Tip and the Gipper: When Politics Worked (5 page)

One thing was for certain, the mistakes of his predecessor provided a helpful blueprint—of what
not
to do. Jimmy Carter, a loner by temperament, had come to Washington detesting the city’s cozy ways, resisting the dinners and other lures of its established hostesses, angering the old leadership by his aloofness. Ronald and Nancy Reagan, by contrast, had every intention of enjoying their new city even as he made it his mission to “deliver Washington” from its reigning ideology. His plan was to charm rivals and potential allies alike.

One powerful force at work in Reagan’s favor would now be the survival instincts of those in the other party. Every election has twin results. First, the victor is decided. Next, a directional signal for going forward is sent. Not only had the Republicans captured the U.S. Senate, at the same time picking up thirty-three seats in the House, they’d also clearly intimated what was coming next. “Get out of the way of this guy!” was the unspoken message that now taunted Democrats who’d held on to their seats; otherwise you might find yourself the next victim.

The plain facts backed up the implied threat, and so the sitting Democrats understood the wisdom of embracing caution when dealing with the White House. Top members of the House, after all, had gone down in defeat that November, including stalwarts like Ways and Means chairman Al Ullman of Oregon and John Brademas of Indiana, the majority whip. If such high-profile Democratic members, with substantial reelection coffers, could be beaten, who, then, was safe? Wasn’t the shrewd move to ignore the leadership in Washington and look out for yourself back home? Wasn’t it Tip himself who lived by that rule of survival?

Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill, leader of the Democratic majority in the House was, by right and by duty, the responsible political officer. For half a century he’d forged a reputation for personal affability and partisan toughness. Yet the lesson learned in his first and only losing campaign—running for Cambridge City Council while still a Boston College senior—had never left him.
On the eve of that defeat and while he was still smarting, a neighbor reproached him. Her complaint: he’d failed to “ask” her for her vote. It became axiomatic with him: don’t take anyone for granted and pay the strictest attention to your own backyard.

From that moment on Tip O’Neill understood the extent to which voters’ individual feelings matter, to be neglected only at a candidate’s peril.
In 1936, at the age of twenty-four, he was elected to the Massachusetts legislature, historically a Republican stronghold. For twelve years he endured the humiliations of minority status, but he’d finally had enough and set about putting together a statewide Democratic power network. Operating on the lesson he’d learned long ago from his father about the primacy of neighborhood concerns and personalities—“all politics is local”—he made it his watchword as he crisscrossed the commonwealth, recruiting candidates.

So it was in 1949, joined now by a majority of newly elected legislators, that the Tip-built coalition took control of the Massachusetts House. Still in his thirties, he became the state’s first-ever Democratic Speaker. Four years later, when John F. Kennedy ran successfully for the Senate, Tip sought his seat in the U.S. House and won. Now it was 1980, nearly thirty years later, and his was the name to be reckoned with in Massachusetts political life. But, to his chagrin, he was forced to watch his home state—a Democratic bastion defended by his strong will, acquired savvy, and regular delivery of New Deal–grade pork barrel—go for Ronald Reagan.

But just days after Inauguration Day 1981, O’Neill had offered his hometown newspaper a benevolent view of the president-elect. “
We find him very charismatic . . . and he’s got a good political sense and he’s got a lot of experience,” he told the
Boston Globe
. “. . . Don’t undersell him. He’s a sharp fellow.” He was also lucky, Tip pointed out—an attribute that counts for a lot everywhere, and most certainly in electoral politics.

Ever pragmatic, the Democrats’ leader recognized the challenge now facing him. He also understood the stakes. At this moment the problem wasn’t simply Reagan in the White House but the hard, inescapable fact of Republican control of the U.S. Senate. With another election just two years away, the Republicans might soon control both branches of Congress. The prospect of a grand realignment, Tip clearly understood, was exactly what the GOP was now relishing.

