déJà vu ALL oveR AgAin 199
even made the guest list, but Domenici was snubbed. The usually charm-
ing Reagan dropped a dead mouse in the punch bowl by offering a ser-
mon against tax increases. Gorton and Chiles spoke up for their compro-
mise. “We marched up the hill and looked deficits square in the eye and
then we’ve blinked,” Gorton asserted. “That’s bad policy.” The president
blew his top.^3
William H. Gray III, the Pennsylvania Democrat who headed the
House Budget Committee, was asked for his take on the feud between
the White House and the Senate Republicans. “In North Philadelphia,”
he said with a chuckle, “we learn you don’t get involved in somebody
else’s fight. You might get shot.”^4
The reality on the street, so to speak, was that Ronald Reagan was now
a lame duck, but Gorton and 21 other Republicans in the Senate were up
for re-election in 1986. “A very substantial number of Republican sena-
tors regard the budget deficit as the greatest challenge facing the country,
and we feel that the failure to deal with it really threatens economic
growth,” Gorton said. In the long haul, “good policy will be good politics,”
he added, because reducing the deficit would goose the economy and re-
elect Republicans.^5
dAongoRt n his good fRiend, Rudy Boschwitz of Minnesota, cleared out
their heads and lungs by running together many mornings. When Rudy
wasn’t up for jogging, he’d still stop by the Gortons so they could walk
to the Capitol together. Sally Gorton would say, “Would you like some-
thing for breakfast, Rudy?” He’d say, “No, no, no, nothing at all. Well,
maybe a cup of coffee. Well, how about a piece of toast?” Rudy became
family.
The descendant of Pilgrims and the self-described former plywood
peddler whose family fled Hitler’s Germany when he was 3, walked and
talked, trying to figure out how to get Reagan to see the light on the defi-
cit. It was a fascinating era, with a complex cast of strong-willed charac-
ters, Boschwitz says. “Pete Domenici is very calculating, and I don’t mean
that as a pejorative at all. He was very smart, very focused, and he had a
great impatience with colleagues who didn’t agree with him. Reagan was
like Domenici. Slade had a much better touch. I think he improved Do-
menici. He made Domenici think about elements of the budget in a dif-
ferent way. And, oh God, is he such a quick study, which was why he was
so effective so quickly. Not only that, he understood the legislative process
better than I did. Better than most people. He’d be reading Time maga-
zine as he walked through the halls, or reading memos. He was so fo-