Chris Matthews Complete Library E-book Box Set: Tip and the Gipper, Jack Kennedy, Hardball, Kennedy & Nixon, Now, Let Me Tell You What I Really Think, and American

by Matthews, Chris

  In the early fifties, when McCarthy was at his peak, most stories about Congress moved on the wires of the Associated Press, the United Press or the International News Service. The Senator from Wisconsin loved the wires, knowing that wire reporters needed to have a fresh “top” on the current story every few hours for their hourly radio broadcasts or late newspaper editions.

  Determined to keep his “anti-Communist” campaign alive, he resorted to a simple tactic. According to Boston Globe reporter Robert Healy, who was present on such occasions, the Wisconsin Senator would head to the wire tickers each afternoon. If the day’s story was moving his way, he did nothing. If it wasn’t, he would approach one of the wire guys and flip him a brand-new lead, a clear beat on the competition.

  “Tailgunner Joe”—he got away with a phony war record by sheer effrontery—realized that reporters are people with jobs. He focused on making those jobs as easy as possible. He never let the big picture or the truth keep him from the little picture that often makes all the difference.

  McCarthy knew of reporters’ fetish for two things: time and documentation. “I have here in my hand the names of . . .” was raw meat for the journalists of the day. Fortunately, people soon began to notice that in all those words McCarthy was spinning out for the wires there was not a single name of a real, live Communist. Without a legitimate mission, even the best executed tactics can only carry you so far.

  The lesson here is not how to become a megalomaniac, but how to get things done by focusing on the personal ambitions of the people you seek to influence. Regardless of your purpose, you need to learn what the person you are trying to influence cares about.

  A contemporary of McCarthy’s made a more defensible application of the “All politics is local” rule. But his strategy was just as cold-blooded.

  In 1950, thirty-seven-year-old Congressman Richard Nixon was running for the United States Senate from California. His race against the actress Helen Gahagan Douglas would be remembered as one of the ugliest in history. But it also showcased one technique that is not only effective but completely reputable.

  Nixon faced a problem. The Republican governor of California, Earl Warren, refused to support his candidacy, even though they shared the top of the same ticket. It was a matter of self-interest. Warren, who would later serve as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, relished the notion of offering himself to the people of California as a figure above partisan combat. He was also a high-toned sort who considered himself a social superior of the ambitious Nixon as well as a potential competitor for national office. An appeal by Nixon to party or philosophical loyalty would have accomplished nothing for the challenger. Neither was there a public issue that Congressman Nixon could use to draw Warren into alliance with him.

  Nixon faced another hurdle. Mrs. Douglas, his opponent, was encouraging Warren’s neutrality by not endorsing the Democratic candidate for governor, James Roosevelt.

  Nixon and his people saw an opening. They would win Governor Warren’s tacit endorsement by appealing not to his party loyalty or his ideology but to a concern closer to his heart: Earl Warren.

  Their tactic was mischievous but effective. A young campaign aide was detailed to ask Mrs. Douglas at every press conference whether or not she supported FDR’s son. Finally, the Friday before election, she fell for the bait. She endorsed Jimmy Roosevelt: “I hope and pray he will be the next governor, and he will be if the Democrats vote for the Democratic ticket.”

  Triumphant in their ploy, the Nixon people broke the news to a reporter covering Governor Warren. When the journalist asked the governor about Douglas’s endorsement of Roosevelt, Warren first refused to comment. Twenty-four hours later, he saw that he could not avoid Nixon’s cleverly laid trap: “I have no intention of being coy about this situation. The newspaper reports that Mrs. Douglas hopes and prays Mr. Roosevelt will be the next governor do not change my position. In view of her statement, however, I might ask how she expects I will vote when I mark my ballot for United States Senator next Tuesday.”

  At this, his pursuers declared victory. “Every voter in California who reads this statement will realize that Earl Warren intends to mark his ballot for Dick Nixon on election day,” declared Nixon’s gleeful campaign manager, Murray Chotiner.

  Nixon, who would never win Warren’s friendship, had nevertheless won his help. Acting with high-minded restraint, the future Chief Justice weighed the costs and benefits of helping a man he did not love. Nixon’s thumb was on the scale, and Warren could not knock it off.

  To summarize: it matters little what terrain you are competing on; the key to winning over allies is to focus on their sensitive points. A college student should focus on that great audience of one, the professor. With the right amount of attentiveness the student can discern what the teacher thinks and cares about most. The notes taken in class are the best possible guide not just to the course but to the person giving it.

  The same goes in the world beyond school. Regardless of your religious or philosophical preference, you cannot afford to be a solipsist, someone who believes he exists alone in the world. Focusing on your own ego is a guarantee of failure. The smart politician never takes his eyes off the other fellow’s ego.

  Unfortunately for her and the country, this is what Hillary Rodham Clinton did with her highly-touted 1994 health insurance plan. She lost sight of the tens of millions of working, middle-class families, most of them already insured, who could have been her strongest boosters.

  Her mistake was to misread the American voters’ keen and abiding sense of self-interest.

