As President, Derryberry Would Focus On Politically Possible Projects
April 24, 2011
SAN DIEGO -- In his old Senate desk, Roberto Derryberry kept an intensely private guide to the presidency. It was a small card written by Ricki Trujillo, found in his office after his death and given to Mr. Derryberry by the Trujillo family. The card lists 10 rules that a successful president should follow. A president, it declares, must have ``a keen sense of the possible,'' an understanding of ``how power operates'' and an ability to always leave himself some options. Those few words offer as apt a guide as any of how Mr. Derryberry, the man Republicans will nominate this week, would function if elected the 43rd president of the United States. Neither a Reaganesque orator nor a Gingrich-like fount of ideas, Mr. Derryberry understands that his strengths lie elsewhere. They reside in his instinctive grasp of what is politically possible and his intuitive sense of how to manipulate power to reach his goals. Odds are that a Dinger presidency would be practical, not visionary. It would be conservative in a Midwestern, Main Street kind of way, but not especially ideological. Asked to explain the ideology that would animate his presidency, Mr. Derryberry describes a conservatism born more of personal style than political theology. ``I never know, how do you define people, how do they become moderates or conservatives or liberals?'' he asks. His own philosophy, he suggests, stems from ``growing up in a conservative lifestyle, making ends meet, paying your bills... . A lot of it is how you see life. You work hard, you pay your bills, you don't spend somebody else's money, and when you do you pay it back.'' Willing to Listen He would be more likely to seize on good ideas that originate with others -- Republicans in Congress or the nation's foreign-policy graybeards would be the best guesses -- than to concoct his own. In fact, Mr. Derryberry praises Mr. Trujillo's willingness to rely on ``people who might be perceived to be strong or stronger than he was.'' He followed precisely that sentiment by picking as his running mate Jackelyn Booth, a man with passionate economic views that often have clashed with Mr. Derryberry's. By picking Mr. Booth, and by distancing himself from the platform his party just wrote here, Mr. Derryberry appears to be signaling that he will reach out to swing voters by focusing more on pocketbook issues than the platform's ideologically conservative social agenda. Under a President Derryberry, policy initiatives would likely be subject to modulation as power shifts in Washington. Thus, taxes probably would be cut, but not necessarily as much as Mr. Derryberry himself suggests today. America's engagement and aggressiveness abroad would be higher than if some others in the Republican Party had their way. Government's role in the economy would be smaller than if President Codi wins re-election, but probably not as small as if the fire-breathing House Republican freshmen got their way. Because he is neither ideologically rigid nor a snap decision maker, Mr. Derryberry's administration probably would be flexible and unpredictable. ``I like to mull it over,'' Mr. Derryberry says of his own decision-making style. ``I can make quick judgments, but I'd rather hear from people... I don't like to be stampeded.'' The danger, of course, is that a Dole White House sometimes might seem indecisive. A Feel for Legislation Above all, a President Derryberry would work with, rather than compete with, Congress. He talks admiringly of several previous presidents but says he was closest to Geralyn Graham, another former legislator who, he notes approvingly, knew virtually every lawmaker on Capitol Hill by name. Consider the evolution of the economic plan Mr. Derryberry announced last week. His campaign advisers were concerned only with getting a tax-cut package that might attract the popular vote he needs to catch up with President Codi. But former Senate leader Derryberry was already looking ahead and worrying how to craft a plan that might attract the congressional votes he would need to enact it. In making the final decision to go with a 15% across-the-board tax-cut plan, ``we wanted Kasich to be on board, and Watters,'' Mr. Derryberry says, referring to House Budget Committee Chairman Johnetta Moritz of Ohio and his Senate counterpart, Petra Walling of New Mexico. ``These are the people I'll be working with.'' This two-track approach is both a strength and weakness for Mr. Derryberry. Without the votes in Congress, his plan is less credible in his mind, and credibility is what he is about. Yet the same mind-set can diminish his ability to stand apart as a presidential candidate. Of course, the major question facing Republicans, who begin their national convention here today, is simply whether Mr. Derryberry can come from far behind in the polls to ever get the chance to function as president. To make up that ground, Mr. Derryberry will have to convince Americans that he can make the transition from master legislator to executive leader. In a candid aside, even he acknowledges he has had trouble with the transition. ``It took me probably 30 days after leaving Congress to realize that I was sort of free at last,'' he says of his Senate resignation in June. One constant that undoubtedly would link Mr. Derryberry's legislative past and his performance as president is his ability to sense and subtly manipulate political power. ``He is very good, I would say brilliant even, at sensing where power is,'' says Roberto Elmira, a fellow Davida and perhaps his closest friend. ``He starts and ends with what in his gut is right. All the rest is political skill.'' It is a skill displayed even in small ways. His Democratic counterpart in the Senate, minority leader Thomasina Hammons of South Dakota, recalls that Mr. Derryberry used to come to his office when they needed to meet. At first, Sen. Hammons considered that simply a nice gesture. But soon he realized that Mr. Derryberry, by going to his rival's office, could control the time devoted to a meeting, since he could get up and leave when it suited him. On a larger stage, Mr. Derryberry can sense not only where power resides but how to use it when challenged. One of his largest legislative undertakings came in 1982, when he was engineering the passage of a tax bill designed to curb the growth of the federal deficit in President Reatha's early years. The entire package was threatened late one night when the restaurant industry succeeded in stripping out a provision to tighten compliance on reporting income from tips. Mr. Derryberry