They’re sawing off my legs. One yesterday morning, the other next week. I couldn’t see the blade, but I could hear its metallic whir and smell the bone dust—sweet, pungent. No pain then. Plenty now.
Nurse tells me the hospital paid $24,000 for each of these beds. Supposed to equalize body weight and prevent bed sores. But if you want to sleep, forget it. The goddamn bed buzzes every time I move. Any twitch, you wake up. Another high-tech solution creating a new low-tech problem.
The hips I’m being given are steel and cobalt, with a plastic coating where ball meets socket. Good for ten years. Then what? They tell me that second replacements typically last half as long as the first. The third set probably lasts half again as long. In a little more than thirty years, when I’m eighty, I’ll replace them every few minutes.
I’m well on the way to being bionic: Besides the hips, two contact lenses and a false tooth. Not to worry, though. Eventually all body parts will be replaceable. There’s already a thriving international market in corneas, kidneys, hearts, livers. Brain cells have just been transplanted in mice. It’s only a matter of time before mice brains get into us. I’ve met some people who give every impression of having had the operation already. All this raises the question, how much has to be replaced before you cease being the same person you were at the start?
With my new hips I won’t exactly be the same person I was. That’s okay. My former self was corroding. Last week, in New York, I could barely walk from cab to hotel.
The timing of these operations isn’t ideal. Bill is in the final stretch. I should be out there campaigning for him. It will be a challenge for him, but I suspect he’ll make it without me.
Clare smuggled in a sandwich from the real world where taste buds still survive: smoked turkey with roasted peppers. Rapture. Even airline food would be a feast for the palate compared with what I’m being given here.
Where’s Bill’s economic plan? It was faxed from Little Rock hours ago, but the nurse says it still hasn’t arrived. I’m supposed to edit the section on public investment—$50 billion a year in education, job training, preschooling, mass transit, and other things necessary for Americans to be productive in the future—and return it tonight. It’s the centerpiece of the plan. But I can’t very well go looking for it now, hooked up as I am to a flow of body fluids.
Mystery solved. Night nurse says that day nurse got the fax and took it home with her. Apparently the day nurse is a Clinton fan. She saw the Clinton-Gore logo, read the headline “Putting People First,” and got interested. I should be encouraged that at least one American voter couldn’t bear to part with Clinton’s economic plan. But the fact is, a highly confidential draft of perhaps the most important statement of the entire campaign is now loose in Greater Boston.
Bill called today from somewhere on the trail to ask how the surgery was going. I said I was feeling lousy and told him to stop wasting his time on me when he could be converting another voter. He said, Okay, good-bye. It’s the shortest conversation I’ve had with him in a quarter century.
Flashback to the first: It’s 1968. We’re on the S.S. United States, bound for England and Oxford University. The ocean is choppy. I’m belowdecks in a tiny cabin, head spinning and stomach churning. There’s a knock at the door. I open it to find a tall, gangly, sweet-faced fellow holding a bowl of chicken soup in one hand and crackers in the other.
“Heard ya weren’t feeling too well,” he drawls.
“Thanks. That’s awfully nice of you.” I take the soup and crackers from him, but with no intention of imbibing.
“Chicken soup will cure anything,” he laughs.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
“Bill Clinton, from Arkansas,” he answers, without my having asked where he’s from. “Like some company?”
He’s eager to come in, but I’m determined to get back to bed. “To tell you the truth, no.”
“Oh … well, then …” He seems a bit surprised by my rejection, and I feel guilty for spurning him. But if this goes on much longer, I’m going to puke all over him. “It was very nice of you to think of me,” I say quickly. “But I’m afraid I really …”
“Oh, don’t mention it. I understand how you might feel. This ocean is terrible. Where I come from we don’t have anything like this.”
“Well, bye now.” I move to close the door.
“Maybe when you feel better we can get to know each other.”
“I’d like that.”
He won’t leave. “Let me know if you need anything.”
“Sure will. Bye now.”
He grins. “Isn’t this amazing?”
“What?” I’m getting desperate.
“Being on this ocean liner. Heading to Europe. I never thought it would happen to me. Bet you never thought it would happen to you either.”
“No! Sony, but I …”
“Did you ever think you and I would be here?”
“Got to go!” I close the door and barely make it to the can.
Clare and I are returning from visiting Adam at camp. Vermont in July is not as beautiful as Vermont in October, but it’s still one of the loveliest corners of the world. I spot a place to park the car along the side of a river, and follow Clare down a yellow-green path, carefully placing the tips of my crutches. The hips are mending, but I need to exercise caution. We sit on a large rock and take off our shoes.
“I hate Washington,” she says out of the blue. “I don’t want us to go back there.” She’s obviously been brooding about this.
“The chances are so slim it’s hardly worth talking about,” I say. “Let’s enjoy the scenery.”
“What if Bill wins?”
“What if he does? I wouldn’t ask you and the boys to uproot unless he really needed me, and I’m sure he won’t. Let’s talk about something else. Look at this gorgeous day!”
Clare says nothing.
After two minutes’ silence I give up trying to get her off the subject. “What is it exactly that you hate so much about Washington?” It’s a stupid question. I know the answer.
“People don’t have real lives. They don’t talk about real things.” Her eyes fill with tears. “And it’s so boring!”
“It doesn’t have to be, you know. We have friends …”
Wrong answer. She senses that I’m already trying to rationalize a move. “It’s always the same thing. Who’s up? Who’s down? Who’s in? Who’s out? It’s a one-company town, Bob. Everyone works for the same company in some way or other. Politicians, journalists, bureaucrats, lawyers, lobbyists. And all that really counts is your rank in the company. Power, power, power! No one cares about ideas or values, or even their families.” She’s crying. “It was bad enough to be down there when we didn’t have kids. But now I’m not sure I could stand it.”
We lived in Washington for the first eight years of our married life, the years before we had children. I had met her four years before we moved to Washington, twenty-four years ago this fall, the same fateful week I met Bill. She was just a girl then, coming up to Oxford from a little village along the south coast of England—beautiful like a fawn, brilliant but unsure of her footing. Bill and I were still settling into our rooms at different ends of the ancient courtyards of University College when I decided the best way to get to know any of these shy Brits was to audition for a student play and hope to land a part. Clare was the only one waiting to audition when I arrived. She insisted I go first. In that split second I fell for her. Neither of us got parts, and I realized the only chance I’d have to get to know her would be to direct a play myself and to cast her in it—which I promptly did. To this day she thinks she got the part on the basis of her acting skills. The play was a dud, but she stayed on as leading lady.
Clare has a heart-shaped face with a lovely dimple when she smiles, a rosy complexion, and moon-shaped eyebrows over brown eyes that glisten when she’s happy but become dark holes when she’s not. She’s seven inches taller than me—about five foot five—but my shortness has never seemed to faze her. She doesn’t respond to the surface of things, to mere appearances. She connects on a different level. She speaks carefully, choosing words as if each one were a little vessel for carrying a thought from her mind to another’s, and she likes nothing better than to probe deeply into another person’s experiences or life history. She prefers to deal with no more than two or perhaps three people at a time. Crowds bewilder her. Cocktail parties and receptions make her impatient.
For Clare, each human relationship is unique and special, deserving precise attention. When she first came to live in the United States, more than twenty years ago, she didn’t understand how strangers could scream at one another, why casual acquaintances would want to spend hours talking to one another, how salesmen and politicians could act as if someone they hardly knew were their best friend. When we married and moved to Washington, she found the town incomprehensible. I think she was more astonished than appalled. She never imagined that people could treat one another so casually, as means to ends rather than as ends in themselves. She felt more comfortable in New England. Yankees are less garrulous. They tend to say what they mean, and they’re cautious about relationships. It’s easy to see why the idea of returning to Washington is so dismaying to her.
