Living Through the Boss-A Day in the Life of a Senator's A. A.
Toynbee, Polly
Living Through the BossA Day ‘in the Life of a Senator’s A.A. by Polly Toynbee Seven a.m. Monday morning, Ken Gray arrives in his office. He has two hours before the office opens to...
...The matter remains unresolved until the end of the day...
...Arriving at the committee room, he sits down, shaking hands with the other people there, and right away launches into the statement Ken has just handed him, which he hasn’t seen before...
...Then we walk all the way back to the hearing room with the important contributor...
...by Polly Toynbee Seven a.m...
...Where Humphrey gives off an aura of hysterical energy, unable to keep still for a minute, quivering with an unnerving and unnatural bounce, Ken is slow, calm, deliberate, and thoughtful: but there is plenty of respect between them...
...He doesn’t see the Senator again, as Humphrey is in an agricultural committee hearing, but he does manage to persuade him to accept the Today show invitation, and he feels very pleased about that...
...When something happened he expected to be able to go down on the floor and talk about it- with the other senators...
...There is a bit more politicking to be done to get a Humphrey friend onto the Democratic Party’s Vice Presidential Selection Commission...
...They then set off at a racing speed down the corridors, Ken managing to keep up most of the time, Humphrey talking very fast and loud, myself having difficulty staying with them without breaking into a run...
...Mostly these corridors are used by busy aides who hurry down them, their feet clackclacking on the marble, like so many White Rabbits, looking at their watches and muttering over pieces of paper, passing the mail shafts where letters are continually puttering down from floors above...
...You can’t see that people living on farms they want the old time better...
...Humphrey has to fit in time for coffee with Willy Brandt and some other Senators before he goes, and he now hurries off to that function...
...His wife was hired as Humphrey’s appointments secretary...
...We go down to the senators’ dining room, where aides can eat when their senator isn’t there...
...At last it is lunch time...
...When you imagine this much work being duplicated a hundred times, in each senator’s office, when you consider that every senator feels he must have a policy somewhere on record on everything from porpoise hunting to strip mining, from sugar in the diet to arts and humanities, the whole Senate suddenly appears to be a kind of madhouse of hurried statements, spurious opinionating, and pointless duplication...
...But , although a man like Hubert Humphrey hasn’t much to learn about politics, Ken advises him...
...After the campaign Ken went back to Douglas’ office, until the Senator was defeated, in 1966, and in 1967 he became a legislative assistant to Humphrey, then Vice President...
...I like old time better I don’t care for new time...
...There is a chance he might become the Senate majority leader, as people are anxious not to have Byrd-just a chance...
...turns out to be the right to a parking space of your own...
...At least six members of the staff are expected to produce three or four statements apiece each week for the Record...
...Anyway, we don’t owe him a thing...
...She doesn’t look altogether delighted...
...Sitting in the room adjoining Humphrey’s own office is the Senator’s personal staff, his personal secretary, scheduling secretary, and his press officer, who also schedules Muriel, Mrs...
...He comes hurrying out, glances at the statements as he pounds along, and disappears into a “Senators Only” room with them in his hand...
...He may not do it all himself, but he is the man responsible for seeing that it is done...
...There’s scarcely a day when I don’t leave the office feeling that I have really achieved something that day, feeling I have really done something important...
...There must be well over 200 letters...
...Ken then inquires what particularly interests the two...
...I wouldn’t be in any other business...
...The suite is on one of the many long marble corridors of the building...
...It is the first time in the day that I have a chance to speak at any length with Ken...
...As we arrive, Humphrey comes bolting out of the dining room chewing deliberately on an indigestion tablet...
...I could list another 2,000 things that came across Ken’s desk that afternoon...
...Ken is a heavy man, dark, bespectacled, and dressed in large-size casual clothes...
...That’s the kind of restraint needed in that job...
...Some new senators hire old pros who know more about the system than they do and begin by being babied and tutored by their administrative assis tan ts...
...I think he has a duty to appear at a time like this,” Ken says...
...Are you hesitant about making a statement on this business...
...He doesn’t like to feel that anything is passing him by...
...Ken says...
...Ken asks...
...I i 1 Next morning, 8:30 a.m., Ken arrives, not in the best of moods, but his moods don’t show, unless you ask him how he feels...
...Their relationship is a controlled, rather than a natural, one...
...It is Max Kampelman, a Washington attorney and longtime Humphrey adviser...
...The press secretary comes in, still worrying over Humphrey’s Watergate position...
...The most important task that Humphrey has to perform is voting, and his time would be spent more profitably in reading and being briefed thoroughly on current legislation...
...We still haven’t...
...It wouldn’t be described by many as one of the greatest privileges-regular canteen food and no liquor...
