What Politicians Really Want

...Take, for example, the exquisite indirection of Park’s going-away party for outgoing Attor Attorney Gcneral William Saxbe...

...Antoinette Hatfield, for example, explained that her clothing costs tended to be high because “Senate wives are expected to look better than the average person...

...All he need do is follow the maxim that the perfect gift is something the recipient wants but would never buy for hmself...

...For Marvin Mandel, the favor was a vacation in Jamaica...

...Gray justified the complicated transactions which paid for the craft by arguing that it helped him entertain visitors from back home: “I thought the best way to entertain constituents was to let them see the beautiful Capitol from the Potomac...

...Compared to the conduct of his predecessor, Spiro Agnew, Mandel’s behavior seems tame...

...Such subtle courting by lobbyists is one of the major problems of American political life...

...But the financial problems of many in government explain why so often they become entranced with the trappings of office, with chauffeured limousines and elaborately equipped offices...

...John Brademas and was interested in student politics and got to be friends of many congressmen...

...The Status Seekers The phrase “living beyond one’s means” has a dated ring, yet this expression often fits congressmen as closely as it fits the proverbial Westport advertising executive mortgaged to his eyebrows...

...Status in this country is based primarily on two factors-prominence and wealth...

...It is not surprising that several of his free flights were to the National Governors’ Conference...

...Marvin Mandel, Spiro Agnew’s successor as governor of Maryland, left Annapolis on Thursday, January 8, without announcing his destination...

...Neither should we overly praise Jerry Brown for deciding to live in a scantily furnished one-bedroom apartment instead of the California governor’s mansion...

...Held at beautiful resorts like Lake Tahoe, these conferences accomplish little substantive business, but they do provide the governors with the elevated lifestyle which many believe is their automatic due...

...Henry Mitchell of The Washington Post wrote that Park “was once a Georgetown student and roomed in those days with Rep...

...Not only was Halpern overdrawn at the bank, but he owed sizable sums to expensive French restaurants and hotels such as the Plaza in New York and the Fountainbleu in Miami Beach...

...like putting it aside for his children’s college education...

...But the shrewder lobbyists know that the friendship of even uncorruptible officeholders can be won with such blandishments as luxury vacations, elaborate dinners, introductions to celebrities, and the other perquisites of the American upper class...

...The 100 invited guests were served wild goose at Washington’s prestigious and genteelly subdued Madison Hotel...

...Throughout the entire furor, Mandel stoutly maintained that “I haven’t done anything wrong,” although he did acknowledge that the trip to Jamaica might have been “a public relations mistake...

...This was just the beginning of a series of disclosures which prompted the Baltimore Sun to publi’sh an editorial cartoon with the caption, “I’m Marvin, Fly Me...

...First they claimed that the Governor had won the vacation in a raffle, and then they changed the story to read that Mandel and several others, including a Steuart vice president, had put up $1,200 at a charity auction and won the use of a cottage in Jamaica...

...As the years passed, some of these friendships ripened and hence his fondness for ONeill...

...For an elected official without personal wealth, this discrep ancy between prominence and salary often rankles...

...The shrewd lobbyist need not spend vast sums of money to provide a public official with what he wants...

...As Jerry Landauer put it in the Journal, Halpern is a “man of extravagant habits-reaching impetuously for dinner checks at fine restaurants, sending his attractive wife to costly vacation spas, collecting valuable manuscripts...

...There is no need for explicit quid pro quos...

...The Wall Street Journal revealed in 1969 that Halpern, who was then third-ranking Republican on the House Banking Committee, had more than $100,000 in bank loans that were either seriously overdue or totally unsecured by collateral...

...Similarly, many senators are feeling the financial pinch caused by a recent $1 5,000-a-year limit on the amount of speaking fees they can collect to supplement their salaries...

...Walter Shapiro is an editor of The Washington Monthly...

...Mandel’s free plane flights are important, however, because they are typical of the ways lobbyists influence the majority of government officials-those who are neither explicitly corrupt, nor inflexibly wedded to the public interest...

...This explains why the most astute lobbyists can often win the friendship of congressmen and governors through little favors...

...Since there is a limit to how many trips and full-dress dinners can be charged to the public, a passion for living on this level leads public officials such as Mandel straight into the hands of the lobbyists...

...But parties like this cement ties of fricndship with those in public life...

...As one Maryland politician put it, “If this becomes a major scandal, it will be like a champion swimmer drowning in the bathtub...

...he probably would have smiled and answered “friendship...

...Even the more dedicated members of Congress feel a conflict between their lifestyles and their income...

...Sometimes legislators find themselves in serious trouble, as did recently retired Illinois Congressman Ken Gray, who, according to The Washington Star, used left-over campaign funds to help buy his $40,000 houseboat, Rollcall...

...In the cutthroat world of Washington society, there are few gestures so seemingly selfless as gwing a party for someone about to leave office...

...An extreme example is former New York Congressman Seymour Halpern...

...Not consumed by anything resembling ideological passion, Mandel is emblematic of many in public life in that he seems more interested in the pleasures of being governor than in accomplishing anything specific in office...

...BY, early February it had been confirmed that since he became governor Mandel had accepted at least ten other trips on corporate jets...

...But in 1973 they said they were approaching the point where they would be living beyond their means...