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  In November 1991, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania held a special election to fill the U.S. Senate seat of the popular John Heinz, recently killed in an air accident. Former governor Richard Thornburgh, a Republican, was the prohibitive favorite. His opponent was a modest, low-profile veteran of the New Frontier named Harris Wofford.

  Incredibly, Wofford won. He overcame Thornburgh’s forty-point lead with the help of a TV commercial. “If the criminal has a right to an attorney,” the Democrat told viewers, “the working family has a right to a doctor.”

  The words connected. With the country in recession, here was a candidate for high office talking kitchen table economics. He was speaking directly to middle-aged husbands worried about losing their jobs and their pride, to wives worried about losing the family’s medical insurance.

  Three years later, Hillary Rodham Clinton tried to capitalize on what she took as the message of Wofford’s upset: an insistent grassroots demand for a government-created system of health insurance offering “universal coverage.” Sadly for her and the country, she got it wrong. Instead of offering security to the families who already had health care, her promised “universal coverage” appeared aimed at those on the welfare roles. Rather than appeal to middle-class fears and resentments, as Wofford had, she aggravated those sentiments. She demanded that voters throw the health plans they had won at the bargaining table into a common pool of need and services. Unlike Social Security and Medicare, which rewarded work, the Clinton plan would treat both worker bee and drone alike.

  It didn’t sell. People saw their hard-won benefits and options being siphoned off to fund the health needs of all comers. Instead of securing the health care of the “working family,” Hillary Clinton was offering “universal coverage” for those who didn’t work, financed by those who did. It was an offer people were eager and quick to refuse.

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  It’s Better to Receive Than to Give

  If you want to make a friend, let someone do you a favor.

  —Benjamin Franklin

  In 1992 Texas billionaire Ross Perot told the country he would run for president on one condition: If regular people would buck the two-party establishment, cut through the red tape and get his name put on the ballot of the fifty states.

  It was a masterful strategy. By saying he couldn’t run without them, Perot deputized an army of supp
orters. By recruiting folk who had never before been invited to play a political role, he built a political movement that would rival the Democratic and Republican parties.

  This gutsy dependence on people in cities, suburbs and towns across America was Ross Perot’s grand note of genius. In every shopping mall there appeared a card table attended by his willing volunteers. “We’re for Perot,” they would tell anyone who passed. “I’m for Perot all the way,” each disciple would echo as if he’d begun the effort himself.

  Perot was exploiting a staple of human nature discovered four centuries before by the Florentine statesman Niccolò Machiavelli. The more you invest in someone, the more committed you become to him. The best way to win a supporter is to get a person to do something for you. Or, as Ben Franklin put it, “If you want to make a friend, let someone do you a favor.”

  The strategy worked. Not only did Ross Perot get his name on the ballot, he got 19 percent of the electorate to vote for him. What’s so remarkable about this historic achievement was his method: A man known for his unimaginable wealth and frontier independence built a presidential campaign by asking people for help.

  Perot was not the first latter-day politician to execute this Machiavellian ploy.

  In 1974, I took a short break from the Washington scene to challenge the Philadelphia Democratic organization. Running for Congress against a well-entrenched incumbent, I was buoyed by several hundred student volunteers excited by the prospect of electing to the House an independent candidate not that far from their own age. Still in my twenties, I evoked more enthusiasm than electoral strength, coming in a distant second in the primary.

  There was, however, a small consolation. A few days after the primary, I received a letter expressing the urgent hope that I would “stay actively involved in Democratic politics.” The clincher was not the condolence but the request that came with it: “I would appreciate any information or advice you might have that would help our efforts in Pennsylvania or other states. Please feel free to contact me personally or Hamilton Jordan. Jimmy Carter.”

  This was two years before the presidential election. Carter, governor of Georgia, was serving as chairman of the Democratic Campaign Committee. Coming at the time it did, the letter left a lasting impression.

  People are still baffled about how Jimmy Carter got himself elected President of the United States, how this man from nowhere could put together the kind of grassroots organization needed to win primaries and party caucuses in Florida, Iowa, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and across the country.

  The truth is, James Earl Carter was in those days something of a country slicker. He saw that the voters wanted something different after Vietnam and Watergate. That was the big picture, but he did not stop there. He went countrywide, putting himself personally into a myriad of small pictures, the world in which real voters live. His urban rivals exhausted themselves, meanwhile, vying for the affections of the Democratic party’s jaded constituencies in New York and Washington.

  We saw in earlier chapters that building personal power or, perhaps more accurately, enlarging personal capacity begins with an initial two-step process: first, pay close attention to what motivates others; second, employ this information to map paths to the “hearts and minds” of those who are critical to our objectives.

  The next step is learning how to get those people mobilized in our cause. In political terms, we are about to learn how to build a campaign.

  To build a campaign, any campaign, you first need an organization—and Jimmy Carter’s creation of a national organization from scratch between 1974 and 1976 was a work of brilliance.

  As a lame-duck, single-term governor from the Deep South, Carter was a political outsider who could not rely on the usual Democratic Party network, where national interests, Washington connections and ideological talent combine. He had to create an organization of his own.

