WHERE HAVE ALL THE ROGUES GONE?

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000302280002-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 26, 2012
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: April 1, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT i
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ArsTI 3 ,.Drr.1RED
WASHINGTONIAN
April 1985
Politics
Where Have All the Rogues Gone?
Political Mischief Isn't What It Used to Be, But
We Still Have a Few Rogues, Cranks', and Buffoons
By Jack W. Germond ana Jules v? 111171
It's a sad state of affairs in this most
political of cities: Somebody behaves in
a roguish fashion at a big political dinner
addressed by the Vice President. and the
culprit turns out to be not a politician,
but a football player.
Where have all the great political
rogues gone?
When Redskin star running back John
Riggins went into his now-famous mon-
ologue with Supreme Court Justice San-
dra Day O'Connor and capped it by tak-
ing 40-plus winks on the floor at table-
side, it brought tears to our eyes. It hurt
to recall that 28 long years had passed
since Representative T. James Tumulty
of Jersey City made page one around the
country by posing in white tie and tails
for Dwight D. Eisenhower's second in-
augural ball?without his pants on.
We've had Watergate and all that in
the intervening time, but that was knav-
ery, not roguery. Our dictionary defines
a rogue as "a wandering, disorderly, or
dissolute person formerly accountable
Only under various vagrancy acts,"
which falls considerably short of the
leading indicted players of Richard M.
Nixon's coterie.
Our dictionary also describes a rogue
as "a dishonest, unprincipled person,"
which seems a bit harsh to us, and as "a
worthless fellow," which seems too
broad, inviting the inclusion of so many
members of Congress, not 13 mention
members of the Fourth Estate.
The remaining dictionary definition is
more what we have in mind when we
think of a political rogue: "a pleasantly
mischievous person." That is the es-
sence of authentic roguery?the talent
for saying or doing outrageous things
while not hurting anybody much and
without totally losing public affection.
The political firmament is studded with
great political rogues of the past: the late
Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois and
former governor James Rhodes of Ohio
among the Republicans, and Represen-
tative Adam Clayton Powell of New
York and Senator Fred Harris of Okla-
homa among the Democrats, to name a
few. Rhodes, who played golf so much
that nobody noticed when he retired,
may yet again enrich the political
rogues' gallery by leaving the links tem-
porarily to run again in Ohio.
And then there is former senator Eu-
gene McCarthy of Minnesota, always an
iconoclast, now a sometime poet and
lecturer living in rural Virginia. His ra-
pier wit has been known to inflict
wounds too deep to heal. A classic was
his observation that fellow Senator Clif-
ford Case of New Jersey, a mild-man-
nered and harmless man, was akin to a
private sent out after the battle to shoot
the wounded. McCarthy can be a charm-
ing fellow?when he is not writing
cranky letters protesting observations
about himself such as this one.
Enough of reminiscences. Who on the
political scene today qualifies as an au-
thentic rogue?
At the top of the list is Governor Ed-
wards of Louisiana, who could play
Gaylord Ravenal, the riverboat gambler
in Show Boat, or Rhett Butler in Gone
with the Wind without a dash of grease
paint. Edwards, you may remember,
chartered a jet plane to fly himself and a
host of Louisiana Democrats to Paris last
year to celebrate his inauguration. They
all paid?S10,000 apiece.
Edwards is under indictment on
charges of somewhat more serious she-
nanigans?lining his pockets in the
amount of ?2 million in fraudulent hos-
pital-construction deals. The 57-year-
old governor has been under grand-jury
investigation numerous other times, but
this is the first he's been indicted. In this
regard, he's like that legendary rogue
who boasted he had a clean record: a
hundred arrests, no convictions.
Edwards's capers make another nota-
ble rogue, former mayor Kevin White of
Boston. a piker. All White did was throw
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a big birthday party for his wife?and get
political supporters to pick up the tab.
He canceled the shindig when the word
got out to the uninvited.
White had the chutzpah of the true
rogue. Questioned once about a harsh
series of television commercials attack-
ing an opponent. he said they were a
public service because "nobody knows
him and I'm filling in the blanks."
Right up there in our rogues' gallery is
former Texas gOvernor and Secretary of
the Treasury John B. Connally. When
Connally ran for the Republican presi-
dential nomination in 1980. he used his
acquittal?he had been charged with ac-
cepting a dairy-lobby bribe?as a quali-
fication for high public office. In pursuit
of Republican delegates in Oklahoma,
he bused them and their spouses to a
fancy resort from all corners of the state
for a free weekend. He got one support-
er, known thereafter as John Connally's
"million-dollar delegate."
Then there's the new Senate Majority
Leader, Bob Dole, who has mended his
ways after breaking in as a Nixon hatchet
man in the early 1970s. Now that Dole
has heavy leadership responsibilities as
well as continuing presidential ambi-
tions, he has been a bit more restrained
with his quips. But his description of
former Presidents Jimmy Caner, Gerald
Ford, and Richard Nixon as "see no
evil, hear no evil, and evil deserves to
be chiseled in stone.
player or would break ranks and take
millions of black voters with him.