I put an arm around her, groping with my other to stay balanced on the rock. “Believe me. It won’t happen.” I hope I can remain balanced.
There’s a waiting list to get into my courses at Harvard this term. I’d like to think it’s due to my dazzling brilliance as teacher and writer, but I suspect ulterior motives. One of the students on the list comes to my office this morning to plead her case.
“I want a job in the Clinton administration,” she says without blinking.
“I don’t get the connection.”
“Look,” she explains, as if talking to a child. “If I take your course and do reasonably well, you might help me. If I don’t do well, you’ll at least recognize my name, and that helps. And if I ace the class, maybe you’ll hire me.”
Should I be insulted or flattered? She seems as surprised by my surprise as I am by her candor. She continues with a hint of exasperation in her voice, “Why do you suppose everyone wants to take your class, anyway?”
I think I’ll let her into the class just for spite, and then flunk her.
Bill is going to be president. The polls show it. It’s in the air. If the times call for a strong president, he will govern much as Franklin D. Roosevelt governed—with boundless energy, great charm, and bold initiative. Faced with genuine evil or a national crisis of undisputed dimensions, Bill will rise to it. But in the more common situations where the public is uncertain about the choices it faces and what’s at stake in those choices, I worry that his leadership may fail. He’ll become unfocused and too eager to please.
Sitting in my office this morning, trying to decipher handwriting on an exam, when the phone rings. It’s a reporter for the Times. “Is it true that you’ll be running the presidential transition for economic policy?” He might as well have asked if it’s true that I’m to be the first astronaut to Mars.
“I have no idea,” I say. One of the rarely noted virtues of the Washington press corps is its capacity to warn people in advance of events that are about to screw up their lives.
By the time Bill’s call comes, my ambivalence about working for his incipient administration has blossomed into full-fledged negativism. The operator in the Governor’s Mansion asks me, “Will you please hold on for the President-elect?” and I’m tempted to answer, “No, thank you.”
“Bob?”
“Hi, Bill.” We haven’t spoken since the election. I want to say something special, but “Congratulations” is all I manage.
“Thanks. How’re your hips?”
I could end the transaction here. I could say: Terrible. Constant pain. Can’t do a thing. But I swallow hard and emit a tremulous “Fine.”
“Good, because I need you to head up the economic transition. Can you give me the next two months?”
I don’t answer for a second. I’m struck by the oddness of the idea of “giving” someone one’s life—relinquishing how it might otherwise be lived. “What do you have in mind?”
“We’ve got to turn the economic plan into legislation that can get moving right after the inauguration. That means getting all the economic advisers working together—Roger Altman, Bob Rubin, and the other Wall Street people, you and Laura Tyson and the other academics, the business and the technology people, Ira Magaziner and the consultants. We’ll discuss the big trade-offs—investment versus deficit reduction, private-sector growth versus public investment, middle-class tax break. I want broad-based support. Macroeconomics is important, but micro is critical—productivity, education, job training, management-labor relations. So the whole thrust will be new and different.”
It’s as if I opened a dam.
“So,” the gush continues, “can I announce that you’ll coordinate it?”
“I … er …” I grope for words, but I know they’re irrelevant. Bill has already leaked the announcement.
He doesn’t wait. “How soon can you get down here?”
“I’m … not sure. I have to … get my things in … order,” I stutter. It’s my head I have to get in order. “I can’t get down there tomorrow. I’ll let you know.”
“Okay. Call me tonight. Bye.”
Adam and Sam are against my going. Clare thinks I should do it, but when I ask her why, she seems vague. Maybe she secretly hopes that two months of chaos will rid me of any lingering desire for a permanent spot in Bill’s administration.
I have to be honest with myself. The desire’s there. I’ve already spent eight years of my adult life in Washington. Much of it was grueling, thankless work—briefing and arguing cases before the Supreme Court, protecting unwary consumers from fraud. Then Ronald Reagan took over. You could say I departed exactly as I began—fired with enthusiasm.
There’s so goddamn much to be done. The country is growing apart. The wealthy have become richer than ever. That’s fine. But paychecks for the bottom half of the nation’s workforce have been shrinking since the late 1970s. Men with only a high-school diploma or less have been on a sharp downward slide. The poor have become much poorer. Almost one in five of the children of America is living in poverty, without adequate food or clothing or a place to live. The wealthiest nation in the history of the world, and we’ve been splitting into the have-mores and the have-lesses.
I’ve been writing about these trends for years, trying to explain them, suggesting ways to remedy them. I’ve shared my thoughts with hundreds of students, many of whom have gone into public service, and with a string of losing Democratic presidential candidates. I’ve burdened Bill himself with every one of my books and articles, and urged him to run. And he did And he used my ideas. “Putting People First” was all about investing in the nation’s most precious asset—its human capital—so that everyone has a chance to make it.
And then he won. He called my bluff. Now, Reich, put up or shut up. You’re so concerned about all of this? You’ve talked a good game. Now you have a chance to do something about it. So DO it. It scares the hell out of me. What am I afraid of? First, Washington itself. It’s become meaner and nastier since Clare and I were there. The public is deeply cynical. Making real change is now so much harder. Make a mistake, one false move, and you’re mincemeat Could I survive?
I’m also afraid I’d be incompetent at it. I’m not a professional politician. I’ve never run a large organization. I exemplify that old adage: Those who can’t do, teach. I’ve been teaching public management and political economy for twelve years. But I haven’t been doing any of it. Even under the best of circumstances I might blow it. I might even make things worse. What do I really know? How tough am I?
And then there’s Bill himself. I think he’s committed to the same values I am, but can I be sure? All of us early boomers caught the passion for public service from John F. Kennedy, from the civil rights movement, from Martin Luther King, Jr., from the early years of Lyndon Johnson. Government was the engine of social progress. Its mission was to create genuine opportunity for all. I’m sure Bill still feels it. But he’s also a politician. He’s held elective office most of his adult life. He’s been running for office for almost as long. He’s had to compromise, get what could be got, keep an eye on the next election and the one after that. Politicians cannot be pure, by definition. Their motives are always mixed. Ambition, power, public adulation, always figure in somehow. Means get confused with ends. Will Bill stick to his ideals in the pinch? Or will I find myself compromised simply by virtue of being connected to his compromises?
Finally, and most importantly, there are Clare, Adam, and Sam. The boys came along after we left the Washington pressure cooker. I’ve had time to get to know them, to be a father to them and a partner to Clare in bringing them up. I’ve watched in wonder as Adam overcame his early shyness and blossomed into a buoyant, articulate eleven-year-old, and as Sam grew from a funny little gremlin into a creative, thoughtful eight-year-old. The two of them are approaching adolescence like freight trains steaming toward a dark tunnel. I want to be with them when they go through it. How can I be if I’m speeding along through my own tunnel?
Over the years, since we’ve lived in New England, Clare has found her own, personal mission. She’s established an advocacy program for battered women linking university and community. Her politics are local. She is passionate about genuine family values—the values of caring, of mutual kindness and respect. That’s how we’ve brought up Adam and Sam. I want to be there for Clare as well. These are the only terms on which she’ll have me. Could I be there and do the job at the same time?
Washington doesn’t respect families. It spits them out like chewing tobacco, as if they were designed to occupy the players during slow points in the game. I’m afraid of what it might do to me, to us. Is it possible to play in the major leagues—in the rough-and-tumble, high-stakes world of putting ideas into practice—and still be a good father and husband?
