The Negotiator

by George Mitchell

  In the few months I had been on his staff, I had seen him use those talents in the Senate. On this trip I watched as he used them with his constituents. It quickly became obvious that he liked them and they liked him. The statistics confirm the observation: he ran for statewide office six times, twice for governor and four times for the Senate, and he won every time, mostly by comfortable margins. When he left the Senate in 1980 to accept President Carter’s appointment to secretary of state, he was undoubtedly the most popular public figure in Maine.

  Every aspect of life is of course much different today than it was in the 1960s. As we traversed the state (on this and future trips) Muskie and I often slept at the homes of friends of his, occasionally at a small summer camp he owned on China Lake in central Maine, or in motels where, to save money, we frequently shared a room with two single beds. I saw close up how he gained respect by giving it, how he never acted in a condescending manner to those he met, how he weaved integrity into every aspect of the political process, how he won over opponents by the force of reason, logic, and effective presentation. I also saw close up his faults, one of which was that his speeches were almost always too long; once he got started he often found it hard to stop.

  I noticed it that first night in Rumford, and then saw it each night thereafter, whether he had a prepared text or spoke extemporaneously. For the first twenty minutes he gave an informative and humorous speech. Then, just as he got to what should have been the end, he went back to the beginning and essentially repeated the speech, in summary fashion. Then, to my amazement, he went back at it a third time. The crowd was enthusiastic the first time through, somewhat less enthusiastic the second time, and quietly exhausted by the third, although they roused themselves to a long standing ovation when he did finish.

  Six nights later we left Calais, in the far east of Maine, and headed down what is known as the Air Line Road to Bangor. It is a hundred-mile stretch of two-lane road through a heavily wooded, sparsely populated area. On that night the sense of isolation was heightened by alternating spurts of driving rain and heavy fog. By any measure it had been a successful week. Muskie had met, talked with, answered questions, and received a warm reception from thousands of Maine citizens in several towns across the long middle belt of the state, much of it staunchly Republican. When we left Calais we were both very tired.

  As I drove slowly through the rain and fog there was none of the friendly banter of the earlier part of the week. After several minutes he asked, in a low, flat voice, “What did you think of my speeches?” I hesitated. I sensed that he liked me, but I had been on his staff for only a few months. I admired him, indeed was in awe of him, but I had seen firsthand his explosive temper and was a little afraid of him. In that week, and before, I had seen how just about everyone he met complimented him, often lavishly. I had yet to hear anyone offer a critical comment. But I also sensed that he expected the truth from me and that he was not unaware that his speeches were too long. So I decided to tell him the blunt truth. I was generally positive about the week but added that I thought there was one major problem with all of the speeches. Then I focused on the Rumford speech, describing it as I have just done. After I finished there was a very long and ominous silence. The rain splattered on the windshield, and the wipers rhythmically swept them clean; the car moved slowly down the Air Line. My eyes were fixed on the road so I could not see him, and I didn’t dare turn to look. My imagination took hold and I braced myself for what I thought would be at best a tirade, at worst a pink slip, maybe even being thrown out of the car many miles from any human structure. Then a hopeful thought: maybe he’s fallen asleep.

  Finally he broke the silence. His voice was low and soft, devoid of anger. “You’re a smart young man. I think it’s likely that someday you’ll be in elected office, giving speeches like I have this week. When you do you’ll find that there’s nothing in the world like the sound of your own voice.” I knew he was right, but I said nothing. We rode in silence all the way to Bangor and the next day flew in silence back to Washington.

  Eighteen years later I stood on the floor of the Senate, raised my right hand, and took the oath of office as a U.S. senator. In that moment I thought of Ed Muskie, whose seat I would now occupy, of how much I respected, admired, loved him. I thought of how much I had learned from him, what a challenge it would be to fill his big shoes. I recalled specifically that long dark ride down the Air Line Road. Often since then, when I’ve gone on too long in a speech, when I’ve struggled to bring it to a close, I’ve thought of him. Even the smartest man I’ve ever known succumbed to the temptation of talking too much. It took me a long time, but eventually I learned to spend less time talking and more time listening.

  Although I didn’t realize it at the time, when I served in the Senate I was being prepared for the Northern Ireland peace talks. There I spent hundreds of hours listening. By doing so I earned the confidence of the delegates to the talks; I learned what their concerns were; I ultimately figured out where the common ground was. The result was a peace agreement that ended a brutal long-standing conflict.

  In Northern Ireland and elsewhere I learned some of the qualities and approaches needed for successful negotiation. They include learning to listen, patience, a good sense of timing, and a willingness to take risks when justified.

  * * *

  I. He was right. When I retired from the Senate three decades later, I had visited almost every town in Maine, many of them several times, and I had traveled almost every road.