...all right for those with offices on the other side of the building, not so good for those in easy earshot...
...No, I wasn’t in...
...It was a freewheeling outfit...
...The League of Women Voters of Minnesota wishes to introduce a new lady in Washington with .whom the Senator’s office should coordinate...
...You would think Ken agreed with Humphrey’s non-position from hearing him talk...
...Ken estimates that Humphrey would be listed as one of the 25 most important senators, but not as one of the top 10...
...A man from Northwestern Bell, a Minnesota journalist, a Chamber of Commerce official, all hurry to greet him...
...But [Majority Whip Robert] Byrd has a tight grip on the Senate now...
...Someone from the Canal Zone has a query about voting rights...
...Also, he must change into a dinner jacket and get to the airport...
...He has many friends, and he gets listened to...
...Will Humphrey co-host a conference on “Saving the Cities...
...Ken doesn’t...
...He moves slowly, appears unruffled, but can be sharp and authoritarian with members of his staff, although he doesn’t lose his temper...
...He and his wife are dining with the people from Northwestern Bell...
...These three women seem to act as an independent group within the office...
...Otherwise, he particularly likes amendments’ if you want to propose some...
...We spent this meaningful time of the year with our family...
...He has traded in all hope of personal recognition for the belief that he can achieve something through the Senator...
...Amimeographed questionnaire asks for Humphrey’s views on heredity and intelligence...
...Humphrey, it appears, is not so sure...
...That is a patronage job, of which each Senator is entitled three...
...But that’s ridiculous...
...By nine, the rest of the staff has arrived, 25 in all...
...So what about Watergate...
...They are both aghast, though Wendy is the braver in expressing her horror at the amount of work...
...Ken had strongly advised him against it, pointing out that very shortly the Senator would get an important subcommittee on Government Operations, but that he’d probably never get one on Foreign Relations...
...We stay for a little while to hear him...
...But I quit after three months...
...An official letter from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers enclosing their latest statements with regard to Humphrey’s position on the new Office of Technological Assessment...
...Ken says that if no one else can be found he’ll see what he can arrange...
...Dan Spiegel, the foreign affairs legislative assistant, comes in and says, a little indignantly, “I called you yesterday, you weren’t there...
...They are on loan from different branches of the government...
...There is not much natural empathy between these two men...
...Ken hates receptions and tries hard to melt into a corner, but he tends to be sought out...
...Although Humphrey has an enormous ability to absorb facts, Ken feels he really shouldn’t spread himself so thin...
...A primitive painting of a farm above the mantle piece, presumably something to do with Minnesota, a great vice presidential seal and a senatorial seal behind his chair, an elegant cut-glass jar full of peanuts on a coffee table...
...You sure need one...
...Someone else calls up with the same idea, saying they had just bumped into Eric Sevareid, who also suggested the same course of action...
...Wendy is told that a third of her time will probably be taken up by energy...
...At nine, the phone rings, and Ken says, “Yes, sir,” as if he had no quarrel with his boss...
...A call comes in from a powerful man on a powerful senator’s staff, asking Humphrey to speak for a minute to his daughter’s sixth-grade class, which will be visiting the Capitol tomorrow...
...Just that piece on the op-ed page of The Minneapolis Tribune that may get printed in The Washington Post...
...I don’t think either of us feel that much at ease together socially, although I do go and have dinner there once every three weeks or so...
...During the course of a normal day Ken will not see the Senator very often...
...The phone rings...
...No sooner has he put down the telephone than Hyman Bookbinder, an old Humphrey friend and adviser, is on the line urging Ken to persuade Humphrey to make a “ringing appeal for national unity so that government may continue to function,” saying that if Nixon tells the truth, all will be forgiven, on the condition that he agrees to cooperate with Congress...
...Humphrey is not halfway through yet, and is still interrogating the first witnesses...
...He waves to some beaming nuns and calls out “Hi...
...We are all just about to set off when the phone beside us rings...
...All the effort and the feeling of achievement to be had from the job is invested in the Senator and his ability to put it all to good use...
...Some of them, notably the press secretary and the Senator’s personal secretary and scheduling secretary think these meetings are a waste of time...
...It is time to rush over to the Senate floor to give Humphrey a statement to insert into the Record...
...Nutrition...
...Another thankyou letter saying, “Dear Hubey, I am really ashamed for my delay in saying THANKS for your time at our First District dance...
...Ken is not pleased...
...Last time he was on that show Agronsky was as rotten as can be, gave him a really bad time...
...Ken is pleased to get this support for his own view on the matter...
...If he’d stayed he’d have had the subcommittee on impoundment, a thing close to his heart...
...It turns out that senators take turns inviting choirs from their home state to sing in the rotunda at the end of the passageway...
