The Natural, by Joe Klein: on Government Reform
Al Gore:
1993: Why do we need 10 pages of regulations for ashtrays?
In the summer of 1993, Al Gore showed the press an ashtray. More precisely, it was a standard, regulation, federal government "ash receiver, tobacco, desk type," and Gore had ten pages of regulations to prove it."Can you believe this?" he said,
flipping through the regulations as we sat in his West Wing office. "It's incredible. This is what you have to do if you want to sell the government an ashtray. Here's my favorite. This is the specification for how you test it."
You put the ashtray on a plank, and you hit it with a steel punch "point ground to a 60% included angle" and a hammer. "The specimen should break into a small number of irregularly shaped pieces, no greater than 35.
Several weeks later,
Gore actually shattered a government ashtray on "Late Night with David Letterman." But there was serious purpose behind the vaudeville: Gore was promoting his "Reinventing Government" reform portfolio (which unfortunately came to be known as REGO).
Source: The Natural, by Joe Klein, p. 64-65
Feb 11, 2003
Al Gore:
Passion about technical needs of Reinventing Government
The Reinventing Government project was perfect for Gore, very worthy if eminently vice presidential: Presidents usually have more important things to worry about than how the government actually works. But Reinventing Government was a particular favorite
of New Democrats, who loved the idea of a direct assault upon the ancient paradigm of federal bureaucracy. It also seemed good politics. Horror stories about endless red tape and other governmental abominations were popular with the public and easy to
sell on the evening news. If the Clinton administration could convince America that it was serious about attacking the mythic federal troika--waste, fraud, and abuse--it might be able to build the credibility to propose new "investments"
like universal health insurance.Gore, who had a passion for bloodless, technical issues, pursued this one with great energy and determination; he was a font of Stupid Government Stories.
Source: The Natural, by Joe Klein, p. 66-67
Feb 11, 2003
Bill Clinton:
OpEd: Mastered legislative process in 1995 budget impasse
The 1995 budget impasse would prove a significant turning point in the history of the Clinton presidency: the first sign that he had figured out Washington's legislative process, the beginnings of what would become a total mastery of the
Republicans in the year-end budget negotiations. And it was in those negotiations--quietly, by dribs and drabs, with remarkable persistence over the years--that Clinton would get many of his most important programs enacted.
Source: The Natural, by Joe Klein, p.145-146
Feb 11, 2003
Bill Clinton:
Favored tax incentives over new bureaucracies
[Clinton's list of accomplishments] has a New Democrat bent, a tendency to favor cash and tax credits over the establishment of new federal bureaucracies. Indeed, in his 8 years in office, Clinton only created one new bureaucracy--AmeriCorps--and that
program was semi-private, and run almost entirely through the states. "He was more effective than any other President, by far, in using the budget process to get what he wanted," said one pundit. The government shutdowns had neutered the Republicans
in the annual negotiations with the President, robbing them of their most potent threat; but Clinton still had the veto, and the ability to delay the process and raise the prospect of yet another government shutdown.
The pundit said, "He had an
incredible feedback mechanism--if something didn't work, he tried something else. He would retreat, delay, come back with another proposal--get a half of what he wanted, a quarter, and eighth. But he'd almost always get something."
Source: The Natural, by Joe Klein, p.156
Feb 11, 2003
Hillary Clinton:
Visited many non-governmental programs on India trip
On her 1995 trip to India, Mrs. Clinton seemed to be reassessing her political philosophy after the health reform debacle.
She was clearly impressed with the nongovernmental social programs she had been visiting--indeed, all the programs she visited on the subcontinent were nongovernmental--and she was beginning to wonder if the needs of poor women and children
might be best served by circumventing the government bureaucracy (a classic New Democrat formulation). She was, as ever, cautious about this--"there are good and bad governmental programs
and good and bad nongovernmental programs," she said (a classic Hillarian formulation)--but there was a curiosity and a humility that hadn't seemed apparent before.
Source: The Natural, by Joe Klein, p.128
Feb 11, 2003
Joe Biden:
Modern Congress is much cleaner than in 1970s or 1950s
Partisan legal harassment had become a major industry in Washington, providing crude entertainment and satisfying careers for thousands of short-sighted practitioners.
All this in a nation's capital was, by most accounts, for less corrupt than it had ever been. "Compare this Congress to the one in 1950, during the era that most of the old-timers consider the Golden Age of civil discourse," Senator Joseph Biden, a
Democrat from Delaware, said. "Those guys were taking handouts, honoraria, junkets. When I came here in 1973, Jacob Javits--a distinguished senator--was making money from a private law practice. You don't think he'd be under investigation today?
By comparison, these new guys are squeaky clean. I can't stand most of the SOBs--they're ideologues, they practice Khmer Rouge politics--but they are the cleanest bunch of politicians this capital has ever seen."
Source: The Natural, by Joe Klein, p. 88
Feb 11, 2003
Joe Biden:
Campaign reform in 1980s made more problems than it solved
By 1989, it was clear that the ethics was had reached a new level of intensity. Each side was using high-powered legal weapons to stalk the other. The weapons were of recent vintage--the product of the historic government reform effort that came after
the Watergate scandal. "We were going to reform the system," said Joseph Biden, referring to his generation's arrival in Congress. "But we created more problems than we solved. The campaign finance laws, the
Independent Counsel statute--nothing turned out the way it was supposed to."Biden might have added: the Ethics in Government Act of 1978; the reforms of the presidential-primary selection process and of the seniority system in
Congress; the limitations on presidential war and budgetary powers; the "whistle-blower" reforms that enabled disgruntled government employees everywhere to bring anonymous complaints against their bosses.
Source: The Natural, by Joe Klein, p. 93-94
Feb 11, 2003
Joe Biden:
Disallowed bringing pornography issues into Thomas hearing
The 1991 campaign against Clarence Thomas's nomination to the Supreme Court was far more personal and extreme than the campaign against Robert Bork had been. Members of the civil rights establishment set the tone by calling Thomas a variety of despicable
names because he disagreed with the prevailing wisdom about affirmative action. Then the feminists had their moment with the belated appearance of Anita Hill, who accused Thomas of offensive ribaldry when he was boss at the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission; she was questioned intensely and skeptically by Alan Simpson and several other Republicans on the Judiciary Committee. A delegation of feminists visited Joseph Biden, just as Ralph Nader had done four years earlier. "They wanted the
committee to expose the fact that Thomas watched pornographic films," Biden recalled. "But I told them that if he did, it wasn't material. It was private." (The media were happy to provide all the relevant details to a soap opera-loving public.)
Source: The Natural, by Joe Klein, p.104
Feb 11, 2003
Page last updated: Feb 25, 2019