This Town (34 page)

Biden called Ryan to “welcome” him to the race, and Obama praised Ryan’s “beautiful family.”

And then, within a few days, the two campaigns were back to volleying about how many old people the other guy’s Medicare plan would kill.

•   •   •

F
or some reason, Ryan agreed to talk to me for a profile I started shortly after he was named. Romney’s campaign people in Boston were not happy about this. They feared any perception that Ryan was overshadowing the nominee, an insecurity that became more acute, as it was clear Ryan was generating more excitement with the base. Ryan allowed me in anyway and even let me eat barbecue and drink beer with him while he watched his Green Bay Packers play on
Monday Night Football
.

“Is this the guy who’s writing that hit piece on me?” Ryan said as his press guy, Michael Steel, led me into the candidate’s suite at the Cincinnatian Hotel (located, surprisingly, in Cincinnati). Ryan is adept at wielding sarcasm in a way that can both disarm and manipulate—signaling a mock fatalistic awareness of how the game is played while issuing a tacit invitation to like him anyway.

Ryan’s suite included a small roster of name-brand Republicans that included Rob Portman, a Republican senator from Ohio; the Republican National Committee chairman, Reince Priebus; and Dan Senor, one of Ryan’s top campaign lieutenants, who was a top flack for the U.S. operation in Iraq under President Bush. Ryan kept swigging from his bottle of Miller Lite and sniffling. He had a cold. A bad head cold. He kept mentioning this. He had had it for weeks. “I should not be drinking,” he said. “But c’mon, it’s ribs, it’s football, so I gotta have beer.” He started coughing (Atlas Coughed!). Ryan’s eyes were tearing up and he had an early wake-up the next morning.

After about forty-five minutes and several more coughs, Ryan announced that he would be watching the second half of the game in bed. I assured him that I would leave at that point.

The following week, Steel led me onto Ryan’s campaign bus in Iowa. It was a cushy vehicle with deep vinyl seats emblazoned with the Romney–Ryan insignia, a wood-paneled kitchen, a living room in back, and many flavors of laptops, iPads, TVs, and other gadgets. The bus contained about a dozen members of the extended Ryan family: his two sons, Charlie, eight, and Sam, seven; and daughter, Liza, ten. His wife, Janna, was also here, along with her younger sisters, Dana and Molly; the three sisters come from a prominent Democratic family in Oklahoma and all attended Wellesley College (as did their late mother, Prudence). As I walked onto the bus, Steel loudly announced me as “the guy from the
New York Times
who is writing a profile of Paul.” He said this each time I entered a restricted area around the candidate. Watch what you say, in other words. It is the press secretary’s variant on an arresting cop saying, “You have the right to remain silent” (or, more aptly, an admitting nurse in a psych ward who is obliged to ask a patient if he is feeling suicidal).

Steel then clarified that I would be writing a “hit piece” on Ryan. I corrected him, saying that I had more of a “hatchet job” in mind. “It’s more of a ‘hit-hatchet piece,’” summarized Ryan, the consensus finder. He offered me a midday Miller Lite. Still fighting the head cold, he opted for a plastic bottle of purple Vitamin Water.

Ryan’s body and nutrition freakishness was by now common knowledge—central to Brand Ryan, a study in discipline and exactitude in his approach to physical as well as fiscal fitness. He partook five days a week of P90X, a DVD-based workout that was advertised on late-night TV. Within days of his selection, an online photo of Ryan in a bathing suit made his the most-discussed abs in the history of running mates, other than possibly Joe Lieberman’s.

Ryan fashions himself a small-town middle-American dude, “not a D.C. guy.” This is usually the first tip-off in Washington of a Beltway insider. And in fact Ryan had spent half his life in This Town, arriving right out of college to work in a series of staff jobs before getting elected to Congress in 1998, at age twenty-eight.

People in both parties who know Ryan personally say he is pleasant, thoughtful, and one of the easier members of Congress to get along with. But he can also give off a smug and off-putting air, emblematic of a particular type. He was in his high school yearbook recognized as his class’s “biggest brown-noser.” During the fall campaign, Manhattan Mini Storage ran an ad on a New York billboard asking, “Doesn’t Paul Ryan Remind You of Every Frat Guy You Regret Sleeping With?”

