Political gibberish is not a purely American art form, like jazz and safety blitz. But in only 200 years we have raised it to a level of eloquence beyond anything since the time of the Caesars or even Genghis Khan. . . . And Paul Kirk’s utterly meaningless assessment of the Democratic Party’s current strategic position vis-a-vis the 1988 presidential campaign won him instant recognition in Washington among those ranking political insiders responsible for making nominations to the Gibberish Hall of Fame.
It was one of those statements that had to be made. Nature’s abhorrence of a vacuum is nothing compared with the way the editors of The New York Times feel about the need for a major front-page political story on Thanksgiving Day. Accordingly, the Times’ internationally acclaimed cuisine critic, R. W. Apple Jr., was called back from the food beat in London and Paris and Rome and given the task of firing the first big journalistic salvo of the 1988 presidential campaign.
Neither Kirk nor anybody else in the Democratic Party had expected to be put very suddenly and with no real warning at all in a position of having to even think, much less talk to The New York Times, about having to “seize control of the national agenda” this far ahead of Election Day in 1988. That was not supposed to happen for at least another year.
The Democrats’ game plan, until then, was to lay low and talk like The Universal Underdog—just another bunch of good guys and athletes who got victimized by the cruel ignorance of Ronald Reagan—and then emerge in the winter of ’88 with a fistful of tangible solutions and two or three viable, charismatic contenders who almost certainly could beat George Bush or any other Republican.
But now the president, far too used to letting used-car dealers from San Diego run the country, had looked the other way while Ollie North ran a brisk little gun-running outfit to finance his Central American war out of the basement of the White House, and the few Democrats who were reachable when Johnny Apple called as the holiday weekend began were uneasy.
They felt strangely out of place, like Mike Tomczak or Turk Schonert, thrust into starting roles they hadn’t played for years. Barney Frank, apparently worried that his party members would drool all over themselves in some sort of presidential feeding frenzy, counseled moderation, saying, “There’s no point in us trying to reform the NSC . . . there’s no way for us to keep cowboys like North off the staff. It’s not wise to try an institutional solution of personal defects,” thereby earning a place of his own next to immortals like Hubert Humphrey, Al Haig and Yogi Berra.
Never mind that Dutch was too old and too guilty to duck this one. Apple got Fritz Mondale to sound just as scared as he did two years ago: “If people think our party is quite happy to hurt the country for its own advantage, the country will turn against us, and it should turn against us.”
Despite the Democrats’ pessimism, there was movement in the winter book numbers last week: The boys in the back rooms in places like Vegas, Washington and Moscow were making serious adjustments in their early line odds for the 1988 presidential race. Recent events had “changed the current picture,” as they say in the politics business, and the names on the chart were changing.
Most of the big losers appeared to be Republicans—not only the senators who lost their membership in what has been called “the most exclusive club in America,” but other key figures and once-powerful champions of the Reagan revolution, like Vice President Bush, former GOP Sen. Paul Laxalt from Nevada, and even Reagan himself, who suffered such grievous political losses that his once-magic “image” changed from John Wayne to Ratso Rizzo in the space of three weeks. He not only lost control of the Congress, a huge chunk of his personal credibility with the electorate, the personal trust of Secretary of State Shultz, and the respect of the entire Japanese nation, but also about 88 percent of his own sense of humor.
Reagan had gone out on the campaign trail day after day for almost three months and begged the voters in places like Fresno, Baton Rouge, Reno and a tin hangar at the Denver airport to “stay with” him and his warriors in this critical midterm election, or otherwise they might risk a disastrous public repudiation of his whole presidency and everything it once seemed to stand for.
The voters responded by rejecting almost every big-time politician in the country who had made the mistake of identifying in public with Reagan. Many were croaked and few were chosen. The Senate went Democratic by a margin that not even the most pessimistic jades in the White House had thought possible; the president was confused and humiliated by the Russians when he stumbled up to Reykjavik, Iceland, for a hopelessly ill-conceived “summit conference,” and two weeks later he found himself mired in a shocking scandal that suddenly loomed larger and more dangerous than Watergate.
After all, Oliver North is not a Cuban burglar. He is a lieutenant colonel in the United States Marine Corps, although his chances of making bird colonel seem dim this week. ... It would have been a quiet ceremony, in the Rose Garden perhaps, with the president pinning on his eagles. . . . Now, he’s looking at five to ten at Leavenworth unless he can find a good fixer, and he’s trying: “My plans are now to trust in the Lord and a good lawyer,” North said Saturday.
So what? What about Diamond Don Regan, whose deniability has more gaps than Rose Mary Woods could produce? And Ed Meese, who gave North a few days to shred things in his office before sending in the G-men (obstruction of justice, anyone?) and now is reportedly considering stepping aside in favor of an independent prosecutor, perhaps somebody not so chummy with the president?
And what about the big dogs? Reagan, who tells us he slept through the whole thing, and Bush, who has Max Gomez, Robert McFarlane and half of Saudi Arabia hanging around his neck?
Perhaps Bush should quit first, so Reagan can find his own Jerry Ford to hand off to—maybe Bob Dole, or Pat Robertson—but make no mistake, they should both resign. This one’s not going to get any better, and Dutch should duck out before the Democrats wake up and the new Congress smells blood.
December 1, 1986