ROBERT STRAUSS: Making Things Happen

Shortly after the Iran-contra scandal broke in late 1986, Nancy Reagan became concerned that her husband was not sufficiently alert to the political danger and arranged to have a few people brought in to explain things. To avoid publicity, the White House instructed the guests to report to the Treasury building. From there they were led through an underground tunnel to the adjacent White House. Robert S. Strauss, a former Democratic national chairman and also a frequent luncheon companion of the First Lady, was one of the group. He reports that he pulled no punches with the President. The result? Well, let Strauss describe it. “The President could not have been more gracious,” says he, “and could not have ignored my advice more effectively.”

Oh, well. Bob Strauss is not one to dwell on his failures. As a consummate inside political trader, perhaps the last of the breed, he never lacks new challenges. His predecessors, all the great political bosses and power brokers of the past — Daley, Meany, Rayburn, Johnson — are gone now, their reputations eroded by the winds of calamity and reform. Yet if today’s prefab candidates and queasy partisanship make some voters long for the old smoke- filled rooms, they can take heart: the legacy of the backstage impresarios lives on in Strauss.

A lawyer and veteran of hothouse politics, Texas style, Strauss has a way, as he puts it, of “getting things done and making things happen.” To some that means “influence peddling.” To others Strauss has become, at 69, Washington’s pre-eminent cutter of Gordian knots. And if a deadlock develops at the Democratic Convention this summer, some Washingtonians think Strauss will be the keeper of the keys. In fact, a few of his closest friends — with aw-shucks encouragement from Strauss — want him to be the nominee.

The idea, of course, is pretty farfetched. Besides, though Strauss would disagree, the Oval Office might cramp his style. Is Mikhail Gorbachev in town? Strauss — and Gorbachev — are at Mrs. Reagan’s table for the state dinner. (Helen Strauss, his wife of 46 years, is at a distant table, seated between Caspar Weinberger and Meadowlark Lemon of Harlem Globetrotters fame.) Is William F. Buckley using his TV show to conduct presidential campaign debates? Strauss is co-Grand Inquisitor. When bad blood develops between House Speaker Jim Wright and Secretary of State George Shultz over Nicaragua, Strauss mediates. When a new bipartisan National Economic Commission is created, Strauss is quickly appointed and, thanks in no small part to his own efforts, elected co-chairman.

Strauss has gained influence by practicing politics the old-fashioned way. Whether he is pushing the Democrats’ trade bill or trying to get federal help for Texas banks and savings and loans (including one in which he has an interest) or acting as a middleman for the U.S. and Canada on bilateral trade, the techniques are the same: press flesh, build relationships, probe for strengths and weaknesses. If he can’t shake your hand, he’ll give you a call. Strauss spends hours a day on the phone, staying in touch with his network of friends, his cello-like Texas drawl coming through as either a low, world- weary growl or a tone much higher on the scale when he’s angry or excited. His conversations are laced with humor or biting sarcasm. “Listen, you sumbitch,” he barks to a friend, “you’ve got a problem, and I’m going to tell you how to solve it.”

“People will tell you,” he says, “that Strauss is loyal to a fault.” Yes, many will say that, if he doesn’t beat them to it. And they’ll relate his many personal kindnesses. Others will say, privately, that he’s a fraud, an egomaniac, that his reputation is rooted more in legend than in fact, that he is too often the weather vane and too rarely the wind.

There’s some truth in all of it, but there is no denying Strauss’s reputation as a doer. He has never held elective office and has not even been in Government since he was Jimmy Carter’s special trade representative and roving Middle East ambassador. But his circle of friends is as wide as any in Washington. Sit long enough in his law office on New Hampshire Avenue and you will hear him deal with a dazzling cross section of Washington’s notables in both parties, from Senate Majority Leader Bob Byrd to Treasury Secretary James Baker to Newspaper Columnist Robert Novak. Says George Christian, press secretary in Lyndon Johnson’s White House: “One of Strauss’s many strengths is that although he’s a good Democrat, he can also be bipartisan when the situation requires it.” Perhaps Speaker Wright had something like that in mind when he offered this toast to Strauss at a recent private dinner: “It’s an honor to have with us a close friend of the next President of the United States — whoever the hell he may be.”

Bob Strauss relishes that kind of ribbing, and knows exactly who he is. Today he sports Savile Row suits and $250 English shoes, but he grew up in the tiny town of Stamford, Texas. Neither of his parents was especially religious, but as Strauss once said, “A poor Jewish kid from West Texas learns early how to survive.” His father, Charles Strauss, was an aspiring concert pianist who emigrated from Germany in 1915. Landing in New York City, he took a job as a traveling piano salesman. On a swing through Texas, he met and fell in love with Edith Schwartz. The couple married, and Charles Strauss opened a dry- goods store in Stamford that, if it didn’t keep the family from being poor, did keep them from being impoverished. There were two children, Robert and his brother Ted, 62, now a businessman married to the mayor of Dallas, Annette Strauss.

Bob Strauss’s mother was a strong woman who often minded the family store while her husband listened to opera on the radio or, better yet, traveled to performances in Dallas. Edith urged young Bobby to become a lawyer as a first < step to becoming, in her view, the “first real Jewish politician” in Texas. Her son, dutiful and smart, won undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Texas. That’s also where he met Helen Jacobs, the daughter of a well-off Dallas businessman, whom he married in 1941. Following a World War II stint as an FBI agent, Strauss and an old college chum, Richard Gump, opened a Dallas law office.