I don’t know the answers to any of these questions. And I fear that there’s no way to find out except by trying. If I don’t try, I’ll always wonder whether I might have succeeded. But then again, what if the answers aren’t the ones I want to hear? Could I turn back?
I’m going to call Bill and tell him I’ll be down there in a few days.
I’m on my way. Still walking with a cane but in another few weeks I should be completely on my own new hips. Moving through space smoothly and confidently is surely one of life’s most underappreciated joys. It’s as if I’ve escaped into a freedom I forgot existed. Before, I was locked in a body that could hardly move. Now I can glide, turn, angle, accelerate. I’m unlocked, liberated, empowered.
Airports used to be the worst: interminable terminals, endless corridors of pain. I was always too proud to ask for a wheelchair. But now I race through Logan Airport like a greased pig, slipping effortlessly through the crowds.
A brief panic as I approach the metal detector. What if the new hips set off the alarm? I was warned at the hospital that it could happen and was offered a letter confirming to any suspicious gate attendant that I was partly a man of steel. But I forgot to bring it.
As my turn comes to move through the detector, I imagine the scene: The alarm sounds. The guard asks me to stand to one side while he brushes me with his hand-held metal detector.… Eh? What’s this? The detector emits a loud buzz around the area of my hips. What do you have in there? he asks. Nothing, it’s just me, I say. He doesn’t believe me. Why should he? I look suspicious enough. Extremely short, bearded, long-nosed—not unlike a terrorist from one of those backward countries with a lot of short, bearded, long-nosed people. He orders me to lie on the luggage conveyor belt, flat on my back. In I go, faceup, the x-ray machine’s rubber flaps whipping my head and then my arms and then my hips and legs into the darkness, as security guards and curious passengers gather around the screen.
But the alarm doesn’t go off.
Chaos everywhere. Reporters, office-seekers, ass-kissers, scandalmongers, lobbyists, policy peddlers—they’re all here, crowding hotels, restaurants, bars, street corners. It’s as if all the ambitions that had been dammed up during a dozen years of Republican presidents suddenly burst and flooded this small town.
A reporter taps me as I’m coming out of the Excelsior Hotel. “Mr. Reich, what’s your view on the deficit?”
“You would have given me your opinion last week,” he says slyly.
“You wouldn’t have asked me last week,” I shoot back. Last week my opinion was just my opinion. Now it’s not, which is precisely why I can’t give it. Even if Bill and I share the same values, what’s to say that his views are the same as mine? Will I have to pretend they’re my views? I’d quit before I did that. But quitting might itself make news and damage Bill, and that would be disloyal. Bill wouldn’t have asked me to handle this job if he saw things differently than I did, would he?
I’ll write down the major ideas. This will be a compass to return to when I fear we’re drifting off course.
The immediate problem is that there aren’t enough jobs. Yet merely creating more jobs isn’t enough. It’s possible for a society to create more jobs in exchange for lower wages and worse living conditions. After all, slavery is a full-employment system. The long-term challenge is more good jobs.
For more than fifteen years, people in the bottom half of earnings distribution have lost ground. The middle class has been squeezed. The very poor have become even poorer. The wage gap is widening at an alarming speed. Most of this is due to two great changes that started in the late 1970s—the emergence of new technologies like computers, and the knitting together of all the world’s economies. Both have been boons to well-educated professionals and executives whose problem-solving abilities are in ever greater demand. But these same trends have created disasters for poorly educated factory workers, who can now easily be replaced. The whole economy has been transformed from high-volume production (based on repetitive tasks) to high-value production (based on thought and knowledge). And only those with the right skills are flourishing.
The same transformation has undermined the implicit social compact that once existed between companies and their employees, such that when the company did better, its workers did too. Technology and global competition have allowed investors to move capital quickly to wherever it earns the most. Wall Street (and the large institutional investors behind the Street) now demands high and quick returns. Even profitable companies are slashing payrolls in order to boost their stock prices, rather than sharing profits with employees and upgrading their skills. Investment bankers and top executives are making fortunes, but ordinary workers are getting screwed.
The solution isn’t to try to stop technological progress or to block global trade and investment (even if such moves were possible, they’d impoverish everyone). The main answer is to improve education and job skills. The other part of the answer is to renew the compact between companies and their workers. Encourage profit-sharing. Strengthen unions.
No need to obsess unduly about the federal budget deficit. Sure, reduce it in order to lower long-term interest rates and speed the recovery. But remember the public investments (in education, job training, and preschooling, as well as in the transportation system linking people up with one another) are at least as important as private investments for improving Americans’ standard of living. In fact, private investments haven’t “trickled down” to most Americans. Ninety-five percent of the growth in family incomes over the last decade and a half has been among the top fifth of families. Aim to cut the deficit as a proportion of the national economy—from around five percent (what it is now, after twelve years of profligacy) to around two and a half percent (what it was in the 1970s)—while at the same time increasing public investments.
It’s easy to commit these thoughts to paper. Words are cheap. I’ve been writing them for years. But can we really take action to alter these trends for the better? Does Bill have the will? The ability? Would anyone in his position be able to alter them? Or are the underlying forces so powerful that nothing can be done?
The stakes are high. A two-tiered society will undermine the stability and moral authority of this nation. I don’t want Adam and Sam to have to grow up in a land even more sharply divided than it is today. I don’t want them living in gated compounds, guarded against the rest of humanity. And I don’t believe most parents want to leave to their children that kind of country.
Bill and Hillary and I are sitting in the kitchen of the Governor’s Mansion, sipping tea and shooting the breeze. He tells a joke, makes himself a sandwich. Hillary asks about Clare and the boys, fills me in on Chelsea. They act as if nothing particularly unusual has happened. I half expect Bill to say, “Oh, and by the way, did you hear? Couple of weeks ago I was elected President of the United States. Want some peanut butter?”
Two images are superimposed: the Bill and Hillary I’ve known for some twenty years, and a new Bill and Hillary—the President-elect of the United States and the soon-to-be First Lady. Here, in their kitchen, they’re mostly the former. But every few minutes I see them differently—the way the nation sees them—the First Couple, who embody the hopes and fears, and evoke the adulation and the anger, of 260 million Americans.
Bill blows his nose. It’s a loud honk like a wild goose. The spell is broken. “Goddamn allergies,” he says. “I don’t know what I’m gonna do in Washington. It’s the pollen capital of the world.”
Unlike Britain and other democratic monarchies, we ask our country’s leader to do two jobs simultaneously, to act both as head of government and as the symbol of the nation. It’s a hard act. Governing involves tough compromises and gritty reality. Symbolism requires nobility and grandeur. We demand a street-smart wheeler-dealer, but we also want a king and a royal family.
In democratic monarchies, royal families are the subjects of tabloid journalism, while prime ministers are considered dull. Citizens get all the racy gossip they want, and the business of government continues without distraction. Here, our First Family is in the tabloids, and the President has to answer questions about alleged love affairs even as he holds forth on foreign affairs. It’s a muddle.
This nation mounted a revolution against royalty, but we still yearn for it. We want our First Family to be better than most of us—nobler, wiser, handsomer—and yet with enough self-deprecating wit to reassure us that they’re not putting on airs. First Families always start out as royalty, but the magic almost inevitably fades. None has surpassed Jack and Jackie and their magic kingdom, Camelot, perhaps in part because of its brevity.
Honk. Even louder than before.
“I think you’re getting a cold,” Hillary frowns. “You shouldn’t have been out in that rain last night.”
“It’s an allergy. I don’t get colds.”
She looks toward me and shakes her head. She has the same exasperated smile I see on Clare all the time. “He gets these colds and he calls them allergies, and that gets him off the hook for being irresponsible.”
The phone rings. Hillary picks up. Bill continues to blow.
