Running for Congress: The Secret Motives

...As someone who ran in a Democratic primary in the same district with none of these advantages, it was very easy for me to develop the idea that the well-connected are different from you and I. There was evidence that undermined this stereotype, but I tended to disregard it...

...Reuther, heir to a famous labor name, moves into asMichigan congressional district in 1973 and gets a management job at Ford Motor Corripany...

...There is a meticulousness about issues in the Carr campaign that is rare for a congressional race beyond the purview of a major newspaper...

...Bob Carr: Almost a Congressman Sitting in his tiny law office, now filled more with campaign research material than law books, Bob Carr displays the frustration of someone who is so close to being a congressman he can taste it, yet each morning has to come to grips with the reality that after 30 straight months of running for office, he is still just a candidate...

...Although he won with.over 70 per cent of the vote, Carr admitted that the challenge represented the feeling by some East Lansing liberals that “I was aloof...

...After graduating from Cornell, Reuther worked for Birch Bayh and served on the congressional liaison staff of the OEO in the last days of the Johnson Administration...

...The bare outlines of the situation seemed right for a Robert Redford movie...

...That’s why it is so important to send legislators to Washington who won’t be seduced by the rituals of just being a congressman...

...The whole thing seemed like an out-take from the movie “The Candidate” and both seemed perfect for their parts...

...Rather, the remark reflected the bemused anxiety of somcone who was genuinely concerned about what would happen to him if he failed to get his degree and lost his bid for Congress...

...Joyner-yes, that’s really his name-who has one of those cherubic faces that he had not yet outgrown at 24 or 25, is an officer of the local Jaycee chapter and an assistant to the local mayor, a minor politician who had run one losing race for lieutenant governor...

...We are a generation that was in college when John Kennedy was President...

...Some locals have begun to resent this kind of attitude...

...But all Carr really did was take one study written by someone else (in this case, an alternative defense budget prepared by the Center for Defense Analysis) and combine it with another (the PIRGIM report...

...Chamberlain is retiring, and this year Carr is opposed by Charles Taylor, a conservative businessman...

...At one point he recited a bit of inspirational doggerel en titled “The Will to Win,” and then urged the young businessmen of Livonia “to overcome the mediocrity that is within you...

...Asked about his views on the defense budget, Blanchard replied, “So much about defense is classified, how can I speak intelligently...

...His hunger meshes well with the insecurities of the second-generation ethnics who fill his congressional district, but his needs are somewhat different from theirs...

...It is easy to picture him much earlier, perhaps as a freshman at Michigan State, plotting his first political campaign...

...Carr talks about going to Washington with “realistic expectations” and Blanchard promises that he won’t be a “crusader...

...There will be more newer faces, more younger people than anytime since World War 11...

...Blanchard decided the day after the 1972 election that this was going to be his year to finally run for office...

...Two years ago I sought the Democratic congressional nomination in the district where John Reuther is now the nominee and finished a respectably close second in a six-way primary...

...Carr and Reuther are considerably more liberal than Blanchard, but all three are stressing economic issues like unemployment, tax reform, and national health insurance in their campaigns...

...When Bayh withdrew, Reuther went to the McGovern campaign, working in Massachusetts and Minnesota...

...They were talking about the segment they had filmed for the “Today” show and their threeminute appearance on John Chancellor earlier in the week...

...And that had a far greater effect on us than the Vietnam War...

...Blanchard: Out from Behind the Scenes Sitting at the bar of the London Chop House in Detroit, I was talking about Jim Blanchard with a friend who had just begun covering Michigan politics for a local newspaper...

...I saw it displayed when PIRGIM, a local Nader offshoot, issued a report detailing how the military budget causes economic dislocations in Michigan...

...Blanchard denies that there is anything like a family fortune, although he admits, with a smile, that such rumors discouraged candidates from entering the primary...

...The discrepancy between Carr’s self-image and his status as merely a candidate seemed to be having an impact on his enthusiasm for campaigning...

...In early 1972 my life was somewhat in disarray...

...His law practice was virtually nonexistent, and there is little evidence that Carr relished the idea of devoting the next 10 years to becoming East Lansing, Michigan’s leading ACLU lawyer...