A true rogue can never be part of any
team. Roguery remains one of the great
surviving categories of individuality,
and Jesse Jackson is, above all else, a
one-man show. So he took great pleasure
in tantalizing everyone about his inten-
tions. In the end, in the true spirit of
roguery, he did the unexpected. He de-
livered a custom Jesse Jackson stem-
winder of a speech to the convention?
Senator Fritz Hollings of South Carolina
is another rogue. The image of the old-
time Dixie swashbuckler, Hollings has
the only tongue surviving on the Wash-
ington scene that rivals Gene McCar-
. thy's. His comment to former governor
Reubin Askew of Florida during the
Democratic presidential candidates' de-
bate at Dartmouth College last year hit
an all-time low. Askew suffered at the
time from a nervous tic in his eye, and
when he answered a question in a not
overly responsive way, Hollings asked
him whether he had a tic in his ear as
well. Agan, like McCarthy, Hollings is
one of Washington's most charming
conversationalists when he is not verbal-
ly beheading somebody. (His favorite
target during the campaign was not
Askew, but fellow Senator John Glenn
of Ohio, whom he called "Sky Kine.")
Another authentic rogue is Jesse Jack-
son, whose antics last year drove the
establishment of the Democratic party,
and Fritz Mondale in particular, to dis-
traction. Jackson makes his mischief
with a purpose that often is known only
to himself. All through the primary peri-
od leading up the the Democratic Na-
tional Convention. Jackson kept the par-
ty and Mondale on the hook trying to
figure out whether he would be a team
Robert Strauss has the
authentic rogue's ability to
get up at a party, insult
everybody in the room, and
leave with verbal garlands
tossed at his feet.
but not before he did an ingratiating mea
culpa for his earlier offensive remarks
toward Jews. Then he called upon the
delegates to "be patient " with him be-
cause "God is not finished with me
yet." It was true roguish audacity.
Robert Strauss of Texas. who has now e:Q
ascended into the political stratosphere.
Strauss bears the title of ambassador (a
gift from Jimmy Carter) and functions as
a kind of Bernard Baruch of wheeling-
and-dealing.
Strauss has the authentic rogue's abili-
ty to get up at a party. insult everybody
in the room, especially the guest of hon-
or. and leave with verbal garlands tossed
at his feet. One of his standard lines is
about how sad it is for the honored guest
that the assembled failures and rejects
are the best he can turn out for the occa-
sion. The crack, leveling everyone
equally, has the class of a Bach concerto
or a Joe Montana pass.
Strauss has a special skill with the
two-edged insult. We encountered him
once in the company of Jody Powell,
then President Carter's press secretary,
and Andrew Glass, Washington bureau
chief for the Atlanta Constitution?a
newspaper Carter read regularly, and
thus one Powell was obliged to take seri-
ously. "Look at this guy," said Strauss,
gesturing at Powell. "He thinks this
guy "?Glass?" is Walter Lippmann."
Rogues, while the very essence of indi-
viduality, often find comfort in each oth-
er. A good friend of Jesse Jackson's is
Bert Lance, rogue emeritus of the Caner
administration. Although Lance always
seems to be just one step ahead of the
law, he has been able to generate great
trust and fondness from politicians, in-
cluding such opposites as Jackson and
Mondale.
When Jackson was causing Mondale
to pull his hair out during those tempes-
tuous pre-convention days, Lance
stepped in with some heavy hand-hold-
ing. He listened to Jackson's complaints
about the nominating and electing
processes in the South, and he is credited
to this day by Mondale strategists with
keeping the lid on Jackson.
As for Mondale himself, he demon-
strated how he felt about Lance, once
indicted but acquitted on charges of bank
irregularities, by trying to make him the
Democratic national chairman. The ef-
fort threw Mondale' s own nominating
convention into an uproar and prompted
Wisconsin Democratic chairman Matt
Flynn to observe, "We don't need a
chairman who wasn't convicted. We
need a chairman who wasn't indicted."
As the current Georgia Democratic
chairman, Lance is probably the reign-
ing political rogue in the Democratic
party, if you don't count Edwin Ed-
wards, who really belongs to the Edwin
Edwards party, or the rogue's rogue,
Strauss and his mirror image in the Re-
publican party, former House Republi-
can Conference chairman and Secretary
of Defense Melvin Laird of Wisconsin,
have teamed up as co-chairmen of a new
Commission on National Elections that
will try to put some common sense into
the process of President-picking. Simi-
lar commissions in the past have been
burdened with lofty political-science
professors, while woefully weak on
rogues. These two know every trick and
probably invented some, so they may be
able to come up with some useful
suggestions, which would be a novelty.
1.1ird's place in the rogues' gallery
can be established with one story. One
morning down in Key Biscayne in 1968,
as President-elect Richard Nixon and his
cronies prepared to take office, Laird
came down to breakfast at the hotel
where the press was staying. He was
wearing huge cuff links in the shape of
his House of Representatives calling
card. They were so large that they bore
his name, congressional district, and
Washington and Wisconsin phone num-
bers and addresses.
"Where in the world did you get those
cufflinks?" we asked.
