Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, April 6, 1993 TAG: 9304060306
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LLOYD GROVE THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long
WHEN SENATOR BROKE RANKS, CLINTON TEAM PLAYED ROUGH
The all-out war between Sen. Richard Shelby and the White House began with three little words.They were uttered by the Alabama Democrat immediately after the leader of his party, President Clinton, unveiled his economic plan to Congress. They were uttered despite a White House plea for Democrats to give Clinton three days' grace before criticizing the plan. Shelby told reporters waiting in the Capitol's Statuary Hall: "The taxman cometh."
That was six weeks ago - before Shelby publicly humiliated the vice president, before the White House retaliated by moving federal jobs out of Alabama, before Shelby answered by voting consistently against Clinton's program, and before the White House struck back by denying Shelby extra tickets to a South Lawn ceremony honoring his alma mater's championship football team.
Shelby, who may be the first Democrat to feel the new president's wrath, has shown no signs of buckling under these White House reprisals, both grave and petty. On Friday, before heading to Alabama for the weekend, he was the lone Democrat to vote to let Senate Republicans continue their filibuster of Clinton's $16.3 billion economic stimulus package.
"What are they going to do to me?" Shelby asked during an interview. "Are they going to threaten me? That doesn't get them anywhere. Or do they want to work with me on some issues?"
For the moment, Clinton & Co. don't want to work with Shelby. They don't even want to persuade him. They simply want to punish him - mainly by relocating more than 90 jobs in a $375 million program of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration from the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., to the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
What's more, they want every Democrat to know that Shelby is being punished - and understand the consequences of messing with Clinton.
Usually such disputes are handled discreetly, and few outsiders ever hear about them until long after they are resolved. But half a dozen White House officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, were eager and even anxious to spread the word of Shelby's predicament as they strained against a recalcitrant Senate to enact the first major legislation of the new administration.
The incident provides a window on the workings of the Clinton White House, but the strategy of publicizing Shelby's punishment is also fraught with risk.
"You've got to make it stick," said a senior White House aide. "You do not fail on something as publicized as this." The episode is Clinton's first foray into the practice of lobbying by stick instead of carrot, a technique honed to perfection by President Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s and seldom employed as expertly since.
"Lyndon Johnson called [Sen.] Harry Byrd [D-Va.] down to the White House because he was resisting the civil rights bill," recalled Sen. Dale Bumpers, D-Ark., citing one example. "He said, `You know, Harry, [Defense Secretary Robert] McNamara says we got to close that Norfolk naval base down there, and I don't much want to do it. . . .' And Harry Byrd couldn't wait to get back over to the Senate and vote for the civil rights bill."
Bumpers added that he couldn't tell whether the White House treatment of Shelby would produce the desired result. "Sometimes it causes a senator to dig his heels in deeper, because he feels discriminated against for doing something he really believes in," he said. "But I think more often . . . it's pretty effective."
Another observer, veteran corporate lobbyist Tom Korologos, said his soundings of senators suggest that "they've got to be petrified with the White House playing this kind of shock-treatment game." Korologos, who used similarly tough tactics as a White House lobbyist for Richard Nixon, added: "Clinton's better than Nixon. I give these guys six months before they have a team of plumbers. Pretty soon they'll be at the Watergate. Seriously, they're playing hardball and I admire them."
The episode began on Feb. 18, when Vice President Gore invited Shelby to his office in the Capitol for an afternoon one-on-one. Clinton aides had seen Shelby's "taxman cometh" line in reports of congressional reaction to the president's speech the night before, and considered it both damaging and disloyal, especially in light of the White House request that Democrats hold their fire.
Shelby said in an interview last week that he was unaware of the plea, but that knowing wouldn't have made a difference. "I hope no one in the Senate would feel like they had a gag order on them about what they could say or not, or when they could say it or not."
Gore, who had worked during the budget planning process to help Shelby protect NASA's space station - a project potentially worth billions of dollars to the Alabama economy - hoped to discover what might induce his former colleague to support the Clinton plan. But Shelby had other ideas.
His press secretary, Tricia Primrose, ordered up a television camera from the Senate Democratic Policy Committee and notified all 19 Alabama television stations that video of the Shelby-Gore meeting would be transmitted that evening by satellite. A network pool camera also was included in the pre-meeting photo opportunity in Gore's office.
As the two men posed for the cameras, someone asked Shelby's reaction to the Clinton program. "It's high on taxes, low on [spending] cuts," Shelby replied, appearing to lecture a clearly surprised and embarrassed Gore under the bright video lights. The clip of Shelby's attack was widely carried in Alabama, and prominently featured on the "NBC Nightly News."
Gore was outraged, as were Clinton and members of the White House staff. But Shelby makes no apologies.
"I never intended to embarrass anyone, including Al Gore," said the senator, who was re-elected in 1992 with 66 percent of the vote, 25 points ahead of the second-place Clinton-Gore ticket in Alabama. "Obviously, Al took it that way. But if he's that sensitive about things after being in politics. . . . My goodness!"
The White House began plotting its response that very night, on the theory that such insubordination could not go unanswered.
"This is a `Mack-Clinton special,' " said a senior White House adviser, referring to the president and White House Chief of Staff Thomas "Mack" McLarty. "This wasn't driven by passion - these guys do not believe in letting emotion cloud judgment," the adviser went on. "It was a very deliberate, considered move to advance the president's political agenda. . . . As the saying goes, `Revenge is a dish best served cold.' "