...Thcy came from labor unions or business interest groups...
...Having already read the statement, I recognize when it comes to an end and he continues to speak extempore on fuel shortage, with particular reference to Minnesota...
...In fact, the effort to get the gas hearings in before anyone else is an extraordinary waste of time...
...He has, to some extent, merged, invested part of his own personality in that far stronger and more forceful public image of the man he serves...
...Although technically they are answerable to him, there is a certain amount of tension between the women and Ken...
...The man, knocking on the door rather nervously, looks not unlike Dorothy knocking on the door of the Wizard of Oz’s audience chamber...
...Yes, I was surprised...
...It still seemed to me a remarkable waste of time and effort...
...Very few of Humphrey’s bills ever get passed...
...Some are old friends and colleagues who worked with their bosses long before they reached the Senate, coming from their home states and acting as emotional as well as official props to their man...
...These two men’s lives are symbiotically intertwined...
...The pie‘ce de resistance was a gigantic ice flower vase full of real flowers...
...That’s all we feel necessary at the moment,” the press secretary says quickly, “Have we got anything on the Arts and Humanities Bill coming up today...
...It was a choice between the Minnesota Mafia he had always been surrounded by or a whole host of other applicants who had their own private agenda for Humphrey...
...On the mantlepiece is a sign saying “THINK MINNESOTA...
...back as his administrative assistant...
...However, it’s only fair to point out that a number of senators do try to specialize and thoroughly learn about the issues that interest them most...
...We’d never had a close relationship...
...Weaving and wending our way through the passages and corridors, we hurry along, Ken having got used to Humphrey’s walking pace, until we reach the great double doors of the Ways and Means palace...
...Ken promises to deliver Humphrey right away, but as he puts the phone down he says there is no rush, and he will wait until they’ve found the other two senators before sending Humphrey over...
...Ken continues to instruct the newcomers...
...He has no seniority, no powerful committees...
...Then another questionnaire from a kid in Moorhead, Minnesota who is writing a paper on “The Role of Administrative Assistants to U. S. Senators...
...Not that they deter many chance tourists who, happening to be in Washington, take it as their constitutional right as taxpayers to call on their senator at any time of the day...
...Why did he choose me...
...But there is even more to it than that...
...They would never consider working for anyone else...
...No time for lunch...
...More letters come off Humphrey’s desk, already signed, saying things like, “It’s always a pleasure to be with my friends the meatcutters...
...More startling Watergate revelations break, and soon the Senator comes through to Ken again on the telephone...
...He must see that his man gets through every appointment on his schedule properly briefed, equipped with speeches, and dressed right...
...May the days ahead bring you even greater joy...
...After Ken had left the office for the reception last night, the Senator had been gotten to by his press secretary, and had been persuaded to cancel the Today show...
...He has developed a habit common to most people who are used to working in crowded offices of making his end of the conversation completely discreet and incomprehensible...
...Ken explains that Humphrey “likes to have a policy on everything, and he likes to understand everything that’s going on in the Senate...
...Munching his way through a plate of tasteless chicken and watery vegetables, Ken explained how hard life was for Humphrey, and his staff, having no seniority, no committee chairmanship, only a couple of not very important subcommittees, with no right to any committee staff...
...For a man like Humphrey, whose power is confined to his vote, devoting so much time to holding competitive, repetitive hearings and generating opinions on so many subjects isn’t productive...
...Ken began his career in politics as a legislative assistant to veteran liberal Senator Paul Douglas in 1961...
...He glances through copies of letters Humphrey himself has just sent out, one to “Dear Willy,” of Germany, another to Lady Bird, saying he is thinking of her in Washington in the spring now that all her daffodils are in bloom...
...Probably this is only because they are constantly striving to wriggle out from under Ken’s grip and make themselves into a separate group answerable only to the Senator...
...Are we trying to run a mini-government in this office or something...
...The witness list for an important hearing tomorrow is handed to Ken...
...he went to a Minnesota Grain Terminal Association breakfast...
...Her other responsibilities will be the judiciary, law enforcement, antitrust, the Post Office, the Civil Service, consumer economics, as well as nutrition and the elderly...
...If you get a specific memo from the Senator asking you to do something, you must let me know...
...When the Senator is out, his office is used for meetings...
...Instead...
...Cleaning out the ashtrays that had been used in the meeting, and putting the chairs in the Senator’s office back in position, Ken says to me, when the others have gone, “You know, 1 used to have a slogan on my desk which said, ‘If you can keep your head while all about are losing theirs then you don’t fully understand the situation.’ ” He explains that he had meant to hand out the week’s speech files at the meeting, but “everyone was moaning and groaning so much that I thought it would be better to let it wait .” As we come out into the corridor, a loud crescendo of singing voices crashes around our ears...
