Unleash Chiang Kai-Shek

I'm sorry, but this is just too weird:

Gainesville.com | The Gainesville Sun | Gainesville, Fla.: After more than an hour of solemn ceremony naming Rep. Marco Rubio, R-West Miami, as the 2007-08 House speaker, Gov. Jeb Bush stepped to the podium in the House chamber last week and told a short story about "unleashing Chang," his "mystical warrior" friend. Here are Bush's words, spoken before hundreds of lawmakers and politicians:

"Chang is a mystical warrior. Chang is somebody who believes in conservative principles, believes in entrepreneurial capitalism, believes in moral values that underpin a free society.

"I rely on Chang with great regularity in my public life. He has been by my side and sometimes I let him down. But Chang, this mystical warrior, has never let me down."

Bush then unsheathed a golden sword and gave it to Rubio as a gift. "I'm going to bestow to you the sword of a great conservative warrior," he said, as the crowd roared.

The crowd, however, could be excused for not understanding Bush's enigmatic foray into the realm of Eastern mysticism. We're here to help. In a 1989 Washington Post article on the politics of tennis, former President George Bush was quoted as threatening to "unleash Chang" as a means of intimidating other players. The saying was apparently quite popular with Gov. Bush's father, and referred to a legendary warrior named Chang who was called upon to settle political disputes in Chinese dynasties of yore. The phrase has evolved, under Gov. Jeb Bush's use, to mean the need to fix conflicts or disagreements over an issue. Faced with a stalemate, the governor apparently "unleashes Chang" as a rhetorical device, signaling it's time to stop arguing and start agreeing.

No word on if Rubio will unleash Chang, or the sword, as he faces squabbles in the future.

When George H. W. Bush in the 1970s and 1980s threatened to "unleash Chang" on his tennis opponents, he was referring to China's onetime strongman and thereafter Taiwan's dictator Chiang Kaishek, leader of the Nationalist Party, the man who had largely reunified China in the 1920s with his army's "Northern Expedition," lost the Chinese Civil War to Mao Zedong's Chinese Communist Party, and then taken refuge with his Guomindang party cadres on Taiwan. After the start of the Korean War, the American 7th Fleet protected Chiang (and Taiwan) from Mao's People's Liberation Army.

Republican wingnuts, however, pretended that the 7th Fleet actually protected Mao's Communists (who had, after all, won the Chinese Civil War) from Chiang's Nationalists (who had, after all, lost it) by keeping Chiang Kaishek leashed. They periodically called for the U.S. to "unleash Chiang Kaishek"--so that Chiang, you see, could invade and conquer the Chinese mainland.

When George H. W. Bush, playing tennis (and losing) in the 1970s and 1980s, would threaten to "unleash Chiang," he was mocking the right-wing nuts of his generation.

But George H. W. Bush's sons--even the smart one, Jeb--never got the joke. They, you see, didn't know enough about world history or even the history of the Republican Party to know who Chiang Kaishek was, or what "Unleash Chiang!" meant. Hence Jeb Bush's explanation that twentieth-century Chinese nationalist, socialist, general, and dictator Chiang Kaishek was a "mystical warrior... who believes in conservative principles, believes in entrepreneurial capitalism, believes in moral values that underpin a free society."

To me, that level of uncuriosity is scary. Why is this family ruling us, again?

Comments

[anne]

Nice post :)

[still working it out]

George Bush never travelled outside continental US until he became president. Its hard for me to imagine how that could be for someone that wealthy in the modern world. But what is more remarkable is that there is something about the US political system that means that he is able to become President and his brother became Governor of one of the largest states in the US. What flaw in our collective human nature leads to such a perverse outcome? Is the advantage of a good social network so high that it overcomes utter stupidity and incuriousness? Or do they posess other qualities to overcome flaws that in most walks of life will quickly lead to failure?

[RT]

"Why is this family ruling us, again?"

Because they're the best puppets possible for the ruling class that they're not really part of, but are rich enough to feel they are.

[cm]

still working it out: That somebody has not traveled abroad I would consider an observation, but not necessarily a flaw. A flaw (considering the position) I would consider small(narrow?)-mindedness and lack of curiosity though.

[Johnny]

Don't blame the people, we've got a dysfunctional media. They are usually either (1) obsessed with trivial things like the latest white-woman-in-peril story, Al Gore's disturbing Wardrobe or John Kerry's tan, or (2) so scared of being seen as biased that they present every policy dispute as a he said/she said debate even when they know one side is full of s@#t. This is assuming they even know though. I've seen countless cases where it was clear that media types were completely clueless of things any reasonably educated person, let alone a journalist should know.

Rove is also a master of crating an image. How they got people to think W was a straight-shooting successful businessman and Texas rancher was a master stroke when you take into account he wasn't any of those things.

