Styles of Political Mafias

By Hugh Sidey

Richard Scammon, the elections analyst, came home from the first and last 1964 campaign meeting held by President John Kennedy just ten days before his assassination in November 1963. Scammon sat down with his wife Mary and with great snorts of laughter recounted that by his tally there were, around the table, eight Irish Roman Catholics and two Unitarians from the Middle West.

The Irish Mafia, named by Sander Vanocur, then NBC White House Correspondent, still controlled the heartbeat of J.F.K.'s three-year-old Administration. In Scammon's mellow hindsight, there is no doubt that the tough, pragmatic, but often tender and poetic, strains of the Kennedy stewardship reflected the political culture of the Boston Irish and the legacy of J.F.K.'s grandfather, Honey Fitz.

Loyd Hackler, now president of the American Retail Federation, wryly recalled last week that when he was named an assistant to President Lyndon Johnson, great efforts were made to obscure Hackler's own Texas background. L.B.J. was growing sensitive to the observations that Texas people, Texas clothes, Texas food and Texas language were inundating the capital, and so Hackler was listed as being from Oklahoma. It took U.P.I.'s wily White House correspondent, Merriman Smith, to penetrate the ruse by asking: "When did he move to Texas?"

The reluctant answer: at age seven.

Johnson had his Texas Mafia, best known for its authoritative and cunning ability to manipulate others. Richard Nixon's government melded men from both coasts, but his White House staff had a heavy dose of those too eager sunshine boys from Southern California whose fraternity tricks helped produce Watergate. The memories of Jimmy Carter's Georgia Mafia are mercifully fading, but their suspicion and their resentment of the rituals of real power surely hastened his failure.

It was of no little interest when, after the resignation of Alexander Haig, the new Secretary of State-designate arrived in Washington and introduced himself. "My name is George Shultz. I'm from California." Something clicked.

Most of the key power points in Reagan's Government are now in the hands of Californians of one vintage or another. The White House staff, of course, is freighted that way. Now the President's top two Cabinet members, the Secretaries of State and Defense, form a solid California front. We will feel the effects of their environment.

Theories about political influence are not always tidy, however. Within the White House, James Baker, a Texan, is as important as any of the aides. Reagan's total Cabinet tilts, 8 to 5, east of the Mississippi River. Mike Deaver, who is Baker's deputy and a Californian, contends that the Reagan White House cannot be measured so much for its West Coast flavor as for the taste of Ronald Reagan. With the departure of Haig, those men closest to Reagan all have a special loyalty to him and fit his style.

That style is one hue of the California kaleidoscope. It reflects the manner of self-made rich men whose strong wills have produced wonders in a society that constantly shifted--home, jobs, wives--and put much stock in appearances. These men have lived a long way from the rest of the world. Many have not really come to terms with history, still vaguely believing that American will has the power to work magic in the globe, as it did in California.

For sure, there is in place today in Washington something that could be called a California Mafia. It remains to be seen what lasting impact the perceptions formed on those beaches so far away will have on the city along the sullen Potomac.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.