...Someone else writes to suggest a new FBI director: “A real good guy now working in the real estate business...
...But Byrd had offered him the Foreign Relations job as a special favor, and Humphrey remembered the good old times he had had on that committee...
...Then he waves to them and moves on, having patted the baby...
...Wendy says she is interested in problems of the elderly...
...An anxious but friendly letter from someone who claimed that during the campaign last May he had used his father’s Texaco credit card to hire cars, on the assurance he would be paid back, and was now being sued for $298.68 which he couldn’t pay himself...
...If they are from Minnesota, you can get them to make an appointment to come back and see you when you aren’t so busy, “The Senator doesn’t care all that much about his committees...
...The canapes are vanishing and there is a fair bit of back-slapping and joking about wives, most of whom are present...
...In some way Ken has taken on, as part of his own identity, the glamor and sparkle of the Senator’s image...
...One of the less reverent women insists on eating some in spite of Ken’s warning that it’s against the rules...
...Ken then tells Wendy that since the Senator has already put her on the gasoline shortage and the energy crisis, she’d better stay with it...
...Waiting for Ken is a little pile of telephone messages...
...An old lady of 95 in a Minnesota nursing home gets a letter saying, “How grateful you must be for all the blessings that have been yours during these many years...
...Humphrey grins at her, shakes her hand, and says how very glad he is to see her...
...and “Dear Sister Hubertene, Thank you for remembering Mrs...
...Arriving at seven, to make up for not having worked on Saturday, Ken has two hours in which to clear the letters and memos on his desk...
...Well,” she said, laughing a little edgily, “So Ken’s going to be a celebrity, ha, ha...
...Every so often he misdirects his memos, and I’ll see that the work gets done by the right person...
...It’s totally unnecessary for me to work on the speech,” Ken says, “but Humphrey likes an audience...
...He intends to persuade Humphrey to do it...
...We wait 10 minutes while Humphrey winds up...
...Then there is the most exciting event of the week, Humphrey’s near-, ings this afternoon on the gasoline shortage...
...It used to be a place where you could politely interrupt and say what was on your mind...
...Uhuh...
...It is mostly a matter of routine...
...He has two hours before the office opens to deal with the mountain of memos to be written, letters answered, decisions made...
...Now he regrets it terribly...
...And Ken, in turn, must depend on Humphrey...
...Then there is a bustle at the door, a flash of a few instamatic cameras, and Humphrey bounds into the room, hand outstretched to anyone who wants it...
...The Commission seems to be getting ridiculously huge...
...The Senator has to catch a plane to a, Freemasons’ dinner in New York at 5:30...
...He says that in 10 minutes he will take him over to the gas hearings and hopes that they end soon...
...Wendy comes too, since she is dealing with gas...
...There are still statements to be inserted into the Record before he goes...
...We drive off to the Washington Hilton, where the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, wives in evening dress, was holding a reception...
...At 10:30 Ken calls the weekly press and scheduling conference...
...We try to satisfy all callers who aren’t crazy repeaters...
...Humphrey and me with your Easter greeting...
...A woman with an instamatic camera leaps out at him from behind a pillar, boldly introducing herself...
...The welfare director from Knoxville, Tennessee wants to recommend a young man he knows to become the head of the FBI, “since he’s done...
...that goes onto and comes off Humphrey’s desk, but members of the personal staff are sometimes possessive...
...He is clearly in full flight and not interruptible...
...Humphrey is invited to appear on the Today show to talk about Watergate...
...He says, “You don’t understand the fascination of power, of being near where it all happens, of making history yourself, of making things happen...
...I feel like a new member of the House being loaded with committees I don’t want,” Wendy says...
...At this time Ken takes a tour around the different rooms of the office, partly to see that everyone is there, partly to show he is there, and partly to answer any questions...
...So we stand outside in the corridor while the man explains to Ken exactly what he wants to say to the Senator, and then asks if Ken will guide him to Wilbur Mills at the Ways and Means Committee...
...As we reach the senators’ subway to catch a train over to the Senate, another train pulls in with Humphrey sitting in the front, as if he were driving the thing, also looking agitated at having to sit still doing nothing for a few moments...
...The press secretary is not particularly pleased to see me in the meeting, possibly only because she had not been consulted in the first place about my visit to the office...
...Humphrey suddenly stops seeming as if he’s in a hurry...
...By the time we get back to the office and Ken has dealt with a few more phone calls, it is 4:30...
...Does that interest you...
...so well as safety director of the city of Knoxville...
...It’s a fun hearing and a fun issue,” Ken says, licking his lips...
...The question does in fact turn into something of a battle between Ken and Betty-a quiet, unstated battle of the wills...
...What’s the subject...
