[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 153 (Wednesday, October 21, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10590-S10592]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            NO ENEMIES LIST

  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, in 1969 and during the first half of 
1970, I was a wet-behind-the-ears, 29-year-old staff aide in the West 
Wing of the Nixon White House. I was working for the wisest man in that 
White House whose name was Bryce Harlow. He was a friend of President 
Johnson, as well as the favorite staff member of President Eisenhower 
and President Nixon's first appointee.
  Based upon that experience and my 40 years since then in and out of 
public life, I want to make what I hope will be taken as a friendly 
suggestion to President Obama and his White House, and it is this: 
Don't create an enemies list.
  As I was leaving the White House in 1970, Mr. Harlow was heading out 
on the campaign plane with Vice President Spiro Agnew, whose job was to 
vilify Democrats and to help elect Republicans. The Vice President had 
the help of talented young speechwriters, the late Bill Safire and Pat 
Buchanan. In Memphis, he called Albert Gore, Sr., the ``southern 
regional chairman of the eastern liberal establishment,'' and then the 
Vice President labeled the increasingly negative news media as 
``nattering nabobs of negativism.''
  These phrases have become part of our political lore. They began 
playfully enough, in the back and forth of political election combat. 
But after I had come home to Tennessee, they escalated into something 
more. They eventually emerged into the Nixon's enemies list.
  In 1971, Chuck Colson, who was then a member of President Nixon's 
staff and today is admired for his decades of selfless work in prison 
reform, presented to John Dean, the White House Counsel, a list of what 
he called ``persons known to be active in their opposition to our 
administration.'' Mr. Dean said he thought the administration should 
``maximize our incumbency . . . [or] to put it more bluntly''--and I am 
using his quotes--``use the available Federal machinery to screw our 
political enemies.''
  On Colson's list of 20 people were CBS correspondent Dan Schorr, 
Washington Star columnist Mary McGrory, Leonard Woodcock, the head of 
the United Auto Workers, John Conyers, a Democratic Congressman from 
Michigan, Edwin Guthman, managing editor of the Los Angeles Times, and 
several prominent businessmen, such as Howard Stein of the Dreyfus 
Corporation, Arnold Picker, vice president of United Artists. The New 
York Times and the Washington Post were made out to be enemies of the 
Republic.
  Make no mistake, politics was not such a gentlemanly affair in those 
days either. After Barry Goldwater won the Presidential nomination in 
1964, Daniel Schorr had told CBS viewers that Goldwater had 
``travel[led] to Germany to join up with the right wing there'' and 
``visit[ed] Hitler's old stomping ground.'' Schorr later corrected that 
on the air. What was different about Colson and Dean's effort, though, 
was the open declaration of war upon anyone who seemed to disagree with 
administration policies. Colson later expanded his list to include 
hundreds of people, including Joe Namath, John Lennon, Carol Channing, 
Gregory Peck, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Congressional Black Caucus, 
Alabama Governor George Wallace. All this came out during the Watergate 
hearings. You could see an administration spiraling downwards, and, of 
course, we all know where that led.
  The only reason I mention this is because I have an uneasy feeling 
only 10 months into this new administration that we are beginning to 
see the symptoms of this same kind of animus developing in the Obama 
administration.
  According to Politico, the White House plans to ``neuter the United 
States Chamber of Commerce,'' an organization with members in almost 
every major community in America. The chamber had supported the 
President's stimulus package and defended some of his early 
appointments, but has problems with his health care and climate change 
proposals.
  The Department of Health and Human Services imposed a gag order on a 
large health care company, Humana, that had warned its Medicare 
Advantage customers that their benefits might be reduced in Democratic 
health care proposals--a piece of information that is perfectly true. 
This gag order was lifted only after the Republican leader, Senator 
McConnell of Kentucky, said he would block any future nominees to the 
Department until the matter was righted.
  The White House communications director recently announced that the 
administration would treat a major television network, FOX News, as 
``part of

[[Page S10591]]

the opposition.'' On Sunday, White House officials were all over talk 
shows urging other news organizations to boycott Fox and not pick up 
any of its stories. Those stories, for example, would include the video 
that two amateur filmmakers made of ACORN representatives explaining 
how to open a brothel. That is a story other media managed to ignore 
until almost a week after Congress decided to cut ACORN's funding.
  The President himself has not stopped blaming banks and investment 
houses for the financial meltdown, even as it has become clear that 
Congress played a huge role, too, by encouraging Americans to borrow 
money for houses they could not afford. The President was ``taking 
names'' of bondholders who resisted the General Motors and Chrysler 
bailouts. Insurance companies, once allies of the Obama health care 
proposal, have suddenly become the source of all of its problems 
because they pointed out--again correctly--that if Congress taxes 
insurance premiums and restricts coverage to those who are sicker and 
older, the cost of premiums for millions of Americans is likely to go 
up instead of down. Because of that insubordination, the President and 
his allies have threatened to take away the insurance companies' 
antitrust exemption.
  Even those in Congress have found ourselves in the crosshairs. The 
assistant Republican leader, Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, said to ABC's 
George Stephanopoulos that the stimulus plan wasn't working. The White 
House wrote the Governor of Arizona and said: If you don't want the 
money, we won't send it. Senator McCain said this could be perceived as 
a threat to the people of Arizona.
  Senator Bennett of Utah, Senator Collins, Senator Hutchison and I, as 
well as Democratic Senators Byrd and Feingold, all have questioned the 
number and power of 18 new White House czars who are not confirmed by 
the Senate. We have suggested this is a threat to constitutional checks 
and balances. The White House refused to send anyone to testify at 
congressional hearings.
  Senator Bennett and I found ourselves ``called out,'' as they say, on 
the White House blog by the President's communications director.
  Even the President, in his address to Congress on health care, 
threatened to ``call out'' Members of Congress who disagree with him.
  This behavior is typical of street brawls and political campaign 
consultants. It is a mistake for the President of the United States and 
for the White House staff. If the President and his top aides treat 
people with different views as enemies instead of listening to what 
they have to say, they are likely to end up with a narrow view and a 
feeling that the whole world is out to get them. And, as those of us 
who served in the Nixon administration know, that can get you into a 
lot of trouble.
  This administration is only 10 months old. It is not too late to take 
a different approach, both at the White House and in Congress. And here 
is one opportunity: At the beginning of the year, shortly after the 
President's inauguration, the Republican leader, Senator McConnell, 
addressed the National Press Club. He proposed that he and the 
President work together to make Social Security solvent.
  Senator McConnell said he would make sure the President got more 
support in that effort from Republicans than President George W. Bush 
got from Democrats when he tried to solve the same problem.
  President Obama held a summit on the dangers of runaway costs of 
entitlements. I was invited and attended. Every expert there said 
making Social Security solvent is essential to our country's fiscal 
stability. There is still time to get that done.
  Or on clean energy, Republicans have put forward four ideas--build 
100 nuclear plants in 20 years, electrify half our cars and trucks in 
20 years, explore offshore for low-carbon natural gas and for oil, and 
double energy research and development for alternative fuels. The 
administration agrees with this on electric cars and on research and 
development. We may not be so far apart on offshore exploration. At his 
town meeting in New Orleans last week, the President said the United 
States would be, in his words, ``stupid'' not to use nuclear power. He 
is right since nuclear power produces 70 percent of our carbon-free 
electricity.

