Wag the Dog (43 page)

T
HE PECULIARITY OF
Atwater's proposition was how compelling it seemed at one moment and how preposterous it seemed at the next. It had the sort of duality of a sluttish lover that you just can't see yourself with, but to whom you succumb whenever he or she, as the case may be, comes around. While he was away from it, the president rather expected it to disappear. He was surprised that it survived his first meeting with Hartman. Now what he truly expected from a full-blown presentation of a motion-picture director's idea of what a war should be was that dressing the whore for the ball would just be putting a red dress on impropriety, it would only serve to make what she was—gaudy and meretricious—unbearably obvious.

James Addison Baker III was opposed. Even though he'd brought it to the president. That should have been warning enough for Bush. Baker had a knack, a true genius actually, for distancing himself from disaster. Bush's attitude toward “little brother” Baker was, “Why is Jimmy always right?”
⁹¹
Baker was more than his pajama-party companion on
Air Force One.
The president's regard for Baker was so high that he thought that the whole world would think that a problem was solved if he simply announced that he was assigning Baker to it.
⁹²

Although Baker had made it clear, in an understated way, that he was against the project, he had not yet mounted an attack. He believed, even more than the president, that this strumpet of an idea was no Galatea, and that neither Hartman nor Beagle was a Pygmalion, able to bring it to life. Baker was born into wealth, raised to know that you don't squander capital, financial or personal, fighting unnecessary battles. And even Baker had to be careful about opposing Bushie, who, once he'd made up his mind, was apt to devastate his opponents with the ultimate withering retort: “If you're so smart, how come I'm the president and you're not.”

Hartman and Beagle felt no ambiguity. They wanted the idea to fly. Beagle's motivation was that of the artist, who wants to see his work realized, regardless of cost in cash or life. For Hartman there would be the joy of consummating the biggest film deal ever done. Maybe that ever would be done. Yet it was more than that, more than glory or ego—he was also motivated by a compelling lust for power and for riches.

Beagle knew he could direct a brilliant war. Part of what makes a great director is the ability to spend ten or twenty or sixty million dollars of someone else's money just to tell a story—about a man who cheats on his wife or who dresses like a bat or who teaches pronunciation or who chauffeurs an old lady. The problem was the pitch. He was the veteran of many, many pitch meetings, from both sides of the desk. He knew that success and failure did not rest in the details. Details could always be changed, fixed, lied about. It didn't rest in “the deal.” It wasn't even the Concept. Though it was a very common illusion that concept was the key. Even people hooked on a pitch thought, more often than not, that concept was what they were buying into. But being a great pitch person was more like being Luke Sky walker bombing the Death Star, finding that obscure and secret route, whatever twists and turns were required, that led to an undefended opening, so you could drop a bomb right in their brain.

Hartman agreed.

He was comfortable that Beagle had done a good job. Granted that it was still just at the treatment stage, still, he'd designed a great war, a perfect war, really tuned in to up-to-the-moment audience tastes and expectations. It would even stand up under so-called real-life combat analysis by real-life colonels. And Hartman thought they had most of the other bases covered: security, money, the press. But people don't do things because the arguments for it are good; they think the arguments for it are good because those arguments support something they want to do.

When Beagle had his war to the pitch point, Hartman communicated with the president. It is remarkably hard for the president of the United States to do anything in private, let alone in secret. The scheduling, the protocol, the wave of attendants and courtiers, the palace guard that protects his every move, their equipment and his equipment are as elaborate and inescapable as the excesses of the Sun King and the rigid ostentations of the court of the Ming emperor. Where once court watchers gossiped by word of mouth, now they do it by microwave transmission and satellite and tune the whole world into what His Presidential Majesty had for breakfast, to whom he spoke, upon what subject and at what length; they make news not only of his bowel movements but of his bowels themselves.

Of course, the official transcripts and the daily bulletins may not reflect what was actually said. That is the door to presidential deception: like the purloined letter, his actions must be hidden in plain sight. There was no way to pretend that the president was not meeting with David Hartman and John Lincoln Beagle. The trick was to make it appear casual and unimportant, yet leave time and space enough to talk and to consider. The place they came up with was Bob Hope's house in Palm Springs. The trip itself was passed off as a golfing vacation. But Hartman had not yet found that space-pilot route into George Bush's brain, that surefire path to closing the sale. He turned to Sun Tzu. Sometimes his aphorisms were spotlights that illuminated the battlefield, sometimes they were cryptograms in a scavenger hunt. Still uncertain, Hartman went into the meeting with a miniature edition of
The Art of War,
two-by-three inches, in his pocket, a talisman whose magic words would have to reach him osmotically or etherically.

Bush came in from his golf game happy. Bush liked
games and being outdoors. That was a positive for Hartman and Beagle. But it was still early in the day. Much too early for the president to be on Halcion. That would make it tougher. There was Baker, cold as ice. One look told Hartman that Baker was not neutral, prepared to decide on the merits. That was what Hartman needed—someone to compete with, someone to beat. The formless enemy cannot be defeated.
⁹³
But once the enemy takes a position, we can devise a strategy.

What would Baker's attack be? The obvious one? That he and Beagle were Hollywood. Frivolous movie people. Not to be entrusted with matters of state? With reality? Hartman smiled. He had thought of his favorite line from Sun Tzu—
War is nothing but lies.
Could he meet Baker's objections head-on? Only a stupid man confronts. The intelligent man maneuvers so that there is no need for battle. Imagine jumping up and down trying to say,
“But we are serious people—take us seriously.”
To defend against that charge would be to validate it. No defense. Let Baker attack that space and find it empty.

