Michael Deaver, the onetime high-flying Reagan administration mediameister brought low by scandal, recalls being on an airplane recently, chatting with a flight attendant, when the passenger next to him suddenly leaned over and said, ”Pardon me, didn`t you used to be someone?”
In a nutshell, that`s what can happen to you in Washington when bad fortune, disgrace, even a shift in jobs results in a loss of power or prestige. Boom, you`re forgotten, abandoned and discarded like last year`s tax proposal as friends, acquaintances, even strangers trample right over your once-prominent back on their way to the next luminary.
There`s an axiom about the nation`s capital, attributed to Harry Truman:
”If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.” Not many people here would argue with it.
Washington, more than any U.S. city, is fueled by power. It sustains the whole social system, it`s synonymous with status and many times it`s even more desirable than money. At cocktail parties, the first words out of guests`
mouths are often ”What do you do?” and ”Whom do you work for?” rather than polite chitchat.
So small wonder that friendships here can be fluid, to say the least.
Not all relationships are superficial, of course. Almost everyone can cite friends of long standing and genuine affection, such as former Washington Post Executive Editor Ben Bradlee and the late legendary attorney Edward Bennett Williams; George Bush and his secretary of state, James Baker; Marilyn Quayle and a number of longtime friends.
Deaver says he had solid friends, such as former National Democratic Party Chairman Robert Strauss and former CIA Director Richard Helms, who stood by him. And there are even odd-couple friends, such as senatorial opposites Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah).
But the hangers-on and climbers-up, who have the staying power of a firefly when things go awry, are as plentiful in Washington as press conferences.
Diana McLellan, a columnist for Washingtonian magazine and a longtime observer of the capital`s social scene, says, ”When you`re o-u-t, people drop you like hot potatoes.” But there seems to be one exception. ”They do go to funerals,” McLellan says, ”because people (are seen) there.” One acquaintance, she says, used to arm himself with two handkerchiefs at funerals, so if one became soggy he`d have a spare to prolong the business of meeting and chatting.
She cites the fate of Deaver, who after leaving the White House in 1985 to pursue business interests went into lobbying in a big way, cashing in on his access to those in power. Amid charges of influence-peddling, Deaver was convicted of lying to a congressional subcommittee and a grand jury.
McLellan remembers that shortly after the poop hit the cooling device in the Deaver case, she and some other prominent Washingtonians were on a yacht with Deaver and ”he was given the cold shoulder to beat the band. He was treated like the plague. In Washington, people think unpopularity is catching.”
Deaver, while declining to specify friends who abandoned him, notes what appeared to have attracted them in the first place: ”When you had a position (at the White House) like I had, you`re fawned over and everyone wants to get at you.” His wife, Carolyn, he says, described it as ”like living with a rock star.”
Sheila Tate, who was Nancy Reagan`s press secretary and then spokeswoman for George Bush during the 1988 presidential campaign, assesses it this way:
”When you`re invited to things you`ve never been invited to, if you lose sight that it`s the job that`s being invited and not the person, you deserve the letdown you get afterwards.”
Tate, whose friendships cut across political lines, is president of Powell-Tate, a public-relations firm whose other head is Jody Powell, who was Jimmy Carter`s press secretary.
Tate also is something most Washingtonians are not: a native. As such, she has the unusual luxury of friendships that go back for decades. ”I still have lunch with my two best friends from high school,” she says. ”We go back 30 years. We all dated together, had pimples together and lied to our parents about where we were going together.”
Some `friend`
A more prevailing experience may be that of Chuck Conconi, a columnist for Washingtonian and former author of the well-read Personalities column in The Washington Post. ”The term `friend` is the cheapest word heard used in this city,” he says. ”People would say, `I met a friend of yours the other night,` and it would turn out that maybe two or three months ago I spoke to that person over hors d`oeuvres.”
Or as political columnist Mark Shields says, ”Anyplace where networking is elevated to a high art form, friendships are in some trouble. So many people have contacts and Rolodexes instead of friends.”
One of the stories making the rounds here involves the wife of a powerful congressman who had purported to be the best friend of former House Speaker Jim Wright and his wife and of former House Democratic Whip Tony Coelho and his wife. But when each of the men resigned amid charges of impropriety in 1989, she fled. ”It was almost central casting the way she dropped them,”
says someone familiar with the goings-on.