Another college friend was John Connally, whom Strauss long served as a backstage adviser and fund raiser. After Connally became Governor of Texas in 1963, he appointed Strauss to the state bank board, then helped him become a Democratic national committeeman. Meanwhile, Strauss’s law firm was thriving, and Strauss was getting rich through investments in radio stations, real estate and banking. By 1970 it was time to move to Washington.

From the moment Strauss hit town, first as Democratic Party treasurer and two years later as chairman, he showed he could both get things done and promote himself when he did. With the backing of such traditionalists as the AFL-CIO’s George Meany, Chicago’s Mayor Richard Daley and Senator Henry M. (“Scoop”) Jackson, Strauss set out to cut the Democrats’ massive debt and reconcile their warring factions. He did both impressively and presided over the 1976 convention that nominated Jimmy Carter for President.

Strauss tells a story about those days to illustrate the way he operates. At the Democrats’ 1974 midterm convention in Kansas City, with reformers threatening to walk out because Strauss was trying to enhance the role of party regulars, he began a furious round of negotiations. When Daley told him he had given too much away, Strauss replied, “Well, Mr. Mayor, I’ll tell you, I feel like a second-story burglar, just climbin’ out the window with two- thirds of the jewels, knowing the rest are still on the nightstand. I’m just hopin’ I can get away before the damn ladder breaks.” Then, as now, Strauss takes what he can, gives what he has to — and toots his horn like crazy.

These traits don’t always endear him to others. A few accuse him, but off the record, of ethical lapses. More persuasively, some Democrats think he confuses what’s good for Strauss with what’s good for the party. Says Ted Van Dyk, a former aide to Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale: “Bob has given a lot to, and been loyal to, the Democratic Party. But regrettably he’s most interested in it when he’s in charge.” There are even people who think his claims to power are bogus. His reply: “Yesterday I had lunch with George Shultz, the day before with Alan Greenspan. And the day before that I spent three hours on the phone with Jim Wright. Do you think they would spend that kind of time with me if they didn’t think I had something to offer?” At another point, he says, “I have a basic sense of ethics, decency and integrity. I never cheat on personal relationships, and I never cheat on political relationships.” Then he adds, “Am I overrated? Of course. Did I help create that situation? Of course. I’m that good.”

Strauss’s admirers, famous and obscure, are as effusive as his critics are harsh. A receptionist in his Dallas office, Marie Hevle, near tears as she recounts the things he did when personal and family problems beset her, calls him the “greatest friend I’ve ever had.” Says she: “I probably never would have made it without him.” The owner of a Mexican restaurant in Dallas, whom Strauss helped get started, welcomes him with a hug when he comes for dinner. Comments Christian: “People get far more out of Strauss than he ever gets out of them.”

If Strauss’s ego is legendary — “((Menachem)) Begin was intrigued, captivated by me . . . ((Anwar)) Sadat was crazy about me, and I him” — it masks a rather touching insecurity and desire for acceptance. “What I’ve worked for,” he says, “is to earn the respect of people I respected.” Thus when a prominent Washington journalist once described him as a “fixer,” Strauss fumed, “I detest that word, and I detest that son of a bitch for using it! It sounds cheap. It’s not me. I don’t know how to fix anything. Hell, I’ve never even fixed a traffic ticket . . .! What I do is help make the Government work.”

Ask him to sum up Bob Strauss in a sentence, and he replies, “At peace with himself.” Maybe. He has plenty of creature comforts: private planes, limousines, luxurious apartments in Washington, Dallas and Florida’s Bal Harbour (where his neighbors include friends like G.O.P. Presidential Candidate Bob Dole and Reagan’s chief of staff, Howard Baker). There is also a summer “cottage” in Del Mar, Calif., where he and Helen indulge their passion for gambling at the local racetrack. He’s on five corporate boards, his law firm is among the most sought-after in Washington, and the Strausses’ three children are grown.

But is he “at peace”? Not if ambition is a guide. When some of his close friends insist that instead of negotiating for others at a deadlocked convention, he should be the nominee, they are preaching to the choir. Strauss’s rational side tells him that his age, his state and the fact that he is Jewish, to name only three factors, are insurmountable hurdles. Besides, he claims to doubt that the convention will be deadlocked and insists that if it is, New York Governor Mario Cuomo is a more likely nominee. “I told Cuomo the other day,” he says, “that Texans don’t like guys named Mario, or guys named Cuomo, or guys from Queens. And they don’t like liberals. But you could carry Texas.”

Still, Strauss dares to hope. “I would be a great President,” he says. “I know how to move this country.”

Late one recent evening, Strauss was flying in a private plane from Dallas to Austin. There he would deliver a lecture on politics at his alma mater and afterward attend a black-tie “roast” of himself and fellow Texan James Baker. Below was the black Texas prairie, ahead the glow of Austin, where his career began. It was nearly midnight; Strauss was tired. “Sometimes I feel old,” he said. So why not retire? He shook his head almost sadly. “What would I do then?” It was as close to introspection as he ever gets. “I’d just shrink,” he said. He looked out the window of the plane into the darkness and added, “You don’t know how quickly the telephones can stop ringing, and the invitations stop coming.”

Bob Strauss had just described his vision of hell.