Will the magic stick to Bill and Hillary? In addition to the usual impediments, they also face a generational handicap. They are members of the huge, unruly group of postwar baby boomers (as am I). Pre-boomers are suspicious of their boisterous successors—their self-indulgence and moral laxity. Post-boomers are resentful of all the attention their predecessors have received. Even other boomers are often cynical if not downright envious of successes among their peers.
Hillary hangs up. “I can’t believe it, Bill. The movers are coming tomorrow to start crating things up. Weren’t they supposed to come next week?”
“Yeah. That’s what they said.” He’s still sniffling.
“We’re not the slightest bit ready for them. I haven’t even started on Chelsea’s room.”
This could be any family trying to move from one place to another. It just happens to be the First one, moving from here to the White House.
“Bobby.” She turns to me. “How often have you and Clare uprooted yourselves since you were married? I’ve lost count.” Hillary is suddenly aware that I haven’t said a thing for five minutes, and wants to include me in the conversation. Maybe she’s also subtly sounding me out about joining the administration. She works on many levels, as does he.
“Five or six times, I think. Moving sucks.”
“It’s awful,” she agrees. “But we can’t very well stay here now. George and Barbara are moving out to make room for us.” She giggles.
“I hope they leave the chandeliers,” Bill says, then laughs.
“At least clean out the skeletons from the closets,” Hillary says. Then she laughs raucously, laughter shaking her whole body.
It’s good to see them this relaxed.
“More tea?” Hillary pours.
“Thanks.”
“So what have you decided to do? Would you be interested in coming to Washington?” she asks.
“I really don’t know.” I’d rather not think about it now.
“Clare hates the town, doesn’t she?” I doubt she and Clare have ever spoken about it, but Hillary somehow knows.
Bill sneezes and wipes his nose. “I don’t blame her,” he says. “Why would anyone want to live in Washington?”
Why indeed? Why do the two of them want to subject themselves to that hellhole? Not for power or celebrity. They both know as well as I there’s not much of either left there anymore. Presidential power is limited, shared, diffused. Celebrity is fleeting. It can turn against you instantly.
For love of country? The three of us have talked about, and acted upon, our convictions about social justice for almost a quarter century. I met Hillary even before I met Bill, when she was a freshman at Wellesley College with straight blond hair and eyeglasses so thick they looked like binoculars. She and I were self-styled student “reformers” then, years before the radicals took over administration buildings and shut down the campuses. We marched for civil rights and demanded the admission of more black students to our schools. Even then we talked of bringing the nation together. We were naïve about how much we could accomplish, perhaps a bit grandiose and self-righteous as well, but we also had a lot of fun.
Bill and I talked endlessly during our time at Oxford about what was happening to this country, about how the Vietnam War was tearing us apart, and about the persistence of racism and poverty in the midst of plenty. He spoke of his plans for a political career in Arkansas, and I marveled at how certain he could be about what he wanted to do. Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright was Bills mentor and model—a man of principle who stood up against the war.
We all went to law school together, and continued sharing our concerns and our ideals. We weren’t going to use our law degrees to practice law. Law for us was a tool for advancing social justice, for ensuring that everyone had a fair chance to make it. And then the two of them went back to Arkansas to begin their political odyssey, and I went off to marry Clare and do a stint in Washington. I remember wondering how they’d keep their ideals intact, and wondering also about Hillary and the additional compromises she’d have to make as wife and political partner.
We didn’t see much of each other after that—occasional visits, sporadic phone calls. Bill entered politics. He lost his first campaign, for Congress in 1974, but two years later won the race for attorney general of Arkansas. Then in 1978, at the age of thirty-two, he became the youngest governor in the United States in four decades. I remember he wanted to accomplish a lot in his first term—reforming the rural health-care system, reorganizing school districts, creating a new economic-development department. Perhaps the agenda was too full. He created some powerful enemies. His Republican rival for governor in 1980 mounted an intense television campaign, blaming Bill for mismanaging the state and allowing Cuban refugees to riot at Fort Chafee. Bill lost his reelection bid, thereby becoming the youngest former governor in American history. Then, in 1982, with Hillary’s help, he made a comeback, and he has never lost an election since.
There were allegations about Bill’s “womanizing” in these years, but I saw no evidence of it, and never sensed that their marriage was in trouble. They had Chelsea; Clare and I had Adam and Sam. All of our lives got fuller and more complicated. The children were central to them. But bringing America together, creating real opportunity for people to get ahead, continued to be a main topic of our ongoing discussion whenever we met. I offered policy advice when Bill and Hillary sought to reform the educational system in Arkansas. I celebrated Bills election victories. The two of them celebrated my books.
But I never fully understood how they did it—how they balanced means and ends, how they led political lives yet kept the ideals intact. When to compromise? What to sacrifice? Whom to sacrifice? I never fully comprehended the exact relation between their ideals and their ambitions. I suppose that’s why I didn’t choose politics for myself. It seemed too hard to keep ideals and ambitions in the proper perspective.
And now they’re packing up and moving to Washington to lead the country, and they seem to be wanting me to join them, and it’s frankly scaring the hell out of me.
I’m not ready to talk about it, so I move the conversation in a safer direction. “Some people actually live in Washington already,” I say. “In fact, you’ll need Washington savvy in the White House. Done any more thinking about Washington insiders for the administration?”
They glance at each other. Bill asks, “What do you think about Bentsen for Treasury?”
Lloyd Bentsen is the venerable chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, responsible for tax and trade policy. He’s not motivated by exactly the same ideals as ours. He’s a Texas Democrat all right, but not from the liberal Lyndon Johnson wing of the state party. He’s a freetrader and a deficit hawk with close ties to business and Wall Street. He made a fortune in financial services before running for the Senate in 1970, beating the incumbent liberal Democrat Ralph Yarborough in the primary with TV ads linking Yarborough to the anti-Vietnam War movement, and then beating a young Republican congressman named George Bush in the general election. As Finance Committee chairman since 1986 Bentsen has looked after Texas’s oil and gas interests so well he’s earned the nickname “Loophole Lloyd.” He’s probably best known for telling Dan Quayle in the 1988 televised vice-presidential debate that Quayle was no Jack Kennedy. But since then Bentsen has supported most of the pro-business policies of Bush and Quayle—except with regard to the widening budget deficit, which he’s blasted from time to time. Bentsen is a gentleman and by all accounts thoughtful and principled, but he’s no Jack Kennedy either.
“Dunno,” I say. “He knows the traps. He’d be a valuable adviser. But, hell, he’s not exactly committed to your agenda.”
Hillary nods in agreement. “Well, it’s just an idea.”
Probably a good idea if they’re intent on calming Wall Street and recruiting a powerful ambassador to Senate conservatives. But the Secretary of the Treasury is also traditionally the Presidents chief economic policymaker. If Bill and Hillary are seriously considering Bentsen for this role, how committed can they be to raising the prospects of the working class and the poor?
When entering or leaving the Governor’s Mansion or the transition headquarters, I pass a mountain of television cameras and dozens of reporters standing behind yellow guardrails and beckoning me—barking questions, arms flailing, microphones waving.
“Mr. Reich, when will the president-elect announce his cabinet?”
“Mr. Reich, what are you recommending to the president-elect to revive jobs?”
“Mr. Reich, what are you doing?”
I venture up to the guardrail, and it’s like throwing a piece of meat into a herd of famished carnivores. A feeding frenzy ensues. They hunger for any tiny morsel of information that can be phoned to their editors. They’ve lingered here for hours—listless, cold, bored, worried about having nothing to report. They compete for survival, not so much against one another as against all the other reporters on all the other assignments in all the other places around the nation and the world, who will take the space in the paper or on the half-hour evening news if they don’t. I am, at this moment, their only hope.
