Whatever It Takes
Drew, Elizabeth
BOOKS IN REVIEW Drew's New Washington Whatever It Takes: The Real Struggle for Political Power in America Elizabeth Drew Viking 1294 pages / $24.95 REVIEWED BY John H. Fund E very four years...
...BOOKS IN REVIEW Drew's New Washington Whatever It Takes: The Real Struggle for Political Power in America Elizabeth Drew Viking 1294 pages / $24.95 REVIEWED BY John H. Fund E very four years intrepid reporters follow the footsteps of Teddy White, that legendary chronicler of campaigns (The Making of the President), and turn out a ponderous tome on "what it all meant...
...In the last two weeks of the campaign, they persuaded RNC Chairman Haley Barbour to focus party energies on keeping the House at the expense of Bob Dole...
...Whatever It Takes not only manages to tell a good story but also illuminates the current realities of political power in Washington...
...Once again, they may be disappointed as the gathering cloud of scandals surrounding President Clinton threatens once again to undermine his party's chances of winning back Congress...
...At the same time, the RNC made a large ad buy on Christian radio which warned that Hillary Clinton might take over implementation of the welfare plan and said that if Democrats won Congress, "Teddy Kennedy will be running the place...
...David Rehr of the National Beer Wholesalers Association...
...Less well known is the role of Norquist, an old friend of mine, whom Drew credits with assembling "an extraordinary coalition of about 70 groups called the Leave Us Alone coalition, each of whom want the government not to do something...
...It showed a fortune-teller looking into a crystal ball—and an announcer asking "What would happen if the Democrats controlled Congress and the White House...
...He has since lamented to Democratic audiences that "with only 9,759 votes spread across ten Congressional districts the Democrats44 Drew came away with a new respect for conservative activsts such as Reed, Norquist, and Metaksa...
...In the end, Republicans won the most narrow House majority in 40 years...
...Tate and Torkildsen went down to narrow defeats, while Rep...
...The American Spectator July 1997 65...
...When Bob Dole finally emerged with the nomination in hand he had little money, and his failure to seize the initiative allowed Clinton to define him as old and out of touch...
...Despite this dismal record, Dick Morris recently justified the Clinton 1996 campaign tactics by saying: "The ends of getting him elected and stopping what the Republicans were doing damn well justified the means...
...The next day, conservative activists gathered in a basement room in the Capitol to meet with Speaker Newt Gingrich...
...Marc Nuttle, a consultant to the National Federation of Independent Business...
...With this cast of characters, Drew tells the story of the 1996 House races, which began early in the year with conservative activists increasingly anxious that the Republican primaries would produce a wounded, exhausted nominee...
...while headlines on the Clinton health and tax plans were splashed across the screen...
...Reed replied: "F--- off...
...So too was the corrosive publicity about Democratic fundraising scandals that had begun to filter into public consciousness in October with the first revelations about John Huang...
...The efforts of Reed and the NRA to educate their members on issues and motivate them to go to the polls despite the dreary Dole campaign have been well reported...
...Tanya Metaksa of the National Rifle Association...
...But Elizabeth Drew, sensing that the race for the White House would turn out to be the vapid and bloodless slog it was, decided in early 1996 to write about the battle for control of the House of Representatives...
...Private polls for both parties in late October showed that the GOP could lose the House...
...Ganske survived...
...They have a strategy that's at least 10 to 20 years out...
...Money is the lubricant of politics, and Drew exhaustively details how business and conservative groups raised"soft" money for the Republican National Committee which, in turn, sent funds to groups (such as Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform) for "issue advocacy" ads on issues such as Medicare...
...Drew reports that a grateful congressional Democrat "realized he might have Kenneth Starr to thank...
...In other words, at some point in the fall of 1996 Clinton shifted his emphasis from winning a second term to ensuring that term didn't end in a scandalous Nixon-like Gätterdiimmerung...
...Steve Rosenthal, the political director of the AFL-CIO...
...The tension between conservatives both in and out of Congress and the Dole campaign intensified...
...In a historical irony, people took out their anger over the money scandal more on the Democrats running for Congress than on Clinton himself," concludes Drew...
...Simpson told Reed it was wrong for him to stop the bill and that as an American he should be for it...
...Drew cites an unnamed White House aide as saying that the president had concluded that the scandals had depressed Democratic turnout and that "a strong response would have helped more than it hurt...
...I'm not a statesman...
...Randy Tate, a firebrand freshman from Seattle JOHN H. FUND is a member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board and a contributor to MSNBC...
...According to Drew, much of the credit for the narrow Republican victory is due to the work of Grover Norquist, Ralph Reed, and Tanya Metaksa...
...As preparations for the 1998 election get underway, many of the players in Drew's book are preparing to be back for return engagements...
