The Politics of Life
The following excerpt is adapted from The Politics of Life: My Road to the Middle of a Hostile and Adversarial World (Regan Arts.) by Douglas E. Schoen
Penn, Schoen & Berland had been a successful consulting firm for almost 20 years, but we were still waiting for the ultimate invitation – to work on a U.S. Presidential campaign. I never would have thought that invite would come from my old mentor, Dick Morris.
I’d lost touch with Dick after college. After all, if I wasn’t canvassing, I wasn’t useful to him. But in 1990, Mark and I were making a bid to poll for former Texas Governor Mark White, who was mounting a race to return to office. Governor White asked me to send some materials to his strategist, Dick Morris. When I saw the address in Redding, Connecticut, I realized it was a five-minute walk from the summer house my wife Peggy and I had rented. I figured I’d drop off the documents and say hello. Morris and I were soon chatting as avidly as we had in his shabby West 95th Street apartment. Of course, a few things had changed. The card tables and folding chairs had been replaced by French country décor. His wife, Gita, who used to fill his glass with orange juice, had been replaced by his wife, Eileen, who filled it with Sauvignon blanc.
Dick’s cheeks were a little ruddier. His allegiances had also become a bit more fluid. Gone were the days when liberal ideology or even political affiliation dominated his thinking. Now, Dick’s main concern was who paid the most. (A house in Provence ain’t cheap.) In a field where most political consultants associate exclusively with one party, Morris had gone to work for both Democrats and Republicans, including some of the most conservative members of the GOP, such as Trent Lott and Jesse Helms.
None of Morris’ clients had done better than one of his earliest—a young attorney general from Arkansas named Bill Clinton.
Morris had worked for Clinton in his successful first run for governor in 1978. Clinton soon abandoned him but, when he failed to win reelection in 1980, he returned to Morris. Together, the two men restored Clinton’s political fortunes and reclaimed the governor’s mansion in 1982. Morris didn’t work in any substantial way on Clinton’s 1990 presidential campaign. Morris claimed he’d refused to join Clinton’s famous “war room” because of an argument they’d had in 1990 at the Arkansas governor’s mansion. According to Morris, Clinton went so far as to tackle Dick and cock his fist before Hillary Clinton calmed her husband down. Whatever the truth, the two men made up. One magazine compared Clinton to Elvis Presley and Morris to the singer’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker. Come 1994, when a disastrous midterm election took both houses of Congress from the Democrats, Clinton again turned to Morris to rescue his floundering presidency.
In January of 1995, I was at Midway Airport in Chicago when Morris paged me. (This was when people carried “beepers.”) I called him back from a pay phone.
“Do you want the Clinton campaign?” he asked. “I can get you the whole thing—polling, strategy, media.”
It was a mind-boggling offer. Part of me wondered whether Morris was on the level, but I said, “Yes, of course.”
“We’ll be meeting at the White House at eight o'clock on February 5th,” he said.
I quickly checked my calendar and mumbled something about having a prior commitment.
“You’ll be there,” Morris predicted, correctly.
When somebody important wants to see you, make yourself available, regardless of your schedule.
To be clear, Morris fully intended to run Clinton’s campaign. But, like the mighty Oz, he planned to do it from behind a curtain. He knew his Republican clients wouldn’t cotton to his working for America’s top Democrat. Morris’ code name would be “Charlie,” a reference to Charlie Black, a prominent GOP consultant – and perhaps a wink at Charlie’s Angels, in which the master of operations was never seen.
As I told you earlier, I was shocked during my first visit to the White House by Bill Clinton’s distracted demeanor, his listlessness. That night I wasn’t certain how to help him. But I knew enough not to share that uncertainty.
When someone you want to work with asks you if you can solve a problem, the answer is always Yes.
