Changing the Power Process

...A day later, Clinton named Vernon E. Jordan, another wealthy lawyer with a long record of public service, to anchor the Washington end of the operation as "chairman of the board...

...They will not be allowed to lobby officials from the outside for the same time...

...they tend, rather, to sport varying shades of gray...

...The briefings are meant to give big corporations and unions a lead on what to expect in areas of concern to them...

...After all, that's the way it's always been done...

...If some Clinton aides get their way, Kantor will not be the big cheese on the transition "board of directors" that he wants to be...

...He said the Governor "is not ready to announce exactly what these [in-and-out] strictures will be...

...In truth, though, altruism vies with self-interest among those who practice the nefarious arts in the political tar pits...

...In a little-noted coda to his overly long victory speech, Clinton himself raised the "need to reform the political system and reduce the influence of the special interests...

...Once a Secretary of Education for Ronald Reagan and, more recently, a drug czar for George Bush, he was now merely a part of the scene...

...Democratic Party Chairman Ronald H. Brown is another such dual-purpose person...

...Andrew J. Glass, is head of the Cox Newspapers bureau in Washington...

...Jordan's friends say he hopes to become the first black man ever to be nominated U.S...

...In any event, as I've mentioned, to get hired one may have to agree up front not to lobby the government for five years after leaving the Administration's employ...

...Whatever, in the nation's political capital opposites do come together...

...One wonders how the do-gooders would respond if they could listen to a leading influence peddler, seated in a nest of influence peddlers, arguing that a way must now be found to curb the peddlers' influence...

...Come to think of it, if Clinton and the new Congress actually do manage to reform campaign finance, the folks who raise cash by telling us (correctly) that money debases politics might go the way of those political boutiques on the Right that used to issue warnings (again correctly) about the worldwide Communist threat...

...In a similarly effusive manner, Bennett wrote back...

...Like a storm that gathers energy as it sweeps from the sea to the land and back to the sea again, they have accrued power over the years moving in and out of government . They enjoy easy access to nearly all of the key players...

...It now appears that the folks he picks to help him pick the people who will run the show will be barred from participation for at least six months...

...Just as my friend and I finished our salads, William J. Bennett sat down for a short chat...

...In this respect, few of them can simply be painted black or white...

...Well before 1996, though, Clinton and Bennett are likely to sit down at the same dinner table...

...The interviewing team grazes past us...

...Ironies abound...

...When it comes down to the core technical questions, they are the ones who possess the real expertise, having worked the other side of the fence...

...A few weeks before November 3, Mickey Kantor, then chairman of the Clinton campaign, gave a briefing to the lobbyists of about 30 blue-chip U.S...

...By ruling himself out for Secretary of State, a post that was his for the asking, Christopher set a very high standard...

...The intention," he declared, "is to have the most stringent set of ethical rules ever imposed both for the transition team itself, as well as for people who serve in government...

...It turns out that during the Reagan years the Governor of Arkansas, an admirer of Bennett's macho style, wrote him a warm note of praise...

...Nevertheless, he wound up firmly...

...He earns upwards of $650,000 a year...

...Nor is it wrong of Brown to seek a high post, now that he has delivered the goods...

...Of course, one can glean much of the same information by a close reading of the trade press and a few good newspapers...

...His words are the kind of harsh stuff you might expect to hear from the dogooder, think-tank lobbyist bashers...

...How will business be done in this town in the Clinton era...

...My friend agrees that, to succeed, the new President has to break the iron grip of special interests and their lobbyist handmaidens...

...Over a lunch of chicken soup in Little Rock, some 48 hours after he knew from the exit polls that he had won, Clinton asked attorney Warren Christopher to head up the transition shop...

...Clinton has often sought his advice, too, and sometimes has even taken it...

...Conventional wisdom holds that Presidents come and go, but lobbyists will always find a way to make a nice living here...

