The Saturday night massacre; on "West 57th Street" a Congressional aide criticized Social Security; now he's out of a job - Phillip Longman

Washington Monthly, June, 1988 by Matthew Cooper

On "West 57th Street" a congressional aide criticized Social Security. Now he's out of a job. The Saturday Night Massacre

On a Saturday night in April, the pounding saxophones and rapid-fire shots of youthful reporters that introduce CBS's "West 57th Street" segued into a 13-minute report on the "elderly lobby." There were numbers: with 28 million members, the American Association of Retired Persons is twice "The elderly vote is political clout," said Mel Levitt, an AARP activist in Florida. There was dissent: Bruce Babbitt, recently obliterated in New Hampshire and Iowa, complained that criticism of Social Security and other entitlements had become "a forbidden subject."

But the person who got the most airtime was a 32-year-old writer named Phillip Longman. Short, bearded, and a little soft-spoken, he's made a livelihood examining and criticizing policy toward the elderly. He's worked on Capitol Hill and at thinktanks, knocking out speeches and articles about rising mortgages for the young and ballooning Social Security payments for the elderly. He's been in The Atlantic, The New Republic, and The Washington Monthly; he's done interviews with Denver radio stations and chatted on the set of the "CBS Morning News." And, as you might figure, he's got a book (Born to Pay: The New Politics of Aging in America).

That Saturday night, as Longman chimed in about gray power, he offered this incendiary thought: "What we've got is a system that pays out most of its benefits to people who are middle-class and more affluent, while not providing enough benefits for the poor to bring them up above the government's own poverty line.

"This is a scandal."

So was what happened when Longman came to work the following Monday at the Capitol Hill office of Rep. Kenneth H. "Buddy" MacKay, a Florida Democrat. Besides writing his own articles, Longman had been writing speeches and legislation bearing MacKay's name. That morning, the phones started ringing. They were not calls complimenting Phillip on his fine performance.

"We got several phone calls that expressed dismay," says Gregg Farmer, MacKay's administrative assistant, adding that while they didn't number that many, they were the kind you return quickly. "These were people who were strong supporters and very influential people," he says.

A couple of weeks later, Longman was fired. Everyone involved, however, describes it as the sweetest of separations, calling it inevitable given the clamor. MacKay himself explains it by saying: "I feel very kindly towards Phillip, and I'm sorry this happened. I was being dragged into an argument that was not mine....The position of being an advocate and a staff person don't easily coincide." (Of course, Longman hadn't exactly been operating under a gag order, and his politics were no secret when MacKay hired him. While on the MacKay payroll he was out hustling for his book on dozens of radio and TV shows, even appearing on PBS's "Nightly Business Report," which originates in Florida.) Still, Longman says he sees MacKay as a victim, too. "If anyone has a right to be angry, I do," he said. "And I'm not angry." Farmer calls him a "talented writer and a friend."

Were the calls organized? It's hard to say, but it seems fishy. After all, since he wasn't identified on the show as a member of MacKay's staff (only as a "Washington policy analyst") an outraged resident of Florida's 6th District would have had to devote his Sunday to some pretty spectacular sleuthing to find out where Longman worked. Few calls came into CBS about the piece, says the segment's producer, Steven Reiner, and none about Longman in particular, so it's doubtful anyone got MacKay's name from the network. So whoever called already knew Longman was on staff.

Why the fuss? Phillip Longman violated one of the great taboos of American politics: saying something bad about entitlements. Of course, his sound byte was not the first transgression. In 1985, when the new chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Paul Kirk, suggested that, maybe, entitlements might have to be restricted to those in need, he did what few thought possible: he brought Democrats together--to rebuke him. Kirk quickly took it back. "I should not have mentioned the possibility of a means test," Kirk said. "Our party, led on this issue by Claude Pepper, is unilaterally opposed to any cuts in Social Security." In 1984, Donald Regan had the audacity to tell "Meet the Press" that "[At] the lower end of the scale we shouldn't do anything to Social Security. But at the upper end we should reexamine it." The White House rushed to distance itself from the remarks. He was attacked on the Senate Floor by the Majority Leader Robert Byrd, who said that trusting the Reagan administration to protect Social Security is like "trusting a pyromaniac to guard your firewood." Just last fall, the AARP's own executive director, Jack Carlson, was forced out of office. His crime? Reports have cited his preference for private solutions to the problems of the elderly, such as a "reverse mortgage" plan that would allow the senior citizens to sell their homes to pay for medical care.