...But many more stem from the exigencies of maintaining a suitably elevated lifestyle...

...Despite press criticism, congressmen continue to take junkets to Europe and Asia for much the same reason...

...Within a few days, The Washington Post discovered that Mandel and his wife had gone on a Jamaican vacation aboard a corporate jet provided by S teuar t Pe trole um-an oil company which just happens to be trying to build a controversial refinery on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay...

...If Park had been asked his motive for giving the party...

...for lobbyists like Park are often more subtle than that...

...This attitude is not reserved to governors...

...In contrast, even if a senator with a middle-class income took a bribe, he probably would feel obligated to do something sensible with it...

...A senator may regularly appear before 50 million Americans on the evening news, but he must make ends meet on a salary of $42,500...

...According to Gravel, this last idea came from none other than Lyndon Johnson, who, on the verge of leaving office, took some freshmen senators aside and gave them this secret of success in Washington“invest in local real estate.’’ More than any other recent figure in public life, Richard Nixon illustrates the degree to which elected officials can come to believe that their prominence should permit them to live on a par with millionaires...

...Halpern’s indeb tedness-which eventually helped hasten his retirementstemmed from his insistence on living in a manner that may have fitted his prominence, but certainly not his income...

...Despite the intensity of our current national crusade against corruption, the number of public officials who are actively for sale is relatively small-and, one suspects, they tend to be expensive...

...It would not disappear with tougher restrictions on campaign spending or with raising congressional and gubernatorial salaries to $60,000 or $80,000 a year...

...Obviously, public officials should not be required to live like Ralph Nader...

...In a forthcoming book, Inside the House, Daniel Rapoport provides this glimpse of a prominent House liberal: “Ben and Leila Rosenthal do not live opulently...

...It was neither the kind of party that O’Neill, said to be a man of relatively modest habits, would have given for himself, nor just a mechanical tribute like a testimonial dinner...

...Obviously, some of these salary problems are caused by expenses unique to Congress, such as maintaining two homes and frequent travel back to the home district...

...What Park has done is incrcase the likelihood that leading public officials will deal with him on a personal rather than a bureaucratic level the next time he wants something from the United States government...

...Kandy Stroud recently reported in New York that a number of Senate wives are being forced to go to work to help make ends meet...

...With a $60,000 pension, Nixon is in no real financial danger...

...Last December, Tongsun Park, a somewhat mysterious Korean with a host of interests ranging from oil supertankers to the international rice trade, gave a birthday party for House Majority Leader “Tip” O’Neill...

...in the fashionable Maryland countryside...

...one should not take too cynical a view and automatically assume that this party was given in return for a favor from O’Neill...

...Some of the flights were unabashed luxury vacations such as a one-day trip to Wyoming in 1973 for an antelope-hunting contest held primarily for celebrities and business executives...

...Early this March, Jack Anderson reported that the former President “is deeply depressed over h s finances...

...For as long as thcre are men who dream, not of the work they will do in office but of the life they will lead, there are going to be lobbyists who know how to get what they want by exploiting those dreams...

...The wives of both Mark Hatfield and John Tower, for example, are selling real estate...

...They enjoy the familiar comforts of an expensive country club and two vacations a year...

...He is desperately looking for ways to increase his cash flow...

...It is this passion which explains his curious real estate transactions with Bebe Rebozo and Robert Abplanalp...

...The Rosenthals readily concede that they live well...

...In response to questioning about the column, Gravel, who was originally a real estate promoter in Alaska, justified his home (“it’s actually worth $250,000”) both in terms of his work (“in my business entertaining is de rigueur”) and its investment possibilities...

...George Reedy has written about the seductions of life in the White House...

...A governor like Mandel may be better known than almost all corporate executives, but he is forced to live on the maddeningly middleclass salary of $25,000...

...For those (and there are many) who have gone into public service in quest of a certain lifestyle, there is a limit to how much satisfaction can be derived from having a refrigerator and a shower in your office...

...On a less exalted level, the chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is known, when driving around Washington, to call his staffers merely for the pleasure of saying: “I’m calling you from the phone in my car.’’ For some, these luxuries can serve as tangible reminders that they have arrived, that they actually are high government officials...

...I’m Calling from My Car’ I am not making a case for asceticism...

...No, this party was elegant rather than political...

...Some politicians overcome this problem by becoming so oblivious to reality that they actually live as if they were supported by accumulated capital rather than by their government salary...

...Ever since Nixon journeyed to Wall Street after losing the 1962 California gubernatorial race, he has been devoured by his passion to accumulate enough capital to guarantee an upper-class lifestyle...

...For someone else, it might be a chance to meet movie stars or to be accepted in the homes of aristocratic families...

...If Mitchell was serious, this is an unbelievably saccharine view of the cosmos...

...Recently, Alaska Senator Mike Gravel was described by columnist Jack Anderson as “living beyond his means” to support a “$200,000 dream house...

...But they do live nicely...

...But Anderson pinpoints the source of Nixon’s anxiety: “He lacks the income to sustain his lifestyle...

...There are undoubtedly senators in Washington who are more likely to be swayed by a $30 lunch at an exclusive club which they don’t belong to than by a $300 campaign contribution...

...The efforts by the governor’s office to cover up the story were breath-taking in their ineptness...