Tip and the Gipper: When Politics Worked (16 page)

But, above all, what such trips—so often, and sometimes rightly, I admit, bashed in the press—can accomplish is the sort of outcome
a journalist’s investigative report is unable to measure or assess. They create the wide back channels and spaces where the necessary horse-trading can take place, both always useful in the complex game of politics. But, in the end, the greatest advantage of these excursions is that they offer to these travelers recognition of the shared humanity of a precarious career.

Appearance, though, is always what matters, especially when anyone’s looking. Political junkets, even in the best of moments, carry with them an air of the illicit, of at least a minor crime being gotten away with; still, most take place and no one’s the wiser. This time, too many people were watching, however, and Tip paid the price for being loyally—and stubbornly—unable to relinquish it.

“We were back in Washington working,” dryly commented Billy Pitts, floor man for Republican leader Bob Michel, “and
Tip was in Pago Pago.” The public relations fallout was disastrous. A network news broadcast showed the plane carrying the traveling members of Congress on the tarmac at Hickam Air Force Base in Honolulu. What viewers saw on their TV screens was the aircraft just sitting there on the landing field, its passengers refusing to leave the plane, apparently too embarrassed. Alas for Tip and his companions, the Republicans could have confected no better portrait of the Congress, and its top leader, adhering to the old rules. It was as if the Democratic Speaker had reenacted the Republican ad showing him in the car that had run out of gas—only this time it was a government airplane.

Meanwhile, over at the White House, Reagan and his own men were moving steadily ahead with their planned onslaught on House members, regardless of where the Speaker was and what he was up to. Democratic congressman Tom Bevill from Alabama was in New Zealand with Tip when the call came from the White House, where the president was now back at work.

“This is President Reagan. What time is it, and where are you?”

“It’s three o’clock in the morning and I’m in New Zealand,” Bevill replied, still uncertain what it could be about.

“Have a good trip and when you get back to Washington, I want you to come in and see me. I want to sit and talk to you about the budget.”

Reagan later told Ken Duberstein, one of his top congressional lobbyists, that when he learned it was 3 a.m. in New Zealand, he was tempted to announce, “This is Jimmy Carter,” and hang up.

The next day, the president placed a second call, presumably at a more acceptable time of day, to the traveling House members. This time it was to O’Neill.
“I’m having more luck with Demos. than Repubs.,” Reagan jotted in his diary that night. “Asked Tip O’Neill if I could address a joint session next week. He agreed.” He didn’t bother noting he’d caught his rival far from the political playing field.

Democratic congressman Eugene Atkinson received his call from the president when he was on-air, doing a local Pennsylvania radio call-in show. It was the first time anyone in the country at large had heard the president’s voice since the assassination attempt. Atkinson, who would switch parties and declare himself a Republican six months later, agreed on the spot to support the president on the coming vote.

But despite such a dogged methodology, with its relentless tracking down of congressional votes in every state, Reagan’s primary target of opportunity remained the South. If he could convince and count on those Democrats in Dixie who were willing to listen, he’d be assured of winning House passage of his overall spending and tax plan. When Tip returned from Australia and found himself facing
the results of all those calls made from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue across so many time zones, even to the South Pacific, he freely admitted the “tremendous impact” the president’s intensive effort was having. In truth, he had no choice, since the clear evidence was all around him. Yet at that moment he was unwilling to take any blame for the situation, chalking up the surge instead to “the president’s popularity.”

The White House push for votes was being overseen by Baker and Reagan’s full-time lobbyists Friedersdorf and Duberstein; already in high gear, they had a great deal to be pleased about. Now they and their fellow Republicans were about to be made even happier: Ronald Reagan, who’d been performing behind the scenes, was at last ready to step back in front of the audience eagerly awaiting him. The Speaker, in his daily meeting with reporters on April 28, the morning of Reagan’s televised speech, saw clearly what his reemergence would mean—to him, Tip O’Neill, to the Democratic Party, to the system and its ideals that he so long had valued. Americans, he knew, would rally to the healed and shining hero, simply because in their adulation they couldn’t understand what was coming and how it would affect them. The crowd, in short, would be responding to the highly satisfying sentiment of the moment, just as they did when singing the national anthem at a ballpark. How do you fight that?

