all Southern towns have one, some two or three...
...SJ: Well, you can't give him a flat "no...
...VG: Positive...
...Ostensibly he was Franklin Roosevelt's Secretary of Interior, though in fact he was a White House hit man used whenever FDR wanted a political enemy put in his place...
...But one addendum, not anticipated by my mentor: As he left my office, Bull turned at the door, pointed his finger my way, and bellowed a promise: BC: Police commissioner appoints city judges, you know...
...KING RICHARD: Thou troublest me...
...Bilious reaction is simply the Ickes way...
...My commission...
...As a Special Judge, Birmingham Municipal Court...
...Sincerely, P.S...
...A week after that, he was sworn in at a high-noon ceremony...
Vol. 30 • January 1997 • No. 1