...Next, someone from McGovern’s office comes in and asks Ken whether Humphrey can stand in for McGovern on the Nutrition Committee, as the Senator is away at the funeral of his maid...
...You aren’t totally vulnerable to chance visitors...
...He believes in what’s best described as controlled chaos...
...One of his maxims is, ‘Some of our best legislation is non-germane.’ He doesn’t like to testify before anyone else’s committee, he thinks it’s a waste of time...
...The phone rings again, “Yes, Senator...
...Once, for no reason at all, he invited me, his baggage man, to attend some high-level campaign finance meetings in Florida...
...Are there any important Minnesota press men coming...
...We go over to the Senate...
...These are the first few : A questionnaire from an assistant university professor in Fresno, asking for a detailed account of Humphrey’s presidential campaign expenses...
...Humphrey agrees in principle...
...We make almost no distinction between Minnesotans and non-Minnesotans...
...Without Ken and his staff, Humphrey is a big gun without a gunner, a knight in armor with no one to put him on his horse...
...We’ve really done well getting in first with these hearings...
...Not many people read his statements in the Record...
...The rift seems to be quite deep, and apparently is quite common in many Senate offices...
...them out there...
...Another reason,” Ken adds, “is that I love to think that in 10 years’ time when people are doing research they will find that Hubert Humphrey was the first to put something in the Record...
...We’ll go over there and take him to his 1:30 gas hearings...
...If all that great amount of work done in the office, if all the time all the energy of Humphrey and his men were channeled into something else, they could, among them, produce a daily newspaper, put on a big Broadway show every week, or probably govern a country the size of England...
...Ken hands him the document and Humphrey promises to squeeze it in later...
...I really love Hubert Humphrey for having gone such 8 long, long way with good causes...
...Unfortunately, the driver has gone to repark the car and won’t be back for 10 minutes...
...There wasn’t any legislating to do...
...We leave the office at six and go down to the parking lot...
...They often give Humphrey advice that conflicts with Ken’s, as will be seen in the bickering over the Senator’s TV appearance...
...He has no brief with him that tells him these things, but he does seem to know exactly how many independent gas stations have just closed down, exactly how many men are out of work, exactly which firms in the state own how many stations...
...Humphrey probably knows more people in the room than anyone else...
...Ken took a deep breath, “Well,” he said slowly, “on a day-to-day basis it means the receptionist knows who to channel calls to when we get inquiries on a particular subject...
...He also promises to support any legislation that might come up against the slaughter of porpoises...
...They are treated exactly as if they are new legislative assistants...
...He’ll probably want to make a short speech putting some of the material in the Record...
...Several kind senators had appealed to the power-thatbe to give him back his seniority as far as possible, to put him back in the rank that he had left, but Senator Mike Mansfield put his foot down and sent him to the bottom of the class...
...There are at this meeting two.new Congressional Fellows who had arrived this week to join the staff for four months...
...The Martin Agronsky show calls, and Ken tells the press secretary that there just isn’t room on the schedule today...
...Ken OKs the list and sends it in to the Senator...
...A Minnesotan complaining about the Democrats in the Minnesota legislature: “If the Democrats can’t be constructive why don’t they shut up...
...It’s as if he were Santa Claus in a big department store, paid to be nice...
...Well, it won’t be the first time he misses a plane,” Ken says, as we make the long journey back to the hearings...
...Big portraits on the wall of Johnson and Truman, none of Kennedy...
...He is Senator Hubert Humphrey’s administrative assistant, the man who runs everything behind the scenes, the invisible hand that passes over the right speech at the right time, the invisible mouth that whispers reminders at crucial moments, the invisible brain that prepares a statement and a view on anything and everything...
...During the next few weeks there are at least five different sets of hearings scheduled on exactly this issue, each arranged by a different senator...
...A number of people call out “Hi, Senator...
...For this reason it is difficult to make him stand out and come alive as a man apart from the Senator...
...Tomorrow Humphrey plans a hearing on the gasoline shortage, which he is particularly interested in...
...It is impossible to discuss his job, its frustrations and satisfactions, without discussing Humphrey himself in some detail...
...Many of these aides tend to spend a good deal of time politicking for themselves, trying to do favors for the offices of great men for whom they aspire to work, building up personal contacts with people who will help them get on in the world...
...When Humphrey returned to the Senate after leaving the Vice Presidency, he was forced to begin all over again as a freshman senator...
...The woman produces her aunt, her husband, and her child from behind the same pillar and takes their photograph talking with him...
...Humphrey suggests that the aunt hold the camera and take another photo with the woman in the picture...
...And those are only the first few on the top of the heap...
...It seems likely that Ken will decide to move on at some point...