Like most members of Congress with half a brain, Ryan had a pretty low opinion of many of his colleagues and had been thinking of how to escape. He thought about running for president himself, in early 2011. “A lot of people were encouraging me to run,” he mentioned to me, deploying the humble-brag construction preferred by politicians. In early August, when Romney tapped him, Ryan’s life got predictably insane: he coined a new phrase, “to get Wienermobiled.” It referred to a summer he once spent working for Oscar Mayer in northern Minnesota. A reporter asked him if he ever drove the Wienermobile. “I did actually, as a promotion for turkey bacon at a grocery store,” he said. “Then Wikipedia or something wrote that I was the guy who drove the Wienermobile.” That was its own job. Ryan only drove it once. But the story spread and he gets accused of lying. “So now, whenever something like that happens, we say, ‘Oh, I’m getting Wienermobiled again.’”

One of the fun things about watching a supernova rise is to see how people in Washington react to him. They are suddenly falling over themselves to say how well they know the Paul Ryans of the world, how they have been mentors. “We are VERY good friends,” said Representative James Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican. “I was definitely a mentor to him.”

A few weeks after he was announced, Ryan returned to the House floor for the first time as a running mate. In a private reception with his fellow Republicans, he was swarmed. People he had served with for years, almost twice his age, were reduced to fanboys. They asked for his autograph. They asked him to pose for pictures. Biggest Brownnoser grows up to be the Biggest Brownnosee—another winner in the Suck-up City pageant of This Town. I asked Ryan how many colleagues wanted pictures.

“I don’t know, fifty?” he said. “I thought that was very strange.”

13

The Presidential Campaign: Belly Flops, Bourbon Chocolate Truffles, and Wonderful Ruins

I
n midsummer, the keepers of heaven’s green room stole from us Gore Vidal, the acerbic titan of letters and author of one of the few great literary works about this city,
Washington, D.C.
Dick Cavett said that after spending time with Vidal, “you felt you had just had a lovely bath in the elegant and witty use of our sadly declining English language.” Vidal also produced two of my favorite This Town‒applicable statements ever: (1) In response to Cavett’s asking him his philosophy of how to conduct your life: “Never turn down an opportunity for sex or being on TV.” And (2) “Success is not enough. One’s friends must fail.”

Vidal, who was eighty-six when he expired July 31, was the grandson of a U.S. senator from Oklahoma who himself was the author of one of my favorite all-time quotations about the D. of C.: With its architectural grandness, Senator Thomas Gore said, Washington “will make wonderful ruins.”

As Obama–Romney death-marched to its end, it was clear that ruins could wait. The Political Class was doing just fine. Both conventions—the Republicans in Tampa in late August, the Dems in Charlotte in early September—were transformed into the Fattest of Cities in these leanest of times. The partygoers were swimming in corporate cash and feeling so very good about themselves—pretty much the opposite of where the recession-drained citizenry was and how many were feeling generally about the two major political parties. Festivity was breaking out everywhere. Anyone with rudimentary door-talking skills could finagle his way up to the troughs. There were lines of idling limos, ice sculptures, free media-sponsored food centers (the Huffington Post’s “Oasis” also offered free massages, aromatherapy, and yoga classes in both cities), and so many politicians to honor for their service. Tony Bennett performed to fete Nancy Pelosi’s twenty-fifth year in Congress with eight hundred others in Charlotte.

Also, lots of panel discussions to remind us that this is all about issues.

•   •   •

T
he unquestioned Big Man on Campus in Tampa, at least for the first part of GOP-looza, was Chris Christie, the rotund Republican governor of New Jersey. Romney awarded the coveted keynote speaker’s slot to Christie, who had acquired (thanks largely to YouTube) a reputation for colorfully beating down the hecklers, reporters, and teachers’ union types who annoyed him. These tantrums had become as basic to the Christie persona as perma-tan was to Snooki’s. (Angering Christie, David Letterman said, was “like crossing a rhino.”) They also imprinted Christie with the reputation of a no-nonsense purveyor of hard political truths and granted him a status as the cathartic id of impatient conservatism and counterbalance to the superego Romney.

Likewise, the press had granted Christie one of those coveted political badges of being “someone who tells it like it is,” who “gives it to you straight,” and all that. They come along periodically—Ross Perot wore it in the early nineties, John McCain during his “straight-talk express” days. Smitten observers reliably treat them with a holy-shit reverence befitting their stature as the
first person in political history who actually tells the truth
. And just as reliably, their acts wear thin.

Christie came in with great pockets of goodwill. He was huge with the key
Morning Joe
demographic. Joe and Mika were big fans and hosted him regularly (it always helps Club cred to be based in or around New York). Bill Kristol was a booster, Brokaw was his pal, and Springsteen his idol—loving Springsteen being a popular pose among many politicians, but Christie was the real deal (he had gone to more than a hundred of the Boss’s concerts and everything).