  LEARN TO LISTEN

  Learn to listen: that is the most important lesson of my political life. I’ve talked a lot in my life, especially during my years in the Senate: speeches, statements, press conferences, debates, committee hearings, marking up bills, conference committee deliberations, Senate Democratic caucuses over which I presided. I can’t possibly estimate the number of words, but surely it must be in the millions. And in all that time, as all those words flowed out of my mouth, the only certainty I have is that I learned little while I was talking. Learning has come from listening, from reading, from observing, from doing. The product of my learning has, hopefully, helped others to learn and has improved some lives. But it was not my talking that did it. Rather it was what I learned when I was not talking.

  Although these thoughts crystallized while I was in the Senate, and especially in my last six years, most were based on earlier events, including Muskie’s words on the Air Line Road. And, as I’d noticed early in life, most people like to talk about themselves. That’s one reason why I’ve never had a problem striking up a conversation with a stranger. Simple questions usually get them talking: Where are you from? Where are you heading? The answers then permit more personal questions: Where did you grow up? What do you do? Invariably some word, phrase, or fact in the answers opens up lines of follow-up questions, and in a short time I’ve learned something about another person’s life that distinguishes him or her from everyone else I’ve met.

  I also observed early in life that it is common in social conversations for people not to listen carefully to what others say. Rather it is often the case that a person speaks and then thinks about his or her next statement rather than intently listen to what others are saying; that is especially true of public figures who meet, usually briefly, large numbers of people. By the time you get to shake a person’s hand, your eyes and mind often are already on the next person in line. Too many persons in positions of authority become accustomed to deference, develop excessive self-confidence, and are incapable of showing respect to others, especially those with whom they disagree. These attitudes demean the position and lessen the person’s ability to perform his or her duties. I’ve been fortunate to receive many kind compliments in my life, none more so than “Thank you for listening to me.” The simple gesture of maintaining eye contact and concentrating on what another person is saying is not only a source of information and learning. It also is a sign of respect.

  This approach served me well in
the Senate and the Northern Ireland peace process. I was not an especially good listener when I entered the Senate. By definition the job requires a lot of talking, and for my first eight years as a senator I worked hard to live up to the definition. Becoming Senate majority leader called for more talking, not less, and in the early years I achieved that. But one crucial difference led me to change. As a senator most of my advocacy was public: in the campaigns for election, in public speeches, during debate in the Senate, in televised interviews and press conferences. There were, of course, some occasions that called for private advocacy. But after I became majority leader the balance shifted. While still plentiful the public appearances declined in significance in relation to my most important objectives. The real advocacy, the real work, increasingly was in small groups or frequently one-on-one.

  There was not a single moment or event when I suddenly grasped the value of good listening. It was rather a gradual process of awakening to the startling reality that in my dealings with other senators my persuasiveness grew the less I talked. It was a combination of factors: as I listened more and better, I gained insight into the views and needs of the senator with whom I was engaged. That enabled me to be more precise in my arguments, which in turn enhanced my ability to persuade and, in a beneficial ripple effect, improved my standing when the next round of advocacy began, as it inevitably does for the Senate majority leader.

  It’s a simple concept, in other circumstances called learning on the job. I did a lot of it as majority leader, as one evolution led to another. So it was that learning to listen led me to become more patient and more effective. However, most good things come with a cost. While I gained much from learning to listen, I also lost a lot of time because much of what I listened to was not worth the effort. Stated another way, it was important and helpful to become a good listener, but that in turn required me to become more patient. To get to the wheat you have to endure a lot of chaff.

  PATIENCE IS A MUSCLE

  After I retired from the Senate I often said that as majority leader I had developed the best and strongest patience muscle in Washington. That muscle was sorely tested in the Senate and in Northern Ireland. The Senate is a great institution and a harsh teacher. In my first few years as majority leader I made many mistakes. More than once I lost my temper and with it control of the situation. On other occasions I made indiscreet comments in what I thought were private conversations, only to have them become public, or worse. Once, angry at a senator’s failure to follow a well-established protocol in handling legislation on the Senate floor, I rebuked him directly, in strong language. That was bad enough; a short time later, in what I thought was a private conversation, I unwisely answered fully another senator’s question about what had just happened. Of course I should have known better; he promptly reported my remarks to the first senator, who, already angry at my private rebuke, was justifiably outraged that I would tell someone else about it.

  I was initially unable to control my frustration at the seemingly endless talk, delay, and obstruction that characterize the Senate. By the time I became majority leader I had been in the Senate for seven years, so I was aware of its frustrations, but I had not been responsible for dealing with them. Now I was, and it was extremely difficult to accept. Gradually, through trial and error, necessity, and force of will, I adapted. The long and painful process that led to enactment of the Clean Air Act amendments in 1990 and the protracted budget struggles in both the Bush and Clinton administrations taught me the value of patience and perseverance. By the time I left the Senate I had learned to deal with and even come to appreciate some of its quaint rules and archaic practices. And what I learned there was later immensely helpful to me.

