Dukakis Aide Estrich : She’s More Than Most Can Manage

Susan Estrich, 35, national campaign manager for Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis--and the first woman to hold such a weighty post in presidential politics--is variously described by admirers as brilliant, shrewd, dynamic, witty, a natural leader.

Critics call her imperious, rude, coarse, vindictive and intimidating. But either way, meeting Estrich for the first time, it takes about two minutes to determine this much: If energy alone can do it, George Bush is history.

It’s like being sucked into the eye of a hurricane, just watching her coming, a stocky blonde in a mini-skirt, petticoat hanging half an inch, barreling across the foyer of the Dukakis campaign headquarters, barking some final order over her shoulder to a staffer as she distractedly snatches at her visitor’s hand in an impatient split-second shake, teeth flashing in what passes as a friendly grin.

Won’t Decline Free Air Time

Turning in the same motion, she jabs impatiently at the elevator buttons, dammit, she’s running late for a taped television appearance across town, an utter waste of her time, but what the hell, they wanna give the Dukakis campaign free air time, she’ll take it.

“I always say the same thing, over and over, it drives ‘em nuts, but what can they do?” she chortled, now striding across the parking lot, talking, talking, talking in breathless, nonstop staccato bursts, don’t even think of interrupting.

Here’s a woman with enough obvious self-confidence for five people. She doesn’t offer opinions, she states absolutes.

In the car, her mind races from one topic to the next, no particular order, from sexists she confronts on the job to the outrageous price of real estate in Los Angeles, where her husband lives, to the upcoming California primary, which, in consummate campaign manager style, she swears she would never dream of taking for granted, polls showing Dukakis with a 2-1 lead over the Rev. Jesse Jackson notwithstanding.

No Details of Strategy

But beyond that, she consistently refuses to publicly discuss her campaign strategy, not even the most innocuous details of what goes on behind her closed doors. “Why should I?” she asks.

Next, Estrich’s thoughts are firmly fixed on Jackson himself. He’s becoming an increasing annoyance to the Dukakis campaign, first with his critical swipes at Dukakis’ foreign policy and domestic programs, and now with his suddenly revived gripes, shades of ‘84, about what he regards as the unfair allocation of uncommitted super delegates.

The man is never satisfied--he liked the rules just fine when things were going his way, “after Michigan, for example,” Estrich growls. “And I don’t think he’s helping himself a bit, either. Nobody gives a good goddamn about the super delegates!”

As for Jackson’s intentions at the convention, she only rolls her eyes and temporarily goes off the record, as she does with maddening frequency, watching vigilantly to see that the tape recorder is in fact snapped off. Estrich didn’t get where she is by placing much trust in her fellow man, journalists in particular. Anyway, suffice to say, in private, Estrich relishes political gossip as much as the next person.

But (back on the record), she’s “assuming” Jackson will be reasonable, for the sake of his own ambition if nothing else, and throw his support wholeheartedly behind Dukakis, no matter what he gets or doesn’t get, rather than take the fall for a possible George Bush victory in November.

Whispering Behind Her Back

But if Jackson annoys Estrich, he is as a gnat unto an elephant, compared to the way she feels about those who are constantly whispering behind her back that she is no more than a figurehead, that Dukakis’ former campaign manager and close friend, John Sasso, is actually still calling the shots from behind the scenes.

Sasso was obliged to resign last fall when he got caught sabotaging Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s presidential campaign--to wit, leaking tapes to the media exposing Biden’s plagiarism of a speech.

Her eyes glitter coldly as she contemplates this insidious assault on her command. “It’s simply not correct, and the governor has said so repeatedly.” All emphasis in what follows belongs on the pronoun, I :

“I am in charge. I run it. I manage it. I decide where we’re going, what we’re going to do, where we will spend money, how much and on what; I decide what we’re gonna say, who should do what. I am in charge of deciding what, ultimately, we are going to do. I have the power.”

Estrich is more than insulted, she seems positively outraged, perhaps because those who would question her authority are also striking at the very core of what she has, at least so far in her life, always been: the classic-case super-achiever.

Her resume, in brief:

A native of the Boston suburbs, one of three children born to a middle-class, small-town attorney father and a medical receptionist mother, both Jewish; a Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude graduate of Wellesley; scholarship student at Harvard Law School, where she was the first woman president of the Harvard Law Review; a couple of prestigious clerkships next, including a year with Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens; then two years with the Los Angeles firm of Tuttle & Taylor (where she decided that corporate law was “incredibly boring--and I didn’t want to go into criminal law, because who wants to spend their lives defending rich villains?”); and back to Harvard, where she became one of the youngest tenured professors in the school’s history (currently on a two-year leave).

Married to Disney Producer

She is married, no children, to Martin Kaplan, a former speech writer for Walter F. Mondale, now an executive producer for Disney Studios in Los Angeles, whom she sees every few weeks. Their home is in Nichols Canyon, the former Gloria Swanson mansion, complete with a diving board off the second-floor bedroom balcony into the swimming pool below.

Last year Estrich also wrote a well-received book on rape law, based on her own rape 14 years ago. An undergraduate, Estrich was unloading groceries from her car, in broad daylight, when she was attacked by a stranger who was never caught.

Meantime, Estrich has also been busy for the past 15 years, working the Democratic Party circuits, earning membership in that tight little world of professionals who make campaigns run, the operatives who move like migrant workers from campaign to campaign, season after season, bound less by political convictions, which range from a lot to none, than by sheer love of the game.

By the time Dukakis catapulted her to the summit of her trade, Estrich had paid her dues in full, hustling behind the scenes for the likes of Teddy Kennedy, then Mondale in 1984, plus a lot of tedious committee work in between. By the time Rep. Geraldine A. Ferraro hired her as executive director of the Democratic National Platform Committee in ‘84, Estrich had demonstrated once and for all that she could hold her own in any smoke-filled room with the toughest, crustiest, most devious old warhorses of the bunch.

Initial Amazement at Estrich Recalled

Eight years ago, for instance, attorney Stu Eizenstat headed up the Jimmy Carter team negotiating with Kennedy forces over the Democratic platform, and he still recalls his initial amazement:

Sitting across the table from him and his seasoned team of attorneys was this 27-year-old female, wearing blue jeans and chain-smoking Marlboros, but peering fearlessly at them all through narrowed eyes as she laid down her demands. Which were non-negotiable.

“Our mandate was to try to reach compromises. (Estrich’s) was to find as many areas of difference and confrontation as she could, to move as far to our left as possible . . . and, at the end of the day, we would just go off and bang table tops in frustration,” says Eizenstat, now a Dukakis supporter himself. “Because she won more points than we did. We had won the delegates--but she won their hearts.

“And I was utterly amazed--that someone so young, with so relatively little experience in national affairs, had such command of the issues, could understand the nuances so well. She wasn’t personally obstreperous--she simply made her case, she was tough but fair, but, by God, she stood her ground, she never gave an inch!”

But, if Eizenstat is enthusiastic about Estrich, Ferraro is an unbridled cheerleader.

‘Nobody Thought She Had Been Unfair’

“I hired Susan because it takes anybody meeting Susan about half a minute to see that she’s incredibly smart,” she says. “I’d heard about her role on (the Kennedy team) so I told her, ‘OK, I need this platform to go through with a minimum of angst.’ I said, ‘If you know how to create disruptions, then you must also know how to avoid them’--and she did. In the end, nobody thought she had been unfair or arbitrary.”

As for those who would call Estrich an imperious witch, Ferraro only snorts in contempt. Strong women always take that rap, she says--usually from insecure men, confused and frightened in the presence of a woman who doesn’t fit their docile mold.

“Let’s face it,” Ferraro bristles. “Women are still judged by different standards than men--particularly if they come on strong. And, no doubt about it--Susan does come on strong. But her life has not been easy. Here’s a woman whose self-confidence has been hard earned, starting with her own rape.”

For her own part, Susan Estrich only wishes that her detractors had half the courage of her friends--guts enough, at least, she hisses, to “stop hiding behind the privilege of anonymity.” And, to be sure, it’s hard to find anybody willing to publicly criticize the woman who may, come November, play a key role in the White House.

But it’s easy to find critics happy enough to talk off the record.

“She’s a snotty bitch,” says one male reporter. Men are always rougher on Estrich than women.

‘She Condescends, She Listens to Nobody’

“Like so many smart people, Susan forgets there are also other smart people in the world,” says a campaign worker. “She condescends, she listens to nobody. She has a world view that says you’ve got to be constantly on the attack; she doesn’t trust anybody.

“And she’ll say the most disparaging things about people behind their backs. One day I heard her absolutely eviscerate a guy who wasn’t in the room--and he thinks she’s his friend. But that’s Susan.”

Inquiring about the source of this in-house treachery, Estrich asks with an icy little smile, “And who might that have been?” not really expecting an answer. And, apparently, not really caring much either. To hell with her detractors. She simmers only briefly, concentrating on the traffic on the way to the television interview. She’s an aggressive driver, which, by now, a scant 20 minutes into meeting her, seems hardly surprising.

“I’ve learned to let it roll off, not to get my back up,” Estrich says, “because I do think, unfortunately, that there’s a lot of sexism in most of the negative things that are said about me. I get along fine with men who are secure in themselves.”

She allows this to hang in the air for a minute. And then explodes again. What other campaign manager, for chrissake, gets called “a bitch?” Or suffers the intense physical scrutiny generally accorded a thoroughbred on the auction block?

Anger at Mention of Fingernails

Take, for instance, the matter of her fingernails. “It’s in every goddamn article, about my nails,” she fumes, waving a hand in disgust. It, the hand, promptly freezes, midair. The fingers curl forward, nails neatly aligned. They look good. Moderate length, no cracks, no splits. Polish, bright pink, gleaming. No chips. Put resentment on temporary hold: Estrich is inspecting her manicure.

And so it goes in the new world of Susan Estrich, overnight public figure, a woman at once charming and abrasive, bitingly decisive yet full of contradictions.

If Estrich hasn’t yet mastered the finer nuances of slick public deportment, she has also retained an earthy, spontaneous honesty. For now, at least, she is a hybrid woman, no more the hoity-toity Harvard lawyer than a likely stand-in for Loretta Lynn’s raw-talking, down-home Topeka housewife singing the blues about having too many kids already plus “one more on the way.”

In short, those pink fingernails still matter, right along with the Rev. Jackson’s complaints about super delegates. Whether it was always thus, or the media made her that way, is a different matter, but the truth is, Estrich sometimes seems downright obsessed with her physical appearance. She even carries the fashion magazine Vogue onto airplanes.

And now, out of the car and inside the women’s room at the TV station, Estrich was glaring into the mirror, all higher concerns temporarily suspended, swearing at her hair. Damned stuff, it just lay there, lank blond strands hanging around her face. “I ran outta conditioner this morning,” she muttered, mostly to herself, whacking furiously at her head with the hairbrush. She then turned her attentions downward, to the rest of her body, which annoys her even more.

‘I’m Heavier Than I’ve Ever Been’

She quit a three-pack-a-day cigarette habit last summer, and now, she grunted, yanking at the bottom of her snug gray miniskirt, which kept riding up on her hips, causing her slip to show, “I’m heavier than I’ve ever been.” The skirt sidled right back up. She stared at it with hatred. Crunch went the hard candy peppermint drop parked in her jaw as she demolished it in reflexive spite.

Worse, she still wants a cigarette. A Marlboro. Red pack, regulars, not those wimpy silver and gold pack lights.

“It’s horrible . . . not a goddamn day goes by that I don’t want a cigarette, several times at least,” Estrich muttered wearily.

But what was all this mindless dithering in the women’s room? Susan Estrich had a campaign to run, the next President of the United States to elect, and, suddenly glancing at her watch, she saw that the TV people were running behind schedule. Estrich loathes disorganization. She burst forth.

“I told them I’d stay until 2:30. And that’s exactly when I’m getting up and leaving, whether they’re finished or not,” she promised as she marched down the corridor and into the studio, still jerking at the damnable skirt and commanding the stage crew, as she took her seat, “Keep the goddamn cameras off my legs and on my face, eh?”

Standard Dukakis Campaign Rhetoric

The program featured four local journalists whose object was to lure Estrich into saying something--anything--newsworthy. Estrich, in turn, peered into the cameras with her most thoughtful, earnest face and concentrated on burying them all beneath her standard heap of Dukakis campaign rhetoric.

She won, hands down, as she usually does.

Asked, for instance, about the current local uproar over Gov. Dukakis’ skewered state budget, which Republicans are using to challenge Dukakis’ claim that he is a model chief executive, Estrich only shrugs pleasantly. “The point is not whether it (the budget) is off or not . . . it’s whether you act . . . “ which, she naturally adds, Michael Dukakis will.

Whatever the question, Estrich can also easily make the sweeping leap from there to the sorry state of the present GOP Administration, with its “shocking” tolerance of such types as Atty. Gen. Ed Meese and Panamanian strongman Manuel A. Noriega. And as for Jesse Jackson, or any questions about the vice presidency, forget it. “Peter, I don’t think it is appropriate for me to comment on that at this time,” she said, leaning toward Peter, whose eyes rolled upward.

Mercifully, it was over in less than 20 minutes. Moderator Andy Hiller, apparently a veteran victim of the Estrich steamroller, closed his program with glazed eyes and sardonic good humor: “Our thanks to Susan Estrich. She said she was going to try not to say too much of substance on the program today, and she’s done a pretty good job.”

Poise Really No Big Deal, She Says

For her own part, this little cat-and-mouse game with the media makes Susan Estrich laugh, it’s so easy. Back in her car, she was buoyant, flattered at compliments on her remarkable stage poise. It’s really no big deal, she shrugged. “You learn it teaching. When you’re standing up there in front of 150 restless kids, you let ‘em even sense you’re not in complete control, and you’re dead.” Journalists, she’s found, aren’t all that different.

Nor does Estrich have all that much respect for some of the past politicians she has so diligently served. “All these guys are so used to having people wait on them hand and foot . . . they’re off in a different world,” she says with the mild amusement of an adult discussing the antics of small boys. Walter Mondale, she recalls, used to simply hold up a hand, two fingers pressed together, neither looking around nor saying a single word, to indicate when he wanted somebody to fetch him a pen. But, make no mistake about it, Estrich hastens to add, Michael Dukakis is different.

But, now approaching her office once again, it was time, according to the Estrich Timetable of Efficiency, to wind down, to get serious not only about Dukakis, but also about her own personal role in it all. People are constantly asking her what it feels like to be, at the relatively fresh age of 35, trying to shape the fate of the most powerful nation on earth, to wake up each day convinced that she knows what’s best for all of mankind. Most folks naturally presume that a sizable ego, not to say a massive personal ambition, must be at work here.

Asserts No Interest in Power for Self

Not so, says Estrich, looking like a woman darned near offended. The truth is, she says, that, although she’s been “incredibly fortunate” to have wound up in a position of such responsibility, she personally has no more interest in the exercise of power than, say, a volunteer in one of Mother Teresa’s soup kitchens, or, in an even more immediate example, one of those nameless, faceless, unpaid citizens who sit in the big room outside her office, working the telephones all day long, all because they are convinced, just as Susan Estrich is, that “the fate of literally millions of people--the very quality of their lives--depends on this election.”

“My ego isn’t at issue here, it really isn’t,” she says. “When I get up every morning, I only ask myself, ‘What is it that I can do today, to help elect Michael Dukakis President of the United States?’ I mean it just doesn’t matter to me, whether I have my picture in this magazine or that one. Although,” she adds, grinning despite herself, “I would of course prefer that it not to be a bad picture. . . . “

And Susan Estrich does in fact talk with convincing passion about a variety of issues: the homeless, the elderly, working mothers, unemployed steelworkers, migrant laborers, AIDS research and U.S. military excesses, which she sees as little more than just another way of suppressing the will of the common people in behalf of U.S. big business interests, be they in Nicaragua, Panama or Angola.

‘I Don’t Have to Do This’

“I don’t know how anyone could question my commitment,” she concludes. “I don’t have to do this (at $70,000 per year) to pay the rent or my mortgage. Lord knows, I could earn a lot more money teaching law, taking an occasional case, writing maybe two or three Supreme Court briefs a year. . . . So my involvement is clearly based on principle.”

As for her future, Estrich turns deliberately coy, refusing to say whether she intends to return to teaching or aspires to some role in a Dukakis Administration. She has, however, already asked for a second year’s leave of absence from Harvard, “to leave my options open.”

And, next, the woman who had just spent several minutes denying her interest in power, swearing that she, perhaps alone among political operatives, refuses “to play those little off-the-record games with the twits from the press,” was wearing the dark face of a rumbling rain cloud as she said this about those political reporters who perpetually bad-mouth her behind her back:

“I don’t mind it at all, because, for one thing, I never confront it. Because the reality is this: As campaign manager--as manager of a campaign that is in fact going quite well--they would never dare betray their true feelings to me. Because I have the power! I can say, ‘Well, fine. I just won’t talk to you then,’ or “I’ll give the better story to your competitor.’ So whatever they may say behind my back, around me, they display nothing but respect.”

She finished with a grin of immense satisfaction.