That day Tip chose to offer, in his press briefing, simply a confirmation of the plain reality:
“Because of the attempted assassination, the president has become a hero in the eyes of the public,” he said bluntly. “Is that effective?” was the question he then asked, and answered himself: “I would have to presume it is. We can’t argue with a man as popular as he is.” He was facing the facts, at the same time as conscious of what was at stake as he’d ever been aware of anything in his life.

That same night, Ronald Reagan took his place at the podium before a joint session of Congress. The packed-to-the-rafters audience sitting there in high anticipation offered him an ovation as he walked in, even before he’d said a word. It soon swelled into a tumult he would later describe as “unbelievable.” Only once it finally subsided did he begin to talk; his tone was humble, grateful, and affirmative. Speaking on behalf of himself and Nancy, he first told the crowd,
“The warmth of your words, the expression of friendship and, yes, love, meant more to us than you can ever know. You have given us a memory that we’ll treasure forever. And you’ve provided an answer to those few voices that were raised saying that what happened is evidence that ours is a sick society.”

He went on to describe how Americans of all ages had sent letters expressing their good wishes and concern over his progress. One, from a small boy in New York, Peter Sweeney, had especially pleased him and he read it aloud. Wrote the worried second-grader, “I hope you get well quick or you might have to make a speech in your pajamas.” Then, Reagan, ever the showman, paused before he finished with the child’s charming postscript, an ideal punch line: “P.S. If you have to make a speech in your pajamas, I
warned
you.”

As they watched, the White House operatives had every reason to be thrilled. Their man had come to Capitol Hill—where not everyone was a friend—and been interrupted
fourteen
times, three of which were standing ovations, by swelling waves of applause as he spoke. But of all those approving outbursts, it was the third standing ovation that most moved Ronald Reagan himself. It was at that moment that forty Democrats rose to join the Republicans in endorsing his call for an historic shift in U.S. fiscal policy.

“The old and comfortable way is to shave a little here and add a little there. Well, that’s not acceptable anymore,” Reagan declared. “I think this great and historic Congress
knows
that way is no longer
acceptable.” He’d been taking a direct shot at the Democratic opposition’s attempt to propose an alternative to Reagan’s program, one that asked for far more modest cuts in spending and taxes. Not only was he dismissive of it, but when that sizable clutch of approving Democrats got to their feet to applaud, he took it as their renegade seal of approval. “It took a lot of courage for them to do that,” he wrote in his diary that night, “and it sent a shiver down my spine.”

Tip O’Neill, his shock of bright white hair a beacon marking his presence on the podium behind the president, similarly registered what had just occurred. “Here’s your forty votes,” he whispered to Vice President George H. W. Bush, seated beside him. He knew only too well those conservative Democrats sitting up there in “Redneck Row”—their chosen seats high in the back of the House chamber—and what they were up to. He recognized that voting with the administration and not with their own party was the only way many of them would stand a chance of reelection in 1982 in their basically conservative districts. (Among them were Democrats whose
aye
s were always in question, and now a few would even change them for good.) Yet there were no surprises: Tip had already identified them on the scoreboard he’d been keeping.
“This is only the first skirmish in the war. The war is the election of 1982 and we will win the war,” he was soon to declare, accepting the fact that the current battle was over. “You know a horse that runs fast doesn’t always run long.”

Publicly, however, O’Neill’s response was gracious to the point of excess, as when he made his first comments to the press directly after the speech.
“I was overjoyed to see the president looking so well,” he said. “Like all Americans, I am deeply and humbly grateful that so many prayers have been answered.” Calling Reagan “inspirational,” he pronounced the speech he’d just heard “even poetic
at points,” saluting his performance as in every sense of the word presidential through his ordeal.

But he also showed his mettle. He presented a sizable list of factual errors that the address had contained. Yet, even so, he was careful not to blame Reagan himself for the mistakes, instead pointing the finger at White House staffers.
“It is unfortunate in the extreme that some of those who provided statistical information for this data did President Reagan a grave disservice,” he noted.

