Well, it hasn’t come to that yet, but it almost has, and I want you to know that when it does I will be there in the trenches with my fellow Washington malefactors and insider crumbums. Meanwhile, permit me a few thoughts on this insider/outsider business. It’s a fraud.
That is my first thought. The reason I am so cynical about what strikes me as the pose of outsiderness is that it has been affected by practically everyone who has run for president in the past few decades, including and pre-eminently by some who had already been president for four years. I mean if those weren’t insiders, who was? Nixon and Reagan, to take some examples, ran against the very governments they had helped to create, and denounced them with all the exasperation and vigor of a Ross Perot.
And, anyway, these outsiders, including the ones who aren’t simply incumbents pretending to be challengers, are usually not outsiders by any tests that matter. Much has already been written on this theme about Perot’s close dealings with politicians at every level, with the federal bureaucracy and political elite, with big-time lobbyists, with big-money power players and the rest. But he is not alone here. For unless we decide to elect the gazelle boy or some other human raised by animals in the forest, this is likely to be the case. By the time they get within hailing distance of national office, our candidates may be called many things, but outsider is not one of them. I mean, the two-billion-dollar outsider? Please. Whatever Perot’s other virtues may be, they do not include disconnection from the “system.”
And even if this were the case, it wouldn’t last long. Look at what already is happening. Envelopment by the elites, co-optation by the enemy … and, by the way, who was and where is that darned enemy, anyhow? The point is that since everybody (practically) is for an outsider and against an insider, insiders themselves have been pouring forth in sizable numbers from the innermost power and money dens of Washington, Los Angeles and New York to advise, assist and otherwise hook up with Perot. Shame on you for thinking there may be just the tiniest whiff of bet-covering here. The fact is that it always happens: the outsider, by the time he succeeds, rides in with the assistance of those he has famously held up to contempt.
They help elect him in two ways: first by serving in their vast anonymous agglomeration as a juicy target for his outsider gibes and, second, individually, while he is attacking their professions and economic class, by rewriting his housing policy and defense budget and so on for him. (The third phase comes about a year after the outsider has been elected, when, by immutable law, things will not be going so well and the press will be in full cry. Some of these same insiders will be going around telling assorted small gatherings, off the record, how stupid he is and how he hasn’t listened to a single word of advice they’ve given.)
The play here can be entertaining. In 1976, Jimmy Carter’s head campaigner, Hamilton Jordan, avowed that he would take the pipe if Northeast establishment types, Zbigniew Brzezinski or Cyrus Vance, turned up in a Carter government. Brzezinski, of course, was named national-security adviser and Vance, secretary of state (in which jobs they were in almost constant contention: insiders actually are not interchangeable and often don’t even look alike). Jordan, who did some work for Tsongas this year, has turned up on Perot’s list of prospective helpers. He has become a pillar of the anti-establishment establishment.
It’s not just the mention of Jordan that puts me in mind of Carter, like Perot an ambitious, intelligent Southerner who went to Annapolis. Much about the Perot campaign has reminded me of Carter, who more assiduously than any other candidate pursued the outsider political line, and many of whose attitudes were ringers for Perot’s now. This struck me when I learned Perot had said to Barbara Walters that he wouldn’t knowingly countenance adulterers among his government appointees; it was Carter, after all, who issued some kind of instruction that his live-in-couple administration workers get hitched or else.
More similarities-listen to Carter campaigning: “I don’t want anything selfish out of government. I think I want the same thing you do. And that is to have our nation once again with a government as good and honest and decent … as are the American people.” And: “There will be no anonymous aides, unelected, unknown to the public… wielding vast power from the White House basement… I will pick my cabinet on the basis of merit, not politics. . .” And: “It’s time for someone like myself to make a drastic change in Washington. The insiders have had their chance and they have not delivered.”
There are yards of this stuff. Like Perot today, too, Carter the campaigner was known for insisting on staying vague on the details of positions and stressing values instead, for denouncing political competitors, journalistic critics and just about anyone who opposed him as somehow corrupted by their association with the national polities and Washington life that predated his. He also was very hard on the trappings of presidential power, assistants carrying the First Suitcase and so on. This is a big theme with Perot, who told Walters he will dispense with motorcades, “Hail to the Chief” and other regal distractions.
I realize Perot is a different guy, with different talents. They are not interchangeable, either, but Perot is talking now about his intentions the way Carter did. It didn’t work then and it won’t next time. Carter’s presidency, despite its large failures, also had its successes-but these had nothing to do with his posture of outsiderness but rather were the result of conventional, traditional governing efforts. Our political system has been misused, not rendered obsolete. It can be made to work by good, courageous people–and there are still plenty of them in Congress and the bureaucracy-who respect it and respect the voters. It needs grounded leaders, not demolition crews. You can win as an outsider, but you can’t govern as one.
