TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/052190/0521106.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 25.1 KB | 516 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 21

COVER STORIES

Big Bad John Sununu


He's smarter than you are, and he wants you to know it. That's
why George Bush prizes his brusque but brilliant White House
chief of staff

By DAN GOODGAME -- With reporting by Michael Duffy/Washington


    The winds lay calm on the Caribbean that evening, but 30,000
feet up in a White House jet the President's chief of staff was
stirring a political storm. Returning to Washington from the
inauguration of Costa Rica's new leader, John Sununu wandered
to the rear of the Boeing 707 to schmooze with the traveling
press. But first he shed his suit jacket, his title and his
name. At his insistence, Sununu was now a "senior White House
official."

    The conversation quickly turned to the hottest topic of the
week: Could Sununu reconcile President Bush's campaign pledge
of "no new taxes" with his invitation for congressional leaders
to join him in budget talks with "no preconditions"? Sununu
shook his head impatiently. "We're allowing the Democrats to
bring their good arguments for taxes to the table," he said.
"And it is our prerogative to say no. And I emphasize the no."

    How, then, asked a reporter, could Bush be sincere about no
preconditions? Were there any circumstances, another inquired,
under which he would trade new taxes for cuts in federal
spending? "You've got a one-track mind on a trivial question,"
Sununu snapped, his voice rising. "Small minds ask small
questions."

    It says a great deal about John Sununu's reputation for
rudeness that, when the "small minds" quote appeared on the
front page of the Washington Post the next morning, half the
town knew immediately which "senior official" was talking. The
Democrats whom Bush was trying to lure into budget talks
accused the Administration of negotiating in bad faith. But
Sununu had accomplished his goal: reassuring the Republican
faithful and the voters that Bush remains staunchly opposed to
any broad new taxes. When the President subsequently dissociated
himself from Sununu's remarks in a chat with House Speaker Tom
Foley, the strategy was complete. Bush was able to posture as
Mr. Fiscal Responsibility, willing to entertain any proposal,
including higher taxes, to help balance the budget.

    This good-cop, bad-cop routine has become a staple of the
Bush White House. No one plays the heavy better than Sununu,
and no one takes more heat on Bush's behalf. That is why Bush
picked Sununu as his right-hand man, and why he prizes him.

    When he named Sununu his chief of staff shortly after the
1988 election, Bush handed the ultimate insider's job to a
bumptious outsider with a chip on his shoulder: a
double-hyphenated Lebanese- and Greek-American, born in Havana
with a funny name. Bush pointedly ignored the protests of such
close advisers as Secretary of State James Baker, leading the
Washington establishment to conclude that he had "done another
Quayle." Sununu was obviously brilliant: a three-term Governor
of New Hampshire and former engineering professor with an IQ
estimated at 180. He had been an invaluable political asset,
rescuing Bush's faltering campaign by masterminding a victory
in the New Hampshire primary. But he lacked any experience in
the clannish world of Washington and was so relentlessly
abrasive that one wag dubbed him "Morton Downey Jr. with a
Ph.D." The smart money gave him at most a year in the job.

    That was 16 months ago. Today Bush is surfing along at
60%-plus public-approval ratings, and much of the credit falls
to Sununu. His White House displays almost none of the
backbiting and leaking that roiled the Reagan Administration.
He adroitly appeases fellow right-wing Republicans who have
never much trusted Bush. On the other flank, Sununu exuberantly
baits environmentalists and others into blaming him, rather
than the President, when the Administration backslides from
Bush's gauzy promises. Though he possesses no more "vision"
than Bush does, Sununu has substituted a quiet and canny
strategy to attain the President's paramount goal: re-election
in 1992.

    In fact, Sununu has emerged as Bush's most inspired choice
for any senior post. Amid the bland Washington-retread Wasps
with whom Bush has peopled much of his Cabinet and staff,
Sununu adds both spice and balance. His brisk certainty and
willingness to take bold stands complement his risk-averse
boss.

    The two play off each other like a wrestling tag team on
late-night cable: Gentleman George and Snarlin' Sununu; the
King of Kind and Gentle and his Dark Prince. Bush may call
himself the Environmental President and the Education
President, but he has Sununu to make sure that this rhetoric
stays relatively cheap.

