Little man, what now?
FERGUSON, ANDREW
Little Man, What Now? Robert Reich and the Failure of "The Conversation" By Andrew Ferguson In January 1992, the left-wing publicist Sidney Blu-menthal wrote an informative article for the New...
...We're losing our soul...
...The relationship between the president and his labor secretary is a rollercoaster ride, as dizzying as cigar smoke...
...But is he...
...Reich describes a congressional hearing at which Teddy Kennedy helped him out of a tight spot: "I could have drowned...
...They're a stitch, eh, Mrs...
...Blu-menthal picked him out for special mention, along with such luminous intelligences as Mickey Kan...
...Thus in the Manichaean struggle with the fatcats, Reich sides with the little people and the dogs...
...Morris tells Reich: "Clinton tacks to the right when the wind is blowing right...
...In "The Annointed: Bill Clinton," Blumenthal patiently laid out for his readers the intellectual milieu that had produced the then-Democratic frontrunner and soon-to-be president...
...The talk about moving continues...
...So central was Reich's role in The Conversation that you might even consider him its impresario...
...In a discussion of budget constraints, Clinton's famous temper flashes...
...Reich himself, Reich himself offhandedly confesses, is "passionate about social justice and economic fairness...
...Pitilessly he shows us his old pal, the president, as unprincipled, indecisive, shifting this way then that with every current, and all the while avoiding the consequences of his own vacillation...
...That's what Mommy says...
...Now it's blowing right, so that where he's heading...
...In its particulars Reich's view of American society is not so different from those 19th-century pen-and-ink sketches showing a cigar-chomping, overstuffed Kapitalist with his boot on the back of a scrawny fellow marked "Labor...
...Locked in the Cabinet stands as a con-"tinuation, elucidation, and consummation of : The Conversation (stop me before I turn into .Rev...
...Kennedy saved my life...
...I vowed to myself I'd be here for this family," Reich writes...
...Weren't they supposed to come next week...
...Wasn't Clinton an original member of The Conversation—caring passionately, talking incessantly throughout the '80s...
...Robert Reich and the Failure of "The Conversation" By Andrew Ferguson In January 1992, the left-wing publicist Sidney Blu-menthal wrote an informative article for the New Republic that still repays re-reading...
...The next moment, the president is listening to Lloyd Bentsen or sucking up to the ball-bearing Alan Greenspan, and Reich is deflated...
...But the more shocking revelation concerns congressional Democrats...
...Then she laughs raucously, laughter shaking her whole body...
...This is a violation of the first rule of Democratic memoir-writing: When talking about Teddy, avoid aquatic metaphors...
...With his background in "oil, gas, and high finance," Bentsen had not been exposed to the full sweep of human experience available to Reich as a professor at Harvard and a resident of Cambridge, Massachusetts...
...The little people will never understand it, he predicts...
...alists would fare in the real world—in the nuts-and-bolts world, as it were—of political practice...
...in the Reich household "I can let go and be me...
...The Conversation was less an ideological wrangle than a spiritual state, an attitude, an approach to the world...
...Back to the White House for another four years," he said, without so much as a smile...
...In a remarkable coda, Reich relates a chat with Dick Morris...
...I feel sick to my stomach," Reich writes...
...He has done all the reading...
...They are the "underdogs," big, lovable pups flopping around and panting for his help...
...Not since Frances Perkins has a secretary of labor been so comfortable with his feminine side—and I'm not forgetting Lynn Martin, either...
...Reich leaves "the nuts and bolts" of politics a supremely unhappy man, convinced as strongly as ever of his superiority to its processes, to its practitioners, and to the man who gave him the coolest job he'll ever have...
...The burden falls, perforce, to Bill and Bob, but although the Reich is willing, the Clinton is weak...
...At least clean out the skeletons from the closets," Hillary says...
...This long project may be called The Conversation...
...Notwithstanding his disappointments with the president's centrism, Reich remains a quintessential Conversationalist...
...She giggles...
...He agrees with me when we talk, but . . ." When the president signs on to a balanced budget, Reich writes, "I worry . . . he has lost sight of the larger goals he came to Washington to accomplish...
...It may be a good plan," Reich notes, "but it's complicated as hell...
...And Reich recounts this devastating assessment without so much as an argument...
...Not to be rude, but I don't think that's any of your business, sir...
...The Conversation, Blumenthal wrote, wasn't about anything so earthy as "the nuts and bolts" of electoral politics...
...Pols have an attention span "just under three minutes...
...Make that, Good jobs at good wages, my son...
...Then he tacks to the left when it's blowing left...
...The high hopes, of course, have been dashed...
...Moral vanity can have practical applications, and this after all is what The Conversation was about...
...But there's more to The Conversation than mere sanctimony, more than this highly approving attitude towards self...
...Reich's caricature has a '90s touch: When he meets with a group of businessmen, he complains that all the cigar smoke hurts his eyes and makes him dizzy...