The governor had nailed for himself a killer persona of charismatic crankiness. He also made a big show of almost running for president through much of 2011. He engaged in the familiar dance of public indecision, speaking endlessly about how
flattered and humbled
he was that people kept asking him about running for president. Never do public figures appear less humble than when they are telling you how humbled they are. (A case in point occurred roughly fifteen minutes ago, as I was writing this, via tweet from Howard Fineman of the Huffington Post. “@howardfineman: Just hit 45K followers, a big sum by my humble standards. I’ll do my best to merit your continuing attention to what I write and say Best, H.”)

Christie’s rolling ego trip through Tampa resembled a dress rehearsal for 2016. The week began with an article in the
New York Post
saying that Christie did not want Mittens to pick him to be his running mate because he would then have to leave his governor’s job (and he loves his job, which they always have to say). Christie denied the article’s claims, but at least two Romney advisers I talked to had no doubt that the notion had come from Team Christie, if not directly from Governor Powder Keg himself.

He hit three or four delegation breakfasts a day, meeting key activists in important primary states (South Carolina) and fund-raising ATMs (California). “This is not about me,” Christie said, often. “It’s about Mitt Romney.” Christie only expended 1,800 words and 16 minutes in his keynote address talking about New Jersey before spitting out the name of the nominee. Christie’s speech was dubbed the “Me Note Address.” “
A prime-time belly-flop,” Politico
called it. By week’s end, the whale had jumped the shark.

My defining image of Christie that week occurred on the Tuesday morning of his Me Note. He was speaking to a breakfast assembly of Michigan delegates and comparing himself to an agitated racehorse. “You know, the horse that’s at the starting gate of the Kentucky Derby,” he explained. “Just banging up against that gate, you know?” Christie kept rolling his broad shoulders back and forth so the delegates could appreciate the full effect of his impatience and excitement. Then he bolted the breakfast, threw off his navy suit coat, and barreled his way through the lobby of the Embassy Suites in Tampa.

“No questions today!” Christie shouted back to the group of about fifteen trailing reporters and cameramen before plopping himself into the passenger seat of a waiting SUV that would transport him two blocks to the convention floor for his walk-through.

Christie checked out the convention stage while the rock band 3 Doors Down rehearsed nearby. Playing the Republican Convention these days is usually a signal that a band has become totally lame. Exhibits A (3 Doors Down), B (Journey), and C (Jack Blades of Night Ranger) were all scheduled to play Tampa this week. So were the predictables (Kid Rock and what’s left of Lynyrd Skynyrd) and the proverbial “country legends” that are GOP standbys. Ron Kaufman, the longtime lobbyist and Republican state committee man from Massachusetts, was parading around with the Oak Ridge Boys. Kaufman, who has a hideously fabulous little moustache and talks with a mumbling Boston accent, introduced me to the Oak Ridge Boy with the long ZZ Top beard. I kept running into the bearded Oak Ridge Boy all over Tampa, including during Christie’s walk-through. “Hey, you here with that Christie fellow?” he asked me. “I’m a big fan,” he declared. I’m guessing Christie would rather be caught naked than at an Oak Ridge Boys show.

After about a fifteen-minute walk-through, Christie headed off the floor as 3 Doors Down kept blaring away. As he stomped through narrow hallways and tunnels in the concourse, the pulsing music nourished a decidedly WWE aura around Christie. I kept following him through the concourse because no one was telling me not to. You can go a long way at a convention by just walking with a sense of purpose and looking like you belong in the entourage. Finally, I walked up alongside Christie—who was “only doing TV interviews this week,” his people said—and fearlessly asked him if he had a special pre-speech meal planned.

“Something light,” he told me. “Maybe a salad, with chicken or something.” At which point, one of Christie’s security henchman—who resembled an extra from
The Sopranos
, needless to say—noticed me and told me to stop asking questions. It was just as well, because Christie had already hoisted himself into the passenger seat of his SUV and slammed the door behind him. His bright white dress shirt rose a few feet in the air to where it almost touched the glove compartment, making it appear as if the airbag had deployed.

•   •   •

I
cannot believe so many Americans are currently on food stamps,” the Democratic lobbyist Heather Podesta was telling me. None of these food stamp recipients appeared to be in this room: a sunlit function hall of the Mint Museum, in Charlotte, where Heather and her superlobbyist husband Tony were hosting their daily brunch salon during the Democratic Convention.

The Podestas care deeply about food, not only people on food stamps. They had made a special preconvention “tasting trip” to Charlotte to ensure the best chow at the elite functions they hosted for the many senators, congressmen, and candidates they gave money to. Heather and Tony sampled from thirty local eateries to yield this day’s decadent smorgasbord of bourbon chocolate truffles, cucumber slices topped with chicken salad, and crab cakes slathered with peach chowchow.