...John Ehrlichman has, not surprisingly, canceled his debate with Humphrey at the Brookings Institution, will a substitute do...
...He puts down the telephone and dives toward the corridor, all of us following as best we can...
...Northwest Airlines, noted for its protracted strikes and readiness to claim compensation even after one-man walkouts, has its head offices in Minneapolis, and it would not be unreasonable to suppose that the Senator numbers several of its executives among his political friends...
...Then, at 3:30, a call comes from the front office: did Ken remember that Humphrey had an appointment with an important contributor, to discuss a conference he was holding ‘that the Senator had promised to attend...
...It is now 9:30...
...One of the biggest privileges of being a senator or an A.A...
...Ken likes to see everything...
...He went in and the door closed again at once...
...A large number of letters applying for a job in the office, which get the universal reply, that they have excellent qualifications for working in the Senate but alas, there are no openings...
...He hasn’t yet spoken with Humphrey, although he is in an adjacent, though not adjoining, room...
...Humphrey just knows and remembers every hand he’s ever had the pleasure to pump...
...Ken is enthusiastic, but Betty South, the press secretary, is not...
...The whole staff, apart from clerical workers, gathers, and Ken addresses them quite sternly...
...This helps reduce the amount of work and lets the senators learn about some things in depth...
...They all are a little hushed, awed in this large, carpeted room which reeks of the aura of power...
...You ain’t for common people or farmers...
...There is no problem about the fact that Humphrey probably knows nothing about sugar in the diet, as the staff of the Nutrition Committee will provide a statement and a set of relevant questions for him to ask the witnesses who will be testifying...
...You don’t have to see all the people who turn up and ask for you...
...Back in the office, someone calls up to ask what the President’s decision to increase cheese imports means...
...Most senators seem to have this feeling to some extent...
...Others, like Ken Gray, are professional aides who work their way through several senatorial offices in the course of their careers, soldiers of fortune who move freely from one senator to another, always hoping to move up the ladder in terms of working for more and more powerful men...
...He gets away at 6:00, more easily done when the Senator is away...
...He dashes on around the corner and again we follow...
...The issue of a Watergate statement keeps reappearing...
...It is getting very close to time for the hearing and ‘Ken is fidgeting a little with the file he is waiting to hand the Senator...
...Also, rather to Ken’s disapproval, Humphrey is determined to involve himself in every conceivable subject, and not to specialize...
...I swear to God I haven’t seen her for a month,” Humphrey is saying down the telephone...
...It is more than time now to hurry back to the office...
...Ken feels that the less he has to see Humphrey, the more efficiently the office is running...
...If they’re not from Minnesota you can give them the reprint of a speech and tell them to go away...
...He has come to the top of the ladder as an administrative assistant and would have nowhere to go, except to the office of a more powerful man...
...The chief government spokesman on the matter is due to testify at each, presumably giving the same evidence five times over, for no better reason than that this is a politically sensitive issue, much in the public mind, and a number of senators want to be noticed for “doing something” about the situation...
...Your remarks in the Record are sure a jumbled mess...
...Someone offers a little money towards Humphrey’s presidential campaign deficit...
...In the offices of more.powerfu1 men far more trading on a much deeper level takes up the time of the A.A...
...Also,” he says, “the few thousand most important people in the country will read the Record now and then and it makes him appear active on every front...
...The great mahogany doors to the senatorial suites with their heavy senatorial seals look dark and forbidding...
...This is not an occasion where Ken is expected to stand behind his boss, discreetly reminding him who everyone is...
...He turns to me and says, “The Senator is grabbing a bowl of soup in the Senate dining room...
...Ken goes back to the office, the day almost over...
...Tim says education...
...An angry though polite letter from a Houston oil transporter complaining about Humphrey’s statements on the fuel shortage...
...He sits down to his dictaphone and begins at the top of the heap...
...He really loves the Senate...
...I am already exhausted from trying to keep up with the volume and variety of the morning’s work...
...They tend to go their own way without consulting him...
...If in some way the Senator fails, if he bungles something that’s taken a lot of planning, if he changes his mind or gets something wrong, it’s likely that Ken will not feel altogether forgiving...
...Sometimes he does it by mistake, sometimes because he thinks it’s good to keep the office on its toes...
...In the Senate there are basically two types of administrative assistants...
...He always talks as loud as if he were addressing a room full of deaf people...
...Ken calls back a Baltimore potentate (“I don’t like that guy”) and laughs and jokes with him for a minute or two...
...Everyone has a large lapel label which helps with the identification problem, as long as you don’t appear to be looking at it...
...I don’t know...
...The trouble was that Humphrey still had all the old ideas about the Senate...
...At 1O:OO a call comes through saying that the Senate lacks three for a quorum...
...A letter from Minnesota reading, “Sir, All you thinks about your selfs...