Having winged my first reply to him, I began to work out the specifics of how he could move back to the center. Throughout the winter and spring of 1995, Morris and I told the President he must commit to a balanced budget. Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin and Vice President Al Gore supported the idea, but Clinton’s more liberal advisers —Chief of Staff Leon Panetta, Deputy Chief Harold Ickes, and Communications Director George Stephanopoulos -- disagreed. They claimed he’d be selling out congressional Democrats. Clinton believed in letting everyone have their say. He once told me, “I don’t want to hear what you think I want to hear.” But I was starting to think he could not control his own staff. I wasn’t sure how much influence I had over him. It didn’t help my standing to be associated with Dick Morris. Back in the late 1960s, Morris and Ickes had locked antlers in some New York City races. Ickes couldn’t let it go. Whenever I suggested he and Dick should put it behind them, Ickes talked like a robot: “I serve at the pleasure of the President. I’ll do what he tells me to do.” This he said while sticking a pencil in his ear. Perhaps he thought the eraser would drown me out.
Ickes fought us over everything. He disputed our expenses. He refused to give us a long-term contract. Stephanopoulos and Panetta would also do their best to undermine us. In fairness, Morris didn’t need to be so brusque with Panetta, who would go on to serve as President Barack Obama’s CIA Director and Secretary of Defense. In one meeting with Clinton and Gore, Morris told Panetta, “Leon, Bill’s going to do it my way. I’d rather have you cooperate. If you don’t, I’ll just have to cut you out.” Talk about audacity. Of course, Panetta sometimes responded in kind – exiling our ally Bill Curry to an office across the street in the Old Executive Office Building. Panetta told Curry that if he needed his help, he would call. Curry’s phone rarely rang.
All this backstabbing and kneecapping told me we needed to recruit our own people – people who agreed with us. Sharing power in Washington is generally seen as a mistake. It means you must share access and credit. But it’s better than failing.
When you can’t do it yourself, call in reinforcements.
Even though Morris was ostensibly our commander, it was starting to look like his White House rivals would either push him out or that he would self-immolate. I had to build a team that could, if necessary, outlive Dick Morris. I immediately thought of Mark. His work for our corporate clients could be adapted to Clinton. Morris didn’t really know Mark, but he knew he didn’t like him. A few years earlier, the two had been in some meeting where Mark had dared to contradict Morris’ advice to a client. Morris hadn’t forgotten. Morris finally agreed that Mark could dispense his polling insights at the beginning of our meetings with Clinton -- but then Mark would have to leave. Also, until Morris summoned him, Mark would have to wait in the usher’s office. Not surprisingly, Mark wasn’t thrilled. I told Morris that this protocol was demeaning and petty. After much discussion, Morris backed down. Still, he vowed to keep Mark tightly tethered— “like a caged animal.”
I next contacted Bob Squier, with whom I worked on the Lautenberg campaign. Squier was one of the top media consultants in Washington. More importantly, he’d worked with Clinton and Gore. He and his partners, Bill Knapp and Tom Ochs, had the type of D.C. connections we sorely needed. I also brought on Hank Sheinkopf, who’d helped me run for Congress, and Marius Penczer, a Nashville producer of music videos. Besides bringing a useful MTV sensibility, Penczer shared the President’s love of country music.
Code-naming ourselves “the November 5th Group,” we met for the first time on a muggy day in May at Bob Squier's Capitol Hill townhouse. Dick Morris made the introductions. Looking at our host, he noted, "Bob and I have had our ups and downs." That was putting it mildly. Back in 1986, while representing competing candidates in a Florida Senate race, Squier had accused Morris of goosing his client's numbers. He called Morris "the Julia Child of cooked polls." Trying to smooth Morris’ feathers, Squier now quipped, “At least I didn't call you Chef Boyardee."
Putting slights and grudges aside, we began to look for ways to lift Clinton out of his hole. We made an oath of secrecy. During Clinton’s first two years, low-level, mid-level and high-level aides were constantly talking to reporters. Everybody leaked. The best way to stay on Clinton’s good side was to stay quiet. One time, when our group was meeting with him, National Security Advisor Tony Lake came in to update the President on the fate of Scott O’Grady, an Air Force pilot shot down over Bosnia. Lake looked uncomfortable speaking in front of us, but the President reassured him. “These guys don’t leak,” he said.