Microphones are thrust into my face; mouths, notepads, cameras close in; spotlights are turned on. They tower over and around me—the herd and its small prey.
Be calm. Don’t be rushed. Put out of your mind that ten million people at this very instant have a perfect view of the emerging pimple on your forehead. Don’t think about the possibility that you may throw up or faint or your nose may start to bleed. Carefully select a question to respond to, and rehearse an answer in your head before speaking. Make it sound as thoughtful as possible, even though you have absolutely nothing of interest to say.
I clear my throat, and the herd instantly quiets. “The President-elect has been receiving the economic data,” I begin, ponderously. A flurry of note-taking. Cameras whirring. “He will be examining all options.”
The herd explodes.
“What data?”
“When will he decide?”
“What will you recommend?”
Keep your ego in control Don’t try to satisfy them, because they never will be satisfied. Don’t be seduced by the attention. You are not important. Your opinions are irrelevant. You have given them enough now. Walk away.
“That’s all for now.” I smile. “Have to get back to work.” I turn on my heel.
They scream questions. I’ve only whetted their appetite. They demand more. They roar, they yell, they bellow. But I keep walking. I feel rude, even guilty. I tell myself not to look back.
It’s a zoo. But who’s caged, them or me?
Then the flight home to Cambridge.
Adam and I hug when I come through the door, and he begins to cry. It’s been only a week, but it seems much longer. And Adam’s crying makes my eyes fill with tears. When Clare comes winging in from the kitchen and sees the two of us, she joins in the chorus. Sam runs down the stairs, to find the rest of his family a slobbering mess.
Maybe the four of us are too close. Maybe Adam needs to learn to be more independent of his father. Toughen up. If one week away can cause this kind of commotion, perhaps it’s a good thing that I’ll be absent even more often in weeks to come. It will give the boys a chance to separate.
That’s bullshit. I’m trying to rationalize my new job and the time it will take away from them. Adam isn’t crying just because I’ve been away for a week; he’s upset because he senses this is the start of many such weeks. And his feelings are perfectly appropriate. I feel the same way.
Ed Reich had to work almost seven days a week, including evenings. He worked his ass off selling cheap cotton dresses to factory workers, and he rarely had time for my sister and me. I missed him more than he’ll ever know. So when Adam was born I vowed to myself I’d be here for this family. Double when Sam came along. I got a teaching job that gave me the time I needed to be a father. I shared with Clare the responsibilities for getting up at night with them, changing their diapers, giving them baths. When they were toddlers I told them stories before bed and rubbed their backs until they fell asleep, and walked them to nursery school and stayed with them until they settled down. I’ve attended all their soccer games and baseball games, all their school plays and concerts, all the meetings with their teachers. But I haven’t done any of this just for them, or for Clare. I’ve done it for me too. Sure, I was ambitious, and hard-working. You might even say driven. Teaching, speaking, writing—a busy life. I was sometimes on the road. But I tried always to get home by bedtime.
The thought of leaving them for an all-consuming job makes me profoundly sad. In the public zoo, under the lights and amidst the microphones, I must be cool and professional. In the comfort of this private family zoo, I can let go and be me.
The problem can be traced to the Presidential Transition Act of 1963. It was the first time Congress authorized money to help incoming presidents prepare for office. Before then, the only real task between Election Day and Inauguration had been finding a cabinet. Policy came later. FDR didn’t have a clue what he’d do when he arrived in the Oval Office. His first official act was to order a pencil and a legal-size pad.
But now Presidential Transitions have become large efforts. This particular one occupies several floors in an office building on the main street of Little Rock and five more floors in an office building just south of Thomas Circle in Washington. All floors in both places are honeycombed with partitioned cubicles, makeshift desks, cardboard file cabinets, telephone extension cords, and newly installed jacks.
It has the chaotic, hyped feel of a campaign. But the campaign is over, and here task forces are examining each department and agency of the federal government; policy groups are sorting out every issue that the President-elect might face, foreign and domestic; message teams are assessing how various policies might be communicated to the public; political teams are analyzing the new Congress; constituency teams are delving into the special concerns of women, blue-collar men, labor unions, cities, others.
To the outside world it appears to be a massive exercise in purposive planning. Inside, it’s hell. I spend much of my days in meetings with one or more task forces or teams, or in meetings trying to coordinate their efforts. The day ends with a 9 P.M. meeting of a high-level council trying to coordinate all the coordination. Already the incipient Clinton administration has created a bureaucratic monster.
Two dubious things are being accomplished here. First, the effort is producing large piles of three-ring binders brimming with facts and options. If Bill were to start today and read continuously, he would not reach the end by the close of his first term in office. Second, hordes of campaign workers are kept busy. Thousands of twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings have descended on Washington—field organizers, precinct workers, advance teams, phone-bank volunteers—all with hopes of landing a job in the real Clinton bureaucracy. The one large feverish campaign to elect Bill Clinton president has now disintegrated into thousands of intensely personal campaigns to work for President Bill Clinton.
When not in meetings, I’m counseling job-seekers.
“Don’t worry No decision has been made on an assistant secretary for vocational education,” I reassure the deputy chair of the task force on the Department of Education, who has heard a rumor that key staffing decisions were made yesterday.
“Give me your résumé and I’ll make sure it gets to the right person,” I advise a mail-room assistant who has spent the year since graduating with honors from Smith College sorting envelopes and is now fearful of being left out in the cold.
“I’m sure you’ll get a response,” I reassure an antsy professor on leave from MIT who’s upset because he hasn’t yet received a response on the paper he sent the President-elect about macroeconomic policy for Western Europe.
Tensions are running high. Feelings are raw. Egos are bruised. Had there been no Presidential Transition Act—no expectation of such a massive effort—life would be far simpler. I could concentrate on how to translate Bill’s economic platform into concrete proposals, ready to go at the end of January.
But there’s a deeper problem with all this. Most people here have never worked in government. The sum total of their public experience is the Clinton-Gore campaign. And yet simply by virtue of their being here—lobbying for this position or that, sharing the latest gossip, making deals—they will become Bill Clinton’s subgovernment. They will fill every lower-level political appointment in departments and agencies. They will move into the White House. But governing is not campaigning. It’s about holding a public trust and getting a job done. To confuse the two could lead to some big mistakes.
“What do you want to do?” Bill asks casually, as if asking which brand of dishwasher I’d like to buy. We’re sitting on a couch in the Governor’s Mansion, sipping coffee. All around us, movers are packing boxes and crating furniture.
I knew this conversation was coming. Clare and I spoke on the phone last night.
“You have to make up your mind,” she counsels, with only the slightest hint of impatience in her voice. We’ve been over this ground before. “He’s going to ask you, and you have to decide. Do you want a top job in his administration or not?”
“What do you think?”
“It’s your decision.”
“Not just mine,” I say emphatically. “It will affect you too. And the boys.”
She pauses. “You know how much I detest that city. But if Bill really needs you, and you want to do it, and it’s a job you think can make a difference to people’s lives, then I’m okay. I can get a leave from the law school for a couple of years.” She pauses again, and then resumes, more softly. “I’d hate for you to pass this up and then wonder forever after if you made a mistake. And I’d hate for you to blame me.”
“I wouldn’t blame you,” I say in a whisper.
“Do it, Bob. If he offers you what you want, take it.”
“Okay, but it scares me,” I say.
“It should scare you. That’s rational,” she says, and laughs.
“But am I deceiving myself about what Bill and I can accomplish?”
“Probably,” she says with a smile in her voice.
“That’s not what I wanted to hear.”
