The most difficult was McClure, whose vote was crucial to unlock the natural-gas bill from the Conference Committee, and whose price was continuing the high-level research on breeder nuclear reactors that, not coincidentally, was being performed at a major facility in his home state of Idaho. He demanded an annual research budget of $125 million. Few projects made Jimmy Carter’s hair stand on end as this one did, but the project would not die. Strauss, Mondale, and Kitty Schirmer went to see the president, who declared, “I’m not going to compromise on those things.” But he knew he had no choice if he wanted the bill, and as Kitty observed, “In the end he did some compromising, but it was so late, it was kind of ungraceful.”4
In his preparation for a meeting with McClure, the president was clearly agitated. “This sets a precedent in paying McClure $100 million for his vote. I have never done that before,” he said. In my notes I underscored that last sentence. Mondale, a seasoned Washington veteran who had long ago lost his innocence about compromises, weighed in to ease the passage to reality: “Mr. President, now is the time to strike; this is a modest price to pay. The gas bill is very important.”5
It was a moment of truth for Jimmy Carter. I knew he hated this kind of raw politics, but he realized it was now or never. He took a swipe at Mondale, only half joking that he would probably give a senator “one of your vice presidential gardeners to get this bill done,”6 before soothing his conscience by emphasizing that he was making no commitment to actually build the reactor, and he wanted to ensure that McClure understood that before he committed a specific amount for research.
And that is exactly what he had to do when McClure arrived with Domenici in the historic Map Room in the White House, where Roosevelt had guided Allied progress in World War II.7 Carter began by arguing that the Europeans believed that the energy bill was crucial for the stability of the dollar and was a crucial part of the deal he had made at the Bonn summit. McClure countered with a ridiculous statement: “The breeder reactor is more important to the Europeans than the natural-gas bill.” Then he got to the heart of the matter: “I’m giving up on my key concern, the escalator on price for natural gas, and I need assurance from the president on the breeder, which is the key item for me.” Reminding McClure that he had served as a naval officer on a nuclear submarine, Carter continued: “I favor atomic power. I am committed to a breeder program, but I am concerned with the spending levels.”
This made the vice president, Schlesinger, and me hold our collective breath to hear what the president would say next. Finally, with a sigh, the president agreed and, to the visible relief of everyone there, said: “I don’t object to what you will work out with Jim.” Schlesinger and McClure worked out a compromise to appropriate $100 million for breeder research but no money for construction. McClure wanted the bill to “suspend” instead of “terminate” the project, so that continued research would seem more plausible. Carter substituted the vague word “discontinue,” which was consistent with his position on Clinch River—yes to research but no to construction. That is how deals are done in Washington.
Domenici was an easier sell. He told Carter that he “had never worked harder on anything” since coming to the Senate, that his New Mexico consumers and producers both opposed the natural-gas compromise, and he needed the president to fight hard for the bill when it got to the Senate floor. Carter firmly assured Domenici he would do just that. With McClure and Domenici, we had nine of the seventeen Senate conferees, a bare majority. Now we had to persuade a majority of the thirteen House conferees. Without assurances from the conservative Waggoner and the liberal Democrat Henry Reuss of Wisconsin, O’Neill wanted insurance from two other conferees.
That same day the president invited two of the most liberal Democratic congressmen, Harlem’s Charles Rangel and James Corman of Los Angeles, for a late-night meeting back in the Map Room. Before going to the White House, they had already been pressured by O’Neill to support decontrol if only on a patriotic basis, however unpopular it surely would be in their districts. O’Neill had warned that a defeat would damage the prestige of the nation and the president, as well as his own—an unspoken but important factor in the minds of politicians hearing from the principal dispenser of patronage and position in the House of Representatives. So with this appeal from the Speaker, they headed to the White House.8
We knew Rangel wanted housing money for his Harlem district, but, Schlesinger said, “The president didn’t seem interested.” Whatever Carter’s disdain for such horse-trading, this was too important to stand on principle. I called our chief legislative liaison, Frank Moore, and we arranged on our own for additional HUD funds for Harlem, a poor district that needed the money anyway. Charlie Rangel, a founder of the Congessional Black Caucus and a political power in America’s most prominent black community, had a gravelly voice and great charm. He cared deeply about the impact of rising energy prices on poor people in New York and around the country.9
Jim Corman was one of the most courteous members of Congress I ever met. I never heard him raise his voice or say anything unpleasant about anyone. He was silver haired and intense and his liberal, proconsumer credentials were unimpeachable. He and Rangel were among my closest friends in Congress, both had opposed the compromise on decontrolling natural-gas prices, and both made a complete about-face after Carter explained that his credibility and political standing at home and abroad were at stake.
