ON POLITICAL BOOKS: Hangin' with the Houseboyz
Buckley, Christopher
Hangin’ with the Houseboyz 7bink the guys you elected are dangerous? Meet the arrogant young staffers running the show . I by Christopher Buckley ity the book* that comes out in May 1992...
...Profiles - in Courage this ain’t...
...It entertains as it damns...
...Constitution to every household in America...
...Regnery Gofeway, $21.95...
...The media, which have been playing the perk scandals for all they’re worth after largely ignoring the bigger questions, emerge here as a kind of enabler to all these fiscal drunks...
...The trauma specialist’s account of the engagement had been verified...
...Remember too that the “definition of honesty in politics is staying bought once you’re bought...
...Does any Congress with a national approval rating of 17 percent and up to its neck in a check-kiting scandal have a lid left over its head...
...Rep...
...A quote from our own classical past is inverted to become the Hill rat’s credo: “Ask not what your member can do for the issue, but rather, what the issue can do for your member...
...Hill Raft Blowing fhe Lid Off Congress...
...The United States, you’ll recall, was not technically supposed to be fighting in El Salvador, just advising...
...A prime purpose of political polls is not only to handicap the horses, but to point moneymen in the right direction...
...In 1!288, 94 percent did...
...But mammon is in the details, and the details are delicious...
...Rogers would take it from there...
...One lousy mil...
...Oh well...
...His eventual A-Funny-Thing-Happened-On-TheWay-To-Damascus moment came when his second child nearly died in infancy...
...In 1984, preparing for the reelection, “[Wle had 680,000 computer-targeted letters, postcards, and newsletters in the works...
...The author grew up as a Special Forces brat, which equipped him, at least at first, with the temperament and moxie to take his hill...
...They have a co-dependent relationship going, for if there’s one thing Jackley relates a remarkable incident from 1983, when he got a call from a local television producer in El Paso who told him that a friend who works as an Army trauma specialist at Fort Bliss-one of the prime beneficiaries of Coleman’s pork-dispensinghad just come back from a supersecret mission in El Salvador, where he was summoned to treat “American dead and wounded-none of them,” the producer relates, “in regular uniforms...
...Ninety-eight percent of them got reelected...
...Did Jackley take the FBIS report to his superiors...
...Touted as the Liar’s Poker of Capitol Hill, Jackley’s account does live up to the publisher’s flackery...
...Ron Wyden and a television camera...
...Brace the universe portrayed by yourself for another shocker: Michael Lewis in his staff- classical Past is inverted to largely by ingratiating himlevel expos6 of Salomon self with the-now deposed Brothers, the Hill rats Jack- become the Hill rat’s credo: and disgraced soeaker of the ley chronicles learn self-im- House,clim Wight...
...If Congress has become a house of ill repute, it didn’t get that way by accident...
...The staffer snorts, “A mil...
...FBIS reported intercepting and transcribing a transmission from Radio Venceremos, the voice of the FMLN insurgency, that reported a victory in an ambush of the Atlacatl Battalion...
...Understand that, and you’ve understood the intent of every law ever passed...
...In 1790, only about half of House members ran for reelection...
...Squalid and appalling as Jackley’s revelations are, this deft account of the grosser realities in democracy’s sausage works, based on the author’s 12 years as a congressional staffer, or “Hill rat” as they call themselves, may no Chrisfopher Buckley lives and wrifes in Washingfon and edifs Forbes FYI, the quarferly supplement to Forbes...
...And they did well...
...Did the producer follow up on his own...
...I can do ten mil with report language and not even have to ask the chairman...
...All-pork franks Then there’s good old “Uncle Frank,” the rich relative who never says no to free stamps...
...He says CIA and maybe some military...
...Suddenly his mighty press secretarial labors on behalf of his boss, Texas Democratic Congressman Ronald Coleman, a man with the ethics and moral courage of a hookworm-and apologies to hookworms everywhere-fell into the proper perspective...
...Jackley notes, “That may or may not have been true, but his disdain was palpable...
...What did he do...
...PACs follow a congressman’s “numbers”-that is, his approval ratings back home-the way advertisers follow a TV show’s ratings...
...scheming to vote against a good bill that he actually favors, him to--namely, steal from the voters of other districts...
...as Marlene Dietrich once put it, “It took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily...
...The Numbers run everything...
...Profiles in scourge Solutions, anyone...
...And thus he came to burn his bridges with a once he’s assured that it is going down to defeat...
...And absolute power was still too much of a blast to mess with...
...Peanuts...
...There, in a way, you have it all, the sum teleology of Capitol Hill: self-preservation...
...Meet the arrogant young staffers running the show . I by Christopher Buckley ity the book* that comes out in May 1992 with Pt he subtitle Blowing the Lid OffC ongress...
...He cites Common Ciiuse’s figure that in 1988, PACs gave $82 million to1 incumbents and a mere $9 million to challengers...
...I turned to the El Salvador section and froze...
...At one ooint...
...Parliamentarian Edmund Burke’s lofty admonition to the electorate in 1774, “Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment...
...O’Rourke has pointed out in his own Pogo shtick on Washington, Parliament of Whores, the problem is that, in a democracy, the whores are us...
...This got portance at a very callow “Ask not what YOUr member him a sr;at on the all-powerige, usually right out of college...
...They live and die by their coverage...
...from which all oork I , ley eiplains to a fellow Ap- rather, what the issue can do flows...
...One reason, of course, is money...
...The collective voice being raised these days is that of Casablanca’s Captain Renaud, shocked-shocked!-to learn that congressmen are perkmongers and slobs when it comes to balancing their own checkbooks, never mind that they’ve overdrawn the nation’s by $4 trillion in the last 12 years...
...Even the phraseology is out of Liar’s Poker...