She laughs again. Clare is skeptical about government. She has confidence in the relationships she builds, and in the webs of relationships that build a community. But she’s doubtful about the effectiveness of solutions that come from far above or outside.
We’ve talked about this for years. My argument is that some set of people is going to be in Washington making the big decisions, and it might as well be people with the right values. To give up on government is to cede it to those who are in it for the wrong reasons, or who care nothing about the underdogs in society.
Yet for all this, Clare remains a skeptic, not a cynic. “Bob,” she says, “maybe you can make a difference. It’s a risk worth taking.”
And so now Bill and I are sitting here, finally getting to it.
I tell him I’m not interested in heading the National Economic Council. The job needs someone who isn’t pushing any particular agenda or ideas—who can serve as an “honest broker” among Treasury, Office of Management and Budget, Council of Economic Advisers, the Trade Representative, Commerce, and Labor. Otherwise, every player will try to do end runs around the process. The job also needs someone content to remain relatively invisible. Otherwise, the other players won’t share information with him or her. On these two criteria, among all the registered Democrats in the United States Bill couldn’t find a worse candidate than me.
I suggest he consider Bob Rubin for the job. He’s been working with me on the economic transition. Even though he’s spent the last twenty-five years as an investment banker with Goldman, Sachs in New York, he seems genuinely concerned about the poor. He’s bright and good-natured, and also a bit shy and self-effacing.
“Then what would you be interested in?” Bill asks.
“Two possibilities,” I say boldly. “Secretary of Labor or chair of the Council of Economic Advisers.”
He nods. “Okay.” Then we resume talking about the economic transition and when the first budget will be ready. And then the conversation drifts to Boston and the New England Patriots.
That’s my job interview, I’m embarrassed by my audacity.
A phone call from someone who says he’s been asked to investigate me in case the President-elect wants to appoint me to high office. He’s a bit vague about who actually made the request. I’m already getting used to sentences delivered in the passive voice (“We have been asked to …” “It is necessary that …” “There is a sense that …”). It’s part of the way people talk in Washington. The passive voice conveniently avoids any direct attribution of responsibility.
When I arrive at the investigator’s home tonight, he offers me a drink and gets right to the point. He and two colleagues sit across from me, inquisition style. They are big men in gleaming starch-white shirts and dark suits.
“Our purpose is to discover any embarrassing item that might turn up in a confirmation hearing.” He smiles awkwardly.
“Anything I can do to help,” I chip. “Nothing to hide here.” I laugh lamely.
Third grade. Ronny Elliott and I have sawed almost clear through the large maple which holds Richard Merrick’s tree house. Three fathers—mine, Ronny’s, and Richard’s—sit somberly in our living room I’m grounded for a week.
“I expect this will be pretty routine,” he says. “We’ve already done a preliminary check and you’re fine.”
Kindergarten. I’ve just paid Holly Knox a nickel to do a somersault on the jungle gym so I can get a good peek at her underwear. She promises not to tell a soul, but she rats. Mrs. Scofield sends a note home, suggesting counseling.
“You’re pretty boring, as these things go,” says another member of the trio. They chuckle.
My host puts his drink down and looks at me intently. “We’re on your side,” he says. “We’re your team.” Silence. “If you can think of anything that, if revealed, might taint your confirmation, you probably should share it with us now.”
Miss Bouton’s Nursery School I’m terrified of the old biddy. I refuse to eat the bowl of mysterious mush she serves up for lunch. She asks me why. I tell her I’m not feeling well but that her food is delicious. She flies into a rage, telling me I’m a sarcastic little brat, and expels me on the spot. Mother is devastated.
“Can’t think of anything.”
“The late nineteen-sixties? That’s a tricky period for some people.”
Oakland Induction Center, August 1969. I’m scared. At four feet ten inches tall, I know I’m technically too short to be drafted, but I’ve heard rumors that the army is looking for tunnel rats small enough to flush the VC out of their caves. I’m standing in my underwear, back straight against the measure, when the examining sergeant issues his decision. “Sorry, son,” he says gravely. I’m too frightened to ask him whether he’s sorry that I’m going to Nam or sorry I’m not. He continues, “Maybe someday you’ll grow, and then you can serve your country.”
“Nothing immediately comes to mind.”
“If it does, give a call,” says my host, with a smile. “In the meantime, we do need to discuss this.”
He reaches under the coffee table and hands me a large black three-ring binder. “We did a computer search of all the negative things critics have written about your books over the years.”
It contains at least five hundred pages, single-spaced, indexed by year, cross-indexed by topic.
I hadn’t intended my books to be particularly provocative, but they turned out that way. Theological economists, committed to their own sacred beliefs, have been upset by them. Conservative theorists, bowing to their own gods, haven’t been particularly enthusiastic either. But the books have had some influence nonetheless. Even the President-elect is a fan, or so it seems. Every one of them sits on the bookshelf near his desk in the Mansion. When he last visited in Cambridge, he brought along a dog-eared copy of The Work of Nations, my most recent, filled with underlinings and marginal notes. Much of it found its way into “Putting People First.”
My host gently takes the binder out of my hands and places it on the coffee table between us. “Quite a collection,” he says, still smiling. “You’ll need to be ready to respond.” His two colleagues look at the volume, then up at me again, smiling politely and nodding in agreement.
“No problem,” I say. I try for humor: “And to think I accomplished all that in only fifteen years!” I laugh. The three of them continue to smile politely.
My host leans toward me. “You did much better than that.” He points to the label on the side of the black binder: Critics of Reich, Volume I.
I’d like to get a memo to Bill before Christmas, outlining his practical options for the federal budget—something he can really use. It’ll begin with what’s ahead if there’s no change in current policy: how fast the economy is likely to grow in the next five years; what the government will be spending on defense, health care (Medicare and Medicaid), Social Security, interest on the federal debt, public investments, and everything else (FBI, postal service, air-traffic control, and so on); how much of this spending will be paid for through tax revenues and Social Security payments; and the resulting deficit.
Then he can try out alternative scenarios. Say he wants to increase public investment by twenty percent over the next five years—a bare minimum—while cutting the deficit by half. In order to achieve these two objectives, how much would he have to cut from defense, from Medicare and Medicaid, or from the rest of the budget? By how much would he have to raise taxes? What are the various combinations? And what happens to these estimates if the economy grows slower than expected, or faster?
This isn’t rocket science. Maybe I can put all this into a simple computer program and show graphically the consequences of various choices. The real challenge is to get reliable estimates.
We’re trying. The economic team occupies a rabbit warren of rooms deep in transition headquarters, which can be located only if you start there and drop bread crumbs on the way out. In one room, Roger Altman, an investment banker, examines tax options; in another, Ira Magaziner, business consultant, examines the deficit (during the campaign, Ira had the most grandiose plans for government spending, so it seemed only fitting that he agree to take this assignment on); Larry Summers, lately of the World Bank, is focusing on health spending; Laura Tyson, from Berkeley, is examining investments; Bob Rubin, the other Wall Streeter whom I spoke to Bill about, is looking at overall growth estimates.
Gene Sperling and I share a cramped corner office. Gene is my officially designated deputy. In his mid-thirties, only a few inches taller than me, his pale face punctuated by round horn-rimmed glasses over wide eyes slightly crossed, Gene is perpetually in motion, working fifteen-hour days. No one else has nearly Gene’s command of the facts; no one knows as much about what Bill has committed himself to during the campaign. Gene is the lone Indian among a large number of chiefs.
