"It's how we sell it to the customer, the voters. We tell them that it's a package deal. There is stuff in here that everybody but the most die-hard liberal is going to want. We tell them that within the first 100 days after electing us, we will submit a package of ten bills, one for each item, and we promise that if elected we will ram them through. Lots of hoopla! We do a mass signing of the contract on the steps of the Capitol. We invite all the Republican candidates to Washington to sign with us. We do the talk shows and the news shows and the whole nine yards. If each of us takes one or two of these items as their own, we can bomb them left and right."
"It'll never work. Clinton will veto every last thing we put through.", retorted Santorum.
It was Nussle that answered that one. "So? This is going to be very high profile. You think he is going to bag ten consecutive bills? If we take back the Senate, we could actually do this in the first 100 days."
"Remember, this is partly theater. Every day after we take control, we submit one of these bills like clockwork, just in time to make the evening news. We're not actually going to get everything we want, but we can play this up big with the voters. Don't forget, there are a lot of Democrats in conservative districts that are going to like pieces of this. It won't be a straight party line vote on this stuff. I would bet that on some items we'll be able to pick up enough votes to be able to override a veto.", I added.
There was a positive undertone to the meeting, but every eye was turned to Newt Gingrich, who could kill it with a single word. Instead, he was looking at my easels, one hand along the side of his face and a finger tapping his chin, with a sly smile. "Carl, you told me you had an idea, but this is an entire campaign! It is audacious! How do you see it working?"
Well, he wasn't shooting it down! "This year, 1993, we are doing prep work on this. We finalize the ten points, start getting details down. A year from now, we start increasing in speed. Six months later, after the primaries, we get the new candidates involved. We go full court press on this. We get a few Senators to start writing their own versions of the bills.", I told them. I pointed at Newt. "You're the general on this."
He nodded. "We do this right, we win and I become Speaker. This isn't public knowledge yet, but Michel is leaving after this term. He won't be back in two years."
"Damn!", I heard around the room. That made sense, though. I knew that Gingrich would become Speaker in the next Congress, but that he was only Number Two in the pecking order now. If Michel left, he moved up, and he wanted to be Speaker so bad he could sit on it and taste it.
"There's ten points to the Contract, whatever they end up as. We each take a point and start working on the legislation; we get some help on the other two. It has to be absolutely secret. The Democrats and Bill Clinton get a sniff of this, they'll figure out a way to push back. This year is totally quiet prep.", I added in.
Gingrich shook his head. "No, we can't leave it in your offices. We move it out, to one of the think tanks around town. We work on it through them. I'll talk to a few people, get them over here for an evening or two. It's a good start, though. Carl, I really like this! John, what do you say?"
John looked around the room and at the easels for a moment. "It's brilliant. We're going to have to do a lot of ads on this next year.", he cautioned.
Jim Nussle said, "We get the RNC and some soft money to do that. They can push the program without mentioning us. It's legal." A few others nodded and agreed with that.
"By God, this could work!", exclaimed John Doolittle.
I nodded. "This has to be secret, though, really secret. I mean, cross your heart, hope to die, pinkie shake secret. You can't tell your wives, you can't tell your girlfriends, you can't talk in your sleep! The Democrats learn about this, they'll come up with some bullshit of their own.", I said. There were some grins at this. While some of the group were real straight arrows (Santorum), I knew some weren't (Gingrich), and the comment about wives and girlfriends would hit home for some of the guys. Hey, they were grownups; they could face the heat if they got caught.
We broke apart after some more discussion. Newt promised to get back to me the following week. We were in business.
Was this how the first Contract With America began? That was on my first go around, and I had no idea when it actually got started. I did remember that by the '94 elections it had totally galvanized the Party and thrown the Democrats into complete disarray, and the elections were a watershed event. It was Newt's baby then, and the Gang of Eight were his helpers. I was happy enough to let him lead the charge this time. If we won, I would rack up some serious Brownie points and favors I could call in at a later date.
Plus, a lot of it was stuff that the public thought we needed. Entitlement reform for instance, was desperately needed. In the case of welfare, we had created a perverse incentive to have welfare babies. As originally planned, women on welfare received payments based on the number of children they had. The more children they had, obviously the more assistance they needed. Enter the Law of Unintended Consequences. If by living in some dump and not feeding your kids properly, it costs less to raise a child than the extra payment, then you actually make money with another child! Talk about your bad policy ideas! That was just one example. The entire system needed to be overhauled, to get people off the dole and onto their own feet.
What I wanted to do was to oversee the entire thing. By 'creating' the idea, it put me in the driver's seat, even if I let Newt take the credit. I could soften things, make them more palatable to the Democrats, cut down on the nasty rhetoric. I could push back against the lobbyists who would try to take over everything. It was going to take a lot of work, and I was going to need some help.
The first thing I did was to break my own rule about talking to anybody. I told Marilyn I was staying another night, and had Marty come over to the house Wednesday night. He had spent several years as a lobbyist before coming back from the dark side. I would frequently joke with him about just that thing, telling him that I knew there was good still inside him. He could help me keep things honest!
Marty and I had a quick dinner at a seafood place down on the Potomac before heading over to the house. Once there, I made a couple of drinks and took him into the den, where I gave him pretty much the same spiel as I had given the others. With Marty, however, I was able to focus a little more, and cut out some of the extraneous stuff, and got it done in half the time. At the end I asked, "Well, what do you think?"
"Well, it's audacious as hell, that's for sure. What did Gingrich and the others think? He can kill it if he wanted to, but he's looking for a game changer and this could be it."
I nodded. "The others all liked it. Newt liked it more when I said we'd put it under his name. If it works, he becomes Speaker of the House."
"He probably gets hard just dreaming about that."
I gave a theatrical shudder. "Now that's an image I don't want to think about!" Marty snorted in laughter. "What about his idea of shopping it out to one of the think tanks in town? Why should we do that?"
"Deniability, for one thing. If anything leaks, it's just a proposal from the think tank, not pending legislation from your office. You just sit there and go 'Huh?' as necessary.", he commented.
"Huh?"
"Very good, keep practicing that. Just as important, they have a lot more lawyers and statisticians and thinkers on tap than you do. Some of this stuff will be really, really big and involved."