by Ira Shapiro
Baker stated, “We want to resist the temptation to demagogue, witch hunt, to destroy people’s characters. But we will pursue the truth.” The Senate charged the panel with submitting either a final or interim report by October 4, a month before the election—an almost impossibly short time frame in which to conduct any investigation, but one that would allow the voters to have the facts and judge the importance of Billy Carter’s connection to Libya.
The White House immediately pledged full cooperation with the investigation, including the willingness of First Lady Rosalynn Carter and Brzezinski to testify. Clearly the Carter administration had learned the fundamental lesson of Watergate: the cover up is almost always worse than the crime.
Always eager to score partisan points, Bob Dole could not resist giving a speech comparing Watergate to “Billygate.” Dole claimed the only real difference between the two situations was that this time, both the president and the Congress were Democratic.
At the time, Bayh and Dole were working closely together on important legislation to improve American innovation by getting the results of university research in the hands of business more expeditiously. But that legislation reflected the “good Dole,” a legislator who operated in a substantive, nonpartisan way. Billygate and a high-stakes election year got Dole’s political juices flowing, bringing out his slashing, partisan side familiar to the country from the 1976 campaign. Bayh, obviously irked at Dole, pointed out that, unlike Nixon, Carter had pledged full cooperation and did not plan to invoke executive privilege.
Bayh had no illusions about the job: “It’s going to be like walking through a minefield.” He said that his aides had urged him to turn it down and concentrate on his campaign. He deserved praise for stepping up to a tough assignment like the distinguished senator he was. Nevertheless events would prove that his staff was probably right.
ON AUGUST 4, A line of 300 would-be spectators snaked through the halls of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, as Bayh gaveled the start of the hearings. Both Democrats and Republicans questioned the wisdom of the White House using Billy to urge Gaddafi to lean on the Iranians early in the crisis. Bob Dole asked sarcastically if, after Billy left Tripoli, “something happened that was useful besides the burning of the U.S. embassy.”
However, by the second day, despite the presence of eleven television cameras and sixty reporters, senators on both sides of the dais seemed uncertain whether the hearings were even worthwhile. There appeared to be no White House impropriety. Patrick Leahy, a first-term senator also in a tough reelection battle, commented: “I’d just as soon no one [in Vermont] knows I’m on the subcommittee. They’d wonder why I wasn’t doing my other duties instead.” Max Baucus commented: “The basic feeling of the American people is this may not be ‘much ado about nothing,’ but it’s a lot to do about not very much.’ People are saying ‘Poor Billy’! They think the media has made a lot of this.” Even Dole observed: “A lot was smoke—I’m not sure there was a flame.”
Bayh, who had taken the political risk of chairing the panel, said: “In the end, it may not amount to a hill of peanuts.” Indianans were worried about other things. “Autoworkers are on unemployment. Farmers are suffering from the grain embargo. People couldn’t care less about the Libyans.” Bayh also observed: “There’s a lot of disenchantment with confrontation between the president and Congress. My constituents are saying ‘why can’t you fellows get along?’”
Jimmy Carter remained committed to bringing out the full truth. In the White House briefing room in early August, he said that he was “willing and eager to respond in person” to any questions from the special committee and “the sooner the better.” He said that he would send the committee “a full and complete report” on the subject this week, make it public at the same time, and answer questions from reporters in a prime-time press conference.
“The complete disclosure of the facts will clearly demonstrate that at no time did my brother influence me in my decisions toward Libya or the policies of this government toward Libya,” Carter insisted. “And neither I nor anyone acting in my behalf ever sought to influence or interfere in the investigation of my brother by the Justice Department.”
On August 21, Billy Carter began his testimony before the special committee. “I’m not a buffoon, a boob, or a whacko,” Billy said. He portrayed himself as an ordinary southerner who had been victimized by the increased scrutiny that came with being the president’s brother. “I never offered or did anything for the benefit of Libya or the government of Libya in relation to American government policy or actions.” Billy said that he had told the Libyans: “If the people and the government of Libya want to treat me as a friend, that was fine with me. If the people and the government of Libya want to deal with me as a man of potential influence, they had chosen the wrong person, and I so informed them.”
Pressed by several senators about whether he regretted his actions, Billy said: “I don’t know if I would do it over again. Before I do anything again with Libya I’d talk real long and hard with my lawyers.”
Billy said that he had spoken casually with the president about the Libya visit. “He has never been there and we had family talks just as you would tell a member of your family about a trip you may have taken to a foreign land.” His bottom line undoubtedly struck the committee as convincing: “I never asked my brother to do anything for the benefit of Libya. I also know he would not do it even if I had been foolish enough to try. . . . Neither Jimmy Carter nor I believe that the government can or should be used for the financial benefits of the president’s family.”
Unsatisfied, Dole wanted the investigation to go deeper. “We’re involved in it now. We have our reputations to worry about. We’ve got to get the facts,” Dole said. “We can’t have a situation that, when it’s all over, the Post or the New York Times says why didn’t you bring this or that out. Once you get into it you’ve got to be careful or you’ll get hit with a falling object.”