...I'm really trying...
...He deflects responsibility so artfully," Reich notes...
...He's not motivated by exactly the same ideals as ours," he observes, and later muses, "I doubt Lloyd Bentsen has ever spoken to a single rank-and-file member of the AFL-CIO, let alone a janitor...
...He wields irony with the deftness we have come to expect from sophisticated baby-boomers: Here is the nation's twenty-second Secretary of Labor, on his first official mission to the workplaces of America, about to begin his First Official Dialogue with a Blue-Collar American Worker...
...It's, like, a moral obligation...
...His verdict is rendered early on: "Washington sucks...
...But almost from Election Day 1992, the warnings begin to sound, vague and distant at first, loud and crashing and unignorable four years later when the president's betrayal was complete...
...I hope so, Sam...
...But we can't very well stay here now...
...One letdown follows another...
...The final blow comes in the summer of '96, when the president signs the welfare bill— for all The Conversationalists, the ultimate act of betrayal...
...For all its appeal, Locked in the Cabinet is nevertheless the work of a bitter and frustrated man, and one who is eager, as diplomatically and subtly as possible, to tell us why...
...He agonizes constantly...
...For surely The Conversation is now over...
...The First Official Dialogue between the Secretary of Labor of the United States and a Blue-Collar Worker has not generated the richness of fact and detail the Secretary had hoped for...
...Dear God, who will take care of the dogs...
...the press is simple-minded...
...But then no one ever said you had to be honorable to join The Conversation...
...The Conversation, we learn, involved : ¦; endless policy conferences, thick position'" <!'y papers, weighty tomes, and lengthy corre-' -spondence among the very best, most creative thinkers the Democratic party was honored to possess...
...the president shouts in agony...
...This is The Conversationalist talking— the megalomaniacal use of the first-person pronoun, the presumptive role of president as benefactor to a helpless nation...
...As secretary of labor, Reich defined the American workforce as "the little people who work hard and most of the time get screwed...
...The president, Reich assumed, shared this grand vision of the commercial republic...
...But for every infelicity, there is a good wisecrack, or a skillfully rendered set piece—some instance of self-deprecating charm...
...Morris represents "all I detest in American politics," but by book's end Reich leaves the impression that the political consultant has a far better understanding of the man they both served...
...But he always knows his ultimate destination...
...But he gets over it, with the help of a remarkable family...
...It is a well-wrought book—witty and quickly paced, expertly mixing policy palaver with colorful anecdotes: the work of a man who knows how to write...
...Well, one was, and the most sublime anticipated pleasure of the first Clinton administration was to watch how The Conversation and The ConversationAndrew Ferguson, a senior editor of The Weekly Standard, is the author of Fools' Names, Fools' Faces (Atlantic Monthly Press...
...It's awful," [Hillary says...
...It is a family of Conversationalists...
...And sure enough, health care fails...
...From the start, Clinton has been part of I The Conversation," Blumenthal went on, . -.ji-j* his customary redundancy driving the .- y;'.i point home...
...There's no point to winning reelection if it has to be done this way...
...AHarvard professor, Reich was the oldest Clinton friend to secure a position in the president's cabinet...
...In rendering dialogue, for example, he should go easier on the italics...
...You're going to help people get good jobs...
...tor, James Carville, David Wilhelm, and Derek : Shearer...
...What'll I be able to tell the average working person I did for him?...At least I'll have health care to give them...
...Sweatshops choke the landscape, bread lines wind through the haunted streets of our great cities...
...But at last Reich's sympathy runs dry...
...On page 9, Reich worries about taking the labor job Clinton may offer him: "It scares the hell out of me...
...Reich's book takes the form of a four-year diary, and he works to give it a diary's intimacy...
...Over the years he has mastered the whole domestic policy curriculum that has evolved...
...Before too long, the downs far outnumber the ups...
...I feel as though we're on exactly the same track," Reich thinks between oomphs...
...Reich is uncannily prescient in hindsight...
...I hope they leave the chandeliers," Bill says, then laughs...
...Locked in the Cabinet is in the end an act of ingratitude...
...From here Reich's disillusionment unfolds with a sad inexorability...
...Bringing America together, creating real opportunity for people to get ahead, continued to be a main topic of our ongoing discussion whenever we met...
...The health-care plan is unveiled...
...Oh, those skeletons...
...Here's Hillary in the governor's mansion in Little Rock, preparing for the move to the White House: "I can't believe it, Bill...
...The great rethinking of liberalism that The Conversationalists undertook throughout the '80s has in 1997 issued, under the pressure of practical politics, in the Rockefeller Republicanism of the second Clinton administration...
...The Conversation: complete-^ with the capitals, it is a tag to treasure...
...We started drinking from the same trough as the Republicans...
...You can imagine the parties...
...During the transition, Clinton asks Reich, with a sidelong glance, "What do you think about Bentsen for Treasury...