  The negotiations in Northern Ireland involved thirteen parties: two governments, the United Kingdom and Ireland; ten political parties from Northern Ireland; and the independent chairmen.I On the first day, in a large conference room packed with nearly a hundred people, in a moment of overconfidence I told them, “I’m a product of the United States Senate which, as you know, has a rule of unlimited debate. Any Senator can stand up, at any time, and talk for as long as he or she wants. So I’ve listened to a sixteen-hour speech, a twelve-hour speech, and lots of other very long speeches. I can and I will sit here and listen as long as any of you can talk. I can take anything you throw at me.”

  I was trying to reassure them that their concerns would be heard because I was aware that their history was not one of listening to each other. To the contrary, they routinely refused to listen to each other, and the dramatic walkout was a staple of their politics. But, as became clear in retrospect, I went too far in my opening statement, and over the next few years I paid a heavy price. Although there were no twelve-hour speeches, there were many long monologues. Most of all there was eye-glazing, mind-numbing repetition. Over and over and over again, for month after month, then year after year, for what in the aggregate must have been hundreds of hours, the same people made the same speeches. It took every bit of patience I had, and more, to sit there and listen, but I did. I didn’t prohibit any delegate to the talks from speaking, although I could have and perhaps should have. But I knew that if I was ever able to get them to agree, the result would be in some respect painful to each of them. I did not want anyone to have the excuse that he or she wasn’t heard or didn’t have the chance to argue a position.

  It became especially difficult for me in the last few months of the main negotiation, roughly from February to mid-April 1998. As the end neared tensions rose within the negotiations and throughout society. So too did the number and specificity of threats. One day I received a visit from security officials who wanted to discuss those threats. They had reviewed my travel schedule, my day-to-day movements, and had come to recommend changes. For roughly the first year and a half the negotiations had been conducted on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of each week. The delegates, almost all of them elected officials, had tended to their other duties on Thursdays and Fridays. My schedule varied widely, but in the first year or so, if there had been a “normal week,” it would have started early on Sunday morning, when I left New York to fly to London; there I connected to a flight to Belfast, arriving at my hotel at about eleven o’clock in the evening. We met from Monday morning through Wednesday evening. After three long days of negotiations I often left on Thursday to fly from Belfast to London and then to Washington. I spent Friday working in my law office there, then flew to New York that evening. On Sunday morning the cycle began again. As the negotiations became more intense I often remained in Belfast an extra day, Thursday, to hold informal meetings with delegates, to brief government ministers, and to plan for the next week. This meant that I was spending four nights a week in Belfast.

  The security officials reassured me that the venue for the negotiations was heavily protected. However, they warned me that my vulnerability to a personal attack was highest in the morning, when I traveled from my hotel to the building in which the talks were held, and then in the evening, when I made the return trip. One response to that was to change hotels frequently, sometimes every day, which I had done from the beginning. Another was to vary the time of departure and the route by which I was driven from the hotel to the talks venue and back; I usually waited until I got into the car to decide which route to take that day, so no one could possibly have advance notice. Still another, which they now strongly recommended, was that I reduce the number of nights I stayed in Belfast from four to two. Instead of leaving New York on Sunday morning and arriving in Belfast that evening, I was to leave New York on Sunday evening, fly overnight, arrive in Belfast on Monday morning, and go straight from the airport to the negotiations. On Wednesday evening, instead of staying overnight in Belfast, I was to fly to London, stay overnight there, then fly to New York on Thursday morning. I liked the fact that I could spend a little more time with my family each week, but I dreaded the prospect of beginning each week flying overnight from New York to London to Belfast, then going directl
y to the negotiations. I knew that I would be exhausted.

  With apprehension I accepted their recommendation. It turned out to be even worse than I had anticipated. The several Mondays I went through this routine were among the worst days of my life. I found it difficult to listen, to focus, to even stay awake. Fortunately the last two weeks involved little travel. I stayed in Belfast as the negotiations extended through the entire week and ultimately around the clock. Somehow I got through it, although by the time the Peace Agreement was reached, on Easter weekend, I was more tired than I have ever been, before or since. But the result was worth it, and, as an added bonus, my patience muscle had survived its greatest test.

  * * *

  I. I was assisted by two distinguished colleagues: Harri Holkeri, the former Prime Minister of Finland, and John de Chastelain, the former Canadian Ambassador to the United States.

  RISK

  Since listening and patience are cautious pursuits, it may seem paradoxical that another important lesson of my life is a willingness to take risks. At several turning points in my life I took chances that seemed imprudent at the time. These included leaving the security of a federal judgeship for a temporary appointment to the Senate and declining an appointment to the Supreme Court as I was leaving the Senate for an uncertain future. Those were large and obvious risks. To leave the security of being a federal judge, a job I truly loved, for the insecurity of a Senate seat, especially for just a short time, was difficult. So was the decision to turn down an appointment to the Supreme Court. But I was confident of my ability to properly evaluate the risks and rewards, to rationally prepare a personal cost-benefit analysis. Most of all, whatever my decision, I was reasonably well-assured of being able to continue to successfully engage in important and productive work. In neither case was money a factor. My experience prior to each decision had bred in me confidence that I could earn enough to take care of my family’s needs.