WASHINGTON INSIGHT / Campaign ’96

NO RESPECT: Tape recordings of strategy sessions held in 1990 reveal that leaders of GOPAC, the controversial conservative political action committee used by House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) to orchestrate the GOP takeover of Congress, were anything but upbeat about the field of moderate Republicans who wanted to run for president this year. Republican consultant Eddie Mahe began one discussion by listing the senators who had approached him about the 1996 race, which the party hoped would occur as President Bush wound down a second term. Mahe mentioned Sens. Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. The names elicited considerable ridicule, and the room burst into laughter when Mahe disclosed that Sen. Bob Packwood of Oregon, whose reputation was not yet tarnished by the sexual harassment charges that led to his resignation, also wanted to run for the White House. “It’s sublime!” one GOPAC participant is heard saying. Amid the cackling, Mahe added: “I mean all of them are absolute screaming idiots!”

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NOT EVEN ONCE: Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole’s primary election victories this week almost certainly set up a general election tussle between titans: an incumbent president running against the most powerful member of Congress. So can history provide clues about what happens to legislation and other Washington business for the months when the leaders of those two branches of government square off? The answer is no. Never before has the occupant of the White House faced the majority leader in a general election. What’s more, despite the old saw that the Senate is the incubator of presidents, a sitting majority leader has never even been his party’s presidential nominee. On the House side, only one speaker has carried his party’s presidential banner: Henry Clay in 1824. But even that long-faded campaign provides no hints about possible legislative stalemate this summer and fall because the president that year, James Monroe, was not seeking reelection. Clay lost to John Quincy Adams, which adds one more piece of trivia to the 1996 race: Never has a current Senate majority leader or a House speaker been elected president.

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WORD BENDERS: The GOP’s current presidential sweepstakes has established a new landmark in the steady distortion of the English language to serve the interest of politicians. The practice started with “information opportunity” to label staged events held to do anything but inform, in the full sense of the word. Now comes “earned media” to distinguish regular press coverage of political events from advertisements or “paid media.” The new term replaces “free media,” which had the apparent deficiency of failing to suggest sweat and hustle. To some, it is this latest coinage that is undeserved. “How was it earned?” wonders University of Virginia political scientist and press critic Larry Sabato. Next, Sabato speculates, failed candidates will write off losing campaigns as “character builders.”

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PILING ON: Staff members for Sen. Ron Wyden, the Oregon Democrat elected to fill the seat vacated by Packwood’s resignation, gleefully have been sharing news of a discovery made when moving into their Republican predecessor’s Capitol Hill digs: His private office had dimmer switches. The Washington press echoed the catty observation as implied evidence of nefarious behavior toward women. Going unmentioned, however, was the simple reality, according to the architect of the Capitol, that dimmer switches are common in congressional offices. A random check of nine senators found five with dimmers in their private offices and four without, including brightly lit California Democrats Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein.