VOICE FROM AMERICA
The deathlike charm of Mr C. Fred Bergsten
ot long before the recent election I found myself seated at a dinner party beside a woman who divided her time between throwing parties in Washington and peddling Monets by the square yard to now bankrupt Texas oil-men, and now col- lapsed Japanese real estate moguls. Over- come by the ennui of recession, she had recently taken to raising money for the Clinton campaign. It emerged that during one of the fund-raising events she had been allowed to sit next to Hillary Clinton. This was her experience of politics, and the din- ner was punctuated by her breathless attempts to impress us with it. I made a sin- gle, feeble gesture to save her from herself by suggesting, sarcastically, that she should put her name forward to be appointed the next chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). The woman nodded and became lost in contemplation.
Not long after the election this same woman turned up across the table at anoth- er Washington dinner party. For a time she seemed to have left her political ambition at the door. Then, as the main course arrived, she blurted out to the table that 'a lot of people have told me that I should let myself be considered for the chairmanship of the NEA. I'm beginning to think that they're right! What do you all think?' While the rest of the party stared into the pool of gravy around the roast beef, I almost fell off my chair. I felt certain that I was the only person ever to nominate her for high office, and equally certain that she had for- gotten my role in her new career.
Mrs Clinton's one-lunch confidante had neglected the first rule of Washington office-seeking, which is never to mention one's own desire for office. Still, the woman's raw self-promotional impulses were perfectly consistent with the spirit that informs daily life here, as everyone but a handful of journalists jockeys for the 2,000 or so jobs in the Clinton administra- tion. The process is anything but innocent. A Clinton aide recently explained to the New York Times the key to bureaucratic success. 'A lot of it is campaigning,' he said. 'A name gets into play, and unless it's knocked down — which is not always possi- ble to do — it remains in play. So a savvy person will find a way to get his name pro-
moted.' • About once a week a whole new set of previously obscure candidates for office bubbles up into view. Where they come from is difficult to say; it's a big country, and since everyone assumes that someone else knows who they are, it is quite possible that no one knows who they are. As a result, the outcome of their competition is wonderfully unpredictable. Four years ago, for instance, the Treasury pitched for a prestigious job as an under-secretary a young man without experience, who hap- pened to be employed by the same Wall Street firm as the new Treasury Secretary, Nicholas Brady. The young man, who held a middle-ranking job in his firm, had been 'mentioned' in the newspapers and the peo- ple doing the hiring for the Treasury assumed that he must be intimate with the incoming Secretary. In fact the two had never met. The young man now sits in an office the size of a guildhall beneath high ceilings trimmed with a stucco frieze and portraits of the Founding Fathers. He has a car and driver and a couple of dozen peo- ple around him to genuflect as he walks down the hall to the men's room. He gazes out across the Washington Monument from his desk, where he muses gently about the Future of America, breaking off on occa- sion to converse with Senators or to meet with journalists who flatter him until he purrs.
Now he is being replaced. To judge from the behaviour of the possible replacements, the main qualification for the job, other than shiftiness and a general sort of plausi- bility, seems to be the sort of extreme dull- ness equated (wrongly) with a seriousness of purpose and (rightly) with an inability to threaten the boss. In today's New York Times, for example, there appears a letter from a Democratic office-seeker called C. Fred Bergsten, which in its deathlike charm is perfectly representative of the general run of Washington self-promotional litera- ture. Like hundreds of Democratic hope- fuls who have waited for 12 years in the Wilderness, Mr C. Fred Bergsten is employed by a Washington economic think-tank. What is curious about these think-tank Jeremiahs is that, despite their endless stream of letters, editorials, speech- es and television appearances, it doesn't really matter what they think. Far more important is where they think it. C. Fred Bergsten's ceaseless efforts to thrust him- self into the presidential line of vision has earned him the nickname See Fred; it has also made him a contender for the office of the lucky young man from Wall Street. His challenge for the next several weeks is to remain in the public eye. Thus he writes to the New York Times:
As a co-sponsor of the Commission on Gov- ernment Renewal I appreciate your strong support for our proposal for a new economic council in the White House. However, your concern over our having a misplaced focus on 'competitiveness' is misplaced. The Competi- tiveness Policy Council, whose initial report to the President and Congress last spring helped inspire the recent commission, defines that term as largely synonymous with 'pro- ductivity', just as you suggest. To avoid any possible confusion, however, we would call the new entity simply the Economic Council. We would exclude the word `security' because, as you suggest, it could connote a protectionist intent. . .
His letter goes on and on, simply recast- ing Clinton's platform in its own impenetra- ble language, and finishing with a carefully crafted description of C. Fred Bergsten himself: 'The writer, director of the Insti- tute for International Economics, is chair- man of the Competitiveness Policy Coun- cil.' Ole!
Of course every job that goes to a Demo- crat is one that was lost by a Republican. And to judge from the flow of curriculum vitaes, many of these are having trouble finding a place for themselves in the free market that in theory they worship. 'What a lot of these Republicans who've lost their jobs are looking for,' says Mr Robert Balkin, who provides a service which tracks the movements of incoming and outgoing pencil-pushers, 'is an opportunity to stay in Washington and to remain in the contacts books of Washington journalists. They don't want to do any heavy lifting. Really there's only one place that's perfect for this.'
'What's that?' I asked.
'A think-tank.'
The Wasp
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