Nevertheless, Bayh remained quite certain that the hearings had been underwhelming because there was nothing there. He told reporters: “I’ll wager that 90 percent of everything we will hear, you have already written about.” But, “until you stir the pot, you can’t say whether you have a mouse or a dinosaur.”
The committee essentially agreed. Once Billy completed his testimony, the drama was over. On September 24, the panel members decided in executive session that there were no questions remaining that required President Carter’s testimony or even a sworn statement in response to questions. The committee’s interim report came in on October 4, as required, and in time it became the final report. Billygate had ended with not a bang, but a whimper.
THE SENATE HAD HANDLED a difficult political issue about as well as could be expected during the heat of a presidential campaign. The initial overheated comparisons between Billygate and Watergate were way off the mark. The Republican senators played straight and avoided demagoguery. Even Dole acknowledged, in between partisan zingers, that there was nothing to the controversy.
The senators had grasped the central truth early on: the Carters occupied a special place as the nation’s First Family, but they were certainly not the first family with sibling problems. From the beginning, the most likely explanation seemed to be that Billy Carter, a troubled man with financial problems, sought to capitalize on the fact that he was the president’s brother; Gaddafi wanted to secure influence in high circles in Washington, or alternatively, to embarrass the president; Jimmy Carter had an understandable reluctance to come down too hard on his brother, and every reason to avoid being involved in the situation at all. Brzezinski’s initiative seemed ill conceived, but a full array of diplomatic efforts—conventional and unconventional—had already failed to free the hostages. The Republicans were loath to pass up a good opportunity to nail the already weakened president, but they also worried about overplaying their hand and risking a backlash that would help the president. After all, with Ronald Reagan as their nominee and
antigovernment fervor on the rise, by August 1980, the Republicans had every issue, domestic and foreign, going their way. They did not need to beat up Jimmy Carter because he had a troubled brother.
Carter’s forthright handling of his brother’s problems at the very least helped him lock up the Democratic nomination. He also benefitted from the help of Abe Ribicoff. Despite his long friendship with Kennedy, Ribicoff thought it was fundamentally unfair for the senator to try to change the convention rules after Carter had won the delegates that he needed for the nomination. Hamilton Jordan, Carter’s chief of staff, heard about Ribicoff ’s views, sought a meeting with him, and asked if the senator would speak at the convention. Ribicoff agreed, taking the lead of the Carter forces on the first night of the convention to defeat the effort by Kennedy’s campaign to bring about an open convention. The Carter forces prevailed by a comfortable margin; Kennedy finally acknowledged defeat, and on Tuesday night, made one of the most memorable speeches of his career. On Thursday, the convention came to an end, as Carter, Kennedy, and many Democrats milled about on stage, and Kennedy did not raise the president’s arm in the traditional unity pledge, even though he had rehearsed doing so.
More than two months had passed since the end of the primaries. Why had Kennedy stayed in so long? Without a doubt, many Kennedy supporters hoped that something would cause Carter to step aside—perhaps his brother’s intensely publicized problems. But it also seems that several of the senators were actively encouraging him to stay in the race. Still stinging from when Carter deceived him about the ill-fated mission to rescue the hostages in Tehran, Byrd continually made positive statements about Kennedy, never missing a chance to criticize Carter, and repeatedly called for an open convention. Carter believed that Byrd was secretly angling for the nomination. Muskie may also have been intrigued by the possibility that the prolonged battle between Carter and Kennedy might result in the convention turning to him as an alternative choice. Jackson apparently had the same thoughts. Several of the greatest senators had demonstrated, yet again, that the siren song of the presidency transfixed them, robbing them of their usual good judgment.
IN OCTOBER, WITH THE Billy Carter investigation done, Bayh could finally hit the campaign trail. He had always been a terrific campaigner, as comfortable on a farm in southern Indiana as he was in a union meeting in Gary. He had won three Senate races against more formidable opponents than Dan Quayle. But he had always been much more liberal than his state, and now Indiana, more conservative than Wisconsin or Minnesota, was moving hard to the right along with the rest of the country.
Perhaps busy with Billygate, perhaps caught up in the insulated environment of the Senate, Bayh had failed to get ahead of the country’s changing politics. Republican staffers on the Appropriations Committee had begun keeping track of his absences from committee meetings, using them as campaign fodder. Moreover, the single-issue groups, which had not existed six years earlier, had become forcefully and stridently involved in the Indiana Senate race. “It’s been vitriolic,” Bayh observed in October. “The outsiders have come here in force.”
In his pitch to voters, Bayh stressed his seniority and what he had done for the steel industry, for coal, and for agriculture. His campaign literature touted his accomplishments on national security and inflation and showed him target shooting and talking with National Guard troops. To counter, Quayle’s consultants came up with a clever line: “Bayh suffers from the two George’s syndrome. He sounds like McGovern in Washington and like Wallace in Indiana.”
Elsewhere, Wisconsin’s polls had Nelson still comfortably ahead of former Congressman Robert Kasten, but the numbers felt wrong. In late summer, Eagleton called me to his office. When I came in, he looked like a whirling dervish: tearing articles out of the papers, working the phones, scribbling notes, smoking like a chimney.