...John Glenn, the ranking Democrat on the hearings, are said to keep underlined copies of Drew's book on their desks...
...Dole campaign manager Scott Reed said he considered himself "at war" with the leadership over their efforts to stem illegal immigration...
...But this time they showed Randy Tate trailing his Democratic opponent by two points, and four other GOP freshmen hovering just over 5o percent...
...Democrats have attempted to equate those transfers with the fundraising scandals of the DNC, and this summer are hoping to use Sen...
...He then said: "This is the most incompetently run campaign in American history...
...So with eight days left in the campaign, Republicans brought out an ad warning voters not to give Clinton "a blank check...
...64 July 1997 The American Spectator Republicans had not won back-to-back House elections for 70 years, and it was feared that if they lost control in 1996 it might remain out of their grasp for years afterwards...
...President Clinton himself apparently agrees in part with Drew...
...Senator Alan Simpson asked Reed for a meeting to protest Dole's efforts to kill the immigration bill...
...While in public he denies his fundraising scandals hurt Democrats, in private he has come to regret his strategy of ignoring the scandals in the campaign's last days...
...In fact, both Thompson and Sen...
...writes Drew...
...The AFL-CIO will likewise attempt to finish the job it started...
...The one word reason his advisers gave privately was Whitewater...
...It was as if the gods had stepped in to punish Clinton for his arrogance and insouciance when it came to fundraising...
...would be in the majority today...
...While President Clinton has been an extraordinarily lucky politician, he seems to bring only ill fortune to his party, which is now a congressional minority but has seen states with 75 percent of the nation's population elect GOP governors and 256 of its officials switch parties—all since Bill Clinton's first election...
...Both parties held successful conventions over the summer with Republicans temporarily energized by the selection of Jack Kemp as Dole's running mate and Democrats pleased that they tamped down liberal criticism of President Clinton's signing of the welfare reform bill...
...and Dick Morris, the architect of Clinton's stunningly successful election-year scramble to the center...
...He had surrendered what moral authority he had left...
...As it became clear that the sputtering Dole campaign was creating a drag on Republican congressional candidates, the GOP Congress began trying to pass legislation to burnish its image with swing voters...
...Peter Torkildsen, a cautious Massachusetts moderate and the Republican incumbent who came closest to losing in 1994...
...That attitude may have worked for President Clinton in 1996, but his fellow Democrats may find voters in 1998 once again using them as the whipping boys for the ever more creative excesses of his administration...
...I'm not a legislator...
...Three vulnerable GOP congressmen who were targeted by the AFL-CIO are also featured: Rep...
...Republicans, in turn, will no doubt be interested in her description of how the AFL-CIO used "issue advocacy" ads to "wreak vengeance on the io4th Congress...
...By mid-September, President Clinton felt confident enough about his own reelection that he became intent on helping Democrats regain control of one or both Houses...
...Before Gingrich's pep talk the group heard a downbeat report on the results of Washington State's "jungle" primary, in which candidates from both parties appear on a single ballot...
...and the youngest House Member...
...On September 17 President Clinton met with Democratic leaders and agreed to transfer funds fromthe DNC to the congressional campaign committees and hold three unity fundraisers for them...
...The Republicans and Democrats alike realized that the battle for the House would have far more to do with the nation's long-term political alignment than the race for the White House...
...In other words: Whatever It Takes...
...Reps...
...I'm a campaign manager and it doesn't help Bob Dole if you continue to send Clinton bills to sign...
...Ralph Reed, executive director of the Christian Coalition...
...This was code for hearings not just on Whitewater but also the bevy of Clinton scandals, past and perhaps future...
...While Pat Buchanan appealed to many at a gut level, they recognized his nomination would be disastrous for races further down the ballot...
...Drew, a veteran of campaign reporting, tells the story of the 1996 election through the activities of seven players: Grover Norquist, the energetic head of Americans for Tax Reform and a columnist for this magazine...
...and Greg Ganske, a plastic surgeon turned Iowa congressman who ran against a Democratic former TV anchorwoman...
...Soon word began filtering back to the RNC from field workers that the "blank check" campaign was working...
...In 1994 the results had forecast the defeat of then-Speaker Tom Foley and several other Democrats...
...And if the independent counsel, Kenneth Starr, brought damaging charges, a Clinton adviser said, it would be more comfortable to have a Democratic Congress...
...Drew was allowed to sit in on the group's weekly Wednesday meetings at Norquist's office and came away with new respect for the conservative activists: "They think longer-term than any people I have ever seen in politics," slit says...
...Fred Thompson's oversight hearings to highlight the role of ATR and other conservative groups in the 1996 election...
Vol. 30 • July 1997 • No. 7
