Lion of the Senate: When Ted Kennedy Rallied the Democrats
in a G.O.P. Congress
1.
Why is your book, Lion of the
Senate: When Ted Kennedy Rallied the
Democrats
in a G.O.P. Congress,
relevant today?
The book
tells the story of how Ted Kennedy, the liberal lion of the Senate, rallied the
Democrats to defeat the Gingrich revolution.
The Republicans won a stunning election victory in 1964—a victory as
stunning and unexpected as Trump’s. They
picked up 52 House seats and 7 Senate seats.
They controlled both houses of Congress for the first time in 40 years. They campaigned on some of the same issues
that propelled Trump to office—a covert appeal to racism and to fear. And they had a radical right-wing agenda that
was strikingly similar to one of the guys in power today. They seemed
unstoppable, but Ted Kennedy showed how they could be beaten—and they
were. And he did more. Not only did he stop the right wing agenda,
but he went on to pass major progressive legislation even in that hostile
environment. So it’s really a playbook
for today’s Democrats and progressives.
2.
What does this book tell us about Senator Kennedy?
The book tells
what we think is an exciting story—how Kennedy rallied the Democrats to
defeat—against all odds—a radical right wing agenda fueled by a devastating
Republican electoral victory. Even more
astounding, it tells how he went on to pass important progressive legislation
even in that hostile environment. Most of all it shows what made Senator
Kennedy such a great leader, a great politician, and a great Senator.
Part of understanding what made
Senator Kennedy so special involves understanding the way the Senate
operates. The mores of the Senate
explored in the book are both important and opaque to outsiders. The way the
intricate Senate rules shaped the fight over the minimum wage was an untold
story until now. The excitement of working for Senator Kennedy, the enthusiasm
he generated, and the fast pace and twist and turns of strategy are all part of
the story that people outside the Senate’s specialized environment can’t
normally see and will enjoy.
One of the
unique features of the book is that Nick Littlefield, the lead author, was
Senator Kennedy’s chief domestic policy advisor during this period, so he was
at almost all the key meetings with Kennedy—in the Democratic caucus, with
President Clinton and other top White House Officials, with Republican
Senators, with important leaders of outside groups. Nick took shorthand and he was a kind of
unique guy in that he could participate in a meeting and also take verbatim
notes, so readers can experience what it was actually like to be in the room in
those key meetings.
3.
How did Kennedy and the Democrats defeat the Republican agenda?
The basic
recipe to defeat the right-wing agenda was to use every legislative tool
available to fight it, to unify the Democrats in opposition, and, most
important, to educate the public about what the Republicans really
intended. Once the public understood it,
they didn’t like it.
They
didn’t think they’d voted for big tax cuts for the wealthy, or to cut and privatize
Medicare, or to take health care away from low income people, including
children and the elderly and disabled, or to slash educational opportunity, or
to eviscerate environmental protections, or undermine OSHA, or to deregulate
Wall Street or to tip the scales of justice against workers and for big
business.
It’s the
same thing with Trump and the Congressional Republicans. There are so many people who are just realizing
that when they voted for Trump and the Congressional Republicans they were
licensing them to take away their health care—but there is so much more that
the Republicans and Trump want to do that the public won’t support—if only they
understand it.
Ultimately, the Gingrich Republican program
couldn’t be sustained because it had become so unpopular. But that didn’t come easily: it took a sustained campaign, a unified
message, daily activities, and influencing the press to cover the issues. There was hardly a day that went by that we
didn’t have a forum, a rally, a floor debate or amendment, a new study, or
something going on to try to catch the public’s attention. Of course, today there are a lot more methods
of communication available than there were then. But the key ingredient is that Democrats be
unrelenting in telling the truth about what the Republicans want to do to the
American people.
4.
How did Kennedy pass progressive legislation in that climate?
Kennedy
was a unique combination of idealism and pragmatism. The idealistic side meant he was always going
to fight for progressive values, for those who were left out and left behind,
for ordinary hard-working Americans.
The
pragmatic side said that he was willing to compromise if needed to move the
ball forward. In that partisan and
gridlocked area he was able to pass the minimum wage, the Kassebaum Kennedy
insurance reform, and the child health insurance program.
Kennedy perfected a core approach
to success on every big issue: what he called the “inside and outside game.”
The inside game meant mastering the issue, unifying the Democrats, finding an
important Republican partner, and using his deep understanding of the rules and
chemistry of the Senate; the outside game meant engaging the relevant interest
groups, effectively engaging the news media, and ultimately mobilizing the
public.
Finding a
Republican partner was usually a critical ingredient. It’s very hard to pass anything through
Congress—especially if you are in the minority—unless you start it out with
some bipartisan support. That usually
requires compromise—not necessarily on the goals but on the means and whether
you get the whole loaf or half a loaf.
5.
You devote a chapter of the book to the Child Health Insurance Program
(CHIP), which Kennedy and Orrin Hatch teamed up on. How did that happen?