When he was still in law school in the early 1980s, Gene was my summer research assistant. He worked his butt off, even though, as I carefully explained to him in advance, I didn’t have a penny to offer him. I subsequently made amends by getting him involved in the Dukakis campaign, then helping him land a job as chief of policy for Governor Mario Cuomo, and then pulling him into Bills campaign. He’s a whiz kid, but he’s also a slob. The office we share is a terrifying sea of paper—stacks of binders, piles of reports, great swells of campaign documents, pink phone messages, legal-size note papers taped to the walls. It’s a goddamn mess. Whatever I’m working on seems to vanish the moment I turn away, lost somewhere in the waves of Gene’s sea of paper.
“Gene, you see this?” I hold up a white piece of chalk.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m setting limits.” I draw a line down the center of the floor, extending up both walls on either side. “That side is yours.” I gesture. “This side is mine.”
“Okay, okay. I can take a hint.”
“Hint, nothing. I’m serious. Help me carry your mess over there.” Gene reluctantly carries the boxes and papers across to his side of the border, where the stacks quickly become twice as high as before. But at least I can see the floor on my half, and I have a clean desk to work on.
Later in the day Gene asks, “Any luck on the deficit estimates?”
“Not much. I’m seeing Darman tomorrow. Maybe I can pry them out of him.” Richard Darman is President Bush’s Director of Management and Budget.
“In preparation for that meeting you might want to take a look at these.” Gene totes over three large manuals from the Defense Department, plus a stack of Pentagon files, and plunks them down on my desk. “Good bedtime reading.”
“Thanks.” I begin leafing through the volumes, which will be useful.
Fifteen minutes later, Gene is back. “By the way, here’s a pretty good summary of the last Medicare and Medicaid Trustees report. The costs are skyrocketing. If we don’t get some control, we can kiss the rest of the budget good-bye.”
“Thanks.” I’m not paying attention. I’m still poring through the defense materials.
“By the way …” He returns with more files. “You’ll want to glance through these. OMB’s last midterm projections.” Plunk.
“Gene!”
“Wha’?”
“Your mess! It’s back on my side of the room!”
“Only the useful part. I promise I’ll keep the useless mess over here.” He cackles.
Dick Darman has a telephone next to his desk with a large panel of buttons on it.
“Each one of these is connected to a power center,” he explains, smiling proudly and running his fingers over the buttons. Darman has narrowly set eyes and a wide chin, which makes his face resemble a pear.
“That’s impressive.”
“I just work the phones here.” He leans back in his chair, pleased with himself.
“What about the cabinet? Are they power centers too?”
“Some of them. It depends. Mostly not. Treasury. Defense. State. A.G. Yeah, I have buttons for them too.”
He looks at me for a long instant, then leans forward as if about to tell me a secret. “They’re out of the loop.” He smiles broadly and proudly again, and points to his telephone buttons. “This is where the loop begins. This is the loop. Right here. OMB. This is where all the centers of power meet up. It’s power central.”
Rumor has it that the projected deficit is much bigger than advertised. “I understand the deficit will be about $350 billion by 1997,” I say. It’s a pure guess.
The smile vanishes. Darman sits up in his chair. “Yeah, about that. Bigger than we expected, actually.”
Darman has been in Washington for twelve years, beginning with Reagan, although not at this power center. He’s unpopular with right-wing Republicans who view him as being responsible for convincing Bush to raise taxes and make Bush’s lips unreadable. Darman’s predecessor here at OMB, David Stockman, is now on Wall Street.
For twelve years, the Republicans have perfected a strategy to shrink the size of the federal government. They could never have taken on public spending directly; too many of the programs were too popular. So they concocted a different plan: First, they cut taxes. They told the public that tax cuts would inspire so much entrepreneurial zeal that they would more than pay for themselves in new tax revenues. When that didn’t happen and the budget deficit ballooned, they changed the tune. They expressed outrage at fiscal irresponsibility. They called for massive deficit reductions. They talked about the importance of balancing the budget.
Reagan inherited a modest deficit ($59 billion in 1980) and a manageable debt ($914 billion). But by cutting taxes—mostly on the rich (the top rate fell from seventy percent to twenty-eight percent)—and by cranking up defense spending, he began running deficits of $200 billion a year “as far as the eye can see,” in Stockman’s memorable words. Democrats seeking more money for their favorite programs were all too happy to cooperate with him. Twelve years later, the debt is more than $4 trillion and the yearly deficit more than $300 billion. Now Republicans are demanding the deficit be reduced. And because a large portion of the American workforce is earning less than it did before and can’t afford higher taxes, the only realistic option for reducing the deficit is to cut spending. Presto! The strategy has worked brilliantly.
“I’d like to have your specific deficit estimate as soon as possible,” I say coolly.
“You’ll have it in days.” Darman grins, leaning back in his chair once again.
He evidently likes it here. But what exactly does he like? Being at power central?
The economic team meets with Bill at Blair House, across the street from the White House, where Bush still resides. I deliver the bad news on the budget. “The projected deficit is much bigger than we had estimated. By 1997 it will be $350 billion—$60 billion higher than we originally thought.”
Bill isn’t upset. In fact, he even seems buoyed by the challenge. “We certainly have our work cut out for us!” he says enthusiastically. At the end of the meeting he virtually leaps out of his chair.
I’m concerned, but not about the size of the deficit. After all, the whole damn federal budget document is almost meaningless—an imperfect accounting device. It excludes future liabilities like federal pensions and veterans’ benefits, and it also excludes assets like the value of the federal government’s landholdings, buildings, and facilities.
Worst of all, it treats all spending the same—whether a crop subsidy to a rich farmer or college aid to a poor kid. But the latter isn’t really “spending” at all. It’s an investment in the future productivity of that child, and of the nation. Borrowing money to pay off wealthy farmers doesn’t make sense. It won’t make America as a whole richer in future years. But going into debt in order to help our people become better educated and more productive is entirely reasonable. No sane business executive would fail to borrow money in order to make a profitable investment like this. The average family understands the difference between investing thousands of dollars in a child’s college education and spending the same amount on an around-the-world luxury-liner cruise for Mom and Dad.
The GI Bill made college affordable to a whole generation of returning World War II veterans and propelled much of the economic growth of the 1950s and beyond. The expense was justifiable, even though the federal deficit was a much larger percentage of the national output then than it is now.
My real concern is that the deficit is already framing our discussions about what we want to accomplish in the future. Getting the deficit “under control” is becoming the most important measure of success. We discuss it for hours: How big is the deficit likely to be five years from now if nothing is done to shrink it? How much should it shrink? What mix of spending cuts and tax increases is necessary to do the job? We’re building our own conceptual prison.
The deficit has to be cut, surely. But the deficit isn’t the core problern. The problem is that the earnings of half our workforce have been stagnant or declining for years. And there’s no simple link between the deficit going up and wages going down. Wall Street bankers and Federal Reserve members would have us believe there is, but their motives are far from pure. They want more than anything in the world to eliminate inflation. This is what the rich (who lend their money and bear the risk of inflation) have always wanted. Borrowers rarely mind some inflation. The bankers argue with straight faces that a lower deficit leads to more private savings, that more savings result in more capital investment, that more capital investment means higher productivity, and that higher productivity translates, as night follows day, into higher wages.
But every link in their chain is fragile. Private savings now travel at lightning speed to the ends of the earth in search of profits. And those savings can yield good profits either where labor costs are very low or where skills are very high. Global investors may be indifferent to the choice, but our nation can’t be. Our future living standard depends on competing for global capital by building our skills.
That should have been the central issue for todays Blair House meeting: how to reallocate public spending away from todays expenditures on defense and on wealthy beneficiaries of all sorts of government largesse (Social Security, Medicare, farm price supports, and so on) and toward investments in our future productivity. And how to shift private spending that way too: how best to encourage companies to invest in the skills of their workers.