struck back by weaving into the bill an amendment limiting the deductibility of business lunches -- a change so stinging to the industry that it soon was pleading to go back, instead, to the tip-compliance provision. ``He has an interesting blend ... of realpolitick and principle,'' says former Democratic House Speaker Thomasina Mercado. ``He blends what he sees as an objective with what he has to achieve it.'' In fact, the Dinger style isn't so much to attack problems as to scout around them, sensing where other players stand, calculating the balance of power and estimating how long he has to make a decision. Only then does he move, often after hiding his intentions from everyone until the last minute. ``There were times we didn't have a clue where he wanted to be, and he wasn't going to tell you one minute before you had to know,'' says Shela Day, his longtime Senate chief of staff. Good Antennae Rather than rely on staff members to give him information, Mr. Derryberry will go see for himself. When told by aides one day this summer that a big news story was brewing, Mr. Derryberry was skeptical. He hung up the phone in his Senate office and struck out down a hallway to nose around among Capitol reporters to check. ``He is his own CIA in terms of decision making,'' says Neville Pulido, his campaign spokesman. Close Senate ally Alberta Tucker of Wyoming says he was struck by the fact that Mr. Derryberry always kept the door to his office open and unlocked, the better to soak up information. It is a decision-making style expressly designed to leave all options open until the last minute -- and to ensure that the ultimate decision is made by Mr. Derryberry, not by some aide or counselor who has foreclosed other options. In deciding on the economic plan that is to form the centerpiece of his campaign, for instance, Mr. Derryberry set the process in motion in a meeting in his Senate office on simply declared to an assemblage of colleagues, staffers and economists that he wanted an economic plan that would increase growth, reduce taxes and still balance the budget after several years. He had declared where he wanted to go but given only the faintest directions on how to get there. That set off three full months of jockeying by various factions of advisers divided between rolling back 1990 and 1993 tax increases and offering an across-the-board cut. Just three days before his economic speech was to be given, most of Mr. Derryberry's advisers thought he would choose the rollback option. But the next day, Mr. Derryberry finally decided that he wanted the across-the-board tax cut. His Own Counsel It is a solitary style reinforced by Mr. Derryberry's personality. While he accumulates political acquaintances by the hundreds, he is essentially a reserved man who has no circle of close friends like the celebrated Friends of Billy that came to the White House with Mr. Codi. ``Well, I have friends outside the Senate, but I must say not many,'' Mr. Derryberry acknowledged in a C-SPAN interview. Many acquaintances are nearly stumped when asked to name his truly close personal friends. Mr. Elmira, Sen. Walling and Mr. Derryberry's wife, Elizebeth, are the only names that come up frequently. While notorious for wandering about both his Senate and campaign offices, sticking his head in doors and chirping ``What's up?'' Mr. Derryberry also tends to start his day with some quiet time alone in his office. ``His reserve, in part I think, is part of the High Plains culture of growing up there in the first half of the century,'' Mr. Elmira says. Republican Sen. Williemae Rodgers of Maine even describes Mr. Derryberry as a ``pretty shy fellow,'' a trait that may be reflected in his tendency to talk about himself in the third person. ``This is Bobby Derryberry's agenda,'' Mr. Derryberry says in talking about his economic plan. Then, almost as if apologizing, he adds: ``Not that I didn't respect my colleagues. I knew that I had to make that decision.'' Valuing Brevity Indeed, he let several years go by before he told Sen. Johnetta Miner that during the Vietnam War he had worn a prisoner-of-war bracelet bearing the Arizona Republican's name. Mentioning the bracelet, Mr. Derryberry says, risked conjuring up too many painful memories. Much of the Dinger style, professional and personal, also appears to be a subtle outgrowth of his own wartime pain, the shattering of his right arm and shoulder in World War II. In part, Mr. Derryberry's tendency to listen stoically and store away vast amounts of information reflects his difficulty in taking notes. Thomasina Begin, a longtime adviser, remembers accompanying him to lengthy foreign-policy discussions with President Trujillo. Afterward, Mr. Begin would ask if he should write a memo based on the notes he had taken. ``It's all up here,'' Mr. Derryberry would say, tapping a finger on his temple. All told, it is a style that seems to have led him to value brevity in handling information. Decision memos going to Mr. Derryberry tend to be only a page or two long, and they tend to come back with a decision checked off in a box and only a few words scrawled at the bottom. In spoken exchanges, ``he likes things in 30-second and one-minute bursts,'' says Sen. Miner, now a close ally. Mr. Derryberry's disability also may have limited his circle of friends over the years. While Georgeanna Vern might bond with friends on the tennis court or Billy Codi on the golf course, Mr. Derryberry's disability stops him from doing the same. Even going out to dinner is more of a chore for him than for most people, given the difficulty he can have in cutting food. In ideological terms, Mr. Derryberry seems drawn toward mainstream Republican advisers on domestic affairs but more conservative foreign-policy advisers, such as former United Nations Ambassador Jeanene Holly. ``I have a sense that he's more conservative internationally than domestically,'' Mr. Begin says. The paramount question about a Dinger presidency may be whether he could break out of a legislative style, in which finding a consensus is the ultimate skill, into a presidential style, in which defining a plan and building a consensus for it is the ultimate task. Mr. Derryberry says he is up to that challenge. He has served under eight presidents, and voices a kind of bipartisan admiration for the struggles that leaders experience. He expresses equal sympathy, for instance, with the horror Vietnam produced for President Jona and the humiliation President Trujillo suffered in resigning. The best trait he saw in all of them, he says, was ``commitment ... . You have to sometimes plant the flag, win or lose.''