...Ken asks...
...the idea is that their experience on a senator’s staff will help them deal more smoothly with Congress when they return to their regular jobs...
...Ken says he’ll try and tells the scheduling secretary to squeeze it in somehow...
...This is a big, freeloading, holiday occasion, and everyone is out to enjoy himself...
...This also meant dealing with all the scheduling and travel plans on Humphrey’s campaign...
...When Ken comes back to his office after his rounds, the telephone rings...
...While he is gone, Ken goes to find his driver, who works during the days as a doorman outside the public gallery of the Senate...
...Ken has had important disagreements with Humphrey on how to maximize his power...
...For all the other thousands of Hill employees, the scramble in the mornings to find a place to park is one of the main topics of conversation...
...Yesterday was Sunday...
...Humphrey sometimes takes his advice...
...For senators with more seniority and powerful committees, their most important work is done in the hearing room, where there is a large complement of extra staff to help them get some kind bf grasp on what’s going on...
...I don’t like that guy,” he said, “but I guess it’s good to have him owe us a favor or two...
...she says, trying to make it sound as if she is half joking...
...We have a statement for him and a memo on two amendments,” says AI Saunders, the chief legislative assistant...
...A thank-you letter reading “Dear Chief, I want to express my thanks for your assistance in helping my son Ian get into Brown University...
...We treat them with courtesy...
...in Ken Gray’s case, although he is in his mid-thirties, some 25 years younger than Humphrey, it’s hard to see which of the two men is father and which is child...
...That round was one up for the personal staff...
...In many cases it is probably disastrously bad for their effectiveness as knowledgeable and serious men...
...A mayor in Pennsylvania wants Humphrey to make a 25second video-tape supporting him in an upcoming election...
...Ken OKs a letter for Humphrey to sign, a reply to a request by Senator Mike Gravel to co-sponsor a bill on the Airlines Mutual Aid Agreement, designed to stop airlines from receiving compensation when their employees strike, thereby destroying the incentive for airlines to resolve their disputes...
...Worthy, noble, wellintentioned effort for the most part, but spun out so thin that the end result is scarcely visible to the human eye...
...The door opened a crack, and inside you could just catch a glimpse of the room, darkened by heavy yellow drapes across the window...
...The Young People’s Socialist League wants a quote for its new magazine, but attached “to this letter was a note from another staffer reading, “Ken, I assume I should just ignore...
...Ken and Wendy stand well back from this encounter...
...Uhuh...
...These will not often be read on the floor, but they will appear in the Congressional Record as if they had been...
...The Senator averages 20 such statements a week...
...Someone grabs his jacket as he passes and he waves again...
...But what is really being achieved out of that great mountain of trivia...
...A man in Albuquerque asks why Humphrey isn’t shouting about Watergate...
...Ken nods and lets the matter drop for the time being...
...It isn’t clear that the world is being made any better by the work in that office...
...So what does all this really mean...
...He is by nature far more issue-oriented than many A.A.s, but almost none of Humphrey’s bills get passed, and what goes on in Humphrey’s minor subcommittees could not be described as being of much importance...
...Kathi has hurriedly finished her club sandwich and is licking her fingers, Above her is a notice board filled with pictures of the Senator, a poster saying “Little People for Humphrey” showing him with some children, a picture of him bottle-feeding a lion cub, a picture of him looking sporty in a felt hat...
...But nothing more is said about it...
...Neither of them answered, but Ken gives it to Wendy, presumably because it sounds like the sort of thing a woman ought to be interested in...
...Humphrey’s advancement is the only way that Ken himself can move on...
...Humphrey...
...Among senators who like, trust, and on the whole agree with one another, is is common for them to defer to the senator who specializes in a certain subject and trust his opinion on how to vote...
...In 1964 Ken became Humphrey’s baggage man on his campaign plane, keeping track of everyone’s luggage, “especially the reporters...
...He used to say with terrible indignation, ‘I went over there and wanted to talk, and I couldn’t!’ ” The important decision that Ken has never forgiven Humphrey for making was abandoning his place on the Government Operations COmmittee in exchange for a place on Foreign Relations...
...Senator Humphrey’s suite on the second floor of the Old Senate Office Building consists of four rooms with high ceilings and not enough floor space...
...Ken groans, very silently...
...I’ve polled the office, and the majority are against his appearing on the Today show tomorrow morning...
...This man has been in Washington three times before and they had been unable to fit him in...
...That means he’ll be dead before he qualifies for an important chairmanship,” Ken said...
...I mean, do just the few of us in this office have to cover the entire government...
...Ken feels bitter, but tries not to remind the Senator of this mistake...
