With the earnest air of a new, true believer, the man told the audience about his just-adopted, 18-month-old Chinese daughter named Lilly and how she’s changed his life.
At age 53, he’s looking at the world differently, he said, focusing “on what will be good for her.” He feels the necessity to rid the political system in which he’s lived of all the “bitterness and hate” that leaves voters disillusioned.
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The onlookers seemed not merely attentive, but convinced. Perhaps only a few wondered, as I did, if Ed Rollins was engaging in the latest in a lifetime of reflexive fabrications, big and small; another act of spin, albeit confessional, here in the heart of Spin City.
Rollins is a longtime political operative who, after a big tell-all book, has become a celebrity. He’s vaulted onto media and social A-lists, in the process providing unintentional insight into the moral vacuum of the capital.
There he was last week, taking part in a rite confirming establishment acceptance: Addressing a luncheon at the National Press Club.
Kings, presidents, prime ministers and corporate chieftains do likewise, surrounded at the dais by handfuls of club members. On this day, they were from the Washington Post, USA Today, ABC News, the Denver Post, Newsday and Sacramento Bee, among others.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please give a kind Press Club welcome to Ed Rollins,” said the club president. The several hundred in the room obliged with a kind Press Club welcome.
Amazing.
Here was a political operative who, by his own admission lied in claiming he paid off black New Jersey clergy to keep the vote down when his candidate, Christine Todd Whitman, ran successfully for governor in 1993.
Here was a consultant paid by candidates, including Ronald Reagan, Ross Perot and California’s Michael Huffington, to run campaigns for them and then proceeded in his well-publicized “Bare Knuckles and Back Rooms” to trash them, or their wives. Nancy Reagan was “paranoid, high-strung and neurotic,” but clearly angelic compared to Arianna Huffington, a diabolical Svengali in designer skirts.
Having assured a New York publisher that he would violate lots of confidences, he got an advance of slightly more than $1 million.
Rather than ostracized, Rollins is embraced, especially by the media for whom he’s been a reliable source. There have been puffy profiles on prime time TV magazines. Newsweek had him analyze the Dole campaign and The New York Times gave him space on its op-ed page.
Offers to make paid speeches are flying in, says a Rollins friend, who indicates that Rollins is getting as much as $10,000 a pop. Then there’s the nice, six-figure job with a major public relations firm in New York and entry into a fast New York social set (“Mike Nichols and Diane Sawyer, among others,” informs a friend) with his wife Sherrie Rollins, a corporate publicist.
“As unaccustomed as I am to speaking without an honoraria (sic) . . .,” he began at the Press Club, to guffaws.
He then referred to the travails of fellow political consultants Dick Morris, the Clinton adviser caught with a hooker, and Roger Stone, a Dole helper who is said to have advertised on the Internet for couples to share intimacies with Stone and his wife.
“Both Stone and Morris had more fun becoming controversial,” Rollins said, again to chortles.
He bemoaned “the pollution” and “the distortion” marking politics, the lack of talk about issues. “We all suffer as a nation,” he said.
After his opening remarks, the questions came on diverse topics. Campaign finance reform. Political journalism. Bob Dole’s campaign. The Sunday night presidential debate. Why character isn’t of greater concern to voters.
There were more and all were posed, intriguingly, with explicit reverence.
Here, after all, was the son of a Vallejo, Calif., electrician who had proven a political operative of no great accomplishment when brought into the Reagan White House. He was beckoned by Lyn Nofziger, an iconoclast assistant to Reagan for political affairs. Nofziger split after a year and was replaced by Rollins.
After dueling over who was to run Reagan’s 1984 re-election campaign, Rollins surfaced as a compromise choice to run the whole shebang. Given Reagan’s huge advantage over Democratic candidate Walter Mondale, running his challenge, he said, was no greater than a jockey riding Secretariat during the horse’s prime.
He leveraged the Reagan success into fat jobs, though his bad-boy image did get him in trouble on occasion and led to splits with clients.
Throughout, he maintained his relations with the political press. The media, obsessed with the booming cult of the consultant, talk lots to the Rollinses of the world, though many forget this: Most consultants don’t know a sliver more than they do.
The real problem can come in the inevitable letting down of the reporter’s frequent papier-mache guard in the face of kindnesses returned.
The reality, whether in Washington or at the Cook County Circuit Court, is that reporters generally treat sources better than non-sources; returning phone calls and, even better, giving a good quote, can cover a multitude of sins.
The sham of some journalism, especially the political variety in Washington, is that reporters tend to know far more than they tell readers and viewers. Their hands may be voluntarily tied by “off the record” disclosures or merely by a desire to be liked and, thus, to please.
Many loved their symbiotic relations with Rollins, whose career reflects the cynical products of the political mercenary doing most anything to win. But now he frets, “We have polluted the airways with all the negative ads.” He did a few himself.
His book manifests contempt for many clients. Only Ronald Reagan, Jack Kemp and a few others are spared. But to the ladies and gentlemen of the Press Club, he proclaimed that consultants get way too much attention and credit.
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Candidates deserve more of the spotlight, he says, because they and issues matter. But consultants like Rollins base their careers on exploiting the notion that they have great secrets to convey and are critical to the prospects of politicians who are mere empty vessels.
There’s the need for polling, targeting issues, fashioning tactics, creating ads and purchasing TV and radio time. Only a savvy pro can help all those rube politicos. Forking over to a consultant the now pro forma 15 percent of a candidate’s TV buy, an amount that would make the mob envious, is a small price for the rube to pay, right?
Feigning their ancillary role, the consultants seek attention, knowing that candidates come and go but they remain, always in need of new clients. The more publicity, the better.
And as the publicity comes, so does the money, and the celebrity. Pretty soon, the consultant’s home number is attached to the Rolodexes of producers and reporters.
Rollins was a favorite source and will be even more now. The requests stream in, says a friend, from Larry King, “Crossfire” and “The Charlie Rose Show,” among others.
He’s a star, now bigger than most any of his former clients. And the Washington media love to massage a star.
“I treat politics differently than as a practitioner now,” a mellow Rollins told the Press Club gathering, citing his new daughter and what she means to him.
“There’s a new softness in me,” Rollins said.
Perhaps. But don’t worry, you’ll hear about Lilly again. Either on “Larry King live” or in some auditorium, for $10,000.
Cokie watch
You, too, can be a six-figure pundit. Speaking of the just-concluded 104th Congress:
“Well, the Republicans did come in like lions, and they’re going out like lambs”–Pat Buchanan on CNN’s “Capital Gang,” Sept. 21.
“The 104th Congress came in like a lion and is going out like a lamb”–Cokie Roberts, “This Week With David Brinkley,” eight days later.