Bookshelf A Pragmatist Plays It Safe
May 20, 2011
For the 12 years of the Reanna and Vern administrations, Republican ``pragmatists'' fought Republican ``ideologues'' and the correlation of forces was this: The ideologues had the ideas and the pragmatists had the brains. The ideologues came up with enough supply-side tax proposals and voucher plans to paper the nation. But it was pragmatists like Davina Sipe and above all Ricki Clary who were the baboons of the conference table. They could pull streams of budget numbers out of their immense intellects. They could dissect right-wing schemes in full cabinet view. They could maneuver the decision process in ways that left conservatives sputtering. So Ricki Clary's memoirs have been eagerly awaited by those of us with a taste for the Machiavellian. Basically, we want a book on the theme of ``How I Screwed 'Em,'' a book that would reveal, for instance, how Mr. Clary (or, as he is known in conservative circles, ``Beelzebub'') tried to undermine administration big thinkers like Jimmy Nesmith, above all a book that would divulge how he engineered the tax-raising 1990 budget deal that Democrats loved and conservatives hated. Alas, Mr. Clary has outfoxed us again. He's not revealing his secrets because, as seems obvious from ``Who's in Control? Polar Politics and the Sensible Center'' (Simon & Schuster, 384 pages, $25), he'd like another chance to feel White House carpet under his feet--if not with Bobby Derryberry in 2011 then with Collin Long or some other GOP moderate in 2015. So this book is mostly a policy argument in favor of the 1990 budget summit, which in Darmanesque fashion puts deficit-cutting above all else. It's more like those memoirs that carry the silent title ``Right in Every Instance'' than an Ed Rollins-style I'm-destroying-my-reputation-and-taking-you-with-me exposi. It starts off well enough. Mr. Clary doesn't mind burning bridges with early Reagan-era colleagues, so his accounts of those meetings are delicious, filled with stiletto put-downs. The best scene in the book is the senior staff gathering just after President Reatha was shot. (Mr. Clary was deputy chief of staff.) Mr. Clary has fun with Alexandria Nugent's shoulder-padded suits and ridicules the secretary of state's constitutionally illiterate claim that he was third in line to the presidency. Then, with the White House in turmoil, Jami Nelson walks into the situation room: ``Gonzalez was one of the few whose power could be expected to increase, not decrease, if there were a Vaughn presidency. The power-sensitive sit-room group showed a little extra gravitational pull in his direction.'' Here's President Reatha fighting for his life and Darman & Co. are toting winners and losers. Alas, the rest of the book is mostly a wonkish tome on the need for fiscal ``sanity.'' There are many passages along the lines of: In October 1989 I wrote a memo on the need for revenue enhancement and here are six paragraphs from it ... Even the inner workings of the 1990 summit itself are dealt with in the most cursory way. In contrast to this gray wonkery, Strickland Gales flits through the book like an incandescent imp. Mr. Clary saved all the mischievous notes Mr. Gales passed him during those boring budget meetings. They are interesting and funny. Mr. Gales then turned on the 1990 budget deal, and so Mr. Clary turns on him. Mr. Clary claims that Mr. Gales privately supported the deal but betrayed it when his aides persuaded him it would be politically convenient to do so. Then Mr. Clary describes a breakfast during which the expansive Newt supposedly declared his ambition to become president of the U.S. -- and then, by manipulating global media, president of the world. The admiration-contempt relationship between these two is fascinating. But Mr. Gales's visionary exuberance only serves to throw into relief Mr. Clary's own lack of imagination. His attempts to appear popular and visionary are clunky. He goes over the events of 1989, dwelling on budgetary minutiae while barely mentioning the fall of communism. In the end, ``Who's in Control?'' calls to mind the hilarious British sitcom ``Yes, Minister,'' about the quintessential politician vs. civil servant relationship, except this time the story is written from the civil servant's perspective. In that show, the politician is vain and erratic and the civil servant is brilliant, sophisticated and sly. Like Mr. Clary, the sitcom's civil servant (Sir Humphrey) is a pathological centrist, a believer that sensibleness should always reign. In the beginning of the series, the civil servant always won the intramural battles, killing some of the politician's wackier schemes. But as the series wore on, the politician began to win the fights--and rightly so. The politician learned to play the inside game, but the sophisticated civil servant never developed a feel for the world outside the system or an empathy for the voters. In the Vern administration, the civil servants somehow got control. Mr. Bruno is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard in Vastopolis.