  So why don't we work together on this lower cost way to address clean 
energy and climate change instead of enacting a national energy tax?
  On health care, the White House idea of bipartisanship has been akin 
to that of a marksman at a State fair shooting gallery: hit one target 
and you win the prize. With such big Democratic majorities, the White 
House figures all it needs to do is unify the Democrats and pick off 
one or two Republicans. That strategy may win the prize but lose the 
country.
  Usually on complex issues, the President needs bipartisan support in 
Congress to reassure and achieve broad and lasting support in the 
country.
  In 1968, I can remember when President Johnson, then with bigger 
majorities in Congress than President Obama has today, arranged for the 
civil rights bill to be written in open sessions over several weeks in 
the office of the Republican leader, Everett Dirksen. Dirksen got some 
of the credit; Johnson got the legislation he wanted; the country went 
along with it. Instead of comprehensive health care that raises 
premiums and increases the debt, why should the White House not work 
with Republicans step by step to reduce health care costs and then, as 
we can afford it, reduce the number of Americans who do not have access 
to health care?
  The President and his Education Secretary Arne Duncan have been 
courageous--there is no better word for it--in advocating paying 
teachers more for teaching well and expanding the number of charter 
schools. These ideas are the Holy Grail for school reform. They are 
also ideas that are anathema to the labor unions who support the 
President. President Obama's advocacy of master teachers and charter 
schools could be the domestic equivalent of President Nixon going to 
China. I, among others, admire that advocacy and have been doing all I 
can to help him.
  Having once been there, I can understand how those in the White House 
feel oppressed by those with whom they disagree; how they feel besieged 
by some of the media. I hope the current White House occupants will 
understand that this is nothing new in American politics--all the way 
back to the days when John Adams and Thomas Jefferson exchanged 
insults. The only thing new is today there are multiple media outlets 
reporting and encouraging the insults 24 hours a day.
  As any veteran of the Nixon White House can attest, we have been down 
this road before, and it will not end well. An enemies list only 
denigrates the Presidency and the Republic itself.
  Forty years ago, Bryce Harlow would say to me: Now, Lamar, remember 
that our job here is to push all the merely important issues out of the 
White House so the President can deal with a handful of issues that are 
truly Presidential. Then he would slip off for a private meeting in the 
Capitol with Democratic leaders who controlled the Congress and usually 
found a way to enact the President's proposals.
  Most successful leaders have eventually seen the wisdom of Lord 
Palmerston, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, who said:

       We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual 
     enemies.

  The British writer Edward Dicey was once introduced to President 
Lincoln as ``one of his enemies.'' ``I did not know I had any 
enemies,'' Lincoln answered. And Dicey later wrote: ``I can still feel, 
as I write, the grip of that great bony hand held out to me in token of 
friendship.''
  In conclusion, here is my point. These are unusually difficult times, 
with plenty of forces encouraging us to disagree. Let's not start 
calling people out and compiling an enemies list. Let's push the street 
brawling out of the White House and work together on the truly 
Presidential issues--creating jobs, reducing health care costs, 
reducing the debt, creating clean energy.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Bennet). The Senator from New Hampshire.
  Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I believe I am recognized now for 10 
minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct.
  Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I wish to speak on another topic, but I was 
fascinated by the presentation of the Senator from Tennessee. I think 
we are all

[[Page S10592]]

concerned about the direction of this calling out. I take it the 
Senator from Tennessee is suggesting this administration is 
``Nixifying'' the White House; is that correct?
  Mr. ALEXANDER. That is a word I had not thought of. What I am seeing 
is some of the same signs I saw as a young man in the early stages of 
the Nixon administration. I am seeing those same signs in the Obama 
White House, and I am suggesting that going down that road leads to no 
good end. ``Nixifying'' is an interesting way to describe it.
  Mr. GREGG. I may have just made up that word. Hopefully, it will be 
added to the lexicon.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. I think it will. That is good.
  Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Tennessee. He has 
made some valuable points on that issue.

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