The Gortons and Slades - Washington Secretary of State

Let’s MAKe A deAL 211
the old pro from West Virginia, quickly changed his vote to “yes” so the
Democrats could move for reconsideration. Dole craftily called up other
business and prevailed in a parliamentary chess match that stretched
over the next four weeks. Evans, who had never wavered in his opposition
to Manion, voted against the pivotal procedural motion to reconsider.
It was unfair, he said, to make Manion undergo another roll call on the
merits of his nomination. 4
Dan Manion was headed for the federal bench.
As quids pro quo go it was classic D.C. horse-trading, except that the
stakes were higher than usual: a lifetime appointment to the federal bench.
Democrats railed at Gorton’s perfidy. “Slade Gorton couldn’t deliver without
selling out on his principles,” Adams said. Gorton was unrepentant.
Absent the Dwyer dustup, he would have supported Manion, he said, because
Indiana’s Republican senators, Quayle and Richard Lugar, assured
him their nominee was no right-wing lapdog. Further, the American Bar
Association rated Manion as qualified, albeit marginally. Gorton resented
being characterized as insensitive to the bedrock principle of an independent
judiciary. He said Dwyer’s appointment was in fact a victory in the
battle to counter Reagan’s single-minded push to install conservatives on
the bench. “I regret I cannot do it across the country.” 5
Gorton’s deal-making was analyzed and editorialized from Seattle
to Savannah. “Deals are made all the time in Congress,” The Washington
Post said. “But Mr. Gorton took it too far. . . . Judges aren’t pork.” Eric
Pryne of The Seattle Times’ Washington Bureau wrote that the episode
illustrated “an important distinction” between Gorton and Evans, “who
are so alike in so many other ways. Simply put, the difference is this:
Gorton has fewer qualms about engaging in the give and take, the wheeling
and dealing, the horse-trading that is an essential but sometimes unpleasant
element of political life. Evans, while not averse to compromising
and negotiating, doesn’t play the game as readily or with as much
relish.”
“Slade has always loved the give and take, the rough and tumble,” Jay
Fredericksen, a former Evans press secretary, told Pryne. “He knows how
to use it. He’s very good at it. Dan is a different kind of guy. Slade will do
what he has to do. Dan doesn’t like to bend.” One of Gorton’s press aides
agreed, though his metaphors were less flattering to the boss. “This is not
a perfect world,” said David Endicott. “If people want to play that game,
Slade will play it. . . .He will get down in that trough with them.” Evans
took pains to dispel the notion that he disapproved of what his friend and
seatmate had done. “I think all of the furor and the talk about Sen. Gorton