For more than two decades, I’ve been involved in politics – four tours of duty on Capitol Hill, two presidential appointments serving senior cabinet officials and as an advance man on congressional, presidential and national advocacy campaigns. During all this time in the swamp, I’ve been a low-key staffer, a special assistant — the guy a step behind the principal but always ready to step up and ensure the political train moves smoothly and on time. Call me the Fixer.
In all these posts for all these men and women, I’ve seen what it takes to secure and enhance true, sometimes massive, political power. It’s pretty much five habits, reflex actions on the part of politicians – and their unelected employees.
Of the five, the singular habit is resilience – the ability to react instantly to adversity. In a day or even an hour, a once methodically scripted event is upended in the first minute due to circumstances unforeseen. When things go south, panic is not an option. In successful political types, there’s only an instinctive drive north, and here’s a tale about how that works.
On one of many globe-trotting ambles with my lanky, wise-cracking boss, a Deputy Secretary of State, we find ourselves outside of the city of Fier, Albania, 40 miles southwest of the capital city of Tirana. Along with several embassy staff, we are at a large farm where U.S. foreign aid has provided long-needed agricultural equipment, the result of which is prosperity the community has never seen. Our visit occasions a celebratory lunch in a new barn and an emotional ceremony involving local villagers and farmers.
Afterwards, a village elder speaks with our embassy interpreter who locates me and says the community wants to honor this new Albanian-U.S. partnership with a traditional observance.
The next thing you know, with great fanfare a proud farmer is behind an honest-to-goodness 19th century plow and a newer ox and has cut a 50-yard furrow in a nearby field. The increasingly adamant elder tells our interpreter that the Americans must lay down a matching lane right now. My boss and the State Department guys are nowhere to be seen and suddenly, it’s a Fixer moment. Perhaps you know where this is going.
Several farmers gather around and look warily at me as I make a pantomime gesture of pushing something while jogging in place and then I double time it out to the field to where the farmer is standing with his beast of burden. I smile and then grab the plow handles, yell several curses at the ox and then begin gamely trudging behind both, slicing an uneven cut into the wet soil as mud splatters all over my suit, shirt and face. The villagers see this crazy spectacle from a distance and start cheering. Throughout all, in my mind is an utterance from a former boss, a Member of Congress, forced to throw out a pitch at a minor-league baseball game. You read it above: “The only way around this thing is straight through it.”
Afterwards, not quite knowing the full details, my funny guy boss looks at my soiled ensemble and says, “You are a testament to the hard work of freedom.”
“I know,” I reply, “all fifty yards of it.” But the show must go on and soon the Fixer is herding everyone back in the cars and the motorcade is rolling on to the next event.
The habit learned from years of watching my bosses had automatically kicked in: Move out.
First, there was no way I was going to outlast the request of the persistent elder. Second, there was no way I could let the event be soured because we didn’t follow through on a village custom. And, third, there was no way I was going to allow my boss out into that swamp. Someone had to act and act fast.
What’s the alternative? Alas, I’ve seen individuals handle sudden mayhem in all the wrong ways: Utter panic. Total paralysis. Defeat.
This is just one relatively minor episode in the grand sweep of politics, where the need for a Plan C takes place 4,821 miles away from the swamp. There are much worse ones.
Here’s one: Your boss is at the center of an exceedingly unflattering story in a prominent publication (the same one that had the Fixer jumping for a photoshoot in a small West Virginia town). A really awful story. The piece comes out of nowhere; no heads up that it was even being written. The article is first taken to the senior staffers. They read it and then it’s brought to the boss, who knows something is up and is soon grimacing. What follows is the habitual response: Assess – how bad is it? Always get to the absolute bottom of the bad news so there are no further surprises. Next, adapt: Figure out three things to be done right now to fight and counteract the story. Then advance: Do them. Write a short and powerful refutation of the piece, call the reporter and his or her editor, decide to bring it up in a public setting and knock it down or gauge the terrain to see if the piece will fade away quickly in the next news cycle.
Sometimes the challenge is not epic, but nevertheless the need for resourcefulness is imperative. What you can’t do is freeze, and none of my bosses ever did. The ox and the New York Times don’t go away on their own; you work immediately to make them go away.
Jeff Nelligan worked for three Members of Congress, was twice a Presidential Appointee serving senior Cabinet officials, and has been an advance man on Congressional, Presidential, and national advocacy campaigns. The above is an excerpt from his book, Tales From the Swamp: Five Habits of Successful Politicians – Notes of a Fixer (Amazon 2020).