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

  John F. Kennedy, despite his opulent background and his polished Ivy League reserve, became expert at this exercise. He never went the Elks Club route—wearing funny hats, spending evenings being slapped on the back—but he learned to campaign in a more personal way, trudging up and down the triple-deckers of Cambridge and Charlestown, knocking on doors and asking working-class Irish, Italians and Armenians for their “support.”

  As a candidate for Congress in 1946, running against a popular local mayor, Kennedy was forced to build a totally independent political organization. It set the mold for all the later Kennedy campaigns. He brought twenty-thousand members of the Boston working class onto the family team. Practically every campaign volunteer became a “Kennedy block captain,” armed with a personal supply of buttons, signs and literature on Jack’s exploits aboard PT 109.

  The Kennedys knew how to dispense their family glamor. Every Irish Catholic mother in Cambridge pressed her daughter to volunteer in order to have a shot at the handsome, wealthy young bachelor. The nervous girls were quickly put to work on some important project, such as writing personal thank-you notes for “the family.” Their letters might well be addressed to other storefront volunteers like themselves. The addressee didn’t matter; what mattered was the trust implied in the assignment. It was in such moments of personal fulfillment that the famed Kennedy organization was created.

  In the years that followed, there would be analogous bouquets for the five-hundred-dollar-an-hour lawyer who could abandon family and career at a moment’s call to advance Jack or Bob or Ted. The tangible reward might be nothing more than a PT 109 tie clasp, the outward and visible sign of the inward and spiritual “Kennedy connection.” A man who had contributed financially for years felt himself fully compensated by having Jack give his mother a kiss. “They always made sure you were included,” Ted Sorensen recalls fondly more than two decades later.

  This willingness of one man to go out and boldly ask was the secret fuel of the Kennedy juggernaut in the late 1950s. It explains how a forty-three-year-old senator with no role in the national party or the Senate leadership could snatch the presidential nomination from the party establishment.

  What the Senator from Massachusetts did in the campaign was unprecedented: he applied his local technique of political retail to the presidential race. He sent his campaign director, Lawrence O’Brien, out into the country simply to ask county chairmen, small-town mayors and state AFL-CIO treasurers to support him for president of the United States. No one had ever asked them before.

  “As I look back on my travels, the thing that amazes me,” Larry O’Brien recalled, “is that we had the field almost entirely to ourselves. No one representing Johnson or Humphrey or Symington [the other candidates for the Democratic nomination] had preceded me to the state houses and union halls. As I moved from state to state making friends, I kept waiting for the opposition to show up, but it never did.”

  On July 13, 1960, Kennedy won the nomination. At ten-thirty the next morning, he offered the other spot on the ticket to Lyndon Johnson. The Texan had played it very rough as adversary for the nomination, attacking him not only for his poor attendance record but also for his bad health, reporting that Kennedy suffered from a secret terminal disease. Kennedy knew, however, that he needed the Texan as his running mate in order to win big down South. Political experts agree that if he hadn’t made that extraordinary decision, Richard Nixon would have been president eight years sooner. Just as the Kennedy forces had proven during the long battle for the nomination, the willingness to ask can be the greatest of all power plays. As Lyndon Johnson put it later, even he was overwhelmed by Kennedy’s request. “It took a pretty big man to walk down two flights of stairs to ask that of a man who had opposed him all the way down to the Panama Canal.”

  People don’t mind being used; what they mind is being taken for granted. Tip O’Neill often told a story from his first and only unsuccessful run for office. The year was 1934, when, still a senior at Boston College, he ran for a seat on the Cambridge City Council. On the day of the election, he met a neighbor who said she was going to vote for him even though he hadn’t asked her to. O’Neill was surprised at her statement. “I’ve lived across the street from you for eighteen years,” he told her. “I shovel your walk in the winter. I cut your grass in the summer. I didn’t think I had to ask you for your vote.” He never forgot her response. “Tom, I want you to know something: people like to be asked.”

  The fact is, the more favors asked, the more supporters recruited. People who pour their souls and their bank balances into another’s destiny cannot afford to be too critical. They simply have too much invested. As Machiavelli suggested, great careers are like great wars: the sacrifices call for further sacrifices.

  Paul Corbin, a tough old political operative who spent years at Bobby Kennedy’s side, told a tale about his fund-raising efforts for a successful Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate in the mid-1950s.

  Early in the Democratic primary campaign, Corbin had persuaded a very wealthy fellow, a registered Republican, that his contribution to Corbin’s candidate was essential to prevent a “red” takeover of the Wisconsin Democratic Party. A hefty check soon arrived from this Republican, which supplied the margin of victory in a tightly fought race.

  Corbin went back to the contributor during the general-election campaign. Clearly Wisconsin Communists were determined people, he argued. If Corbin’s candidate were to lose in November, the party would fall into the hands of “the reds” the next time around. He scored again: big contribution; big victory.

  On inaugural day, the contributor showed up at the executive chambers.

  The apprehensive governor went right to the point. “I want you to know how much we appreciated your help.”

  Silence. A long silence.