At last the line from Sun Tzu that spoke to this situation came to him. Once he understood, it was obvious, it was comic, he deserved a slap in the face from a Zen master, it was the very first sentence:
Military affairs are of the greatest importance to a country, for life or death, survival or destruction, depend on them.

“Mr. President,” David Hartman said, “the great leaders of America—Dwight Eisenhower, Harry Truman, Jack Kennedy, and yourself, sir—were forged in war. Victorious war. But now we have a problem. Where are tomorrow's leaders going to come from?” Watch this, Mr. Baker, Hartman said to himself. I'm taking the high ground. “From the Vietnam generation? I don't want to take a thing away from the boys who fought there. Died there. Were wounded there. Believe me, I honor them. But what did they experience? Defeat. They experienced defeat. That does a terrible thing to your mind. When a confrontation comes, what are they going to say? They're going to say: ‘Remember Vietnam. We can't go to war. We'll lose. We better back down.' They do say it. The sons of bitches in Congress did it to you over Grenada, Panama, Libya, Lebanon. It's a chorus, a chorus of losers. ‘We don't want it to turn into another Vietnam.' I would never say that those people are cowards, inherently. They are responding to what their experience has taught them . . .”

“Well, I don't know,” Baker said, “about America running out of leaders.”

Oh, Mr. Baker, Hartman thought, I have just invested the hills around your flanks and you didn't even know they were there. He said, addressing both of them, “You're from Texas. Now if a son of yours got thrown by a horse, what would you tell him to do? You'd tell him to get back up there. What if he said, ‘No, dad, no horseback riding for me. I think I'm going to learn how to do ballet dancing instead.' You'd make damn sure that boy got up on that horse again. I know you would.

“America needs you, Mr. President. America needs you to help it get back on the horse. To be tall in the saddle again and to ride.” Reality check. Too thick? No. Too thick is impossible.

Mr. Baker, Hartman thought, here it comes. I reveal to you where I've mounted my artillery. “I read Lee's memo, we all read it. I want to tell you something—if all that this was about was an election, I would not do it. Period. I would not risk one American boy fighting on a foreign shore for anybody's reelection. And my bet is, Mr. President, neither would you. I know your record, you've been there, you know better and you are an honorable man.”

Sonuvabitch, the Jew bastard is taking the high road, Baker said to himself.
⁹⁴

“But that's not what it's about,” Hartman said. If he read Baker's thoughts, he didn't seem to mind. “America needs a war to remember what it's like to win. The next generation of leaders needs to be tested in battle, to win, and go on from there, with confidence and pride. If you sit down at the poker table and every two-bit, tin-pot gambler in the world knows you're scared to go all the way, they'll bluff you out of pot after pot and strip you down to your underdrawers. The men who stood up to the Soviet Union, the most dangerous military power the world has ever known, a nuclear power, were men who had been victorious in war. What happens, if, after you, we get another Jimmy Carter? An America that backs down to anybody and everybody—to an ayatollah, to South American drug dealers and gangsters, to a Qaddafi.

“What scares me, Mr. President, is that in the generation after you we will see the return of appeasement. You have to save us, Mr. President.”

“Slicker than deers guts on a doorknob,” Baker said. He liked to talk Texan from time to time, it made him feel colloquial. But actually, he sounded respectful. He knew—unless Hartman and Beagle hopelessly fucked up the rest of the presentation—that this was no longer a self-defeating proposition. Once again Lee Atwater's strumpet memo was asserting its right to life. Was it a brilliant stroke of realpolitik, actually more historically profound that it appeared, or was this loonybin Napoleonics?

 

 

 

⁹¹
Time,
2/13/89.

⁹²
Later on, when Bush's reelection campaign was in trouble, he announced that “Baker is coming,” as if, like the
Mighty Quinn,
his mere presence would immediately turn things around. With the economy, over which he had presided for four years, as the main issue against him, Bush announced, in the second presidential debate, that, if reelected, his solution would be to put James Baker in charge of the economy, and he apparently expected all America to say, “Well, that'll be alright then.”

Is Bush right about Baker? A scan of the press on James Addison Baker III will convince you that he is either the only person in Washington actually capable of true accomplishment or that he is the best spin doctor in Spin City.

Baker began his political career working on Bush's Senate campaign, which he lost. In 1975 Bush persuaded Ford to make Baker under secretary of commerce. He took over President Ford's reelection campaign and got the credit for bringing the incumbent “within an eyelash of beating Jimmy Carter.”
(Time,
2/13/89) He ran Bush's first campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 1980. He convinced Bush to withdraw—although Bush still had at least a statistical chance to win. Reagan rewarded Bush with the vice presidency and Baker with the post of chief of staff. Baker later traded places with Don Regan to become secretary of the treasury.

His major accomplishment at Treasury was the devaluation of the dollar. It was his initiative and his insider political savvy that is credited with making it actually happen, it was supposed to make America more competitive and reduce the trade deficit. For a critique of this policy see, among others, Daniel Burstein,
Yen!: Japan's New Financial Empire and Its Threat to America
(Simon & Schuster, 1988). It argues that this abrupt devaluation, in isolation, doing nothing else to prepare American business to take advantage of the change and to become export-oriented, had the result of handing the Japanese an incredible gift. Their money literally doubled in value. It made them twice as rich as they had been the day before. It did not lead the Japanese to buy more American goods; it led them to buy more of America—real estate, businesses, financial institutions, and Hawaii.

In sum: Bush lost, Ford lost, Bush lost, the economy of the United States lost. Bottom line: Baker went 0 for 4. The result: Baker's reputation as the man who was always right and who got things done continued to grow.

Baker ran Bush's 1988 presidential campaign. Except, of course, for the selection of Dan Quayle, which has become widely cited as
the decision that Bush made without Baker,
and for the negative advertising, which is attributed to Atwater and Ailes.