The president made no specific promises (Moore and I had taken care of that), but Rangel made it clear that he was “worried about the impact of rising energy prices on the poor, and on consumers in general, and I want to know, Mr. President, that you will take every action at your disposal to protect them.” Carter replied by emphasizing the programs in the energy package to help shield low-income Americans from rising prices and to assist poor people to insulate their homes. Bringing in these two liberals helped give them political cover to switch together. Both also agreed that it was better for Carter to depend on them to push the natural-gas bill over the top rather than the fractious and demanding representatives of oil-patch states.10
But even with their reluctant support, the House conferees were one vote short of a majority. The best target was none other than swashbuckling Texas Charlie Wilson, and the saga of signing him up was worthy of a Hollywood movie. (Years later, in fact, he would be played by Tom Hanks in the Mike Nichols film Charlie Wilson’s War, chronicling his bravado campaign to arm the Afghan mujahadeen against Soviet invaders.) At this critical moment he said he had to catch a plane. Wilson told the Speaker’s top aide, Ari Weiss, that if he absolutely needed his vote to make the necessary thirteen, he could have his signature as long as he was not the only producer-state congressman supporting the deal. Wilson was depending on Waggoner to offer political cover, but could not have known that after he left for the airport, Waggoner had withdrawn his support under pressure from oil and gas lobbyists. That left Texas Charlie by himself with the unaccustomed company of liberals Corman and Rangel to bring the compromise out of committee. It also left Weiss understandably reluctant to cast Wilson’s vote in such politically treacherous circumstances.
Wilson was on a commercial airliner. Weiss dashed from the Map Room to the White House congressional liaison office, where they were celebrating victory—prematurely, as Weiss explained to their horror. The White House switchboard operators, who can find anyone including the proverbial man on the moon (and even the real ones when they landed there), patched Wilson through to Weiss on the pilot’s radio so he could explain the sudden turn of events. Wilson temporarily withdrew his proxy and promised to call back after he landed. For more than two hours there was complete silence. No one could find him, not even the White House operator.
Lud Ashley, Schlesinger, Weiss, Kitty Schirmer, and a handful of senior staff including me paced around the vice president’s office late into the night. It was like a hospital waiting room full of nervous prospective fathers—except this pregnancy had not taken nine month
s but almost twice as long. In desperation, Weiss contacted Wilson’s fellow Texan, Majority Leader Jim Wright, who found Wilson at the home of an oil company executive, discussing the bill with a handful of producers. As we waited a few more suspenseful moments for Texas Charlie to check with his congressional colleagues, we were finally able to draw breath: Wilson gave Weiss the go-ahead to cast his proxy. Elated but exhausted, we never did find out exactly what Wilson or his oil-patch colleagues had said among themselves in order to free up his essential vote.11 Once the natural-gas compromise passed the committee, Long quickly reached a deal with his House counterparts. They killed the wellhead oil tax but approved the gas-guzzler tax and other important incentives for conservation and alternative energy through solar power, wind, and biomass.
THE ANTIPOLITICIAN DRAWN INTO POLITICS
For both houses of Congress to pass the Conference Report into law, we still had to face floor battles that would revisit many of the same issues and reassemble the cross-party coalitions that had marked its tortuous passage so far. Only a few days after the conferees reached agreement, eighteen other senators including opponents and supporters of deregulation joined in a “Dear Colleague” letter opposing the compromise. The irrepressible Abourezk declared he was ready to filibuster the bill. Another obstacle was the compromise on the breeder reactor; some senators would not be satisfied until they saw a stake through its heart, and McClure aroused their suspicions by publicly claiming he had achieved a greater commitment from the president than he actually had. Carter phoned me from Camp David with instructions to prepare a statement declaring that he had made “no commitment to construction of the breeder or to buy component parts for the new plant.” The fact was that, under pressure in the negotiations, each side heard what it wanted to. With Schlesinger trying to work out details with McClure, the president directed me to monitor the agreement closely and call him if any dispute arose.12
Again, the same bizarre coalition of conservative business and liberal labor and consumer groups formed to kill the Conference Report. Despite these almost insane circumstances, this time it was different. We banded together like the Argonauts in search of the Golden Fleece, and Carter did not bend or break under the pressure but plowed ahead. We brooked no petty compromises at this late stage and pointed out the impact of delay on the already stressed dollar.
During Labor Day weekend Carter called twenty-six wavering senators as he prepared for the Camp David negotiations between Israel and Egypt, including the Iowa Democrat John Culver at 5:00 a.m. during his holiday trip in Alaska. In the midst of the intensive Camp David negotiations, Carter talked with another thirteen senators by phone and marked each one as leaning positive, negative, or open—and thus subject to persuasion. The president did not need to be told that he needed to use the full power and authority of his office or the bill would fail. It was a brutal example of how often a president must switch from one complex subject to another and stay on top of both. His intense personal lobbying by phone was the closest his presidential politics would come to hands-on lobbying. The natural-gas battle was a fight to the finish. Either we won or the Carter presidency was shot.