...His campaign manager, hair greying at the temples, had a Frank Mankiewicz look, complete with a Brooks Brothers striped, button-down shirt...

...And pride, an important element in unraveling Carr’s complicated make-up, ruled out returning to Washington as anything less than a congressman...

...Greeting MSU students on their way to class, Carr looked so perfect with a Mark Spitz moustache and long, blue stadium coat that I half-expected Ali McGraw to yell, “Hey, preppie...

...True, two terms on the Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee may not have the same literary prestige as, say, four years at the helm of Commentary, but it does produce the kind of notoriety that is neither easily attained nor quickly forgotten...

...As for his professional campaign staff, I should have remembered watching them back in February demonstrate with elaborate over-laid maps of the congressional district that they had discovered where the large student vote was concentrated...

...During my campaign I explained that I was running to express my outrage over the Vietnam war and the “to get along, go along” attitudes of most congressional incumbents...

...Can and several staff members went over the PIRGIM report carefully and mapped out a response that meshed these findings with Carr’s own advocacy of a $14 billion cut in military spending...

...This is linked with a desire for acceptance within Congress which is much stronger than his feelings about particular issues...

...Later this month there will be laborious efforts to explain the mid-term congressional results in terms of the economy, the reaction to the Nixon pardon, the lingering residues of Watergate, and voter attitudes toward political reform...

...dozen mind-numbing speeches by candidates for everything from U. S. Congress to county commissioner, I kept thinking about the Jaycees and their “development and growth...

...It is also fitting that Blanchard is the only one of the three Michigan Democrats who is married and has a child...

...When Chamberlain announced his retirement from Congress earlier this year, Carr recalled that he began to be regarded as the district’s “nonincumbent incumbent” because of his close race in 1972...

...Some degree of emotional estrangement from your constituents is inevitable after taking office, but with Carr, it seems to be happening while he is still a candidate...

...Instead, I was seeking answers to far more personal and elusive questions...

...Seeing Blanchard in a stark white raincoat with too many buckles, it is apparent that his candidacy would fail to go over in Ann Arbor, where John Reuther sports a blue blazer, or in East Lansing, where Bob Carr wears a corduroy suit and a red turtleneck sweater...

...Bob Carr has become a symbol to people who believe the same sort of things that I do...

...This is unfortunate because a political campaign is often the best time to gauge the character of a future congressman, for once in office, self-images quickly change, public faces quickly harden...

...While some may regard the job of a state representative with the same fondness that W. C. Fields reserved for Philadelphia, few would doubt that becoming something like a U. S. congressman is a form of “makingit” in America...

...This predictability of outlook seems to spill over into his political views...

...It can be seen as a last desperate gamble, a last defiant gesture, before he settles for something ordinary or returns to a political patron like Birch Bayh...

...Like Winston Churchill’s pudding, his life lacks theme...

...Part of his anger was political because any joint debates would give exposure to his less well known opponent...

...We’re not the New Left, we’re not angry young men...

...He took great pains to tell me about the friendships he has made with House Democrats like Ed Mezvinsky, Les Aspin, and Gerry Studds...

...What motivates Blanchard is a desire for recognition after years of 2 working behind the scenes...

...He faced some large problems...

...Similarly, Blanchard was shocked when he went to Washington to try to get the endorsement of an environment group and discovered that they were more interested in his views on abortion (he’s against it) than on the energy crisis...

...While the editor of Commentary has concrete responsibilities, a freshman congressman has one of the most unstructured jobs in America...

...Money is also important to Blanchard, but it is something that he takes for granted...

...Someone who knew Blanchard in state government described him as “one of those people who talked constantly about how he would be governor of Michigan someday...

...For all his diamond-in-the-rough qualities, there is no question that Blanchard is a driven man...

...For example, he stresses the need for independent congressional fact-finding because he has learned the hard way that a legislative body cannot depend on any bureaucracy to adequately assess its own performance...

...His congressional race was not prompted by greed or ambition, but rather motivated by a kind of insecurity and the hope that election to Congress would provide a focus that his life had thus far lacked...