...This particular office is probably worse in this respect than most, first because Humphrey has no committee staff to take the weight off the shoulders of his staff on the things that are most important to him, and second, because Humphrey still acts like a presidential candidate out on the road, required to answer well every question from every stray heckler...
...Humphrey declines to put his name to this, saying the airline employees are “too highly paid already...
...The answeris no, he won’t have time...
...I hope you aren’t.’’ Ken suggests that Humphrey go down to the press gallery and make a statement...
...He didn’t see how things had changed...
...He has something urgent to say...
...know where all this information came from, “Probably someone he talked to last night at that Chamber of Commerce reception...
...Ken explains that there is no money put aside for printing, but senators are entitled to reprints of anything that has appeared in the Record, so that when someone writes asking for Humphrey’s views on any subject, there will always be a copy of a statement” on hand on almost any conceivable matter...
...Kathi Sezna, Ken’s secretary, goes down to the carry-out in the basement as soon as she gets in, and fetches us each a cup of coffee...
...But it seemed that Humphrey didn’t hold this defection against him, for in 1970 he begged Ken to come...
...The scheduling secretary is then called upon to read out what the Senator is already committed to for the next week in the way of speaking engagements outside all the Senate work...
...Betty feels he should stay well clear...
...Sugar in the diet, diabetes, and heart trouble,” the young man answers...
...And he is important...
...An aide rushes in and asks could he put through a priority call to Teheran for a friend who needs to find her husband urgently...
...He can be the most considerate man...
...Humphrey can’t make up his mind...
...A letter thanks Humphrey for the tear sheet he sent her from the Congressional Record, which she encloses, “1 now apply for the job of your secretary...
...It isn’t often that Ken can be of much assistance to him in that way...
...He’s been doing it for 20 years and it’s very difficult to get a man to change...
...I still have to ask him about the real satisfactions of his job...
...There is also an annex, a long way away, in a converted apartment building where three people do the first sorting of the mail...
...It’s firmly in his custodial care and everything is scheduled...
...Everyone is sitting around in a circle of chairs, no one daring to sit behind the boss’s huge desk...
...I wanted to talk to you about Rhodesia,” Dan says, and there is a brief discussion of a statement Dan will write for the Senator to insert into the Record...
...Ken proceeds to brief the two newcomers, and most of the others drift back to their own offices, Humphrey’s personal staff hurrying out with almost indecent haste...
...He wishes now that he’d listened to me...
...However, there may have been more to Humphrey’s decision than meets the eye...
...Senators Alan Cranston and Thomas Eagleton have accepted, Muskie is dithering, and McGovern has refused...
...He could have jumped all over the President, but like other Democrats, he was holding back for fear of damaging the country...
...In the words of another administrative assistant, “You blow their nose, dust and diaper them, and send Polly Toynbee is an editor of The Washington Monthly...
...Tim is given a range of topics to study: the interior, land-use, and strip mining, most of public works, national growth and development, commerce, transportation, judiciary, consumer affairs, and District of Columbia affairs...
...I guess that’s been one disappointment in this job...
...There are 12 speeches, ranging from Temple Israel to the 7th District PTA, and a file on each is ready to be distributed for people to work on...
...But then, I really don’t criticize him for becoming more moderate-that’s the way the whole country’s going...
...He used to be outspoken and very liberal, but as a national candidate he became less sharp...
...They are like a group of men on bicycling machines in a slimming salon, using maximum effort for minimum mileage...
...He returns shortly, having insisted that he was not redly needed...
...The roles seem to shift from one to the other...
...But Ken says he enjoys this more than anything, cares little for privacy, and feels himself regenerated by every hand he shakes...
...Humphrey’s position in the Senate doesn’t allow for much wheeling and dealing and trading of favors...
...The trouble is that he still lives his life as a national candidate...
...Ken explains quietly that the Senator doesn’t want to make too much of a partisan thing out of it...
...In the beginning Humphrey used to come back from the floor shaking mad...
...Right...
...Ken starts off...
...A duty to himself, and a duty to the country to let them know where he stands...
...Since the Record isn’t many people’s bedtime reading, I ask what the point of all that work was...
...Sure enough, the enclosed reprint is full of muddles and repeated paragraphs...
...Ken’s secretary has her lunch at her desk...
...It was like being in limbo.’’ Ken went from limbo to work for Maryland Senator Joseph Tydings who was defeated in 1970...
...The telephone begins to ring...
...Humphrey is asked to chair the Foreign Relations Committee on May 10, so Ken calls back and agrees with some alacrity...
...By 7:45 Ken can slip away and go home, but it isn’t the end of his official day...
...Senator is calling him into his office, together with a legislative assistant, to go over a speech to be made tomorrow on federalism at the Woodrow Wilson Center...
Vol. 5 • June 1973 • No. 4