While Carter would make as many phone calls as we asked, he still seemed unwilling to personally apply the power of his office on plane trips with members of Congress or in most forms of socializing. On an Air Force One flight to New Jersey with eight of the state’s congressmen and its Democratic senator, Harrison Williams, only once was the president heard discussing the urgency of the energy bill. Bill Cable, the White House liaison to the House on energy, overheard him talking about it with the state’s moderate Republican senator, Clifford Case.13 I made a terse note on my legal pad: “JC not politician; JC simply not like to be with other politicians; maybe felt he was better” (than them).14 Dan Tate, Cable’s Senate counterpart, was aghast that on “the most critical domestic vote of his presidency” Carter refused to revisit the subject with New Mexico’s Dennis DeConcini, nor would he talk with California’s acerbic S. I. Hayakawa—the two had caused him problems ratifying the Panama Canal Treaty—or to Senator Edward Brooke, a moderate Republican from Massachusetts, because of a reported wisecrack implying that the president was debasing the dignity of his office by wearing jeans. “And the list gets longer,” Tate complained.15
Schlesinger later said that Carter’s “heart was not in it. He felt himself unclean when he lobbied a senator, and yet when he appeared before constituency groups, he could talk about substance.… He could close with, ‘We need your support,’ and these people were all flattered to visit with the president of the United States.”16
Schlesinger worked superhuman hours to apply pressure through the energy industry. But this was a full-team effort for the final push. At an Oval Office meeting on August 31 with Mondale and Carter’s close advisers, we had only thirty-four certain Senate votes for the natural-gas compromise, and the president was given another list of senators to call—mostly liberal Republicans—as well as the chief executives of Gulf, Texaco, Mobil, and Exxon.17 I worked with the president on the final draft of an urgent August 31 letter to Congress, invoking a warning from Federal Reserve Chairman G. William Miller that failure to act risked a further decline in the dollar.18 Miller, a former Textron CEO, publicly injected himself into the debate unlike any previous Federal Reserve chairman. Mondale virtually camped out in his Capitol office just off the Senate floor to buttonhole Senators.
Ham, Rafshoon, Frank Moore, Gail Harrison of Mondale’s staff, and I met with Anne Wexler each morning at 8:30 a.m. to develop strategy for a Conference Committee report that was so riddled with compromises no one liked it. At the same time we worked with Anne to develop an outreach strategy for public support on the grounds of patriotism and national pride. She skillfully reached out to companies and unions with plants in the districts of wavering senators and congressmen for White House briefings. She knew how to set up briefings and form coalitions among groups that usually opposed each other, for example industry and the environmentalists. She assembled about two dozen chief executives from a variety of industries in the Roosevelt Room.19 Not one of them supported the natural-gas bill, but she had organized her own assault squad of top-level talent. Schlesinger opened with multicolored charts and new figures to show how the compromise would increase gas production. Then Anne brought in Bob Strauss as the closer. With his Texas twang and down-home manner, he told the executives they held the fate of the bill in their hands: “This is close enough so a half dozen bankers I had in here this morning and the people in this room could pass or defeat the bill.” Several of the executives, particularly those from industries such as textiles that Strauss had helped as trade czar, changed their positions and supported the compromise.20
In the weeks before the Senate vote, executives from insurance to automobiles to aerospace were summoned for another half-dozen sessions in the most extensive administration lobbying campaign on a domestic issue since Carter took office. Nothing was spared. A group of bankers was invited for lunch in the family dining room, a special treat. Even a few oil companies such as Atlantic Richfield were persuaded to hold their noses and support the compromise, although deregulation would not be complete until 1985. Exxon, the paragon of an integrated global oil company, was persuaded to stay neutral. Other industries like steel, autos, and the farm groups were split. Republican senator Robert Griffin of Michigan told us that for him to vote in favor, he needed at least one auto manufacturer to support the measure. So we dragooned Chrysler, in financial trouble and in need of a federal bailout we would later give to save the company and tens of thousands of auto workers’ jobs. Schlesinger, never one to mince words, remarked later that it had taken the White House “three years to learn that the real power on Capitol Hill is held by industry.”21
It is important to recall that at that time, we were dealing with mainly a clash of competing interests and not corporate and union campaign payoffs. All were constrained by post-Watergate campaign finance laws
aimed at limiting much of the perverse influence of money on politics. Carter and Ford both ran their 1976 campaigns using funds from the income-tax check-off, rather than raising tens of millions of dollars in private and corporate donations for today’s unconstrained super-PACs. Still, the independent oil and gas companies were masters at getting special tax and regulatory breaks by spreading money around irrespective of party. And we had to curry favor with big business to overwhelm the power of their energy suppliers. (Over the years, the constraints on campaign financing laws have been eroded, most recently by the Supreme Court’s fatal Citizens United decision, removing virtually all restraints on campaign spending. The huge cost of television campaigning, and the political organizing that once was shouldered mainly by political parties, has pervaded all areas of public policy.)
This alignment of strange political bedfellows on Capitol Hill helped make the battle as fierce as any that Washington had seen in decades. The principal reason for the preponderance of opponents was that the compromises satisfied no one fully. The energy producers and conservatives, arguing that controls were not being removed quickly enough, formed a marriage of convenience to kill the Conference Committee’s compromise with consumer advocates fearful that prices would rise too quickly and angry that deregulation would occur at all, although all controls were slated to end in 1985.
President Carter Page 28
