Blogging Charlie Wilson's War: How Charlie Wilson was reminded that all politics is local

Charlie Wilson was a conservative Democrat.   Nowdays a conservative Democrat is a Democrat in the pocket of big business interests, somebody who's never met a lobbyist they didn't like.  Back then, in the early 1980s, a conservative Democrat was somebody like Charlie Wilson who was every bit as liberal on domestic issues as Tip O'Neill but who was hawkish on defense, ardently and obstreperously anti-Communist, and who never met a military appropriation he didn't like, especially if the money was going to be spent in his home state.

He was also a notorious and compulsive skirt-chaser, a happy hedonist who narrowly escaped a cocaine bust, and a drunk who nearly scuttled an important Congressional fact-finding mission to the Afghan frontier that was key to his mission to arm the mujahideen by getting in a drunk-driving accident the night before the plane was to leave and fleeing the scene.

He appears to have been relatively honest.  What graft he was prone to accepting he accepted almost unconsciously in the form of free trips, free booze, and the attention of pretty women who were free with their affections.

Basically he lived every day as if he was desperate to catch the notice of the House Ethics Committee.

But Tip O'Neill liked him.

More importantly, the late, great Speaker of the House found Charlie Wilson useful.

In Charlie Wilson's War, George Crile isn't just telling the tale of adventures of a single anti-hero.  He's telling an important part of a larger story, the end of the Cold War, which means that he routinely steps back to take a look at the bigger picture and place Wilson's story in context.  We're shown how Afghanistan and Charlie Wilson figured in the political battles being waged back in Washington and in the scheme of things we see him as a supporting character in the power struggle between the Democratic Majority in the House of Representatives and the Republican President, Ronald Reagan.

One of the reasons Charlie Wilson was able to do what he did was that very few people in Washington were paying attention to Afghanistan.  Tip O'Neill's right hand man back then, Tony Coelho, told Crile that he doubted most of the members of Congress could find Afghanistan on a map and weren't the least bit interested in having its whereabouts pointed out to them.

At the time, the focus was on Nicaragua.

As much as Charlie Wilson wanted to take the battle right to the Commies in Afghanistan, Ronald Reagan wanted to fight them in Central America.  Wilson wanted to out and out kill Soviet troops.  Reagan wanted to overthrow the Sandinista government.  Wilson didn't like the Sandinistas one bit and would have been glad to vote to give money to the Contras.  Tip O'Neill wasn't about to let Wilson do that.  Funding the Contras was the Reagan Administration's second choice though.  Reagan wanted to invade.  Tip O'Neill wasn't about to let that happen either.

Coelho told Crile:

During the eighties we had a divided government.  The Republicans controlled the Senate, and the only institution controlled by Democrats was the House.  We were not just the opposition party, we were the opposition government.  It was a heady time for us.  After the 1982 elections a political stalemate occurred and that stalemate gave Tip power and we were aggressively willing to take on Reaganism.

The fight with Reagan was across the board but Nicaragua and the Contras were the most consistent bones of contention.

Tip O'Neill cut a deal with Charlie Wilson, "an implicit quid pro quo arrangement," Crile writes,"in which he'd agreed, in effect, to sell out the Contras in exchange for leading in the House when it came to funding the Afghan war."

Wilson felt bad about this.  His conscience bothered him.  But he knew, because O'Neill made it clear, it was either the mujahideen or the Contras, and if Charlie had chosen the Contras that would have pretty much ended any influence he had in Congress over anything.  He'd stop being an effective representative of his district.  His constituents, a conservative and religious bunch, would very likely stop forgiving him for the sins and indiscretions in his personal life if in his public life he wasn't bringing home the bacon.

All politics is local.

Coelho again:

Nicaragua was a bitter, bitter, vicious fight with State, CIA, the military, and the White House against us.  If Charlie had gotten caught up in any of those battles he wouldn't have gotten anywhere.

Reading this stuff has made me nostalgic about Tip O'Neill.  More nostalgic.  It's often pointed out that Reagan didn't govern like the Right Wing idealogue he ran as and talked like.  George W. Bush has out-Reaganed Reagan on most issues.  Partly that was because Reagan had a pragmatic streak.  He liked to get things done more than he liked to get his way.  Mostly though it was because Tip O'Neill stood in his path.

Makes me wish O'Neill had left a manual on how to run a successful opposition for Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

But I have to remember that things were different then.

The Republican Party hadn't yet become a complete tool of the corporate and Radical Right.  The Right Wing noise machine didn't exist.  The Media was still known as the Press and journalists tended to cover the news as if it was about something and not gossip about personalities and which personalities had power.  That was changing.  But stories about politics still aimed at explaining the issues being contested not about which side was doing the better job of framing the issues.