Later, he said, the same woman claimed to be ”inseparable, dearest, closest friends” with banker Robert Altman-now embroiled in the Bank of Credit and Commerce International scandal-and his actress wife, Lynda Carter. When their star wavered, she withdrew, according to this version of events, and, when pressed about her relationship with Altman and Carter, reduced it to, ”We`ve been out a few times.”
Carter, however, has stronger friendships to draw on. Late last month, several women friends, including Marilyn Quayle and Rae Evans, vice president of national affairs for Hallmark Cards Inc., took Carter out for a champagne lunch at a popular Washington restaurant.
”We wanted to let her know these are difficult times, we`re proud of her and thinking of her,” said Evans, who also is one of Quayle`s closest friends. ”I think her (Carter`s) friends are sticking with her, although there`s always that … group of people who can`t remember your name after it`s appeared negatively in the paper.”
More than veneer
Among the more startling friendships here, at least in the eyes of out-of-towners or anyone who watched the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, is the one between Kennedy, the liberal Democrat from Massachusetts, and Hatch, the conservative Republican from Utah, who are on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Not only are their politics usually at opposite ends of the ideological spectrum but also their lifestyles: Hatch is a Mormon and doesn`t drink.
Yet the two have a longstanding friendship and seem genuinely fond of each other.
”I`ve been to his home many times,” says Hatch, who dates their closeness to the early 1980s, when he was chairman of the Labor and Human Resources Committee and Kennedy was the panel`s ranking Democrat. ”I know his children and most of his sisters, and I think the world of all of them.”
Hatch says that while they don`t confide things of a political nature to each other, they sometimes do ”with regard to personal matters, deep feelings.”
After the allegations of rape at the Kennedy mansion in Palm Beach, Fla., over Easter weekend and stories about Kennedy being involved in drinking forays with his nephew and son, Hatch says he told Kennedy, ” `If you keep getting into these kinds of difficulties, I`m going to have to send the Mormon missionaries to you.`
”He looked serious and he said, `Yeah,` and something to the effect that `I may be ready for them,”` Hatch says.
One of Hatch`s favorite stories involving Kennedy revolves around a painting the Massachusetts senator had done and hung in his home. Hatch describes it as an ”Impressionistic type” painting of the Kennedy family`s Hyannis Port compound.
”I knew it was his favorite,” Hatch says. Over the years, he kept telling Kennedy how much he`d like it for his own, ”joking about exchanging it for a vote. I kept jabbing him.”
On Hatch`s birthday last March, Kennedy showed up with a huge valise that he said contained charts for a presentation. But at the end of the meal, he unzipped the bag and there was a framed, expensive lithograph of the favored painting. The accompanying note said: ”To Orrin, Handle with care. If the paint comes off, the numbers will show! We`ll leave the light at the compound on for you anytime.”
The gift now hangs in Hatch`s office. ”It`s my pride and joy,” he says. ”I really treasure it.” Then he starts to laugh. ”I`d treasure the real painting even more. You might mention that.”
Administration roulette
Of course, every time administrations change-and particularly when the parties in power change-friendships often change with them.
So the story that Shields, the political columnist, tells about Duke Zeibert, a popular restaurateur, shows a man of exceptional loyalty.
”Duke Zeibert is a genuine credit in a town where maitre d`s know how you or your candidate did in the Iowa caucus, who`s up and who`s down,”
Shields says. ”(People) define someone by what he or she does, and Duke Zeibert is immune to that. Duke doesn`t forget his friends out of power.”
Shields describes seeing John Kennedy`s former chief of staff, Kenny O`Donnell, arrive at Zeibert`s some 15 or so years after JFK died when ”there was no perception of power … and Duke treated him like he was coming right out of the White House mess.”
Finally, there is the Washington phenomenon of people who have few friends but the ones who count.
John Sununu, Bush`s abrasive chief of staff, seems to have made a career of alienating people. So when he was chastised over using government planes and cars on personal trips, there was general glee and few shows of support.
But Sununu had the friendship of the most powerful person in town, George Bush. In Washington, that`s all that was needed.