I’m as guilty as anyone. More guilty. After all, I’m supposed to be in charge of this process. I could have offered a different framework for todays discussion. Instead of focusing solely on future deficits, I should have separated public spending from public investing. I should have charted the current path of public investments over the next five years, and suggested higher investment goals. Then we could have spent our time talking about how to reduce non-investment spending while meeting those goals. I didn’t do it. I succumbed to the deficit obsession.
Where is the obsession coming from? The press has been hounding us, but why is the press so interested in the deficit now, when the topic was virtually ignored during the dozen years when it ballooned? Surely Ross Perot’s campaign contributed to the obsession—he and his inane little chart. And the prolonged recession seemed proof enough of the havoc that a big deficit can wreak on an economy.
But I think the obsession has deeper roots. The deficit has become a symbol of a government that seems out of control at the very time when large numbers of people are feeling they have less and less control over their lives. The government’s failure to balance its checkbook seems particularly galling to an American public having trouble balancing its own family checkbook.
We began with the wrong set of questions today. I allowed us to start building that conceptual prison. Once we treat all public spending as the same and worry only that it reduces the amount left over for “real” investment by the private sector, we run the risk of losing sight of the larger picture. The conceptual prison limits our view, and I fear that none of us—not even the President-elect—will be able to escape.
The first pages of Bill’s economic plan, “Putting People First,” proclaimed: “Our national economic strategy puts people first by investing more than $50 billion each year for the next four years to put America back to work—the most dramatic economic growth program since the Second World War. Our strategy recognizes that the only way to lay the foundation for renewed American prosperity is to spur both public and private investment. To reclaim our future, we must strive to close both the budget deficit and the investment gap. These investments will create millions of high-wage jobs.… They will also help move people from welfare to work and provide lifetime learning.”
I want to believe that this is the mandate Bill was elected on, that this is what America wants and expects from us. But if reducing the deficit takes overwhelming precedence, we may be forced to scale back on public investments.
Bill formally announces my nomination as Secretary of Labor today, along with three other nominations. It occurs in a grand hall within the old State House.
Just before we march out onto the stage, Bill turns toward me and grins. “Did you ever think you and I would be here?”
Its the same question he asked me twenty-four years ago when we were steaming toward Europe, in precisely the same words.
“No,” I answer, truthfully, as I did then.
He marches out first. Donna Shalala, Carol Browner, Laura Tyson, and I parade behind. He stands at the podium and we stand beside him like prize winners about to receive our awards. The room is jammed with cameras and reporters. The lights are blinding and hot.
Bill introduces each of us one by one, and steps aside so we can make little acceptance speeches. When it’s my turn, he says a few nice things (Gene had supplied the sentences), beckons to me, and I approach the podium.
Then I realize there’s a problem. Bill uses a podium that’s up to his chest, but it’s up to my nose. There’s no time to find something to stand on.
I peer out over the top. The assembled reporters seem embarrassed by my plight. I imagine millions of people sitting in their living rooms watching television, wondering what the bottom half of my face looks like.
“Modesty aside,” I begin, “I’ve known for months that I was on Bill Clintons shortlist.”
The reporters hoot.
Four hours later, transition headquarters is empty. I find a paper sign taped to the door of the room I share with Gene, announcing in big black Magic Marker letters: “Office of the Secretary of Labor.” Inside, another paper sign tacked on my wooden chair: “Chair of the Secretary of Labor.” And on the desk: “Desk of the Secretary of Labor.” And so on, all over the room: on the computer, the file cabinet, the telephone, the pencil sharpener, the fax machine, the wastebasket, the room’s single window. And even more signs along the hallway on the far side of the office. “The Walls Which the Secretary of Labor Passes on His Way to the John.” Culminating in a sign taped to the back of the porcelain: “The Secretary of Labor’s Urinal.”
When I return to the room, Gene and others are waiting with loud cheers and a bottle of champagne. Late tonight, it hits me. Secretary of Labor? Bill and I barely discussed the position, but I know what I want to do with it: Focus like a laser beam on jobs and incomes. Make it easier for workers to upgrade their skills. Get companies to invest in their employees. Raise the minimum wage. Awaken people to the widening inequalities of income and wealth in this country, and the urgency of doing something about it.
But what the hell do I know about managing a huge department of government? They tell me that the Labor Department has a budget of $35 billion a year and more than 18,000 employees. At Harvard, I managed half the time of one secretary.
Clare phones. She and the boys watched the announcement on television.
“You looked very short,” she says.
“I am very short.”
She laughs. “I mean, compared to Bill you looked even shorter than usual. When you were at the podium he was standing just behind you. Your head was completely surrounded by his belly.”
She’s happy for me, but I hear the slight stress in her voice. She doesn’t want to move to Washington. But I don’t think that’s it. She’s worried about me—about what this job will do to me, about whether I’ll survive.
“Take care of yourself,” she says just before hanging up. “You’re a cabinet secretary now. It’s a dangerous job.”
“Dangerous? Don’t be silly. I have a security detail.”
Just before I headed off last weekend, a journalist friend told us if you prick a finger in Washington the sharks will bite off your arm.
“You know what I mean. You prick your finger …” Her voice trails off.
“Too small,” I say. “The sharks aren’t interested.”
Hopefulness everywhere, and not just because it’s the season to be jolly.
The copilot of the plane back to Boston, as I exit: “Good luck to you and Mr. Clinton!”
The cabdriver from the airport: “We’re counting on you guys.”
A fast-food worker at a McDonald’s drive-thru: “You’re gonna make a big difference, you and Clinton, for the ordinary people like me.”
Shopping for gifts at Copley Plaza, a half-dozen or so well-wishes from the anonymous crowds: “Good luck!” “We’re on your side!” “Stick up for the little guy, Mr. Secretary!” Smiles. Handshakes. A few fists in the air.
It’s both comforting and alarming. How can we possibly fail with so much goodwill behind us? But how can we possibly succeed with expectations so high?
Tonight, as I tuck Sam in, he stares up at me and asks, “You’re really going to help people, aren’t you, Dad?”
“I hope so, Sam.”
“You’re going to help people get good jobs. That’s what Mommy says.” “I’ll try.”
“I’m glad you’re in Bill Clinton’s cabinet, Dad.”
Presidential campaigns are built on hope. Every four years the nation dips into its bottomless well of optimism. Our quadrennial amnesia prevails. We forget that only four years before we expected the last guy to cure the ills of our society and lead us to the promised land, and how disappointed we were when we discovered that he was just a human being struggling to do a difficult job (designed by the Founding Fathers to be a difficult job), incapable of delivering the idealized society promised at election time.
A retired newspaper editor once told me that there were just two stories in American life, told over and over again under many different headlines: Oh, the wonder of it! and Oh, the shame of it!, one following automatically upon the other with an intensity matched only by the intensity of its opposite, the depth of disillusionment proportional to the height of initial wonderment. Presidential politics, in particular, is a national roller coaster ridden compulsively—hopes soaring, disappointment plunging.
Bill has aroused especially high hopes, even with just forty-three percent of the vote. He arrives at a time when most Americans are worried about their jobs, their wages, their futures, and their kids’ futures—worried that the American Dream of upward mobility may be just a dream. He promises change.
With the new year dawning and the new presidency weeks away, the nation suspends cynicism and gives in to excitement. I feel it. Adam and Sam are infected by it. Even Clare shares it. I’m entering into something both magnificent and terrifying. Can we give working people and the poor a new chance to make it? Can we turn around the economy, and thereby erase some of the anger and cynicism that clouds this country?
Yet I fear what the old newspaper editor told me. Oh, the wonder; oh, the shame. I feel as though I’m about to have a hell of a ride.