The mood was pleasant, even friendly, when President Clinton invited congressional leaders to the White House last week to talk about health care over dinner. Edward Kennedy extolled the virtues of working with Republicans. Even Republican Bob Dole waxed conciliatory, telling the private meeting that "if you put all the things we disagree about over health care on one side of a chalkboard, and all the things we agree about on the other side, the things we agree upon would be much longer." The president himself said the health care debate was no debate at all but "the beginning of a conversation."
During the dinner, one person did not rise to speak -- and yet everyone in the room knew that he would be a central figure in the health debate. That man is Harold Ickes, the New York lawyer and longtime friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton, who has the prominent -- some would say dubious -- honor of leading the administration's health care fight.
After all, the White House dinner was a rare moment of comity in what is increasingly becoming an all-out war over health care. The next few months will be especially decisive for Ickes and the president he serves. First, the veteran of several Democratic presidential campaigns must manage the "outside" game of rallying public support for Clinton's program. Then there is the more important "inside" effort to get the votes in Congress needed to pass the plan. No fewer than five congressional committees will write their own health care bills -- each one with its own wants and needs, egos and conflicts (box, Page 50).
Certain change. One thing, however, that seems to unite lawmakers, from liberals who favor a Canadian-style, single-payer health care system to conservatives who favor cosmetic changes in the current system: All know the Clinton plan will be changed. Especially vulnerable, they say, are his proposals to create health care alliances through which Americans would buy their insurance, his plans to finance the scheme through large employer contributions and his limits on insurance premiums. "I suspect that the president's plan will be picked at," Ickes acknowledges, "but at the end, the necessary elements of guaranteed private health insurance will remain intact." In coming weeks, say Clintonites, the alternatives to their plan, like the one promoted by Democratic Rep. Jim Cooper of Tennessee, will come under fire from the public.
An equally important question is whether Ickes himself will be found wanting. So far, the answer is no. Since his arrival at the White House in December, Ickes has become immensely powerful. He is known for a direct, New Yorker's way of tackling issues -- complete with cursing -- that is in striking contrast to the unfailing Southern courtesy of Chief of Staff Mack McLarty and Counselor David Gergen. But unlike his fellow New York lawyer (and former significant other) Susan Thomases, who is close to both Clintons, Ickes has widespread support throughout the White House. Insiders find him good humored and mercifully efficient in an organization known for endless meetings.
At 54, Ickes is seven years the president's senior and older than White House counselor David Gergen. Yet he is especially popular among younger White House aides who worked on the campaign and like the idea of a tough Democratic partisan in the upper ranks of the White House. "One of the first things that a general can do is give courage and confidence to his troops, and Harold has done that," says an administration official. "He is one of the best decision enforcers in an institution that needs a lot more of that. His modus operandi is to say, `We're through debating that. Let's decide.' " For example, officials say the administration's response to charges in the Whitewater affair, while clumsy, would have been even slower if Ickes had not acted.
Ickes will spend an increasing amount of time coordinating the White House's efforts to win the 1994 congressional elections. But those close to him insist that while he's liberal -- he is a veteran of the presidential campaigns of Ted Kennedy and Jesse Jackson -- he is no ideologue. During the presidential transition, for instance, he helped broker a compromise over administration ethics rules that had divided Clinton's staff. "He probably sided with the liberals in his heart," said one insider, "but he played it straight." Ickes insists that on health care, "I have no ideological constraints."
Latecomer. Ironically, this rising power broker almost didn't join the administration. Even though Ickes has known the Clintons for nearly a quarter century, even though he was instrumental in engineering Clinton's crucial win in the New York Democratic Primary, and he ran the Democratic convention that vaulted Clinton in the polls, he stayed out of the administration when Clinton took office. He was forced to take himself out of the running for a top job because of reports that his law firm was under investigation for its work for a labor union suspected of mob ties. When McLarty told staffers in a private meeting in Little Rock in December 1992 that Ickes would not be coming in "and that sometime those who helped get you here can't go all the way with you," several Clintonites wept. Even after the exoneration of Ickes and his firm in 1993, Ickes, with a 7-year- old daughter and a wife who is also a lawyer, was reluctant to leave New York.
Now that he's on the job, Ickes brings to it the zeal of a workaholic ("He called me from Washington from work on Sunday at 7:30 a.m.," marvels a friend, New York lawyer Victor Kovner). He also brings a prominent political pedigree. His father, also named Harold Ickes, was a prominent member of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal cabinet, and the parallels between father and son are eerie. FDR's Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau dubbed the senior Ickes Washington's "tough guy." Both men could be somewhat mercurial. The son debated whether to join the Clinton administration; his father "threatened to resign constantly," says T.H. Watkins, whose biography of the senior Ickes, Righteous Pilgrim, is becoming required reading in the White House. Both men even had Washington accidents in which they broke their ribs.
But while Ickes's arrival is lifting spirits in the White House, it doesn't solve Bill Clinton's health care dilemmas. Some members of Congress still think the administration speaks with several voices; they complain that they don't know where to go with their questions. Crucial decisions will start being made this week as the House Ways and Means health subcomittee debates its own version of health reform. The panel's Democrats are still sorting through the details, but the betting is they will scrap the Clinton insurance-pool alliance scheme and propose an expansion of Medicare to phase in coverage of the unemployed and the poor. But the larger committee and the other competing panels are likely to head in different directions.
Going it alone? Looming above the committee dynamics is a strategic issue: whether Democratic leaders in the House will try to move a plan without Republican votes. Insiders say they will. But that is risky; a bill that passes the House with only Democratic votes could give Senate Republicans the opportunity to use their filibuster power to thwart the Democrats. One variable is the degree to which Senate GOP leader Bob Dole will be willing to help the president pass a plan. His chief of staff, Sheila Burke, hints at a compromise consisting of insurance reforms, voluntary alliances and a "far less broad and prescriptive benefit package." But no Democrat has yet embraced even that outline of a deal.
Some Ickes associates wonder whether his skills in working for political campaigns and advising politicians make him the right person to win hearts and minds on Capitol Hill, even though his health care team includes congressional staff veterans George Stephanopoulos and Patrick Griffin. "He's never really worked with Congress," says a person who worked with Ickes on a p