...It is clear that in his own mind Carr no longer sees himself as just a candidate for Congress...

...According to Blanchard, the son of a surgeon, the $30,000 represented a significant fraction of his family’s cash reserves...

...But these prizes have been out of reach for Michigan Democrats since the rise of George Romney in 1962...

...We never grew up believing that politics is just war and assassination...

...In a.way I have become more than just Bob Carr...

...The enthusiasm with which Carr dissected the PIRGIM report made it clear that he felt that this-and not campaigning-was the kind of work that he ought to be doing, that this was the job of a congressman...

...Where were you two years ago when I wanted to debate Chamberlain...

...Despite the Nixon landslide, Carr’s collegiate style and antiwar convictions had a strong appeal to the district’s large student population, and he received 49.4 per cent of the vote in an agonizingly close election...

...As a political newcomer, Carr finessed the local Democrats so effectively that he was handed the congressional nomination without a primary...

...Obviously, there is nothing wrong with taking pains to ensure that you have a solid factual base for your speeches and position papers...

...When he mentioned the need to go to Congress with“realistic expectations,” he implied that he didn’t have them in 1972...

...Car made his first bid for public office in 1972 and came within 2,500 votes of defeating veteran Republican incumbent Charles Chamberlain in a district that is dominated by Lansing, but also includes Republican farming areas and the sprawling campus of Michigan State University (MSU...

...Their collective goal is to be congressmen, rather than to do anything specific in Congress...

...is a major source of his knowledge about the inner workings of the office which he is seeking...

...Carr’s immediate reaction was that he had been “screwed” by the Republi can-onen te d news paper...

...But Congress-and Was&ngton as a whole-is full of well-intentioned people who have come to believe that producing meticulously detailed press releases really has a beneficial effect on peoples’ lives...

...It took a full day campaigning with Reuther for me to realize that I was totally wrong...

...Political campaigns are almost always presented to us as clashes over national issues or clear-cut tests of party loyalties...

...Unlike 1972, this year Carr faced primary opposition...

...What this means is that each is apt to measure his own success on the basis of how readily he is accepted by his colleagues, rather than on the basis of whether his work has an impact on anyone’s life...

...It was not said with the kind of arrogance of someone who has achieved success and now regards a master’s degree as an irrelevant credential...

...I asked Reuther who his models in Congress were, and all he came up with was a routine reference to Phil Hart’s integrity...

...The generation of us between 30 and 35 is a special group of people,” he said, gesturing to friends from state government who were helping with the campaign...

...Less than a year later he is running for Congress with United Auto Workers’ support, a Washington fund-raising party featuring Birch Bayh and a team of political professionals managing his campaign...

...Running for Congress The Secret Motives by Walter Shapiro It was “Wife Appreciation Night” at the Livonia, Michigan Jaycees...

...What I didn’t discuss were the personal reasons behind my decision to make this long-shot race for Congress...

...Reuther is opposing moderate Republican Marvin Esch in a diverse district that includes both Detroit suburbs and the extremely politicized university community of Ann Arbor...

...The stories are legion about Reuther’s natural tendency to gravitate to the nearest corner at political gatherings...

...Rather than demonstrating Carr’s indomitable spirit, it suggests how depressing his alternatives were...

...Although raised in the district in which he was running, Blanchard had far better political connections in Lansing than he did at home...

...For most of us, job-hunting is an intense, but private, agony...

...I doubt that you’ll see Jim Blanchard as a crusader in Congress,” he said, adopting the third person for the only time in the interview...

...Carr gave the game away when he said-in words that Blanchard and Reuther echoed-“It will be exciting to be in the 94th Congress...

...Blanchard said the problem is that lawyers tend to think like abstract legalists, ra tber than administrators...

...In many ways they are among the most promising congressional candidates in the country...

...These are not irrelevant questions...

...While I was with him, Carr received a call from the Lansing State Journal informing him that they planned to purchase two half-hour segments on local television for a debate between him and his opponent...

...The only thing real in a lawsuit,” said Blanchard, relishng the one-liner, “is getting a check after the settlement...

...Jim Blanchard wants to be effective, to do the other is not in my nature...