[Johnny]

W's lack of world travel is even more amazing taking in (a) the wealth of the family and (b) the types of jobs his Father had in the 60s and 70s, let alone the 80s.

[Barkley Rosser]

Ironically Chiang Kai-Shek is now massively unpopular in Taiwan itself, where his repressive and dictatorial tendencies and oppression of the native Taiwanese is well remembered. There is a huge memorial to him Taipei, resembling in ways the Lincoln Memorial and mall in Washington. When I was there over a month ago, there were exactly four people visiting it besides myself and my guides and the guards.

[Firebug]

I wonder if we can use statements like this one to separate Jeb from the hardline wingnuts. Remember, we may find this dippy kind of spiritualism ("mystical warrior"?) to be merely silly, but the fundamentalist wingnuts would consider such talk to be blasphemy. Do they know about this?

[ken melvin]

Mark Twain told this story in 'Huck Finn'.

[Winslow R.]

"Why is this family ruling us, again?"

I heard a rumor that there was a mole in the Clinton CEA that told the Pres. that 'it was a bad idea to run deficits but smart to run surpluses'. You wouldn't happen to know the guy?

[James]

I thought George Bush in 1989 was referring to Michael Chang, who won an upset in the French open at the age of 17? Perhaps there was a dual-meaning, including a joke at the expense of the hard-right Republicans of earlier decades, but the reference to Michael Chang seems extremely clear. I vaguely recall reading about Bush the elder being a big fan of the young American player.

Chang won the French open right at the beginning of Bush's presidency by way of a spectacularly gritty game against Ivan Lendl, making him an obvious inspiration for Bush's tennis comments in the news at the time, and one any Americans following tennis would have certainly understood. Perhaps Bush's mantra combined a joke at the expense of old ideologues with a serious expression of respect for the inspiring underdog athlete's achievements and attitude.

Today Chang quotes the New Testament on his website, so perhaps he's theologically aligned with the Bush family, as well. In this light, if I were inclinded to speculate charitably I might suppose Jeb's elaborate story about the character of Chang is partly a humorous tribute to an athlete and co-religionist whom he admires, perhaps partly due to the influene of his father, and no longer implies for him any attitude toward Chiang Kai-Shek. The Bush family made the statement mean something about Michael Chang, for them.

Odd, but not nearly as weird as venerating Chiang Kai-Shek as a mystical warrior, eh?

[llld]

Woah, didn't W go to China when his father was posted there and try (unsuccessfully) to pick up asian chicks?

[christo]

Wonkette picked up a variation of this "unleash my inner Chiang" story in relation to the young drunk JEB following in the footsteps of giants. That blog made the story funny which is important in this laugh instead of cry era.

W should have made at least a brief visit to Beijing while Dad was ambassador. Bush Sr had some wonderful impressions so he found it hard to be disapproving when shadow warrior Little Bottle rolled the tanks over the students.

And one Bush sibling did "score" with the Asian women when he was put on the board of the custom chip foundry company run by the son of the former Shanghai mayor/China prime minister and the son of the Taiwan plastics king. Elites just naturally succeed.

[KevinNYC]

So Jeb Bush is venerating Michael Chang as a mystical warrior, not Chiang Kai-Shek?

I mean seriously, if I were venerating mystical warriors, I probably would have went for Jim Courrier or Mats Wilander.

[moonbiter]

still working it out said: "Is the advantage of a good social network so high that it overcomes utter stupidity and incuriousness?"

The answer is: "Yes. Such is the benefit of being born into wealth."

[RT]

Johnny says: "Don't blame the people, we've got a dysfunctional media. They are usually either (1) obsessed with trivial things like the latest white-woman-in-peril story, Al Gore's disturbing Wardrobe or John Kerry's tan, or (2) so scared of being seen as biased that they present every policy dispute as a he said/she said debate even when they know one side is full of s@#t."

And since John Emerson hasn't posted to this thread, I'll ask the obvious question: why do we have a dysfunctional media?

Could it have anything to do with their ownership, combined with the lack of any meaningful regulation?

Hell, these days they won't let liberals get their POV on the airwaves even by **buying advertising**. How big of a clue-by-four is that?

[Simon]

"And since John Emerson hasn't posted to this thread, I'll ask the obvious question: why do we have a dysfunctional media?

Could it have anything to do with their ownership, combined with the lack of any meaningful regulation?"

Um, no. A well-regulated media, unlike a well-regulated militia, is not a good idea IMO. Regulation either causes the bland inoffensiveness characteristic of most respectable US media, or it turns media into a tool of the State.

What you actually need is a free press that's both intelligent and independent. In the UK we're lucky in that we have intelligent 'broadsheet' newspapers of all mainstream political affilitions, they go a long way to compensate for the overly-regulated broadcast media which is required to be 'impartial' a very bad idea IMO since such mandates only lead to the media concealing & denying its own biases. Much better to be able to read both the left-wing Guardian & Independent and right-wing Times & Telegraph, and then form one's own opinion.

