As I entered Tom Downey’s office, the anticipation was killing me. I simply had to ask whether he’d perfected the smirk of Texas Gov. George Bush.
“The last thing we get ready for is the mannerisms,” he said. “We do the language, the issues, then tactics, first. We were almost up to the mannerisms,” including the smirk, he said.
Downey is a onetime whiz kid Democratic congressman-turned-lobbyist for such A-list firms as Microsoft and Time Warner. He had been rehearsing the role of Bush for practice sessions intended to turn Vice President Gore into an oratorical Mike Tyson for three presidential debates next month.
He’s done all this before, impersonating Republican vice presidential candidate Jack Kemp in 1996, in advance of the Gore-Kemp faceoff, and Bill Bradley for the Gore-Bradley primary duels this year.
Sad to say, Downey’s ability to exhibit the smirk, or mimic such Bush-isms as “Is our children learning?” is now of scant use to Gore, his old chum. That’s because Downey is relinquishing his thespian duties amid an apparent mix of personal honor and campaign skullduggery. His tale inadvertently provides a window on the dismal state of dirty tricks in our public life.
Last week a package arrived for Downey, who was elected to Congress at age 25 in 1974 (a “Watergate baby,” he passed constitutional muster because he turned 26 before being sworn in) and served 18 years before being upset in 1992 by Rick Lazio, now Hillary Rodham Clinton’s rival for the Senate in New York.
The package was addressed incorrectly, to a previous name for Downey’s firm, sent anonymously and via express mail from Austin, Texas. There were about 200 pages of paper and a videotape.
It came as Downey was “about a day away” from being ready to actually impersonate Bush.
The first pages he scanned seemed very similar to “what we’d given the vice president: questions and responses.” He popped the video into a VCR and saw three casually dressed men, two of whom he recognized: Bush and Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), who’s playing Gore in Bush’s secret debate practices.
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The three were at a table, “not dissimilar to the way we would do it,” and the person he didn’t know, playing an inquisitor, had just asked a question prompting Bush to praise Gore’s choice of Sen. Joseph Lieberman as running mate.
“The next frame was the fellow in the middle [the questioner], saying let’s go to the video,” Downey said. There was a monitor near the trio and Downey instantly realized what they were watching.
“It was one of the Iowa debates where they asked him about his favorite philosopher and he responded, `Jesus Christ,'” Downey said.
“Clearly, we had been handed Bush debate materials,” he said. The potential utility was obvious.
“The vice president is a superb debater. But if you know all the one-liners the other side will try–what he was prepared for, and what he wasn’t prepared for–it would be a big advantage for somebody as smart as Gore. He could have an effective witticism ready for every Bush line.”
Though he believes the debates “will either be the end of the Bush campaign or mark his return,” Downey called his lawyer, who called the FBI. Two agents came over, took the materials and asked him some questions. The Bush campaign later told the FBI the materials were bona fide.
Downey knows politics can be rough but believed keeping everything would be “sleazy. These were things I should not have or be seeing.” It was as if an NFL coach were sneaked a rival’s playbook.
He has not spoken to Gore about the incident but is convinced the candidate would not have wanted him to do otherwise. Downey does know Gore.
They served together in the House, and played together, two wannabe jocks who spent hours pounding a basketball in the House gym. Even these days, they live close to one another and are confidants.
As Gore ascended, Downey has both done good and well. He was a nervy House member (“smart as a whip, and he knew it,” says one longtime friend) who took on various committee establishments even if for years mistaken for a teenage House page; balanced liberal views, such as attacks on certain Pentagon pet projects, with the need to help defense contractors in his Long Island district; and became an expert advocate of disarmament, welfare reform and child care.
His downfall came when Lazio turned the tables, portraying him as a Washington insider, out of touch with working-class, majority-Republican constituents. It did not help that Downey was guilty of overdrafts on the House bank and received bad publicity for a Caribbean junket.
But with the Clinton-Gore victory, he was essentially guaranteed a lucrative second career as a lobbyist. He services blue-chip clients but does much charitable work and labors for non-profits such as the American Foundation for AIDS Research, Child Trends and the Institute for Student Achievement.
While confident of his dissection of Bush, he’ll give up his impersonation role to Washington attorney Robert Barnett so that no ethical questions can be raised by Bush.
Bush’s strengths are “he’s confident and comfortable with himself. And he’ll be tough on the vice president: `Bill Bradley said you’ll say anything to win, right?'”
His weaknesses include a gap on foreign affairs and, Downey believes, a personal background that could prompt counterattacks when he raises questions about the morality of Clinton-Gore.
When Bush effectively debated Texas Gov. Ann Richards in 1994, said Downey, he was “disarming and polite. But he was running against a woman and for governor of Texas,” meaning that her sex and the lower-profile office provided a far different context than being up against another man and vying for the White House.
“Here, he has to project the image of a president,” Downey said, suspecting he’ll fall short.
As for dirty tricks, the American tradition is pretty anemic. Elsewhere, they throw stink bombs, completely rig elections, stick a candidate’s supporters underneath soccer fields, and much worse.
Here, operatives mail phony letters accusing a candidate of fathering an illegitimate child, disrupt rallies, and spread rumors of religious bias.
As for conspiratorial theories to explain the Downey package, I proffer the following:
Gore aides stole the stuff and Downey actually studied it for days.
Bush chief strategist Karl Rove sent it to sully Gore, assuming the Democrats would be blamed.
Bush’s media firm, in an act of intramural feuding, sent it to make Rove look bad, knowing people would recall a long-ago suspicious Texas incident linked to Rove.
The Presidential Commission on Debates, scared that independent television stations will successfully counterprogram with reruns of “Friends,” stole the tape as a way to boost interest in two boring white guys yapping for 90 minutes in prime time on the major networks.
Bill Clinton sent the tape to sabotage Gore and create a groundswell of support for changing the Constitution so he can run again.
Joe “Mr. Squeaky Clean” Lieberman, somehow finding time between waxing righteous and raising money from satanic Hollywood, sent it to make Gore look bad and drop out, opening the door for him.
Tipper Gore, sullen over actually living in the White House, sent it to sabotage her husband.
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Hillary Rodham Clinton sent it, hoping Gore would look bad and Bush wins, meaning that her husband would not achieve his final goal of Gore upholding the Clinton legacy.
Bush, fearing how hard he’d actually have to work as president, sent it in an act of self-immolation.
As for Downey’s true belief about the origin and reason for last week’s surprise, it’s pretty simple:
“Somebody in the Bush camp,” perhaps a consultant who’s also done work for Democrats, “wanted me to have it.”
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James Warren and Michael Tackett of the Tribune’s Washington bureau are hosts of “Unconventional Wisdom” at 7:05 p.m. Sundays on WGN-AM 720.