...There is an unassuming air about Reuther, a basic modesty that is ingratiating personally, but rather deadly in a political candidate...

...Reuther, tall, hair brushed forward like a young Kennedy, slouched contentedly’ in his aisle seat...

...Turning to the tightly coiffed wives of the real estate brokers apd insurance salesmen, the state president instructed these helpmates that “your task is to be an element in your husbands’-our fellow Jaycees’development and g-owth...

...Talking about congressional fact-finding, Blanchard suddenly began echoing Don Riegle’s complaint that there are too many lawyers in Congress, although he himself is an attorney...

...Talking with him at his campaign headquarters-a small, second-floor office at a grimy intersection, just a mile north of Detroit-it was apparent that he is keenly aware of his years in the political desert...

...In early October I spent some time with Carr, Blanchard, and Reuther...

...The inexorable chain of events began in 1968 when Carr, who grew up in Wisconsin, came to the Lansing area on a Ford Foundation grant after a stint in Washington with Senator Gaylord Nelson...

...Yet the conventions of political reporting dictate that ques-tions like these are off-limits unless the congressman or senator becomes a serious presidential candidate...

...Nor did a return to state government seem like an attractive possibility...

...At the University of Michigan in 1965, I remember listening to a young politico like him counseling an ambitious freshman that he should enlist in the Green Berets “because a good war record is really important for a political career...

...This additional information did not destroy my preconception that young man Reuther was a hustler, it just suggested that he was somewhat inept at it...

...Rather than being handed the nomination, Reuther was thrown into a five-way primary in which he eked out a victory by less than 100 votes after a protracted recount...

...One can argue that Reuther is almost doomed to a certain kind of frustration because of his family name and political connections...

...This celebrity is an important factor in understanding what motivates people to run for Congress...

...But he also seems to spend an inordinate amount of time refining his policy stands...

...His experiences in the attorney general’s office provided him with a framework which he uses to generalize about other issues...

...And Blanchard has a certain intuitive understanding of government that distinguishes him from most other anti-abortiony anti-busing Democrats...

...Carr asked the newspaper official sarcastically...

...Early in October, 1974, David Broder of The Washington Post gave Bob Carr, Jim Blanchard, and John Reuther, all young Michigan Democrats, a reasonable chance of ’ winning Republican-held House seats...

...Then came two years in Russia, which came about when he was invited to study there by a delegation of Russian trade unionists he met in his uncle’s home...

...A number of prerogatives come with being a freshman congressman, but power-in the sense that an agency head in the federal, or even state, government has power-is not one of them...

...It was watching Bill Joyner, an obscure candidate for state representative, that helped me see the relationship between seeking public office and the Jaycee model of young men striving to get ahead...

...Seduction and Betrayal It is important to stress that these three Michigan Democrats are not villains, nor are they simply updated versions of Sammy Glick...

...That’s why we’d like to . restore the New Frontier, maybe mold it a little with populism, but we also recognize that things can’t be that way again...

...In other states they might end up running a government department or handling legislative relations for a governor...

...But despite his fascination with the subject, he has little to say about Russia that would be unfamiliar to readers of The New York Times or a Newsweek cover story on Solzhenitsyn...

...It is disconcerting the way Blanchard freely admits his ignorance of many subjects...

...For Bill Joyner, and the thousands like him seeking political office this year, the jobhunting is done in public, but the process is qualitatively the same...

...was, they announced with pride, in the precincts surrounding the University of Michigan campus...

...That’s why Jim Blanchard has had to content himself with five years in the state attorney general’s office...

...Underlying Carr’s attitudes about his two years in the state attorney general’s office is the implication that he had little patience with the second-raters who gravitate to the periphery of state Democratic politics...

...Often this ability to be able to endure a series of long-shot gambles until one pays off is an important element in success, but sometimes this excess of freedom can be crippling...

...It is probable that a certain passion and a certain sense of mission has been lost in pursuit of these “realistic expectation~.~ T’h e driving force behind Carr now is his desire to take part in the debate, the rituals and the cloakroom conferences that come with being in Congress...