A. That was one of Kennedy’s great
achievements—one no one else thought was possible in that environment. Today, it provides quality, affordable
insurance for eight million children.
Kennedy
decided that since universal health care, which was the great cause of his
life, wasn’t practical in the Republican Congress, he was going to try to
expand coverage for children to get as close to universal coverage for them as
he could.
The first
step was to find a Republican partner.
He approached a number of Republicans—ten in all—that he thought might
be interested, but the only one who showed much interest was Orin Hatch, who
happened to be one of his great friends in the Senate.
There was
an interesting interaction between Hatch and his staff that we found out about
later that said a lot about Hatch. Hatch
told his staff that Kennedy had approached him about doing something for
children’s health insurance. Virtually
all the staff advised him against it.
They said doing something with Kennedy wouldn’t be popular in Utah. They said that the Republican leadership
would be furious with him. Hatch said,
“You don’t know what it was like to grow up as a poor kid. Help me to do it, but help me to do it
right.”—meaning it couldn’t be what he called a Kennedy left-wing bill--an
individual entitlement with open-ended funding that was run by the Federal
government.
So we went
through a long process of negotiation—exchanges of letters, negotiations at the
staff level—meetings between the two Senators.
Finally, we were getting close, but we still hadn’t agreed on the
funding level or how big the tobacco tax would be that would be used to finance
the program. So there was a climactic
meeting between in Senator Hatch’s office.
A little
bit of background: Hatch loved music and
wrote songs as an avocation. Nick Littlefield, after he graduated from college,
had a brief career as a singer/actor in Broadway musicals and had a beautiful
voice. So Kennedy had the idea that if
Nick sang one of Hatch’s songs to Hatch it might break the ice.
So at the
meeting, Kennedy sprang his surprise.
Nick sang Hatch’s song, “Freedom’s Light” with as much fervor as if he
were back on Broadway and gave it everything he had. At the end of the song, there was
silence. Then Hatch smiled. His only words were, “Nice move, Teddy.” And we got the deal.
With
support from Kennedy and Hatch, the children’s advocacy groups, the
anti-tobacco advocacy groups, and the Clinton Administration, we were able to
force votes on the bill on the Senate floor and ultimately the political
pressure was so great that it was included in the Balanced Budget deal that
Clinton and Gingrich negotiated.
6.
Kennedy was able to pass bipartisan legislation with lots of Republican
Senators, not just Hatch as partners.
Surely he wasn’t close friends with all of them. How did that happen?
Kennedy
made a point of cultivating personal relationships with every Senator he
could. He was a naturally gregarious,
charming guy who really liked people, and he knew how important personal
relationships were. Most of the
Republican Senators hardly agreed with anything Kennedy stood for, but almost
all of them liked him on a personal level, and they knew he was a hard worker
who was true to his word.
These
personal relationships didn’t mean that anyone would sign on to something they
didn’t agree with. But it did mean they
were open to listening if there was something Kennedy wanted to do where they
had some sympathy for the goal. You’d be
hard-pressed to find a Senator who had less in common with Kennedy than Strom
Thurmond, but Kennedy found out that Thurmond had a daughter who suffered from
type 1 diabetes. So Kennedy approached
Thurmond about working together to lift the ban on federal funding of fetal
tissue research, which was thought to offer some promise for finding a cure for
type 1 diabetes. The two of them teamed
up, and they were able to pass the bill by an overwhelming bipartisan majority.
That’s
especially ironic today, as the Republicans are trying to use Planned
Parenthood’s perfectly legal and proper supplying of fetal tissue for
scientific research as a basis for trying to defund Planned Parenthood.
7.
Is that type of cooperation possible today?
There’s no
question that the environment is a difficult one. But there are people of good will on both
sides of the aisle. What today’s
Senators need to do is follow Senator Kennedy’s example—cultivate personal
relationships, look for issues where you share a common goal, be willing to
compromise without giving up core values, understand how to work the
legislative process and reach out to the public. I don’t think there is anyone who will ever
equal Senator Kennedy, but any Senator can use the same approach that worked so
well for him. And, even in this
environment, we have seen some of this.
There is bipartisan support for criminal justice reform, for example.
8.
One of the central legislative struggles you describe in the book was
the successful effort to pass a minimum wage increase. It’s hard for me to imagine that happening in
today’s Congress. How did Kennedy do it?
It was
hard for anyone except Kennedy to imagine it happening in the Gingrich
Congress—but it did.
This was
one of the few cases where a successful, major piece of legislation didn’t
start out as bipartisan. Kennedy’s first
goal was to unify the Democrats. That
was hard, because a lot of Democrats were shell-shocked by the election and
they thought the minimum wage as “old politics,” that the voters didn’t
want. A key moment came in early
January, when the Democratic leadership from the House and Senate met to
discuss the Democratic agenda. Kennedy
was invited to the part of the meeting where the minimum wage was discussed. Perhaps I can read a short excerpt from the book: “Members crowded around a large conference
table; on one side sat Senator Daschle [the Senate Democratic Leader] and on
the other Congressman Gephardt [the House Leader]. As Kennedy entered and was shown to a seat at
the end of the table, a senator was explaining that he didn’t think it was a
good idea for Democrats to be for an increase in the minimum wage at this time
because, in view of the elections, it sent the wrong signal. It was ‘old’ politics. I would only help the poor. It had no chance of success . . .
