A stranger wandering into the Office of Management and Budget’s mid-year review last month might have reasonable wondered: why is this man smiling? Not just smiling, but smirking. After all, the beefy fellow standing behind the podium had, in his years as a top Reagan-Bush official, done as much as anyone to enlarge the federal debt from $ 1 trillion to $4 trillion, or $16,000 for every man, woman and child in America. As President George Bush’s budget director, Richard Darman had presided over record deficits: last year’s was $268.7 billion. True, 1992’s anticipated deficit isn’t going to be quite as horrendous as expected-a mere $333.5 billion, down from $399.4 billion. But the reason for the savings was the usual smoke and mirrors: a spooked Congress had been slow to a
No matter. Darman was in such bluff spirits over an issue far more dear to him than the taxpayer’s money: his own political survival. For months, whispering Republicans had declared the budget director to be dead meat. Along with former chief of staff John Sununu, Darman had betrayed Bush’s read-my-lips pledge by conning the president into a tax increase in 1990, while still producing ever-larger pools of red ink. Unlike Sununu, though, Darman had survived. Now it looked like he would escape one more time. Ross Perot was out of the race, and with him went the deficit as a major campaign issue. Even better, Darman’s old patron, James Baker, was reported to be on the way back to the White House. Darman could not contain his trademark giggle when he stood in the White House press room and announced, " I am now celebrating the 20th anniversary of the first request for my resignation. I look forward to many more."
Darman and the deficit is one of the more perverse duets in a town remarkable for curious pairings, like Wilbur Mills and Fanne Foxe, or Lyndon Johnson and Bobby Baker. The two are entwined in an allegory of good intentions and sorry outcomes that has played the Washington stage since the first days of the Reagan administration. There is the high-minded Darman, who inveighs against the American corporate culture of “now-nowism” and calls on Americans to save for tomorrow, who compares the taxpayer to the kid in the commercial demanding, “I want my Maypo!” Then there is the Darman who behaves exactly like a demanding child, looking for the instant gratification of political deal-making. The Good Darman is a modern Brahmin, a brilliant civil servant who understands government and its role in the economy better than anyone. The Bad Darman, more familiar to Washington officialdom, cooks the books and delights in the quick fix. This was the Darman on display in the early days of the Reagan Revolution, the gamesman who told his sidekick, the then OMB chief David Stockman, that Reaganomics was sure to send the deficit soaring, but so what. “We win it now, we fix it later,” said Darman, who never quite got around to repairing the damage.
For many conservative lawmakers, Darman has become the personification of the deficit. “If arrogance generated revenues and incompetence cut spending, Darman would have us in surplus in no time,” fumes Rep. Richard Armey, a Texas Republican. “Nobody has done more to harm the Bush presidency than Dick Darman.” Within Bush’s own camp, a senior administration official admits, “He’s a horrible influence on Bush. But he’s the one guy who understands what’s in every appropriations bill and it’s too late to get rid of him now.”
It is within those intense appropriations rituals–the backroom Capitol Hill sessions where the budget gets made–that the cunning Darman emerges. He can’t resist trying to con the slow-witted hacks at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Never was this more apparent than during the ‘90 budget negotiations. The climactic moment came when Sen. Robert Byrd, the powerful chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, blew up at Sununu over his oafish disrespect toward Congress. Darman saw a chance to play the Fixer. “Senator, can I have a minute?” he purred. The two men conjured up a deal that gave Byrd more than $100 billion in new pork. In return Darman insists that he got meaningful spending reforms. But like many Darman deals, the payoff is at least two years away, while the payout is today.
Then there was Darman’s own pork. Every year he can’t resist trying to deal for pet projects like the manned space station and the Superconducting Super Collider. (Hill wags call Darman, a space enthusiast, “Rocket Richard.”) The problem isn’t just the dollars spent on these scorned ventures, but the cost of the pork favors necessary to win them. To garner support for the SSC, for instance, Darman has had to allow a host of water projects to go to congressmen like Louisiana Sen. J. Bennett Johnston, who’s using federal dollars to build his version of the Mississippi River in his hometown of Shreveport. “When the president’s man gets into the back room and deals,” notes one Appropriations Committee aide, “it shows that any reform isn’t serious. The candy store’s open.”
Darman was at it again last week, dealing with congressmen to preserve his projects in exchange for stoking theirs. Watching the spectacle, House Budget Committee chairman Leon Panetta bitterly proclaimed the death of a short-lived deficit-cutting mood on the Hill. If the administration won’t oppose pork-barrel spending in its many and expensive incarnations, it’s certain Congress won’t try.
Darman may turn around and defy Congress this fall, but the reasons will be more political than fiscal. The budget director has proposed to Bush that he veto congressional spending bills, in order to shift the blame for the deficit to Congress. The beauty of this is that no one knows better what’s in those bills and how to manipulate them. The irony is that no one would start that battle with dirtier hands.