While the language he used was careful, it was obvious to those who knew him that his frustration came from the heart. Even if he’d been expecting the worst from the Reagan economic recovery program, that didn’t make it any easier to witness so much that he’d cared deeply about and fought for so stoutly just tossed aside. More important, for Tip-watchers, the signs were there: he was becoming angry, even if he didn’t himself yet fully realize it.

The next morning, weighing in once more, he was again first making sure to praise Caesar.
“I have been saying all along that he is a great human being,” the Speaker reminded the press corps, “but I don’t think he appreciates what is in there. The vaccine program would be eliminated, colleges will close and a half million people will be denied the opportunity to go to school, many children won’t receive hot lunches.” And then he reiterated, “I don’t think he realizes that those are the things in the package.” It was a delicate balancing act—acknowledging Reagan’s off-the-charts popularity, and at the same time spotlighting the extent of the potential, and terrible, damage he saw being planned in his name.

Then he managed to get off a nice shot: “All in all, I would like to remind you that Ronald Reagan was a Democrat himself not too long ago. I think he would have been at least as good last night reading our script rather than the Republican one.”

The Republican effort to secure Democratic votes, as we’ve seen, was a marvel of efficiency and tireless effort. And, of course, their secret weapon was the president himself, his strength now recovered, and even more fired up than ever. Well accustomed to the discipline of many takes, stepping into his marks for each one, he played the role expected of him like the consummate professional he was.
“We stroked and we stroked and we stroked and we stroked and we stroked and we traded,” James Baker said, “and the president was very good at that, and willing to do it all day and all night.” One of his gotten prey was that same Tom Bevill whom he’d reached on the phone in New Zealand. Outside the South, he was able to woo Jerry Patterson of California, Donald Albosta of Michigan, Andrew Jacobs of Indiana, Tony Hall of Ohio, and Gus Yatron of Pennsylvania.

Not surprisingly, there was a person standing firm who wasn’t being won over, and that was Tip O’Neill. What conservative Democrats, as well as other wavering ones, regarded as tolerable cuts, the Speaker viewed as assaults on people desperately in need. Hedrick Smith, then chief Washington correspondent for the
New York Times,
recalls getting an urgent call from Godfrey Sperling of the
Christian Science Monitor.
At that time the weekly breakfasts Sperling hosted at the National Press Club, featuring prominent newsmakers, were a Washington institution and with Tip O’Neill as the upcoming guest, he wanted to be sure the influential Smith planned to come.

When the morning arrived, Tip didn’t let his audience down. He arrived loaded for bear, defiant in his refusal to abandon—or see abandoned—the many critical programs he’d fought for. What most struck Smith at the time—what he remembered best from that breakfast session—was Tip O’Neill’s visibly simmering rage as he drew for his listeners a vivid picture of those programs and services
scheduled to be closed down. With his decades of experience as a people’s advocate, he could see that the citizens most harmed by the Reagan agenda would be those least able to protect themselves, and it was in order to be their protector that he, Tip O’Neill, had gone into politics in the first place.

Unlike Tip, Ronald Reagan had been propelled into the position he now occupied by a different set of concerns, and had entered the political arena through a route that little resembled the Speaker’s. The president’s son Ron—a perceptive observer of his dad—later would identify certain habits of mind that greatly frustrated Tip in his dealings with the elder Reagan at this time, as he repeatedly came up against them. Explained Ron Reagan:
“Tenderhearted and sentimental in his personal dealings, he could nevertheless have difficulty extending his sympathies to abstract classes of people.”

In Washington terms, in the late spring of 1981, this meant that whenever Tip would try to illustrate for the president the harmful effects of this or that imminent cut by citing an individual case—for example, a young woman forced to leave college because Social Security survivors’ benefits had been eliminated—Reagan would quickly exhibit warm sympathy. What can we do to help this poor girl? Wanting to help out, he’d summon Ed Meese or another staffer to instruct them to go find the tuition money.