    Their slap-and-stroke routine extends to Oval Office
meetings, where Bush is unfailingly gracious, whether with
earnest junior staffers or craven special pleaders. It is
Sununu's role to wring useful information out of unctuous
presentations and rebut one-sided arguments, and he delights
in it. Bush clearly relishes the edge and the rigor that Sununu
provides. "He has made a lot of friends for our Administration,"
Bush says, "on the basis of competence, sheer competence."

    But as the President knows, Sununu has also made plenty of
enemies through sheer insolence. He slammed down the phone
during a foreign policy argument with Republican Congressman
Mickey Edwards of Oklahoma. He shouted obscenities at Senate
Republican leader Bob Dole's press secretary over a routine
news release. He berated House Republican leader Bob Michel for
not supporting the President with sufficient enthusiasm, moving
Michel to note that "sometimes we have to remind Governor
Sununu that this is not the New Hampshire legislature."
Democratic Senator Tim Wirth of Colorado says what many
Washington insiders feel: Sununu "thinks he's the only smart
guy in town. He shows little respect for anyone else's
intelligence or point of view."

    Nor is Sununu above using double-dealing and deception to
achieve the President's goals. In March he told Delaware
Democrat Joseph Biden that Bush would veto the clean-air bill
the Senate was debating if it included an expensive amendment.
Meanwhile, he privately told Idaho Republican Steve Symms just
the opposite. Symms had favored the amendment because he hoped
it would trigger a veto of the bill, which Symms opposed as too
tough on polluting industries. Sununu led Symms to believe the
amendment would only make things worse because Bush was
inclined to sign the clean-air bill with or without it. Both
Senators voted against the amendment, and it was dropped from
the bill -- precisely what the President wanted.

    Sununu does not think like Bush or any other
let's-make-a-deal politician. He was trained as an engineer and
a debater, and it shows. The engineer in him enormously enjoys
the substantive questions of governance: What kind of pollution
control is cost-effective? Which jet fighter technologies
should we share with Japan? To such questions, Sununu brings
voracious curiosity, a keen analytical gift and near total
recall. Budget Director Richard Darman, Sununu's only
intellectual peer in the Bush inner circle, points out that
"Sununu is trained in fluid dynamics and has a good sense of
the dynamics of a problem," unlike lesser minds, who "see the
world in static terms."

    But years before he studied engineering, Sununu was whipping
older boys in high school debate tournaments. Then as now, he
could argue either side of a question with equal gusto. Unlike
lawyers, debaters never seek friendly, out-of-court
settlements: their goal is to intellectually destroy the
opponent. Sununu wields his prodigious memory like a sword,
inundating his adversary with data. And he resorts early and
often to ad hominem bullying. Observes a senior White House
official: "There is something in Sununu's personality where he
cannot stay in his seat if someone says or does something that
he thinks is foolish. He feels obliged to immediately expose
the person as a fool."

    Sununu often discounts the intelligence of those who do not
debate as ferociously as he. For all his brusque misjudgment
of individuals, however, Sununu shows astute insight into
groups. He cleverly divines which arguments will be most
persuasive to which audiences. And though he is deeply
conservative on social issues like abortion, Sununu is supple
and ambitious enough to accommodate the raging moderation of
George Bush.


    In a city of strange bedfellows, Bush and Sununu make one
of the oddest couples ever: ideologically, temperamentally,
even physically. A common sight around the White House is the
6-ft. 2-in. Bush, his lanky frame impeccably clad in an $800
suit, trailed by what an admirer calls "this fat little
pirate," 5 ft. 9 in., 190 lbs., his wavy hair tousled,
sweating, with tie loosened, jacket off, sleeves rolled up,
pants sagging beneath his paunch and shirttail sneaking out in
the back.

    The contrast extends to the hours they prefer, even their
table manners. Bush bounds eagerly out of bed at 5:30 a.m., and
always has. Sununu is a night owl who, when studying
engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, would
organize a marathon bridge game or keep fraternity brothers
awake while thwokking a lacrosse ball off his wall, then handle
his homework in an hour or so before class. Bush is so
exquisitely considerate that at meals, without breaking
conversation, he will shift his water glass to give the waiter
more room as he arrives with the soup. When Sununu receives
guests in his White House office, he will pour himself a cup
of coffee (he drinks only decaf, which everyone agrees is a
good thing) and grab a handful of M&M's without offering
anything to anyone else.

