The Barbour of the hill
The Barbour of the Hill by David Grann Sometimes, late at night, when Bob Dole was plunging off podiums, labor was blacklisting Republican candidates, and his onetime loyal allies were talking...
...said one GOP operative in early October, when polls showed Republicans forfeiting the House after months of unanswered Democratic attacks...
...Republicans—Barbour deifiers and dissenters alike— had learned an essentially conservative lesson: In politics, there are no saints or demons, only humans...
...The Mississippian with the musical accent and oversized hat of hair survived perhaps the biggest strategic gamble of the season...
...In the past, the GOP president had always hand-picked his RNC chairman...
...embers still smoldered in ashtrays, beer bottles crowded table tops...
...What did happen, unfortunately, was not exactly a triumph...
...We got lucky that it worked out this time...
...On the 14th floor, in a smoke-filled suite, Barbour watched the returns grimly with his team...
...Among those voters, exit polls show that 53 percent favored Republicans, while only 43 percent turned to Democrats...
...My place in history is the latest Republican chairman," Barbour says with a smile, "the fat guy with the funny accent...
...Only Barbour and his onetime top aide, Don Fierce, remained...
...the party not only held the House, but picked up two seats in the Senate...
...The Barbour of the Hill by David Grann Sometimes, late at night, when Bob Dole was plunging off podiums, labor was blacklisting Republican candidates, and his onetime loyal allies were talking about impaling him, Haley Barbour reached into the bottom of his office closet and pulled out a bottle of Maker's Mark whiskey...
...In the long run, Haley's wait-till-you-see-the-whites-of-their-eyes strategy paid off," says Ohio freshman Bob Ney, who just months earlier had grumbled to reporters, "Where's the RNC cavalry...
...it was salvation...
...In the age of rapid-response politics, he lay low, keeping a perfect poker face while conserving the bulk of his money until the final weeks of the campaign...
...If I had to do it all over again," Barbour insisted, "I'd do it the same way...
...Unfortunately, one of those cards was a deuce—Bob Dole—and another a wild card— Newt Gingrich...
...As the balloons hung from the rafters at the Renaissance Hotel in Washington, Republicans were not in the mood for a coronation...
...He should be carried down Pennsylvania Avenue and crucified...
...In the process, he risked not just the GOP Congress and presidential candidate, but his reputation as one of the most successful party chairmen ever...
...Yet the room by then was oddly quiet...
...Even some of Barbour's sharpest critics are mollified, if not muted...
...But though Barbour's trump card wasn't enough to save Dole, it preserved a GOP Congress for the first time in 68 years...
...If that's the case, then the Republicans can forget about being a majority party...
...When the GOP convention failed to push the GOP nominee's polls above 40 percent, Barbour and his team plotted ads and state-party expenditures that would protect congressional Republicans in the face of a presidential blowout...
...Finally, after a desperate Reed begged Ross Perot to drop out of the race, the RNC launched a massive advertising attack warning voters not to give Bill Clinton unbridled power—tacitly conceding Dole's impending defeat...
...At the time, Barbour drawled he'd rather be $10 million in debt with a GOP Congress than $10 million in the black with a Democratic Congress...
...Now, with the election finally over and Republicans safely ensconced on the Hill, a relieved Barbour smiles and guzzles a lite beer...
...But unlike 1994, there would be no note from Ronald Reagan, no ritual call from Gerald Ford...
...Instead, the portly chairman got a slimmer congressional majority and a leaner, meaner Bill Clinton—which, in poker terms, more closely resembles a draw...
...We were hoping for the trifecta...
...And, at least in 1996, the rationale behind Bar-bour's gamble was correct: While many voters settled on their presidential candidate early, a critical portion of the public chose their congressional candidates in the final days...
...Yet they remained from the outset wary allies, linked by fortuity rather than fortune...
...Dole even confided in Barbour that he planned to resign from the Senate...
...Indeed, for Barbour, the outcome on November 5 was more than vindication...
...What should happen if he loses Congress and the White House...
...It'd be nuts if that strategy became the party line...
...It wasn't exactly what we wanted," he says...
...Lionized after the 1994 election, Barbour was on the verge of being excommunicated by his own flock...
...But when some Dole-ites wanted to dump Barbour for one of their own, Bar-bour made it clear he wasn't budging until the new year...
...They can pee all over me," he says, "and it doesn't hurt any-thin...
...After all, only 12 months earlier, 1996 still looked like the year of the Republican royal flush, the year the party would win both the executive and legislative branches and Bar-bour would be anointed the best bluffer inside the Beltway...
...Just as pivotal, the normally parsimonious Barbour went on a last-minute borrowing binge, going $10 million into debt in order to reelect Republican incumbents...
...Relations between the avuncular Mississippian and the stoic Kansan had steadily improved since Dole booted Barbour from legislative strategy sessions on the Hill in October 1995...
...Holding your money until the end "is an inherently defensive political strategy," complains Rep...
...Had we not been dominant in the last week or two," says GOP pollster David Hill, "we'd probably have lost...
...You did great," Fierce said...
...The announcement preempted any insurgence, and ensured the RNC's financial independence in the final weeks of the election...
...At 10:30, it was still unclear whether Republicans had even held the House...
...Republicans had retained the House and gained in the Senate...
...Like any good poker player, Barbour played the hand he was dealt...
...We knew we only had about two volleys....If they'd just a little more time to get over that fence, we'd had to fight 'em off with baseball bats...
...Bill Paxon, head of the National Republican Congressional Committee, calls Barbour godlike, while the political prog-nosticator Charles Cook extols his "gutsy," "optimal impact" strategy...
...He pauses, as if contemplating what might have happened then...
...You can't endorse a strategy that has you consistently losing ground...
...The late infusion raised the ante in the most expensive campaign in history and assured that Barbour did what he had always planned: show his ace in the final moments of the game...
...The untold secret of the campaign was how Barbour distanced himself from Dole, without making it explicit," says Robert Shrum, a Democratic consultant...
...David Mcintosh, an Indiana Republican freshman who served in the Reagan and Bush administrations...
...Nearly everyone now agrees Barbour deserves more than his life...
...After Scott Reed, manager of the Dole campaign, canceled weekly meetings with Barbour, Newt Gingrich, and other top advisers in June, Barbour quietly prepared for a Dole debacle...
...But unlike after the last election, Republicans are limping back to Capitol Hill, their agenda co-opted by a politically hermaphroditic president and sullied by a briefly revived labor movement...
...In fact, most of the House Republicans who crumpled under labor's assault, like Michael Flanagan of Chicago, are in largely Democratic districts and would have lost under any circumstances...
...While Gingrich's toxic image polluted Republican campaigns from Connecticut to California, Dole's invisible candidacy remained a larger problem...
...We were sitting over here behind our rampart," he says, gesturing toward his desk for emphasis and launching into an enthusiastic mixed metaphor...
...Nevertheless, Barbour feared losing control of the entire Republican campaign, from the governorships to the Congress, if Dole didn't reemerge as a viable candidate...
...Barbour shrugs at such carping...
...We couldn't have done any better," Barbour replied...
...There, surrounded by the spoils of his 1994 triumph—framed newspaper clippings and a congratulatory note from Ronald Reagan—the Republican party's national chairman would tilt his head back, take a liberal swig, and tune out the unceasing criticism that he had held his ace too long...
...David Grann is executive editor of The Hill...
...Dole was losing nearly as badly as George Bush, while congressional Republicans were being routed in the Northeast...
...By 1:30 a.m., the electoral landscape had improved...
...It's not exactly what you want to bet the house on," says one Dole strategist...
Vol. 2 • December 1996 • No. 12