  The visitor took in the ornate chamber. Finally: “This is quite an office, isn’t it?”

  The governor was worried. What does that guy want? A road contract? Zoning variance? Patronage? Another interminable pause, then:

  “I just wanted you to know,” the visitor burst out, “that all those years I was giving to Republicans and I’ve never once been on the inside of this room.”

  “If there is anything we can do . . .” said the flabbergasted governor.

  “No.”

  “Isn’t there anything we can help you with?”

  Yet another pause.

  “Well, there is one thing.”

  The two pols, the governor and Corbin, braced themselves.

  “Do you think I could have one of those low-numbered license plates?”

  This is not an unusual story. Even the richest contributor is in a sense a political groupie. The low-numbered license plate symbolizes, after all, a connection with power; the simpler, the better. Membership in the “Eagles Club” was conferred on loyal Republicans in 1980 for giving Ronald Reagan $10,000. If you pay the required amount, in other words, you are not just a contributor, you’re a dues-paying member of a real in-group.

  A politician will help get someone’s daughter into a good college, and the constituent will soon forget (remembering only the other child that the Congressman failed to help with). The same person will never forget, however, that he gave money to the Congressman’s campaign. There’s an interesting asymmetry in the way contributors and politicians refer to each other. The benefactors call the recipients “friends”; the recipients call the givers “contributors.”

  Many people spend their whole lives resisting having others do favors for them. In doing so, they forfeit not only the gift directly offered, but something far more important: the power that comes from receiving. Never forget the basic accounting principle at work here: an account receivable is an asset. Those who have helped you in the past are more likely to help you again. Professional fund-raisers value above all the “contributors’ lists” of earlier campaigns; their scientifically tested hypothesis is that, when asked, people tend to “back up their bets.” Your g
oal should be to make yourself other people’s asset, to build your own “contributors’ list.”

  We live in a debtor society in which citizens, like their governments, build their lives on a whole network of obligation—taking out a mortgage, going to the bank for help to buy a car, etc. Yet the same logic that applies to buying a home or a car or financing a college education is ignored when nonfinancial lines of credit are involved.

  The greatest untapped reserves of energy are not under the Arabian Desert or off the north slope of Alaska; they lie in a hundred million underappreciated hearts. The worst sin of a campaign manager is to let a potential volunteer leave headquarters without being given something to do.

  Make your cause the other fellow’s hope. Hope thus becomes his asset, your opportunity. The more he invests, the more likely he will be to reinvest again and again.

  Some people are fearful of accepting help because it may come with strings attached. But it is actually rare that a contribution to a political candidate involves some carefully calibrated barter of money or time for something of comparable material value. The gift more commonly constitutes a deal of a subtler sort: an investment in a piece of the action.

  Every time I have worked in a political campaign, from Congress to the presidency, I have felt the same sense of being drawn into the thing, being almost hypnotized by the race itself.

  People love to be asked—for advice, for help, for attention in any form; it makes them feel more valuable, more real. It cements a bond. Just as it is hard to vote against a guy who just slept on your couch, how can you knock the guy you’ve been advising? Robert Strauss, who served as U.S. Trade Representative under President Carter and was President Bush’s ambassador to Russia, is a master of such recruitment.

  I remember him walking down the corridor of Philadelphia’s old Bellevue-Stratford during a 1980 campaign stop. Suddenly he spots someone he barely knows talking to a perfect stranger. A lesser man would speak to the vague acquaintance, but it is to the new face that Strauss turns with the familiarity of one sidekick to another: “Is he filling you with enough bullshit? I wouldn’t believe a word that fellow told me. Not a word.”

  With a slight crease of a smile to the fellow he recognizes, Strauss moves on. In that one casual moment, he accomplishes a week’s worth of fund-raising and party-building.

  Here’s how it works:

  First, the towel snap by Strauss stuns the stranger with the realization that he is talking to the friend of a major national political figure. Until that moment, he had no idea his associate was so well placed. Going by the locker-room exchange he’s just witnessed, his friend doesn’t just know Strauss, they must have been on Guadalcanal together!

  The secondary impact is just as spectacular. Strauss cements a relationship with the fellow he didn’t even speak to, may have met only once before, and whose name he may not even remember.

  Tom Donilon, who played key roles in Democratic presidential campaigns, was once awakened at his home by Strauss at 4:30 A.M. “Get your ass out of bed, you little left-wing s.o.b. I’ve got to do the Today show in a couple of hours.”

  To Donilon, this abrupt reveille was “the most endearing thing Strauss has ever done.” Being asked for advice by a big shot like Strauss beats kind words any day. “Men,” Donilon himself surmises, “want above all else to be treated like men.” All that locker-room language is Strauss’s patented way of letting tough, wealthy men—and the occasional whiz kid—know that they are not only part of the team but are, finally, one of the boys.

  Warren G. Magnuson of Washington State was one of the crustiest men to ever sit in the Senate. His campaign slogan, “He stands up to the big boys,” was the very measure of the man. Yet it was Magnuson, the cigar-chomping tough guy, who would tell how, after a long night of card-playing with the boys, President Franklin Roosevelt would pay off his losses with a check, which he would ceremoniously sign, confident that no winner would ever cash it. And, wanting the connection, Magnuson never did.