“We gotta help Gaylord,” he told me.
“Why, what’s happening?” I asked.
“He just did a west coast fund-raising swing,” Eagleton told me.
Nelson hated fund-raising with a passion. “That’s good,” I ventured.
“No,” Eagleton retorted. “He lost money.”
Nelson seemed to lack energy. He stunned his staff by cancelling some of his Labor Day campaign events, missing the opportunity to go before traditional Democratic audiences that had been bedrock supporters in the past. Howard Paster, a prominent Democrat, recalled running into Nelson on a September weekend in Washington, shopping at Safeway—far from the reelection battle. Later that month, Carrie Lee Nelson, the senator’s wife, went back to Wisconsin to do her first solo campaigning. A former First Lady of Wisconsin, she had always generated great affection around the state. Now, however, as she went from nursing homes to PTA meetings, the mood seemed different—familiar faces but a lack of warmth.
In early October, Kasten released a poll showing that the race was a dead heat. Nelson privately agreed. By virtue of having to run in a primary, Kasten was “much better organized. We’re late. There’s no question about it,” Nelson acknowledged. Kasten recognized the challenge of running against Nelson, conceding that the senator was a living legend in the state: “There is a problem in hitting at Nelson personally. [Wisconsin voters] feel he is basically a good person.” Still, Kasten hammered at Nelson hard, charging that he was liberal, out of touch, soft on defense, and unable to economize. “I’m hitting hard on the ‘Nelson gap,’” Kasten said, “the difference between what he says and what he does.”
Once Congress adjourned in October, Nelson began to campaign intensively. “Gaylord is busting his ass,” one staffer happily reported. “He takes it as a personal affront, and an affront to the people of Wisconsin that Kasten is taken seriously.” Speaking at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Nelson chastised Kasten for his opposition to nuclear arms limitations: “Anyone who aspires to high political office and does not understand the awesome consequences of an accelerated nuclear arms race simply is not qualified to hold office.”
But he did not seem to be connecting the way he had in the past. “This was a different Nelson on the campaign trail,” said a Capital Times reporter who had covered him for years. At a state bricklayers’ convention, Nelson received a standing ovation from many members, but not the younger ones, who confined themselves to polite applause. To the new generation of voters, Nelson was simply a name in the news, whose accomplishments were ancient history, not an old friend who fought for the issues they cared about.
When Vice President Walter Mondale, his close friend, came to Wisconsin for him, he felt that Nelson was not campaigning well: “I don’t know what it was, but the spark and charm wasn’t quite there. . . . I could tell it wasn’t clicking.” A columnist warned Nelson in print, “Most people have forgotten who Gaylord Nelson is or what he’s like, and your more frequent appearances in the state during the last six months haven’t sufficiently established your personal presence.”
Nelson had always been a “happy warrior,” in the great Humphrey tradition. Harsh campaigning did not come naturally to him, but now his campaign hit Kasten hard, charging that he had been a “do-nothing congressman who had never passed a bill and didn’t show up to work half the time.” The negative ads took a toll on Kasten, and Nelson opened up a wide lead in the polls; the race seemed to be over. A Washington Post survey, on the eve of the election, predicted that Nelson would be “a comfortable winner.” Nelson did not believe that “the country has turned as conservative as some people think.” But a strong anti-incumbent, anti-liberal, anti-spending, anti-tax current was running, even in Wisconsin, keeping the race in doubt.
In the closing days, Kasten, a bare-knuckled campaigner, unleashed a series of powerful, negative ads. Nelson had tried to capitalize on his chairmanship of the Small Business Committee, but Kasten now charged that Nelson had missed 63 percent of the hearings of the committee that he had chaired, and that only 2 percent of his bills had become law. The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) had a
lways opposed Nelson, despite his work on behalf of small business. Now it weighed in heavily for Kasten.
A few days before the election, a Kasten surrogate pointed out, accurately, that Nelson didn’t even have a residence in Wisconsin—a devastating charge in a year when Washington was in particularly ill repute. It was true: Nelson had started to rebel against the demands of traveling back to the state. He still loved Wisconsin but his center of gravity had become Washington. There was a sense that he had lost touch, and to some extent, perhaps he had.
Nelson had tried to fight the conservative tide, even though he did not always do so convincingly. Across the border, in far more conservative South Dakota, McGovern did not really seem to try. McGovern had seriously considered not running for reelection, but got into the race out of anger against the right, who described him as a “Castro lover” and a “baby killer.” McGovern had become a national and international celebrity. Six years before, he had done penance in South Dakota for “going national,” and during Watergate, having run against Richard Nixon provided a powerful credential. Now, six years later, McGovern had no such cover.
McGovern recognized that he was trailing badly. Publicly, he noted, “it wouldn’t be the first time that I was this far behind and won. They always overdo the attack . . . I haven’t been in politics this long to peter out now.” But when his opponent, Lieutenant Governor James Abdnor, claimed that he was more in tune with South Dakota than the incumbent, McGovern privately agreed. On Labor Day, after a full weekend of campaigning before audiences ranging from indifferent to hostile, McGovern actually wrote the concession speech that he would give in case of the defeat he already anticipated.