“Kennedy exploded. ‘I can’t believe what I’m hearing. If there is one cause Democrats should stand
for it is improving the wages of working people. If we are not going to fight for the wages of
working people, who will fight for them?
When the economy is thriving, and corporate profits are at an all-time
high, and CEO salaries are hundreds of times what the average worker’s is, who
says we can’t afford to increase the minimum wage by 50 cents an hour. It is unacceptable in America for anyone to
work forty hours a week, fifty weeks a year, and still not be able to lift his
family out of poverty…. “ He was in full
red-faced volume in this small room, as if he were addressing a crowd on ten
thousand on the steps of the Capitol.
‘I tell you if we fight on this
issue we’ll win it, and we’ll win it in a Republican Congress. If we don’t, we don’t deserve to call
ourselves Democrats.’
“When he finished, there was a long
silence, as if he had sucked all the air out of the room. Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois was the first
to speak up: ‘Well, I guess we now
understand how Ted feels about this.”
The whole tenor of the discussion
shifted—from whether to support an increase to how big it should be. Kennedy was able to work out a compromise on
that issue. And then the battle shifted
to the Senate floor. There was a long
series of dramatic parliamentary maneuvers over the course of year and a half
where Kennedy was able to force votes on the issue. As the public pressure built, each time more
Republicans broke ranks until there were finally enough votes to pass it.
9.
There are a lot of dramatic and
sometimes quite inside stories in this book that people wouldn’t normally know
about. What are some of them?
I already mentioned how Kennedy’s
asking Nick to sing to Orrin Hatch helped to seal the deal on the CHIP
bill. We tried the same tactic on a big
anti-tobacco program—but this time it didn’t work. There was the epic floor fight over the
minimum wage that ultimately forced Bob Dole out of the Senate and helped doom
his Presidential campaign, the canny use of the press to expose the secret
holds that were keeping insurance reform from reaching the Senate floor, the
constant maneuvering to try to assure that the President would take a strong
line against the Republican agenda, Strom Thurmond’s reenactment for a roomful
of Senators of a pantomime of his morning exercise routine, complete with his
epic struggles to lift imaginary weights, the daredevil race to Arlington
National Cemetery to secure a bagful of earth from the John and Robert Kennedy
gravesite as the proper symbolic gift for the Rabin funeral and get it to Air
Force One before it took off, Kennedy’s gestures of kindness and consideration
for his staff, and many more.
10. I’m sure Senator Kennedy would be appalled at
the effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
I was surprised to learn at how involved he was in its passage, even
though he was quite ill during the time it was considered in Congress and died
before it ultimately passed.
Yes, that’s one of the interesting
stories we include in the book that I think very few people are aware of.
Of course, universal health care
was one of the great causes of Senator Kennedy’s life, and even as his illness
progressed, he exerted a significant impact on the strategies that lead to the
passage of Obamacare. At a key White House meeting where the President’s
advisors almost unanimously urged him to abandon the effort, the President
said, “We need to do this for Ted.” It was Kennedy who convinced Democrats of
the importance of keeping the reconciliation path open—a decision that was
ultimately crucial to the success of the bill. It was Kennedy who set up a
strategy of engaging the key interest groups early and often to avoid knee-jerk
opposition that could have sunk the bill. It was Kennedy who emphasized the
importance of avoiding the rivalries between committees that had done so much
to hamper the Clinton effort. And in the President’s inspiring speech to
Congress calling for the passage of universal health care, it was Kennedy’s
posthumous letter to him that he quoted and it was Kennedy’s “largeness of
spirit” that he invoked.
11.
You worked for Kennedy for 22
years. What was he like to work for?
He was terrific, and I consider
myself incredibly lucky to have had the opportunity to have worked with him for
so long. Kennedy gave you the
opportunity to be working for something larger than yourself. You always felt that you were working for a
man whose great goal was to make the lives of the American people
better—particularly those Americans who needed help the most. Because he was so immensely skilled as a
legislator and a leader, you knew that the things that you did for him weren’t
just aspirational; they could become a reality.
And as we try to portray in the book, the work was endlessly fascinating
and exciting.
And on a personal level, Kennedy
was great to work for. He was
considerate. If you were sick or someone
in your family was in trouble, he would always call to express his
concern. If you did something for him,
he would thank you. If there was a press
story that highlighted your efforts, he would have it framed and send it to you
with a note. Pens used by the President
in signing ceremonies for important bills are given to members of Congress who
were key to the legislations’ passage.
They are greatly prized, but Kennedy always gave the ones he received to
the staff member who had done the most to work on the bill—just a terrific
human being.
Please note, the author recently
hired the book publicity firm that I work for.
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