The Reagan Administration included a fair share of sharpers and snakes but it also included advisers and cabinet secretaries who were concerned about the fate of the nation more than about the advantages to their party or the money to be made for their friends.  The President himself was not a complete fool or a tool of his evil and conniving Vice-President.  And the Democratic majority in Congress was mainly made up of actual Democrats, like Charlie Wilson, who as conservative and hawkish as he was, still thought the role of the government was to help people, all the people, not make some people rich.

Previous chapter in Blogging Charlie Wilson's War:  How a self-made thug helped bring down the Soviet Union.

Comments

[Erik]

A conservative Democrat in Wilson's day also usually meant bad on racial issues. I don't know Wilson's own views on the matter, but it is worth noting.

[mamayaga]

You speak of Charlie Wilson as if he were dead. It appears he's still alive and only just now eligible for Social Security.

[cebm]

Ah, the good bad old days. How I miss them.

[Lance]

Erik: A conservative Democrat in Wilson's day also usually meant bad on racial issues.

Was that true by the early 1980s? I thought that the Dixiecrats had pretty much moved over to the GOP by then. I was thinking, though, of conservative Democrats like Scoop Jackson and the guy who was the Congressman from our district when I was growing up, Sam Stratton, both of whom were on the side of the angels on civil rights, I believe.

Charlie Wilson started out in politics as a JFK-style liberal. I'm not sure what his record on civil rights was. I don't think Crile has refered to it yet. There is a short bit about his relations with his black constituents which was pretty positive. I'll have to look it up. My feeling is that Wilson became a conservative by default. He didn't change with the times. His Kennedy was still JFK not Teddy or Bobby.

mamayaga, I didn't mean to make it sound like Wilson's dead, although he was in his early 50s back in the 1980s so he's been eligible for Social Security for a while now. But I was writing about him as he was then and that past him is gone now.

[Bob]

I’m not sure how heroic and noble Wilson and O’Neill were on this one. Your point about Tip’s success in curbing many of the excesses of the Reagan administration is true enough and certainly makes me long for that crooked old ward healer who understood politics as thoroughly as LBJ and Reagan did. That we’re stuck with Pelosi and Reid now when we so recently had such a lion in charge is a shame.
That being said, our policy in Afghanistan was a dreadful mistake – and Charlie Wilson’s War was the beginning thrust of 9/11. Charlie Wilson was determined to support the "Freedom Fighters" in Afghanistan against Soviet "tyranny" - in quotes not because I am pro-Soviet; I’m not.
The war began when the Soviet puppet in Kabul issued a series of reforms, to include this horrible change to traditional Afghan culture - parents could no longer sell their daughters into marriage at any age - they had to wait until the girl was 12 to exchange her for a couple of goats. The rugged "Freedom Fighters" would have none of that, no siree bub, and they responded with weapons that Reagan and Wilson arranged for them to have. We supplied weapons directly to a group headed by one Osama bin Laden. Smart move that. The Soviets were chased out, the Northern Alliance took over and even by Afghani standards proved to be too corrupt leading to a Taliban take over.....I think you know the rest.
Let’s not make heroes out of the Charlie Wilson’s of the world. I don’t believe for a minute he really believed any of this would come to pass, but if you are going to fund wars shouldn’t you at the very least have some fucking clue what kind of people you are supporting? And what a conservative Democrat really was in Charlie Wilson’s day was a social liberal who was as bat-shit insane on foreign affairs as the most militaristic wingnut. He was no hero and no one the left needs to emulate.

[Batocchio]

I'd like to see Dem leadership with the savviness of O'Neill and LBJ. Good policies would help, too, but some advanced "operating" is needed to combat the current GOP obstructionism.

[ajay]

Bob, no one said that the muj were shining stars; but I suggest you read a little about what the Soviet Army was doing in Afghanistan.
And, to be brutally honest, Afghanistan hurt the Soviets real bad. If 9/11/01 was the price that eventually had to be paid for 11/9/89, it was worth it.

[Bob]

Batocchio: I know the Soviets did a lot of bad things in Afghanistan. Nonetheless, compared to who they were fighting it's kind of hard to make a case they were the "bad guys". Had they won, Afghanistan might have dragged kicking and screaming into, oh I don't know, let's say the 18th century. They lost and the result was an eventual take over by the Taliban. Now if you want to say the Taliban was better for Afghanistan than the Soviets, more power to you. But I'll say for the 50% of the population that was stripped of all rights (ie women) by the Taliban - as well as any right-thinking male - the Taliban was a disaster of epic proportions.
We really need to retire this right-wing way of thinking where the world is always divided into good guys vs bad guys. It's a bit more complex than that.

[Bob]

Batocchio: My apologies - my last comment should have been addressed to Ajay - not you.