Gene Carter
Editor’s Note: This is the final installment of Gene Carter’s “Learnings and Musings” about living in a company town that had its own Nukes.
Influences – Voters, Press, Lobbyists
“Low information” voters are irrelevant EXCEPT on big issues. Politicians know most people don’t care about most issues. Jennifer Hochshild at Harvard noted: “The media that Trump opponents read focuses on COVID, immigration, racism, lying, corruption. The media that Trump supporters read focuses on abortion, jobs, economic growth, protecting the borders, political correctness, dangerous cities, and religious faith.” Got it. This reliance on biased sources of information undermines tolerance of others’ perspectives and the possibility of civil discussion.
(Left, Rita Rodriguez, King Juan Carlos of Spain)
Because of her job, Rita could join the National Press Club, where the bar is called The Reliable Source. Plopping down at a table, you might be sitting next to a stringer for the Maine Courier or Gwen Ifill of PBS. Speakers often came to be questioned by sharp people relaying audience questions. Sometimes, I was able to meet speakers and chat before their presentations. Early on, the Press Club offered three, two-hour panels regarding the Savings and Loan scandal, a rehearsal for the financial meltdown of 2007-8. Where were the regulators? Where was Congress? Where was the press? The panelists summed up the answers very well. A Senate Banking Committee member noted that on any legislation, big banks will explain the game if it favors small banks: state banks explain if it favors federal banks, builders/labor/consumers explain if it hurts them, and so on. Yet NO one opposed regulations allowing federal savings and loans to match their state rivals in diversifying how they could invest their money to pay higher interest to depositors. And the public certainly didn’t care to oppose it until after scandals exposed the problems. Good lesson.
Many presidents and foreign leaders spoke at the National Press Club. In 2000 Prince Philip spoke to an audience that overflowed with levitating middle-aged women. Philip was tall, and he charmed them all with that English accent that allows any Englishman to seem profound, even if muttering nonsense. One woman asked what he thought of architecture, presumably mixing him up with his son Charles. Phillip said, “Well, I guess anything’s OK if it doesn’t collapse.”
Then they confused his conservation work with Ducks Unlimited and the World Wildlife Fund with Audubon, asking about saving animals versus his interest in managing hunting. He seemed nonplussed, acknowledging “that people had just finished a fine meal of steak, and little calves are nice, they moo, and lambs, baaaaa. People worry about protecting them while not wanting animals killed for sport. I mean, it’s like saying sex is OK as long as you don’t enjoy it.”
Imagine what would happen if a First Lady offered such a casual remark. But Prince Philip was regularly in trouble for his public statements.
Everyone learned both to fear and to hate the Washington Post, and they were reinforced by better efforts from the Wall Street Journal and New York Times in later years. Journalists want bylines, which are secured by writing what an editor thinks the public cares about. The more stories the better. Recall, for example, Geraldine Ferraro’s famous equity in her husband’s real estate business. “SHE OWNS IT,” says the headline. No, she had one share. “BUT THERE ARE ONLY TWO SHARES.” Each day a new thread, requiring full recapitulation each time. The Old Rule – Get it all out there fast – still applies if you are the topic and can control it.
Does a politician pay attention to any of this nonsense? Reacting adds credibility, but the politician loses a megaphone for more important things. The Reagan administration was best at making judgments about when to react and when to ignore the news. The Obama administration had to decide to deal with or ignore the “birther” issue. The facts were clear. Since Obama’s mother was born at Wesley Hospital 10 months before me, he was a citizen. His birth announcement in the state of Hawaii was carried in the Honolulu Advertiser. Republican elected officials in Hawaii testified to his birth certificate. Whatever. It was all noise. But noise works.
Then came social media where accuracy is irrelevant, and anyone could reinforce his whims or hunches without concern for being contradicted by three old white guys on the nightly news telling us important facts. Still, in the mainstream media, what an editor deems important and how factors are presented in what order is the more typical bias, not lying. As I also had to remind my eight-year-old, my mistake was not the same as my lying to her. Critics miss that point, often deliberately. They prefer to feed the conspiracy mentality that our clan is under attack, but if we just work hard, we can find the truth. Really.
Lobbyists do work. At their best they give convincing arguments to a friendly official, and material to staffers of people in the middle. Lying which comes out to damage a Member will end the relationship. But lobbyists have to be heard, and their campaign donations smooth things. I missed a good chocolate desert when Rita dragged me from a dinner at the home of a former colleague who had become a lawyer lobbyist. He produced Rita for three clients, clearly, who dared to bring up business over dinner. She was angry. It is wise not to obstruct her at such times. Any client could have called her office and she would have seen them. Lobbyists convince clients that the clients do not know what to do and cannot do it without the lobbyists’ help.
We all know about work horses and show horses. But Members learn, and staffers learn, among themselves, who they can trust. The most dangerous person is the Master of the 60% Truth, as Rita called some people. They tell you enough to get the vote they want, without telling you the things they know are deal-killers for you. You learn not to trust them. My wife learned to work harder and never held it against them.