...Taking a Friday night flight from Washington to Detroit, I accidently found myself sitting behind Reuther and his campaign manager...

...I was somewhat surprised by my vehemence when I answered, “He’s hungry for it, he’s been willing to sacrifice for years to get it and you’re not...

...My primary interest was not their chances in November or their attitudes toward congressional reform...

...At times Carr gives the impression that he senses he has lost control of the entire process: “I sometime feel like I’m part of a thing that is being acted out...

...But it is unlikely that much attention will be paid to what motivated these people to run for Congress or what their ascension to national office means to them personally...

...There is an illusionary air to life on Capitol Hill, and it is easy for a congressman to believe that he is doing important work when he is merely issuing press releases, making speeches to disinterested audiences, and racing from one ill-focused committee hearing to another...

...What keeps Carr going during the last month of his second congressional campaign is the belief that life on Capitol Hill would be infinitely more exciting than handling landlordtenant disputes in a cubbyhole law office, two blocks from the Michigan State campus...

...As we headed back to the car, Reuther mentioned that his master’s thesis was due at American University three days after the election...

...Reuther’s primary interest outside of nuts-and-bolts politics is relations with the Soviet Union...

...She was intently following her husband’s every word, one moment biting her lip, the next minute wringing her hands...

...There is an autobiographical reason why I am fascinated by what prompts people to run for Congress...

...It is difficult, and slightly distasteful personally, to delve into the psyches of these likeable people, especially since my own motivations...

...Running in the militantly anti-busing suburbs north of Detroit, Blanchard is trying to oust conservative zealot Robert Huber, who was first elected to Congress in 1972...

...Yet Reuther seems determined to make a success out of his political career...

...But Blanchard‘s clothes and his lack of concern for the pet issues of litmustest liberals are assets in a district which is largely composed of white ethnics living in tract developments...

...Returning to the United States in 1970, Reuther took part in Teddy Kennedy’s Senate campaign and then joined the staff of Birch Bayh’s ill-fated presidential effort...

...I was there because the Jaycee meeting was to be followed by a candidates’ forum, but throughout a Walter Shapiro is an editor of The Washington Monthly...

...It is striking how proud Carr is of the paraphernalia of this make-work, cerebral world...

...Young Man Reuther It is easy to mistakenly stereotype John (nephew of Walter, son of Victor) Reuther...

...But the exercise is important if we are ever to realistically understandand thus evaluate-the people who purport to represent us in Washington...

...Although the factors that prompted Carry Blanchard, and Reuther to run for Congress are different, none of them displays any sense of mission about why they want to go to Washington...

...But the vehemence of Carr’s response almost suggested that he felt debating was beneath him since he was now the de facto incumbent...

...Similarly, Carr is proud that because of friendship, Tony Schwartz, considered by many to be the best in the business, is producing his radio commercials for half price-a still hefty $10,000...

...When you have a name like Reuther, you are often given far more latitude than the rest of us...

...Once he becomes interested in a subject, Blanchard tends to go off on tangents, his syntax lagging far behind...

...While Carr’s staff would like to see him constantly shaking hands, the candidate apparently wants to leave large gaps in his schedule for “office time...

...Carr gives the impression that he has changed considerably in the 30 months he has been running for Congress...

...It is easy to picture Blanchard asking for the money, much in the way another 31-year-old might borrow a similar sum to buy a piece of a new shopping center development...

...We represent a generation of people about to break through...

...The Nader paperback, Who Runs Congress...

...What Carr meant, in part, is that he relished the idea of joining the kind of company that was not available in a backwater like East Lansing...

...The same slightly acid tone crept into his voice when I mentioned that a voice on one of Tony Schwartz’ radio commercials had a distinct New York accent...

...In 1971 Carr went into private practice in East Lansing, which he quickly abandoned for his first congressional race...

...In the long run, attempts to delve into the character and the aspirations of newly elected congressmen are probably more important than analyzing their positions on abortion or gun control...

...Part of this is devoted to the elaborate courtesies of political phone calls and the intricate machinations of campaign strategy...

...For one thing, Reuther was welcomed by local Democrats with less than total enthusiasm...