...John L. Jackley...
...Bear in mind that according to the 1990 census, El Paso County still had a population of only 592,000...
...cowering under his blankets at home-literally-during the invasion of Panama so he won’t have to make a statement by voting...
...In 1990, the reelection figure plunged to 96 percent...
...But he doesn’t say how that’s going to be possible, exactly...
...Later in the year and on steadier political ground, Coleman did blister Reagan on Central America...
...personnel were engaged in combat abroad in violation of the law was: “We’re not in the story, are we?’ Rogers then told Jackley to drop it...
...the quickest way to perish, as they say on the Hill, is to walk between the voracious Rep...
...wig John Gutfreund’s dare To a colleague to play a single hand of the game for a million dollars...
...Jack- can do for the issue, but ful Appropriations Committee...
...F.epresentative tolepropriations Committee rat man is nothing if not representative...
...And that’s the whopping conundrum at the heart of the congressional beast: As P.J...
...Postage alone for these taxpayer-funded mailings was more than $100,000nearly half of the $212,892 our Republican opponent would spend for his entire campaign...
...Jackley was left to assume that his producerfriend’s source was a wacko, until a few days later, when he was reading over the CIA’S Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) report, monitoring media reports from around the world...
...and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion,” is hootingly dismissed by a Democratic committee chairman: “Burke got his ass sent packing home...
...Nineteen eighty-nine was not even an election year, but by then “we had already sent over one million pieces of mail during the year at a cost of over $200,000 to the taxpayer...
...To Jackley, the only way to sweep these Augean stables is with a grass-roots broom...
...Did Jackley call his producer friend in El Paso to tell him...
...I sighed...
...My personal favorite-and who knows, perhaps it will also appeal to the Internal Revenue Service- is when he angrily demands an interest-free loan to cover his overdraft at-you guessed it-the House bank, and then doesn’t report the free interest to the IRS...
...I know, I know, you’re shocked-shocked-to hear it...
...Easy enough...
...Let’s face it,” gloats one Republican member, “you have to be a bozo to lose this job...
...Rogers reported back to Jackley that Coleman’s reaction to the possibility that U.S...
...They directed a routine query to the U.S...
...The experience concentrated his mind...
...A scoundrel, you say...
...vengeance...
...So if the Numbers turn out well, a member will shop around the results to the PACs to prove he is still a blue-chip investment...
...his press coverage...
...His Damascus moment was still years off...
...But hadn’t he done his civic duty by reporting this amazing, red-hot tip to his congressman’s press flunkey...
...Power might corrupt, but absolute power is a blast...
...I had already learned to keep score, but I couldn’t tell if this one was a run, a hit, or an error...
...Up on the Hill, quotations from classical antiquity are just palimpsests for graffiti...
...Some modemday Dick Tuck ought to come along and plant a giant HOUSE FOR SALE sign in front of the dome...
...He does exactly derived from Salomon big- what his constituents want that the title of Lewis’ book for your member...
...Not to the voters of Texas’s 16th district, who have reelected him time after time-the last two, unopposed...
...Next, we’ll get them to stop leaning on that magic Pitney Bowes machine...
...dearer to a congressman’s heart than his numbers, it’s Most congressmen are press hogs...
...Let’s get Congress to outlaw PAC money...
...A $4 trillion deficit, or Ron Coleman’s parking space at National Airport...
...Amidst the current hullabaloo over kited checks and legislative gridlock, that percentage may change in 1992, but after reading this book, I wouldn’t bet the farm on it...
...He quotes another rodent: “Lord Acton was only half right...
...It is the nature of their egos as well as of their business...
...All the gentleman from El I’aso asks in return from his constituents-aside from interest-free loans and free plants from the Botanical Gardens-is permanence...
...How could Coleman get Like the mini-masters of A quote from our own away with all this...
...They back winners who can produce for them...
...Hangin’ with the Houseboyz 7bink the guys you elected are dangerous...
...Jamie Whitten of Mississippi, since 1977 the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, stated this iron law of politics in an admirably candid moment when he said, “All anyone ever wants is a special advantage over the next fellow...
...Jackley makes us witnesses to wonderful sights: Coleman conniving to get press mileage out of a devastating Mexico City earthquake...
...What happened was that the FMLN had ambushed the government’s elite Atlacatl Battalion and wasted a bunch of our guys along with the Salvadorans...
...Which is doing the nation more harm...
...PACs and other handicappers keep lists of every congressional race in the country . . . PACs do not place bets-campaign contributions-on long shots...
...In 1989, Jackley and Coleman’s chief of staff, Paul Rogers, a petty, humorless despot who regarded himself as far smarter than his boss and therefore the real congressman-a totally common phenom, apparently-put together a plan to mail out two million pieces of Coleman self-aggrandizement...
...Jackley refers to the “holy trinity of PACs, honoraria, and campaign contributions,” though it escapes me what’s so holy about them...
...Something about being a congressman must have changed for the better in 200 years-perhaps the food...
...Clampaign contributions follow Numbers...
...So what did Coleman and his Man Friday do...
...The abuses of Congress’ franked-mail privileges are old news by now, but Jackley provides some fresh gum to chew on...
...The more’s the pity, because this is an important book deserving a wide audience...
...As for the perks-the Codels (congressional delegations-read “PX shopping sprees”), free airport parking, private ambulances-so what...
...Right...
...Army, which told them, Oh no sic nothing like that around here...
...Jackley took this lurid bit of information to Rogers, the control-freak chief of staff...
...Setting aside its dubious merits, you’ve gotta love the symbolism of the fact that “[Tlhe only franked mailing ever officially turned down by a formal vote of the entire House of Representatives was the one to mail a copy of the U.S...
...longer have the ability to dismay...
Vol. 24 • June 1992 • No. 6