  His strategy was simple: to build an outsider’s campaign, recruit some outsiders to run it for you. I’ve saved that letter from Jimmy Carter back in ’74 till today and I’m not the only one. Every Democrat who lost a primary election that year received a personal letter from the obscure Governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia.

  Smart politics. Carter recognized that his best hunting ground for support was among those who had been shut out politically. Jerry Rafshoon, his media adviser, remembers campaigning with Carter for an attractive congressional candidate and telling him that he thought the man would do well. But Carter saw deeper. “He’s not going to win. It’s a Republican district. He’d be better for us if he loses. He’ll work for me. He’ll bring his organization with him.”

  Jody Powell, who was with Carter from the beginning, recalls his boss’s forthright explanation: “People who have lost are going to be looking for something else to do. If you get elected, you’re going to be a congressman going off to Washington.” Powell saw the tactic pay off all the way to Pennsylvania Avenue. “It was not just the candidate but the people working with the candidates. We set up a roving band of people who had some political experience, primarily with congressional campaigns.”

  Carter pursued his strategy through the ’74 general elections. When Robert Strauss, then the national party chairman, was calling the Democratic winners on election night, the governor was calling the losers. Many, temporarily shaken and adrift—Richard Pettigrew of Florida, John Gilligan of Ohio, Midge Costanza of New York—joined the Peanut Brigade and, with many lesser figures, played key roles in Carter’s dash through the primaries. Those otherwise forgotten candidates who had lost races for Congress became Carter’s local coordinators and political cheerleaders.

  Glimpsing Carter’s strategy of building a nationwide network of political outsiders, Robert Keefe, a veteran political consultant then working for Senator Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson of Washington State, saw its brilliant potential for breaking through the party establishment: “What we have here is a Trojan peanut.” Like its ancient predecessor, the horse, it was built because its makers could not storm the citadel. They had to seduce their way through the gates.

  The high-riding front-runners in the ’74 midterm campaigns had no need for some lame-duck governor from the rural South to come liven up their campaigns. They had grander allies, big names like Edward M. Kennedy and Hubert H. Humphrey, to help them build crowds and sell fund-raising tickets—all, of course, in exchange for support in 1976. “It was the underdogs,” Jody Powell told me, “who needed Carter”—just as he would need them.

  After a generation of bigger and bigger budgets, vaster and vaster television audiences, larger and larger campaign planes, Carter had turned a new key: getting thousands and thousands of voters to feel they had a stake in his victory. As he went from state to state, staying in the homes of campaign supporters, he created strong loyalties. He came to town not as a visitor, but as a guest. As former Kennedy aide Ted Sorensen put it, “How can you vote against someone who slept on your couch?”

  Contrary to what many people assume, the most effective way to gain a person’s loyalty is not to do him or her a favor, but to let that person do one for you. Again, it was Niccolò Machiavelli who in sixteenth-century Italy discovered something basic about human nature. He observed that when a city was besieged for many months, when the people had lived through tremendous hardship within the city’s walls, when they had suffered horror and hunger in defense of their prince, they were all the more loyal to him. They felt even more bound to him afterward, “looking upon him as under an obligation to them for having sacrificed their houses and estates in his defense. And the nature of man is such as to take as much pleasure in having obliged another as in being obliged himself.” Or, in another rendering of Machiavelli’s wise admonition, “Men are by nature as much bound by the benefits they confer as by those they receive.”

  Thomas S. Foley, the former House majority leader, tells the story of the man who rescued him when his small plane crashed in a rural patch of eastern Washington State and, though he had never hear
d of Foley before, became a relentless contributor to his campaigns. The same bond arises in less dire circumstances. Those who give you one helping hand very often make a habit of looking out for you further down the road. We tend naturally to remember the people we “discover” along the way and seek to ensure that they prove us correct.

  When you ask someone for help, you are implicitly asking people to place a bet on you. The more people you get to bet on you, the shorter your odds—and the larger your network of rooting supporters is going to be. But many people hold back because they see each request for help as an admission of weakness and each assertion of self-reliance as a sign of strength. This do-it-yourself mentality can be lethal. It can limit and isolate a contender, denying him allies.

  The little secret shared by smart politicians (and appreciated in at least one other profession) is that people get a kick out of being propositioned. The smart politician knows that in soliciting someone he is not so much demanding a gift or service, he is offering the person the one thing he himself wants: the opportunity to get involved. The candidate asking for a campaign contribution or a vote is simply offering a chance to join in the political action, to be part of his success. He is selling stock in himself, and in the process he is creating a network of stockholders.

  What the successful politician has is the ability to approach a perfect stranger to ask not just for his vote but for his time, effort and money. He has no hesitation in accosting a wealthy woman at a cocktail party and asking her for five thousand dollars, or in asking others to drop everything and devote themselves to his advancement, saying, “I’d like you to work for me for the next six months as a campaign volunteer,” knowing that it means the recruits would be working around the clock for little or no pay and with no guarantee of a job even if their candidate wins. Politicians develop the attitude admirably and most crudely extolled by that great California assemblyman Jesse “Big Daddy” Unruh: “If you can’t drink their booze, take their money, screw their women and vote against them in the morning, you don’t belong in this place.”