ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, March 31, 1997 TAG: 9703310078
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
The former labor secretary recalls his struggles during first term of the Clinton administration.
Midway through President Clinton's first term, Labor Secretary Robert Reich found himself stuck in the dog door.
Left without a key to his Washington house when his wife, Clare, was moving the family back to Cambridge, Mass., Reich screwed himself into the opening ``like a light bulb into a socket.''
At 4-foot-10, he thought he could fit. He got jammed. So he had to reverse course to ``twist myself back out.''
The maneuver might be a metaphor for Reich's struggle in Clinton's first four presidential years to move the administration's agenda toward narrowing the gap between rich and poor. He left after getting stuck at every turn.
Reich tells the tale in ``Locked in the Cabinet,'' a memoir to be published April 25 by Alfred A. Knopf.
``I came face to face with all I detest in American politics,'' writes Reich, whose nemesis was Dick Morris, the president's political adviser who resigned in disgrace. ``Morris' craft is the antithesis of leadership. Leaders focus attention on the hardest problems even when the public would rather escape from them.''
The book is a romp through official Washington by a man who has known Clinton since they were students at Oxford more than a quarter-century ago.
From the start, Reich knew what he wanted to do with his White House post: ``Focus like a laser beam on jobs and income. 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.''
All of this in the capital, about which ``a friend warns, `If you prick a finger in Washington the sharks will bite off your arm.'''
All while working with a White House where he quickly learns that ``a lone memo has the approximate impact of a Hershey kiss.''
All while helping Clinton struggle with a revolutionary Republican Congress while Morris whispers unwholesome advice in the president's ear.
And all while being baffled by Clinton's chaotic White House: ``In this administration you're either in the loop or you're out of the loop, but more likely you don't know where the loop is, or even if there is a loop.''
In the end, Reich writes that his goals were, in effect, sucked down a manhole by Morris and his insistence that the president could better win re-election votes by emphasizing deficit reduction, not social justice.
``I'm sitting with a robot,'' the labor secretary decides at a meeting in which Morris asks for Reich's ideas, then tells him he'll filter them through polls and focus groups to find out if any of them are ``good.''
Good means those which can move swing voters in Clinton's direction.
Using the letter B to refer to Clinton, Reich says Morris ``offers nothing but diversions. ... He's a packager and promoter. To the extent that B relies on him, B will utter no word that challenges America, no thought that pricks the nation's conscience. ... Morris makes my hair stand on end.''
Reich eventually tries to open a countercampaign against Morris, working the corridors of the White House ``like an itinerant peddler.''
But Morris continues to write the script. ``The economic message of the campaign is to be nothing but happy talk,'' Reich writes in 1996. And when the time for decision approaches he says, ``I feel certain B has decided to sign the welfare bill and I feel sick to my stomach.''
Clinton did sign the welfare bill. And he won re-election.
When Morris falls during the Democratic convention in Chicago, partly for letting a prostitute listen in on his private phone conversations with the president, Reich calls him ``the ultimate betrayer.''
Throughout his White House service, Reich fights for time with his family - and manages to find another metaphor for Washington politics.
His older son, Adam, lures him onto the roller coaster at an amusement park. Reich is petrified, Adam jubilant.
``The world can be divided between people who love roller coasters and those who are terrified of them. ... B and Newt Gingrich, I suspect, enjoy roller coasters. Al Gore and Bob Dole are probably on my side of the great divide,'' Reich writes.
``It suddenly strikes me as extremely important that people in public life who love roller coasters share power with people who fear them. The fate of the nation depends on the right balance.''
LENGTH: Medium: 87 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS. Robert Reich answers questions Jan. 21by CNBafter being named university professor at Brandeis University in
Waltham, Mass.