Potomac Fever: the Latest Epidemic

By Alessandra Stanley/Washington

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a presidential candidate with a good chance of winning must be in want of a Treasury Secretary. And an Assistant Secretary of State. And a special assistant in charge of federal procurement policy. Jane Austen would keenly appreciate the spirited comedy of manners that is being played out inside the Democratic Party: like spinsters preening before the village bachelor, Democrats are jockeying for position in a future Dukakis Administration. Some call this genteel process Potomac Fever. Others view it as the Waltz of the Wise Men Wanna-Bes.

Pamela Harriman, grand dame widow of Averell and a valued Democratic fund raiser, backed Senator Albert Gore in the primaries. Yet she managed to be on the dais with Dukakis, smiling silkily, as he delivered his first major foreign policy speech this month at the Atlantic Council. Georgetown denizens began whispering that she hopes to become the next Ambassador to the United Nations. At the same conference, Andrew Pierre, a Paris-based defense expert, was the first to ask Dukakis a question. "Andrew shot up out of his seat like a Pershing II missile," a colleague knowingly observed. In social Washington, Hostess Jayne Ikard, who has partied with Reaganauts for the past eight years, has been overheard authoritatively telling friends, "I was born in Brookline."

Republicans are hardly immune from Potomac Fever, but after eight years in power and multiple turnovers in the top jobs, most have already had a chance to serve. For Democrats, who have held the White House only four of the past 20 years, the yearning is unmistakable. "Like others, I am getting a continuous supply of letters, telegrams, calls, reports and recommendations," says Harvard Professor Robert Reich, who is often cited as a key economic adviser to Dukakis. He adds with a roguish twinkle, "I hear from a remarkably large and varied number of people."

In the hothouse atmosphere of Washington, not even the slightest flicker of self-promotion goes undetected. Richard Holbrooke, a well-regarded former Assistant Secretary of State under Carter, advised Gary Hart, then Gore, before making his expertise available to Dukakis. While Holbrooke denies any desire to leave Shearson Lehman Hutton, campaign aides found his friendliness after the New York primary unnerving. "Suddenly, every time you turned around, there was Holbrooke -- it was like a Peter Sellers movie," jokes one Dukakis supporter. Giddily he pursued his comic notion. "He'd be looking in from the door. Look again, and his head is poking through the window. The staff would order drinks, and he'd be the waiter bringing in the tray of martinis." Roger Altman, investment banker and Dukakis fund raiser, who understands the etiquette of job placement, warns, "Those who are qualified for the senior positions don't have to ask for them."

There are a few other helpful hints for Democrats this time around:

1) Get a temporary post at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Not as hard as it sounds, since the school offers a wide array of fellowships for mid-career bureaucrats and displaced politicians. The nameplates along the corridors (Joseph Nye, Al Carnesale, Robert Murray, Robert Reich, Graham Allison) read like a government-in-exile, and old articles are being recycled daily into speech drafts.

2) Publish an opinion piece in the New York Times or Washington Post. "All op-ed pieces are really resumes," says Washington Attorney David Rubenstein, who read his share while serving as a policy adviser to the 1976 Carter campaign. Stuart Eizenstat, Jimmy Carter's former domestic policy adviser, is an earnest, respected economics expert. Yet when his name recently appeared as co-author of a Washington Post piece entitled "Defense Lessons for Democrats," it was enough to rub nerves. Scoffed a former Carter Administration colleague: "Is that a job application, or what?"

3) Join a Democratic Party policy forum. Georgetown University Professor Madeleine Albright, who has long been advising Dukakis on foreign policy, has seen her international-affairs advisory group more than double in size. Fred Wertheimer, director of Common Cause, spins out the pre-election ploys in a bureaucrat's rendition of rap: "You panel, you travel, you visit, you appear. Most of all, you be there."

4) Get touted in the press. The only thing worse than being mentioned in an article like this is not being mentioned at all. One Kennedy School scholar, after hearing that a reporter had called a colleague to discuss Dukakis, called the reporter to volunteer an interview of his own. The best mention comes with a self-deprecating disclaimer. The best example was a double bank shot in a Business Week cover on American Express Chairman James Robinson. The article quoted Felix Rohatyn, the head of Lazard Freres and among those most commonly mentioned for Treasury Secretary, as touting Republican Robinson for that job in a Dukakis Administration. Score one for Rohatyn. It then quoted Robinson as saying he has no desire for a Cabinet post. "There was a lot of mirth in the office over that one," a Wall Street colleague recalls.

5) Give money.

None of these tactics guarantee success. "My advice to people is to keep their expectations low," says the Kennedy School's Reich. "There are many more suitors than jobs." Nor is there much reason to believe that the insiders of today will be on top come January. Outsiders can take heart from Hamilton Jordan's infamous anti-Establishment bon mot of the 1976 campaign: "If Cy Vance and Zbigniew Brzezinski are in the Administration, then we have lost."