Laird, eyes twinkling, replied simply,
"The special interests," and went on
eating.
Of the out-of-Washington rogues. Ed-
ward "Fast Eddie" Vrdolyak, the Cook
County Democratic chairman and bite
noire of Chicago politics, stands out. He
makes war with Chicago mayors without
fear or favor. That's only fair, inasmuch
as his current foe, Mayor Harold Wash-
nnntinned
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ington. has strong rogue credentials
himself, having served time for tax trou-
bles. Washington achieved office in a
racist campaign in which he and Vrdo-
lvak sought to outdo each other.
Some confuse the rogue with the dema-
gogue. and there is often a very fine line
between the two. Some demagogues,
such as 'Huey Long and Joe McCarthy,
stand out on their merits. Others gradu-
ate to roguery. A decade or so ago,
?Governor George Wallace of Alabama
would have been placed in the dema-
gogue category for his shameless play-
ing on the race issue for personal politi-
cal gain. Today, however, infirmity and
age have mellowed Wallace. His appli-
cation to enter the rogues' gallery would
have to be taken seriously.
Wallace is an extremely clever and
entertaining individual. Whenever we
encountered him in the old days, when
he was still riding the segregation horse,
he would inquire about our children?
and about where we lived and sent them
to school. One of us lived in Virginia,
and Wallace would smile knowingly
when we told him that. The other of us
lived in the District and sent his kids to
private school, and he would, smile
knowingly again when we told him that.
If we met him six times in a year, we
would go through this Q-and-A half a
dozen times.
Our Rogues' Hall of Fame is over-
loaded with Democrats. Part of the rea-
son is that Republicans, by and large, are
such a dull lot. Many of them lack the
sophistication to indulge in roguery
without sliding into knavery. Richard
Nixon and the Watergate crowd, and his
avaricious Vice President, Spiro T. Ag-
new, illustrate the point. Others include
the late Joe McCarthy, who was both
demagogue and knave, and Senator Wil-
liam Jenner of Indiana. Today there is
Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina,
who wants to buy out the airwaves so he
can tell us how good tobacco-smoking
and certain Central American dictators
are for us.
Other worthy politicians of both parties
might or might not aspire to be rogues
but fall short for one reason or another.
Near-rogues qualify as "pleasantly mis-
chievous" in the definition but are hard-
ly "worthless fellows" or "wandering,
disorderly, or dissolute," and are just
too harmless. Former senator Sam Ervin
of North Carolina clearly fits. So does
former governor Frank Sargent of Mas-
sachusetts, a Republican who, when he
learned that Nixon had named John Con-
nally Secretary of the Treasury, asked,
"Can he add?"
Of those still on the political scene, or
wishing fervently that they were, we
nominate Representative Morris Udall
of Arizona. former governor Jerry
Brown of California. House Speaker Tip
and?,though we might have
some arguments on this one?the Presi-
dent of the United States. Ronald Wilson
Reagan. His supporters may rend their
three-piece garments at the suggestion.
But his assurances that the truly needy
are adequately protected by his social
safety net has a touch of the pleasantly
mischievous in it.
Others might aspire to roguery but
just don't make it. They are the Cranks,
such as Chief Justice of the Supreme
Court Warren Burger, who is a sort of
Housekeeper of the Judiciary, forever
telling the kids to clean up their rooms.
There are the Bores, the kind who are
too colorless to be rogues and are capa-
ble of emptying an already empty room
with endless self-serving intonations.
The departed senator from Texas, John
Tower, is a world-class example of this
species, and the droning if illustrious
Henry Kissinger is not far behind.
There is yet one other category that is
often confused with roguery. That is
buffoonery. Such names as former gov-
ernors Lester Maddox of Georgia (Dem-
ocrat) and Claude Kirk of Florida (Re-
publican) come to mind, as well as the
late Senator Homer Capehart of Indiana,
' once called by an authentic rogue. Sena-
tor Robert Kerr of Oklahoma, "a rancid
tub of ignorance, whom I hold in mini-
mum high regard."
Sometimes a politician will say one
thing so ridiculous that he earns a tempo-
rary buffoonery membership card.
When former senator Roman Hruska of
Nebraska defended Nixon Supreme
Court nominee Harrold Carswell, criti-
cized as mediocre, on the grounds that
the mediocre people in the country de-
served representation on the High Court,
he got his card punched instantly.
There was a time when Senator Barry
, Goldwater might have been nominated
for this category. But his recent ques-
tioning of some 'aspects of defense
spending, along with other bolts of com-
mon sense, keeps him off the list. The
leading buffoon right now is CIA Direc-
tor William Casey. who surely must be
clowning by the way he runs those "cov-
ert" operations in Central America.
But we have drifted a good distance
from roguery, and from that memorable
scene of John Riggins stretched out at
the feet of Justice O'Connor as George
Bush tried his one-liners on the members
and guests of the Washington Press
Club. Despite Washington's great tradi-
tion of rogues, it took old Riggo to move
in and show the city's political elite how
to make a fool of yourself. We have
indeed fallen on hard times. 0
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