“The situation is still spinning out of control,” Heather continued, shaking her head. She was apparently still trying to make her point about food stamps. Yes, whatever. Where’d the lady with the crab cakes go?

Heather, who is forty-two—or nearly a quarter century younger than superlobbyist Tony—cut a much more stylish and, yes, much prettier version of Cruella De Vil. She has gray and black hair, a big smile, and slightly devious eyes. She wore a multicolored silk suit that looked as if it were spray-painted on. “Graffiti-inspired,” Heather called the outfit.

Heather was trying to stay on her best behavior after landing in a bit of hot water with the locals. She had been quoted in a Reuters article that described Charlotte as a “
second-tier city.” “It’s grim,” she said in the article. “Going to the NASCAR Hall of Fame isn’t reason enough to be in Charlotte.” People noticed that—local people, and not happy ones. “Now I’m being good,” she vowed.

She did not seem terribly broken up about things, one way or another. Maybe the food stamp epidemic was troubling to Heather—and she said she had some ideas on how to get people off them—but Charlotte was a No Guilt Zone, liberal or otherwise.

Democrats have become quite good at justifying their lavish detours. They are, after all, the party of the little guy and must therefore make big, extravagant shows of principle. Party chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, for instance, vowed that Charlotte would be “the first convention in history that does not accept any funds from lobbyists, corporations, or political action committees.” Besides, no one would learn about that $
5 million in corporate donations until much later.

Nor, for that matter, had the quaint vilification of lobbyists that accompanied the rise of Barack Obama stopped any of them from celebrating themselves. Four years earlier, at the Dems’ convention in Denver, the Podestas even made up scarlet L’s—for “lobbyist”—as badges of defiance. Even sweeter defiance? Business is fabulous these days, and so are the Bloody Marys.

Tony Podesta’s firm, the Podesta Group, was in line to have its best year ever, Tony told me. He added that he or the lobbyists he employed had not struggled at all to get face time in the White House despite the administration’s repeated boasts about how little use they had for lobbyists. As of the end of May 2012,
Tony’s name had shown up twenty-seven times on White House visitor logs. It didn’t hurt, no doubt, that he shared a last name with John Podesta, the former White House chief of staff for Bill Clinton and co-chair of the Obama transition team in 2008 and 2009. People assumed that John and Tony were brothers (because they were) and that they talked all the time (they did) and that it gave Tony a big inroad to the administration (they swore not, but clients could assume all they wanted).

As his brunch wore down, Tony took a seat in the corner of the lemony-sunned function room. John walked over and said hi, and so did a circle jerk of Democratic senators and congressmen—Senators Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Ben Cardin of Maryland, Representatives Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Jerrold Nadler of New York—who all were paying respects. They were longtime friends, beneficiaries of Tony and Heather’s, er, “wi$dom.” And maybe future employees, too, who knew?
The
Atlantic
had just reported that in 1974, 3 percent of retiring members became lobbyists. Now 50 percent of senators and 42 percent of congressmen do.

“You were great on TV this morning, sweetie,” Tony said to Senator Kay Hagan as he kissed her sweetly on the cheek. He reminded the first-term senator from North Carolina that she had a “permanent invitation” to his and Heather’s vacation home in Italy.

As for these lavish outpourings at the conventions, Tony admitted that perhaps they were a bit much. “Do too many shrimp die on a week like this? Yes, probably,” said Tony, who was wearing a tan suit and laceless red sneakers. He was more shrugging than sheepish about the shrimp. And, as the head of a firm that lobbied for BP, whose crude had poisoned many a defenseless shrimp, his crustacean-friendly bona fides were suspect anyway.

Heather said the antilobbying trash talk of the Obamans did bother her for a time. “It felt like I was in a cage,” she said, as she had before. “But the food was good.”

•   •   •

O
h
my God, Bob Rubin’s fallen in the pool!”

Bob Rubin’s trademark hooded eyes were droopier than I remembered them. But presiding over billions in investor losses can take a toll.

He was still moving with that aura of a Big Deal through the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton in Charlotte. He was the undisputed king of the Ritz-Carlton Democrats: the primest of movers in the modern marriage of politics and wealth creation. When Bill Clinton hired the longtime domo at Goldman Sachs to be his secretary of the Treasury, it represented the contemporary consummation of a simmering romance between Washington and Wall Street. The experiment was hailed a success: to wit, the late-nineties economic boom, perhaps the sweetest second-term triumph for Clinton to enjoy when he wasn’t getting impeached.