    For pop psychologists who believe that politicians play out
their inner conflicts in public, Sununu is a study in
narcissism. The world revolves around him. He's O.K.; you're
probably not O.K. He is smarter than you are, and he wants you
to know it. Ask Sununu to name an influential teacher or a
prize student, and none comes immediately to mind. He looms
larger in others' lives than they do in his.

    Unlike Bush, who keeps a Rolodex of his 6,000 closest
"friends," Sununu reserves his warmth for a handful of close
friends and his family. Once, after a Bush political dinner in
Miami that ended well past midnight, a reporter saw Sununu
heading out to spend three hours, round trip, on I-95, just for
a brief visit with his parents, now retired in Gulf Stream,
Fla.

    Sununu jealously reserves most weekends for his wife Nancy,
a fund raiser for the Republican Governors Association, and
their children at their four-bedroom home in Oakton, Va., 17
miles northwest of the White House. Asked his greatest
accomplishment, Sununu replies without hesitation, "Eight great
kids." An avid softball player, he enjoys taking swings in the
batting cages with the two youngest sons, Chris, 15, and Peter,
10, who still live at home. Sununu plays third base much the
way he plays chief of staff: setting up almost in the batter's
face to cut off the bunt and daring him to get one past.

    For a time, Sununu wrote stories and poems for children.
Concord lawyer Ned Helms recalls that when his wife fell ill,
Sununu gave her a book of poems that he said he enjoyed, by
Sylvia Plath. A voracious speed reader, Sununu keeps about
three books going at a time: from a biography of Richard Nixon
to a thriller by Tom Clancy to a tome called The Theory of
Numbers, which his executive assistant, Ed Rogers, dryly
describes as "recreational mathematics." During spare moments
on Air Force One, he plays with Game Boy, a hand-held Nintendo
video game.

    Sununu's humor runs toward practical jokes (dressing Budget
Director Darman in a gorilla suit for Bush's birthday),
physical gags (suddenly flopping like a high jumper over the
back of his office couch) and, of course, sarcasm. After the
White House lost a major struggle on Capitol Hill, Sununu
arrived at his morning senior staff session to find his chief
lobbyist, Fred McClure, perusing the newspapers. "What are you
reading, Fred?" Sununu rasped. "The help-wanted ads?"

    In February, after cocaine lords threatened to shoot down
the President's plane as it flew to a summit meeting with South
American leaders in Colombia, reporters pressed for more
details about security arrangements. Sununu deadpanned, "We're
gonna paint the press plane to look like Air Force One, and
we're gonna send it in ahead of the President." The following
month, when Bush learned that critics of his AIDS policy might
try to disrupt a speech he was to deliver, he peevishly told
his aides, "Well, then I just won't give the speech." Sununu
raised his eyebrows and said, "This, from the man who braved
the drug lords of Cartagena?" Bush laughed -- and gave the
speech.

    Sununu's most common expression is not a scowl but a
pixieish, if somewhat smug, little smile. Even his
characteristic fits of trash-can-kicking fury pass quickly.
Still, most White House officials have learned not to take bad
news to Sununu before getting a "weather report" of his mood
from his deputy, Andy Card.

    Sununu, like Bush, grew up in the shadow of a highly
successful father in a comfortable home in a leafy bedroom
community, attended private boarding school and displayed nary
a flicker of rebellion. The crucial difference is that Bush was
heir to both material and social comfort, while Sununu was
always an outsider.

    He was born in 1939 in Havana, where his father briefly
distributed foreign films and other imported products. His
father, whose parents were Lebanese, grew up in Boston. His
mother hailed from El Salvador, though her parents were
Lebanese and Greek. When Sununu was an infant, his family
migrated to the tony neighborhood of Forest Hills, N.Y. Their
home was filled with letters from relatives in half a dozen
countries as well as books and conversations in several
languages. Thanks to his mother, childhood trips to Europe and
college studies, Sununu is fluent in Spanish, speaks decent
French and reads German. But all his life he has been teased
about his name. Even Bush once joked that he picked Sununu
because his surname rhymed with "deep doo-doo." In Arabic,
sununu means sparrow, and appears often in poetry and songs.

    Almost as soon as he entered Catholic parochial school,
little Johnny was spotted as something special. He was
athletic, outgoing and excelled at his studies. He won a full
scholarship to La Salle Military Academy, a boarding school on
eastern Long Island. There Sununu rose to lieutenant colonel
and commanded the other cadets. On graduation day, he won so
many awards that the headmaster, rather than call him from his
seat again and again, simply handed him a silver bowl and had
him stand onstage to collect his loot. Though Sununu insists
that he displayed no interest in politics until 1969, his
fellow seniors in 1957 voted him Class Politician, as well as
Outstanding Senior Student, Outstanding Orator, Most Energetic
and Most Likely to Succeed.