Nothing impresses like discretion.
I worked for Clinton for nearly half the year before word of our operation got out. When The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer called me to confirm the November 5th Group’s existence, I quickly jumped off the phone. I knew that if Ickes thought I was her source, he’d make sure I was fired. I later gleaned that Ickes himself may have been the source. “I confirm you didn’t leak,” he told us slyly.
* * *
Even though we hadn’t been officially hired, the President seemed to be listening to us. He made an address calling for targeted tax cuts. If we could only get him to back a balanced budget. With the Republicans now controlling both houses of Congress, it was only a matter of time before they sent him their version of a budget, which he’d likely have to veto. If he offered his own balanced budget —featuring less draconian cuts to social and entitlement programs Americans valued – Clinton would have far more credibility on the issue. It took months of persuasion but, in June 1995, he pledged to balance the budget in ten years (three years sooner than the Republican plan).
The President had drawn a clear distinction between himself and his party’s liberals. As John Breaux, the moderate Democratic senator from Louisiana said, “The President has been reborn.” Dick Morris liked to speak of “triangulation”— positioning the candidate above and between the two parties. It sounded like a pyramid scheme. I didn’t see centrism as a calculated tactic. To me, it was the wisest way of governing – of reconciling extremes. The country was trending to the right. Bill Clinton was responding. Few leaders had his combination of spine and heart. If anyone could find harmony in the discordant chorus of voters, it was the man with the saxophone.
* * *
Republicans never tired of bellowing that Democrats were soft on crime. Clinton had consistently broken ranks with his party on public safety. Highlighting his crime agenda would be a critical first step in rehabilitating his image. We recommended a $2 million ad buy focusing on the President’s support of the assault weapons ban and his efforts to put 100,000 cops on the street. No one had ever done this kind of massive advertising more than a year before an election. To test the ads, we went back to the malls where we’d tried out AT&T commercials. We aimed Clinton’s ads at swing voters in swing states— Washington, Missouri, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. We did not run the ads in media hubs like New York, Washington, and Los Angeles. Our goal: fly under the media radar and pitch our message straight to the American people. It was months before the national media caught onto the ads. By then, Clinton’s numbers were showing marked improvement.
Meanwhile the Republicans’ “Contract with America” budget was making its way through Congress. Clinton had warned the GOP that he’d veto any budget with drastic cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, education, and environmental protection. But the Republicans were sure the hobbled President would sign the bill, rather shut down the government.
In August 1995, at Clinton’s request, we ran several polls based on various scenarios involving the budget and a possible government shutdown. Every scenario led to the same conclusion: stand and fight. One day, I was sitting in the Map Room with Clinton – assuring him we couldn’t lose on the budget.
“Poll it again,” he said. “I just don’t believe it. Test five or six more hypotheses.”
Clinton knew he was betting his presidency. Without the support of the rest of his staff, he wanted to be sure he wasn’t committing political suicide. But the numbers came back the same. In one poll, by 58 percent to 25 percent, Americans said they would blame the Republicans if the government was shut down.
The trap was set and, amazingly, the Republicans walked right into it. The first government shutdown lasted only a few days, but Clinton’s approval ratings rocketed up. Americans now saw him as a strong leader willing to fight for his beliefs. Stubbornly, the Republicans came back for more embarrassment. After weeks of fruitless negotiations, they shut the government down again -- this time for more than a month. Again, the White House stood firm. Again, the Republicans paid a heavy political price—none more so than Senator Bob Dole, the presumptive Republican nominee for President. Instead of campaigning in New Hampshire, he was tied down in budget negotiations.
Douglas E. Schoen, author of Power: The 50 Truths, has been one of the most influential Democratic campaign consultants for more than 40 years. He is the founder of Schoen-Cooperman Research, a premier strategic research consulting firm, and he is widely recognized as one of the co-inventors of overnight polling. His political clients include former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg and President Bill Clinton, and internationally, he has worked for the heads of state of over 15 countries.
