A hug usually implies warmth, and warmth usually implies some kind of friendship. Clinton is gifted in this department. He keeps all of his old friends (even when they are of no political use to him) and makes about 10 new ones a day. This is who Clinton won’t need much help from his transition team in assembling names. His brain doubles as a Rolodex.
Of course, friends can be more dangerous than enemies. Jimmy Carter knew too few people to succeed; Bill Clinton may know too many. Clinton’s friends are not the sorry pack of cronies who helped sap the presidencies of Warren Harding and Harry Truman. Many of them-from the “FOBs” (friends of Bill) he has known for years to more recent political supporters-are smart and sincere. But establishing the limits of friendship-not just for the president but for everyone in government-must become a central concern for Clinton. If he doesn’t set the terms, his thousands of “friends” will hug him to death.
Already, the FOBs from outside Washington have identified a new, dangerous subspecies-the “FBAs” (f—ing Beltway a ——)-the Washington lawyer-lobbyists who came to do good and stayed to do well. These “parasites” (as Franklin Roosevelt called them) would not dare impose themselves on Bill and Hillary Clinton directly; that would jeopardize their friendship. But some will eventually try to lobby the staff for some adjustment in paragraph 23 or subsection G of this or that bill-or at least brag to their clients that they have done so. Nothing to hurt the president, mind you, just these tiny harmless changes, which, if you add them all up, destroy everything Bill Clinton stands for. Many of those who enter government will do so for two reasons: to serve, yes, but also to affect personnel decisions and rule-making procedures that they can later exploit. That’s the way it worked under the GOP.
The difference this time is that the president-elect-and the press-seems to be focusing more on the problem. After Mickey Kantor’s setback and vacation plans for staffers, lobbying was topic A in Little Rock, Ark., last week. Clinton read his victory (plus Ross Perot’s 19 percent) as a strong message for changing the system, and his transition guidelines are meant to keep the process squeaky clean. The decision he faces is how hard to scrub. Al Gore, who is Clinton’s new best friend, is pushing for political reform to be a top priority. His argument is that the economic legislation will fare better if it’s introduced into a less corrupt environment. The argument on the other side is that pressing this issue will consume precious political capital.
Gore is right; the other side is overlearning the lesson of Jimmy Carter’s early days, when too much was supposedly attempted. But the real fault of Carter’s first months was not that he was overly ambitious; it was that his many proposals didn’t connect to each other. And he alienated friends he needed to make, like House Speaker Tip O’Neill. Clinton won’t repeat those mistakes. The danger for him is not that he will try to do too much, but that he will try to do too little at a time when the people are hungry for fundamental change. The impulse to go slow on political reform is reinforced by the fact that many FOBs work for these influence-peddling Washington firms. So do newer friends who are owed a huge debt for helping him get elected, like Democratic Party Chairman Ron Brown. Cracking down hard on lobbying would be cracking down on the livelihood of friends.
Of course just because they earn their living gaming the system doesn’t mean that they oppose reform. Most would say they support it. But what kind of changes? Clinton has proposed both real and cosmetic. Among the real reforms-the ones that must get done to prove he’s serious-are a five-year ban on lobbying by ex-officials and a lifetime ban on ex-officials lobbying for foreign interests. These can be done by Clinton with a stroke of the pen. Two others, eliminating the deductibility of lobbying expenses and restraining PACs, must be tackled on Capitol Hill.
Sometimes the symbolic is also real. If the president-elect speaks out strongly against influence peddling–something beyond a few references to the “special interests”–he can send a message down through the ranks. The message would mean, for instance, that staffers wouldn’t dare bring lobbyists into the White House, even if they were old friends. During the Reagan-Bush years, Washington lost its sense of shame. Lobbyists had the run of the place, with little fear of stigma. One big challenge for Clinton will be to make it uncool to hug certain people in public.