    Sununu went to M.I.T., where he earned a doctorate and
founded an engineering firm. He met a young woman named Nancy
Hayes, a tall, fair-haired, Irish American from Boston College.
She found him smart and funny and "very sure for his age of
where he was going." They married at age 20.


    After graduation, Sununu taught engineering at Tufts
University. At 27, he was a professor running his own
consulting firm on the side. In 1969 he moved his family just
across the state line, to Salem, N.H., in search of lower taxes
and "a better life-style for my family." There he began his
political career, winning a spot on the local planning board,
then a seat as a state representative. He ran unsuccessfully
for a number of higher offices, including state and U.S.
Senator, before finally winning the governorship in 1982. That
victory came at the trough of the Reagan recession. Sununu
prevailed by promising to balance the state budget without
broad-based new taxes. New Hampshire is one of the few states
with no state personal-income or sales tax.

    As the nation's economy recovered, New Hampshire's boomed
by attracting vacationers and high-tech companies. Never a
Reaganite, antigovernment conservative, Sununu presided over
an expansion in state revenues and expenditures. He brought
computerized management to inefficient state agencies,
increased spending on mental-health programs, expanded prisons
and set aside more land for parks. Then as now, Sununu took a
generally dim view of environmental activists, as he championed
the unpopular Seabrook nuclear power plant. But after careful
study, he promoted curbs on the air pollutants that cause acid
rain.

    He also emerged as a prominent spokesman for Arab Americans,
a role that prompted suspicion from pro-Israel groups. Those
doubts grew in 1986 when Sununu refused to sign a proclamation
denouncing the U.N. resolution that equated Zionism with
racism. He has since met with many supporters of Israel and
convinced them that he means no harm to their cause. At the
same time, in speeches to Arab-American groups, he has spoken
forcefully of the "spleen" and "frustration" he feels over
anti-Arab prejudice.

    Sununu cemented his relationship with Bush during the
darkest moment of the 1988 campaign. Bush had just been
clobbered by Bob Dole in the Iowa caucuses. And his lead in the
polls was evaporating only a week before the primary in New
Hampshire, where Sununu was running the Bush campaign. A friend
who stopped by to cheer up Sununu found him staring out the
window in the Governor's office. "I just heard the news from
Iowa," said the friend, "and thought you might like to talk
about it." Sununu turned from the window with a wolfish grin
and replied, "Yeah, isn't it great?" Then, seeing his visitor's
puzzlement, he explained that the Iowa defeat had left Bush
desperate for a win. "Don't you see," he confided, "how much
good I'm going to be able to do for the next President of the
United States?"

    Sununu delivered on his boast. He persuaded Bush to become
at once more folksy among voters and more slashingly negative
toward his opponents -- particularly in TV ads that attacked
Dole as a closet taxer. The shift in tactics propelled Bush to
victory in New Hampshire and dramatically revived his campaign.


    The one Washington job besides chief of staff that
interested Sununu was Vice President. Bush asked him to submit
disclosure forms as a potential running mate, and some of his
supporters were so encouraged that they brought BUSH-SUNUNU
placards to the Republican Convention at the New Orleans
Superdome. Bush's selection of Dan Quayle badly disappointed
Sununu, who pretended to return a pair of expensive suits,
folded up, to a haberdasher friend in Manchester. He explained,
only half jokingly, that "they didn't get me the nomination,
so I want my money back."

    As his chief of staff, says a presidential adviser outside
the government, Bush wanted someone "who would not get along
too well with the Congress, too well with the press, too well
with the staff." That conviction hardened as Bush watched, with
deepening wariness, the performance of his close friend Jim
Baker as Ronald Reagan's chief of staff. Baker expertly
ingratiated himself with lawmakers, journalists and others,
often at the expense of Reagan. He distanced himself from
unpopular decisions and took credit for those that worked out
well. The pattern, Bush felt, carried over from the Reagan
White House to the 1988 campaign.