...He makes a few mistakes of style and taste, to be sure...
...In fact, "the three of us [Hillary, Bill, and Reich] have talked about, and acted upon, our convictions about social justice for almost a quarter century...
...Interestingly, a large number of events that we now know to have happened are predicted in the diary...
...that Blumenthal so lovingly limned, and with such high hopes, in the preg-\nant days of early '92...
...The movers are coming tomorrow to start crating things up...
...It was about "why one should get elected and what to do if one is...
...Reich is reassured, but only momentarily...
...Reich is taken aback...
...Just as they have risen above the stale old ideological categories of Left and Right, they are liberated too from gender stereotypes...
...All you had to do was talk...
...While Dad's helping people get good jobs, Mom's out there a-teachin' at the law school and founding a "domestic-violence institute...
...Congressional Republicans, of course, are "thugs and bullies"—duh...
...And then on occasion he can be positively indiscreet...
...Locked in the Cabinet serves as its final whimper...
...And then, on page 21: "It scares me...
...It is also vaguely dishonorable...
...To be sure, the old Bill occasionally emerges...
...While other friends may talk about, say, where to have dinner, Conversationalists talk about making this crazy old world a better place—and, just as important, talk about how they're always talking about it...
...The friendship was struck in the mythic year 1968, on the fabled boat to England, where the two were to enjoy their Rhodes scholarships at Oxford...
...Now, five years later, we have a pretty good idea...
...He attends cabinet meetings, visits job-training sites, lobbies Congress, dithers with the White House staff, sups with the Washington elite...
...The essential principle of Clinton's agenda—leaner, activist government—is the result of a rethinking of the future of liberalism and the Democratic party that he and his wife have been part of for years...
...Then, on page 16: "It's frankly scaring the hell out of me...
...This is not difficult for The Conversationalist to do, since the most rewarding kind of intimacy is one that's put on display for thousands of strangers to admire...
...they hug hard...
...Reich and the president hug often...
...Jackson...
...I clear my throat...
...One moment, the president gives a nationally televised speech Reich approves of, and afterwards they hug...
...staffers are consumed with dividing the political spoils...
...In public he must be "cool and professional...
...The president himself stomped them cruelly underfoot during his steady march centerward, as the early promise of gays in the military, ever-higher marginal tax rates, and nationalized health care gave way to deficit reduction, V-chips, and welfare reform...
...Go ahead: Call them ideal-ists—that's just the sort of people they are...
...I asked him...
...The Conversationalist is profoundly self-conscious, and self-congratulatory...
...Reich trembles at the portent: "If Bill and Hillary are seriously considering Bentsen, how committed can they be to raising the prospects of the working class and the poor...
...Where's that, Dick...
...And the imagery is sometimes unimaginative: "[Alan] Greenspan has the most important grip in town: Bill's balls, in the palm of his hand...
...Does Andrea Mitchell know about this...
...So as the little saplings grew, he changed diapers, gave baths, rubbed the kids' backs till they fell asleep at night, and he has lived to tell us all about it...
...Bob," the president implores, "I'm trying...
...in fact, a very good idea, thanks especially to a new memoir from Robert Reich, Clinton's first labor secretary, called Locked in the Cabinet...
...He had high hopes for his fellow cabinet officers—"we children of the '60s," as he puts it—but the president's advisers obsess about the budget deficit, drying up the money Reich wants to hand out to the little people...
...Business...
...little wonder, then, that the old Texan does not—cannot—care passionately...
...In the 1980s we gave up on the little guys...
...This is a sad note on which to close a diary, and to end The Conversation...
...Then the next day, the president says he agrees with his labor secretary, and Reich enthuses, "B really does care about these things...
...Clinton...
...Through the Carter-Mondale-Dukakis, darkness The Conversation burned with brains' afire—enormous brains, baby-boomer brains: a new generation of Americans, born in mid-century, tempered by Rhodes scholarships, disciplined by hard and bitter avoidance of the draft, proud of their graduate seminars at the Kennedy School, and unwilling to permit the slow undoing of the Democratic party...
...How much do you earn, Marsha...
...One House Democrat explains the facts of life: "We're owned by them...
...George and Barbara are moving out to make room for us...
...It deepened at Yale Law and remained strong, though never intimate, throughout the long, deafening years of The Conversation...
...How remarkable...
...Tonight, as I tuck Sam in, he stares up at me and asks, "You're really going to help people, aren't you Dad...
...The Conversationalist is steadily in touch with his (or her) feelings, and his (or her) feelings are always "conflicted," and never below the surface...
...An air of dissipated expectation hangs over Reich's memoir as a result...
...For that matter, almost every non-little person sucks, too...
...And so Reich spends his time fruitlessly "wandering through the halls of the White House and Congress with a tin cup, begging for money to upgrade the skills of working Americans...
Vol. 2 • May 1997 • No. 33