As a Midwesterner with grudges from kindergarten, I learned to get even if I ever could. I recall Inez Neville in Latin 3 at East High mentioning the Roman Sulla’s epitaph: “No man has done me well or ill but that I have repaid him in full.” Sulla would fit in DC. The biggest difference from the West Wing depicted on TV and the real place is that the people in the real West Wing scrap and jockey with each other, often ruthlessly. Civil servants and politicians across agencies and branches learned whom they could trust, who knew things and who did not, as I noted.
I saw people ask and grant favors out of respect for an opponent. Others, politicals or civil servants she could neither reward nor punish, took Rita’s calls and just did what she asked. Maybe that is more rare today.
How Government Operates
It’s said where you stand depends on where you sit. The Export-Import Bank was created to promote and help to finance U.S. exports. Some Republicans saw it as government aid to some industries over others, while others felt it helped build American exporters, many of whom were quite small albeit often suppliers to Boeing. Some Democrats saw it as supporting good jobs in business while others saw it as subsidizing business.
In fact, Rita had MONEY as the Bank could originate loans. She noted that Ex-Im also could guarantee loans, and if the loans were standardized, then commercial banks making the loans could bundle them and sell them off. The buyers knew they were lending to a group of exporters all of whose loans were guaranteed by the US government. So, the buyers would accept lower interest rates. Our retirement funds, foreign sovereign wealth portfolios, university endowments, etc. all bought these collateralized debt obligations. The U.S. direct borrowing was reduced. (What could go wrong…? Unlike the housing market later, it did not go wrong.)
Rita also negotiated endlessly with her foreign counterparts. Borrowers lie. They tell Ex-Im that the French counterpart is subsidizing AirBus by guaranteeing loans to sell planes to Ghanaian Air. So she saved hundreds of millions over time for taxpayers by exchanging data with all Ex-Im’s counterparts, agreeing on minimum interest rates, maximum years to maturity, etc. Price fixing is legal if governments do it. Of course, borrowers default and the US government pays the exporter and reposes the asset. When Freddie Laker went bust, the Bank had five new Boeing’s. I suggested they had five directors, so no problem. In fact, there are businesses they regularly employed that specialized in stealing fueled aircraft at third world airports and returning them to be sold.
The point is to show each party of Congress, Treasury, Commerce, Office of Management and Budget, etc., that the U.S. comes out ahead GIVEN that foreigners will operate to support their nation’s exporters regardless of what the U.S. does. Libertarian theory (no subsidies) falls apart when others will not play the game. Rita got most Members on board by walking through these points with staffers. But how do staffers explain the information to the Member who must respond to a one-sentence zinger from a reporter or an outraged constituent? And then Delta Airlines complains that U.S. loans exporting Boeing equipment to a foreign airline hurts Delta. Delta also will galvanize the Machinists union. Surprise. Rita once left her building hidden in the back seat with the GM economist to avoid protestors on something GM had done. The car was a Chrysler of course, part of the bailout deal.
The hardest thing for foreigners to understand is that there is NO central U.S. Government. What is erroneously called the deep state is many different agencies with different agendas jockeying with each other. A legislative committee will team with one agency in the executive branch to go after another committee, perhaps in the other house of Congress, which is in league with some other part of the government.
The Iron Triangle is the legislative committee with budget and regulatory oversight, the agency affected, and the beneficiaries of the agency as suppliers or consumers. Follow the money. Why do Members fight to be on financial oversight committees? Financial firms consider it legalized extortion.
California Governor Pat Brown told his son that problems are never solved in government, only managed. Shrewd political managing is useful because the public does not know what it wants nor pay much attention, allowing a new or old serious threat to appear before each re-election campaign. It is odd that this continues to work.
And Finally —
Politics isn’t a seminar in which informed minds come to agreement on the best policy. It is not simple venality in which the player with the most money or most deliverable voters wins. It is at best how we learn to co-exist in the same geographic space whether or not we like each other. Newt Gingrich often gets credit for changing things in 1994. War was once called politics by other means. He made politics into war by other means. Civility and compromise began to disappear as methods of achieving legislative goals. Today, the biggest problem is hidden funding, and eventually I think we will have sunshine, forcing super PACs to reveal lists of donors. For the first time I believe in 2020 the Democrats raised more dark money than Republicans, which may change the debate.
I worked a congressional campaign in 1994 for a guy whose party I did not know, promising I’d come down if he would run. Working a campaign is a good education for anyone. He won, the first Republican from the district since Reconstruction. I helped select his office (think college dorm room lotteries), and he escorted me to the top of the Capitol dome. We visited the dome inside the dome, where one can see signatures of Nixon, Kennedy, etc. saying goodbye to Congress. It was the day of the Million Man March, and THAT was a big crowd. On Election Day, I heard a great conversation he had with Mitch McConnell, who insisted the Congressman-elect call from a secure landline, which happened to be in my hotel room, regarding the opponents stealing the election. But I digress….