...But then the lead man makes a mental link with a face, one he has seen in newspapers and magazines over the years...

...Some fear that Bill Clinton, who acquired an evident taste for compromise in governing Arkansas, will not press hard enough for campaign finance reform...

...Moreover, he said, this must be done prior to any major legislative thrusts, which would fail if the old system remains in place...

...Maybe they'll be there to raise money for a worthy cause...

...The firm's senior partner, Thomas Hale Boggs Jr.—whose parents both served in the House—raised big bucks for Clinton...

...If it all actually comes to pass, without side-door waivers for "hardship cases," then the ground will surely rumble beneath Duke Zeibert's...

...As the fall campaign drew near, they both agreed to stash the letters...

...But Clinton plans to set up a White House domestic team under an economic czar, to run what will amount to a national industrial policy...

...But if that proves to be the case, he stands about as much chance of healing what ails the body politic as a cardiologist who pumps fresh blood into a patient with clogged heart valves...

...Maybe they'll simply be sharing gossip with the pooh-bahs of the Washington Post...

...The pricey New York-style pickle and corned beef emporium sits less than a half mile north of the White House...

...Before the Republican Ice Age, he worked under several Democratic Presidents...

...There is nothing illegal about Kantor or Brown wearing two hats...

...Will the young Democratic President-elect act to curb the influence of the lawyer-lobbyists...

...now that a Democrat is moving in down the street—how the mood has changed in this place...

...Duke, who is 83 and runs the circus, lets a camera crew roam through the room...

...To be sure, Bennett, who harbors national ambitions for 1996 and beyond, will one day again pound the Democratic ticket...

...Nobody seems to mind...

...Same crowd...

...From time to time, he and his wife have eaten supper in the White House family quarters with George and Barbara Bush...

...Nothing like that has ever happened here before...

...It is bottom-heavy with lawyers and lobbyists as well as the kind of instantly familiar people who appear on the network news shows...

...Attorney General...

...So he doubles back and asks my host to tell his large viewing audience...

...That could involve executives from the business community...

...Same conversation...

...Around election time, this is also where the clients and would-be clients of top law firms are briefed by insiders...

...Still, it would be nice to watch the in-crowd at Duke's jump out of its alligator shoes if, this time, it were done differently...

...Even as Brown helped shape the Clinton triumph, he drew a hefty salary as a partner in the Washington law firm of Patton, Boggs & Blow...

...My luncheon companion moves easily in the circles of the mighty...

...companies...

...That may well happen, although Christopher has made it tougher for the President-elect to hire Jordan...

...For Christopher, the course following soup with Clinton was waffles with the press...

...At present those courtiers have an inordinate impact on the system that produces most Federal laws and regulations...

...Several Clinton aides held that the bans should be extended to two years...

...There's a kind of cozy cast to the eatery, and, for that matter, to all of official Washington, that outsiders rarely see...

...He sits on blue-ribbon corporate boards and serves gold-plated clients...

...But that's not as cozy, not as inside...

...Nothing at all has changed," my lawyer friend says into the hovering mike...

...But it is not clear whether this mood stems from Kantor's other life as a megawatt lobbyist, or from his showing scant interest in lining up jobs for the small fry in the campaign...

...But the movers and shakers fuel a process that saw fully 93 per cent of the legislators who once more stuck their necks out returned to office...

...The early signs from Arkansas suggest, however, that this time around guns-for-hire could be in trouble...

...As it happens, after the camera swings away we talk of little else but change...

...He would have to find some sort of high corporate monks, prepared to accept such a lengthy sentence...

...This is the year just about everybody thought many incumbents were going to get it in the neck...

...On the Sunday after the election, Christopher also argued on CNN that a five-year cooling off period "will be readily accepted" by the kind of "top people" the next Administration wants to attract...

...And, probably most important, they have wads of cash that they like to pass around Capitol Hill...

...The guests were invited by the bicoastal law firm in which Kantor is a senior partner...