Having owned Capitol Hill with only two short breaks since the New Deal, the Democrats, with the advent of Ronald Reagan and those riding his coattails, had, as I’ve said, every reason to be uneasy. At a post-election press conference, Tip opted for a tone of preemptive diplomacy, referring to Reagan as
“the admiral of the ship.” The new president, he hoped, would be steering
“the proper course” in “smooth” waters. The Speaker depicted his own party as having been hit by a “tidal wave.” Still he rejected obstructionism. “We will cooperate in every way.”

Reagan’s opening move was to recruit a top-flight team of White House aides, a savvy group that included pragmatists and moderates. Illinois’s Robert Michel, the Republican leader in the House, despite his seat on the other side of the aisle, had long been one of the Speaker’s buddies. What Michel saw now was that the Speaker would regard favorably the efforts the new administration was making to assemble experienced players, however he might feel about their ultimate aims.
“Tip is a very practical politician,” was
Michel’s assessment as he took stock of the brand-new Washington landscape. He knew only too well the low regard in which Tip had held the previous president’s people, having heard his frustrated private complaints about the tactics and attitudes of Carter’s Georgia homeboys, above all political aide Hamilton Jordan—whom O’Neill had contemptuously rechristened
“Hannibal Jerkin.”

But while Tip’s practicality was important, so was the fact that he counted himself, above all, a professional. He gave no sign of bearing any grudge at the incoming Republicans for the nastily personal TV ad they’d run against him. Chiefly financed by the National Republican Congressional Committee, it featured a Tip look-alike stranded in a black limo that had just run out of gas. Even worse than its poking fun at what O’Neill would himself refer to as his rough looks, the commercial portrayed him as arrogant and clueless. The on-screen “Tip” was a catered-to and spoiled Washington insider unable to recognize his tank was empty. When asked how he felt about this lampooning, the real Tip shrugged. “Water off a . . . ,” he’d reply dismissively. He understood it was politics, where the opposition’s duty was to hit hard enough so you could hear the smack.

Besides, this was not the time to look back. The election was a done deal. The present—and future—were all that counted.
“I don’t intend to allow my party to go down the drain,” he vowed. He also made the prediction that the Democrats would bounce back in the first midterm election, still two years off. “We’re going to gain seats,” he insisted with gallant defiance, knowing full well the national political wind was gusting hard in the other direction.

At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, there was no need for such bravura. The Reagan production was rapidly getting under way. The president-elect was unusual in knowing his own weaknesses as well as being very aware of his strengths. Back in Hollywood, he’d had the benefit of a team: producer, director, screenwriter, costumer,
etc., each of whom well understood his or her assignment. It was a familiar routine to him, having an expert on the set tell him where to stand and which camera to respect. He was accustomed to being told the plotline.

The first absolutely vital move he made, the significance of which can’t be overestimated, was to hire James Addison Baker III, a Houston attorney and seasoned political advisor, as his chief of staff. Reagan cared more about getting it right than holding grudges. The fact that the much-admired Baker had in the past strategized against him—working for Gerald Ford in the 1976 primaries and for George H. W. Bush in 1980—was no lasting offense. He could find his way to accept a
pro
whom he saw as a fellow conservative. “I always throw my golf club in the direction I’m going,” he’d say. Most important, Nancy Reagan, whose opinion counted for a great deal, agreed with her husband when it came to this crucial hire.

Though conservative in his beliefs, Jim Baker was comfortable in government and effective in politics. He now set to work with his boss’s full confidence, having been given the authority to assemble a White House team. Choosing the aides who’d be dealing with Congress—half of which, remember, remained in Democratic hands—was an important part of this responsibility. Like David Gergen, appointed Reagan’s communications director, the Princeton-educated Texan was evidence that the more centrist political lieutenants can be the most fearsome in battle; they’re often cagier.

In Hollywood terms, you could call Baker the producer, the one taking larger-scale responsibility, the overall honcho. Michael Deaver, a close California friend of the Reagans and longtime GOP political operative named now as the White House deputy chief of staff, assumed the role of stage director. He was entrusted with choreographing Reagan’s indelible turns, as he had done with that dazzling Labor Day appearance at the Statue of Liberty. The third key
inside guy was Edwin Meese, a lawyer like Baker and, like Deaver, a Californian. He and Mike Deaver had worked closely together in the California State House during Reagan’s two terms there. Arriving in Washington, Meese was given the title Counselor to the President for Policy, which allowed him to make sure the Reagan programs stayed on message.