    Sununu, on the other hand, is a natural lightning rod. He
is not only willing to take heat for the President but "loves
to take heat -- and gives as good as he gets," says New
Hampshire G.O.P. Senator Warren Rudman, a Sununu friend. As
Bush's bad cop on environmental issues, Sununu drew the fire
of the Sierra Club and other activist groups, which denounced
him for consistently siding with corporate polluters. They
scarcely mentioned Bush, even though Sununu was only carrying
out the President's policies. Such loyalty is prized by all
chief executives, but especially by George Bush. Moreover,
Sununu's unorthodox political calculations have often been
vindicated, most impressively when he has stood against the
consensus of more seasoned Bush advisers.

    Example: the Senate in late January sought to override
Bush's veto of a bill that would have allowed Chinese students
who feared persecution in their homeland in the wake of last
year's Tiananmen massacre to remain in the U.S. The bill had
passed the Senate overwhelmingly, and most of his advisers
recommended that Bush not invest his prestige in an uphill
battle to uphold his veto. Sununu strongly disagreed. He
persuaded Bush to put a full-court press on every Republican
Senator, promising to protect the students by Executive Order
without offending the prickly Chinese leadership. What was at
stake, Sununu stressed, was the President's ability to conduct
foreign policy without congressional meddling. The argument
worked and the veto stuck.

    Example: on the eve of the Nicaraguan election in February,
"everyone here hoped the resistance would win, but only Sununu
really believed it and said so," recalls Robert Gates, the
deputy national security adviser. When intelligence experts
predicted victory for the Sandinista government, Sununu argued
that they must be missing something: Nicaraguans had to be fed
up with their crashing economy, even though under such a
repressive regime they would be afraid to tell pollsters the
truth. During Bush's morning intelligence update on the Friday
before the election, a CIA briefer again predicted a
Sandinista victory, and Sununu puckishly bet him an ice-cream
sundae that he was wrong. On the following Monday morning, the
CIA man had to pay up.

    Sununu is consolidating his role as the Administration's de
facto chief political officer. Last week, after Jim Wray,
director of the White House political office, took a new job
at the Republican National Committee, Sununu put his executive
assistant, Ed Rogers, in charge. From the beginning, Sununu has
served as a key political liaison to right-wing Republicans.
He assiduously solicits their views and appoints their
candidates to key second-level posts in the Administration: for
example, placing staunch opponents of abortion at the Department
of Health and Human Services.

    Sununu is quietly shaping a handful of issues on which Bush
can run for re-election. On one front -- clean air, child care,
education reform, help for the disabled -- Sununu and Bush are
stealing popular issues that traditionally belong to the
Democrats. On another the White House is preparing "wedge"
issues to sharply distinguish Republicans from Democrats. These
include opposition to broad new taxes, support for a
constitutional ban on flag burning, and aggressive brandishment
of the presidential veto to hold down government spending.
Mindful that voters are more inclined to trust Republicans than
Democrats on law-and-order issues, Sununu has pushed to define
the drug issue to his party's advantage. In his view, curbing
drug abuse is more a matter of hiring cops and building prisons
than of education and treatment. The latter, says a senior
Republican, are things "any fool Democrat can do."

    It is a sound political strategy. But the question remains
whether Sununu will be around to see it implemented. Those who
know him best say there is no limit to his abilities or
political ambitions. When a well-wisher at Sununu's
inauguration as Governor remarked to his mother that she must
be very proud, she replied, "Oh, Governor is nice, but
President -- now that would really be something."

    For his part, Sununu says he wishes only "to serve George
Bush as long as he wants me" -- for eight years, he hopes. That
would be a feat never accomplished since the advent of the
modern chief of staff. Yet for Sununu to survive two full
terms, he might have to temper the fire-eating act that wins
him Bush's respect and trust, which are in turn the source of
his power. As a senior White House official observes, "Although
there appears to be mortal combat in Washington, most people
here treat one another with extraordinary respect. There is a
lot of continuity, and people have to live and work together
for a long time. So the Sununu approach would be better for a
short-timer than a longtimer."

    The early defeat Bush and Sununu suffered in the Senate over
the nomination of John Tower as Defense Secretary is an object
lesson in the perils of arrogance. Tower was for years a power
in Washington as chairman of the Senate Armed Services
Committee -- but like Sununu, he made enemies he did not need
to make, including fellow Senators. And, though it took a
while, Tower got his payback when his colleagues denied him his
crowning glory at the Pentagon.

    A Lebanese proverb holds that "one kisses the hand that one
cannot yet bite." John Sununu doesn't work that way. The rest
of Washington does.