  The old-boy networks, of course, have never been hospitable to women and minorities. The walls of prejudice can be just as strong in a democracy’s government institutions as they are in business. Racism and sexism make access more difficult, but the same rule applies: it’s always smarter to ask than to wait for someone to give.

  During the spirit-numbing Carter reelection campaign of 1980, there was a regular 8 A.M. staff meeting at the headquarters in a half-demolished building on K Street, Washington. Crowded around a cheap folding table on equally cheap folding chairs would sit Hamilton Jordan, the campaign manager, several operatives from labor and the Democratic National Committee, a representative from the Vice President’s office, and one of the President’s speechwriters.

  The daily presence of one visitor, a first-term member of Congress, stood out. Such people, particularly from fading urban districts, are busy: cutting their niche, learning the ropes of Washington, keeping the wolf from the door at home. To come each morning to share the weight of this extra, thankless duty seemed extraordinary.

  When I went to work for the Speaker’s office in 1981, I began to notice that this same member of Congress, though elected just two years earlier, was equally ubiquitous in national party affairs: each newly vacant position, whether secretary to the House Democratic Caucus or the Speaker’s proxy at meetings of the party’s National Committee, seemed to be quietly sought and competently filled by this same member—Geraldine A. Ferraro.

  Whatever the ultimate problems with her 1984 vice-presidential candidacy, the fact is that she won that historically unprecedented opportunity through her relentless willingness to demand a place for herself. Her secret for gaining repeated access to the political inner circle was elementary: she asked; she received; she became a player.

  Ferraro became extremely well known within the party as someone who was always on hand when party issues and party leadership were to be discussed. When members complained that she was too damned pushy, Speaker Tip O’Neill would agree—with a characteristic twist: “Sure she’s pushy. That’s what it takes in this business.”

  In 1984, Democratic Congressman William H. Gray III of Pennsylvania executed a brilliant political coup, becoming the first black to win a major leadership position in the House of Representatives. For years, black members had held significant positions in “their” areas—civil rights, African affairs, education and welfare matters. None had ever run for mainstream assignments in the areas of national economic policy and foreign policy. Bill Gray broke that mold by campaigning successfully for the chairmanship of the powerful Budget Committee. He sought out those southern members with the most conservative reputations, making convincingly clear his determination to win and his desire for their active and public support.

  In a world where prejudice remains all too real, where many doors to opportunity remained locked from the inside, Geraldine Ferraro and Bill Gray dared to knock, proving that not every door was bolted. They made the other guy say no. They proved that when it comes to gaining power, the best hardball is the willingness to ask.

  I will never forget sitting in the Speaker’s back-room Capitol office one night when Senator Bob Dole, who lost the use of his right arm in World War II, stood with his cup at the coffee urn and asked whether I would turn the handle for him. As an adversary, Dole can be starkly manipulative. But when I recall him unselfconsciously asking me to turn the handle, I feel a stir of fondness for the guy.

  I remember, too, being on the other end of a similar relationship. As a young Peace Corps volunteer in rural Swaziland, I would travel from one small trading store to another, offering bookkeeping and business advice. In many cases, the store owner would offer me a warm Coke to drink, it being sweltering and refrigeration being nonexistent. That simple act established a bond between us. As those who study primitive cultures discovered long ago, accepting a favor is as important as giving one. No relationship is a one-way street. Along the dusty roads of southern Africa I was unknowing
ly obeying a rule as tough as Machiavelli’s and as benign as Benjamin Franklin’s. “If you want to make a friend, let someone do you a favor.”

  4

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  “Dance with the One That Brung Ya”

  I’m a dyed-in-the-wool party man. I don’t know just what party I am in right now, but I am for the party.

  —Huey “Kingfish” Long

  When accepting the 1988 Republican presidential nomination, George Bush made an unforgettable promise. If the Democratic leadership of Congress came to him demanding a hike in government revenues, he would smartly turn them down. If they came back again, he would turn them down again. Finally would come the moment of truth. “Read my lips,” he promised to say, pointing to his mouth. “No . . . new . . . taxes!”

  Bush, it turned out, had predicted the events of 1990 with masterful prophesy. The Democratic leadership came to him relentlessly demanding that he either raise taxes or else. He resisted. Finally, faced with the threat of financial chaos in the country, he buckled. He agreed to a budget package that included higher government revenues. To those on the political right, the man who campaigned like Clint Eastwood was now governing like Barney Fife.

  Any street-corner politician knows the price of such betrayal. It’s not just the one-to-one relationship that suffers but your reputation. Loyalty is one of those virtues that carries political as well as moral weight. Who will trust the person who’s shown himself unworthy of it?

  What’s true for the White House it truer still in the neighborhoods.

  In 1981, a special congressional election was held in north Philadelphia to replace one of several officeholders convicted in the “Abscam” scandal. The winner was Joseph F. Smith, a genuine political regular, the sort who works his way up the local city organization, waits his turn and eventually achieves a position of public honor.