This arrangement allowed the new president to concentrate on his essential dual roles: Ronald Reagan, keeper of the conservative faith, and Ronald Reagan, the performer. Relying on his aides to organize his presidential schedule and nail down the details, he would serve as the production’s chief mastermind. He would also be the administration’s leading man. He would
be
Ronald Reagan. He would
play
Ronald Reagan.

How perfectly Jim Baker understood the man and the operation he was running. He saw that an unwritten part of his job entailed keeping his boss focused on why he’d wanted to be president in the first place. Every cabdriver in D.C. would soon know what President Reagan stood for: to reduce taxes and government at home, and to defeat the Soviet Union abroad.

Reagan had been nursing grievances against the federal income tax ever since he’d been penalized back in the 1940s by what was then the high-end marginal rate of 90 percent. To avoid hitting that bracket, Reagan refused to make more than two movies annually. To Jim Baker he’d later explain,
“Why should I have done a third picture—even if it was
Gone with the Wind
? What good would it have done me?” The star had never forgotten his outrage. As president, he was eager to start swinging the ax.

An across-the-board cut in marginal income tax rates was now President-elect Reagan’s holy grail. To succeed in winning it would require a mix of ideological allegiance and political seduction. It was time for Ronald Reagan the political leader to cede the stage to
Ronald Reagan the leading man. What he needed and wanted to do now was to start wooing Washington on its own terms. Unlike Jimmy Carter, here was a man who liked being liked and knew well how to work a room. Both had big grins—but one was infectious while the other merely provided a too-easy target for editorial cartoonists. Carter, thoughtful and earnest, forever seemed the Sunday school teacher he actually was. Reagan, whom millions of Americans remembered nostalgically from his days hosting the popular
General Electric Theater
—and later, briefly,
Death Valley Days
—came off as a familiar, genial personality. He barely had to introduce himself to the country, since his face and voice were already in its mass consciousness.

He and Nancy first needed to introduce themselves to a much smaller group, social Washington. After all, as Nancy wisely saw, this was where they were going to live. As president and first lady, they soon were in demand and immediately began accepting invitations, seeking open channels into the local power culture. Not differentiating, really, between mandarin Republicans and mandarin Democrats, they early on attended a dinner given by publisher Katharine Graham, whose newspaper, the
Washington Post,
had overseen the ruthless cashiering of fellow Californian Richard Nixon. In the coming years, Kay Graham, the first lady of Washington society, and Nancy, the country’s first lady, finding they liked each other, would lunch secretly. Used to having a circle of chums back in Los Angeles, the new first lady also formed other Washington friendships.

This was not Tip O’Neill’s world, where the Reagans were beginning to circulate. His wife, Millie, whom he would salute for having “never changed,” sought no part in the Washington whirl. She had stayed home in North Cambridge for much of his congressional career. Jim Baker, however, saw O’Neill as the highest-value target of the charm offensive. He was determined that the
Reagan White House treat the Democratic Speaker with the respect he’d never received from the Carter gang. Baker believed that it was vital to keep communication lines open between the White House and the opposition as represented by the Speaker’s office. For example, he thought it basic political wisdom to let Tip know what was coming, policywise, and to treat him properly, with the courtesy and respect he deserved—even when they disagreed. Baker knew that an important aspect of his job was to function as the White House’s chief legislative strategist, and that meant he’d have to keep calibrating how to move these two heavyweights—Reagan and O’Neill—together.

Here’s Baker’s own version of how he saw it: “
Like Jimmy Carter in 1976, Ronald Reagan had run as an outsider who criticized the Washington status quo. Unlike Carter, however, we made plans to extend an immediate olive branch to Congress.” He later added,
“I knew that President Reagan would have his hands full with a Democratic-controlled House that he had campaigned against vigorously. So it was even more essential to keep the lines of communications open and civil with Capitol Hill.”