...The reporter, who considers Blanchard to be something of a lightweight, complained, “I can’t understand why Blanchard has any more right to be in Congress than I do...

...According to Reuther, the students were very impressed that a United States senator would do something like that...

...I asked him what he would be doing if he weren’t running for Congress, and Blanchard responded without a moment’s hesitation, “I’d be in private law practice, involved in politics as a hobby, and making lots of money...

...Bored with graduate school and chastened by the effort to find a job in a recessionary economy, I calculated that I had everything to gain and nothing to lose by getting into politics...

...It is easy to understand the frustrations of someone like Blanchard who has been active, behind the scenes, in losing statewide races since his student days at Michigan State in the early 1960s...

...We grew up under presidents you could believe in, not Johnson and Nixon...

...I asked what his plans were if he lost his congressional bid this year...

...Thanks to a skillful primary campaign that was built around walking tours of the district, Blanchard narrowly won a four-way race to get the nomination...

...Those without either are eventually forced to make some difficult choices about career and aspirations before the age of 30...

...Both Carr and Reuther have the potential to be among the most liberal members of Congress...

...Perhaps some day she may grow to lament the fate of political wives, but for those three minutes in Livonia, it was as if both her and her husband’s lives depended on that one speech, that one campaign for state representative...

...If the election were close, Reuther said that he planned another race in 1976 when the incumbent, Marvin Esch, is rumored to be running for the Senate...

...Putting it another way, others in my position might have gone into therapy, I ran for Congress...

...Each of them is unquestionably preferable to his opponent in this month’s election...

...for running for Congress in 1972 were qualitatively little different from theirs...

...On a cold October afternoon, we had just finished a visit to a large apartment complex between Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor...

...There are a dozen young men like Jim Blanchard in every state...

...If he were soundly defeated, Reuther said that he would try to work for a corporation that was active in trade with the Soviet Union...

...The grant involved working part-time with the Michigan legislature, and from there Carr drifted into the state attorney general’s office, a Democratic bastion in a Republican state government...

...According to Carr’s campaign literature, he announced his intention to run for Congress again the day after his 1972 defeat...

...Since he can often get away with doing little more than answering quorum calls and voting, the motive generally ascribed to those who seek public office-the drive for power-seems strangely inappropriate...

...Carr laughed and said, “Out here they probably won’t even recognize a New York accent...

...John Reuther’s congressional campaign represents a kind of benchmark for him personally...

...His orientation is liberal, but listening to Reuther has all the suspense of reading a New Republic editorial...

...Both Blanchard and Reuther face the task of unseating Republican incumbents...

...Showing me into his office, he pointed to two bound volumes of the National Journal as if they were his fondest possessions...

...Blanchard’s lack of Washington sophistication masks an intuitive grasp of the kind of politics he did come in contact with when he worked in state government...

...The featured speaker was the state Jaycee president, whose evangelistic style reinforced every liberal stereotype about the Junior Chamber of Commerce and Midwestern Babbitry...

...As Joyner spoke for his allotted three minutes, I noticed that I was standing next to his young wife...

...His favorite story about his two years in the Soviet Union involves a drunken evening he and Birch Bayh spent with Soviet students in 1969 that climaxed with Bayh playing “Blowing in the Wind” on a borrowed guitar...

...It’s not that Reuther is unable to discuss issues intelligently (I heard him give a detailed presentation on the intricacies of national health insurance), it’s just that there is no particular passion or originality to his point of view...

...In a sense, trying to follow politics is like trying to understand the causes of inflation-you read so much and learn so little...

...But between handshakes, Carr confided that he was bored with the whole ritual, and he complained somewhat sourly that his staff expected him to do this kind of thing all day...

...A major ingredient in Blanchard’s upset victory was $30,000 he was loaned by his family...

...The flock of incoming congressmen will be scrutinized to divine the mood of the electorate and to pick out new faces to watch, much in the way that small boys scan minor league batting averages looking for the baseball stars of the future...

...The long-delayed master’s thesis is somehow typical of John Reuther’s first 30 years...

...They gravitate to prominent state politicians and manage their campaigns, write their speeches and carry their bags...