[DuckedApe]

I vote with James: " In a 1989 Washington Post article on the politics of tennis, former President George Bush was quoted as threatening to "unleash Chang" as a means of intimidating other players." It was an amazing final...Michael was so tired he served underhand (spoons) at the end, but stayed on his feet and prevailed.

Yet, if "The phrase has evolved, under Gov. Jeb Bush's use, to mean the need to fix conflicts or disagreements over an issue. Faced with a stalemate, the governor apparently "unleashes Chang" as a rhetorical device, signaling it's time to stop arguing and start agreeing." then Jeb (or his audience) did not understand. Michael was a gladiator, not an ambassador. The phrase meant "give up, I have strong support."

[anonymous copyfighter]

Here is the 1989 Washington Post article:

The Washington Post, July 16, 1989, Sunday, Final Edition, WEEKEND; PAGE N11

Advantage, Mr. Bush

Networking on the court is a Washington obsession. But when it comes to power tennis, the president always wins

by Marci McDonald

THE ANNOUNCEMENT WAS NOTHING IF NOT CRYPTIC. "ATTENTION, TRAVeling press pool," rang a voice over the White House press room loudspeaker. "Assemble outside the lower press office for an unscheduled movement."

Through the warren of cubbyholes that pass for media offices rippled a jaded sigh. In Europe, NATO was threatening to unravel, and in Panama government goons were attempting to dissuade opposition leaders from savoring victory at the ballot box with two-foot lengths of lead pipe. But those stories were left languishing in computers as reporters scrambled for passes to yet another conflict, this one mysteriously omitted from the official schedule of the nation's peripatetic 41st president.

Out through a late afternoon downpour trooped the grumbling press pool to be herded into unmarked vans. With stately ceremony, the usual Secret Service outriders and the Air Force officer toting the nuclear code key in tow, the 12-car presidential motorcade sped up Pennsylvania Avenue, sirens screaming, past the Capitol to the Hart Senate Office Building. There, up five flights and behind an unmarked brown door that the unsuspecting might have mistaken for a committee room, George Bush had commandeered the Senate's indoor tennis court for an event on which he had expended no small measure of effort, organizing skills and familial honor: his own private tennis tournament, pitting his sons Marvin and Jeb against pros Chris Evert and Pam Shriver.

"Pam who?" inquired a bespectacled wire service scribe, who found himself on the sidelines but had clearly failed to grasp the administration's social intricacies. As Anna Perez, the First Lady's press secretary has noted, for anyone wishing to understand the Bush era, it's probably instructive that one of the guests at the first official dinner, in honor of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, was Pam Shriver. In fact, the Baltimore superstar, who met Bush at a sports banquet four years ago, has been summoned to the First Table not just once but three times -- an example that might set an aspirant to power thinking. In an administration where former presidential doubles partners have snared not only e most coveted spots on the White House guest list but also key posts in the Cabinet, anyone still hoping for a political appointment could hardly be blamed for ditching the geopolitical small talk in favor of brushing up his or her backhand.

After all, hadn't Bush met both James Baker and Nicholas Brady on the tennis court? Didn't David Bates, who started playing the president as a teenager in Texas, end up as the Cabinet's secretary? U.S. Trade Representative Carla Hills once captained Stanford's women's tennis team, and HUD Secretary Jack Kemp takes his game so seriously that he wagered his eldest daughter, Jennifer, a car that she couldn't beat him. When she slammed him 6-1, he begged another set, but after a repeat score, she found a silver Honda Civic in the driveway with a grudging concession on the windshield: "You win."

Already tennis weaves through the Bush presidency like a subplot in a soap opera -- persistent, straining credulity and popping up where you'd least expect it. When it came to choosing a social secretary, Marilyn Quayle turned to Lana Bethune, wife of former Arkansas representative Ed, with whom she had once found herself paired in a congressional wives' tournament. And CIA Director William Webster claims he never travels anywhere without his racket, despite the fact that one of his recent trips to Jordan revealed a U.S. intelligence lapse: Only after Webster and a colleague lost a doubles match against his Jordanian counterpart did they discover their host had recruited the country's best player as his partner. Even Democrat Ann Brown garnered a recommendation for the vacant seat on the Consumer Product Safety Commission from a Republican who often joins the weekend round robin on her private court: Marvin Bush.

"People want to get invited to the White House," says Cwi Steiman, managing partner of the area's Sport and Health Club chain. "I think you'll see a lot of them polishing up their games."

"THIS ISN'T ANOTHER OF THOSE STORIES ABOUT HOW tennis is a country club sport, is it?" bleats White House press secretary Marlin Fitzwater when a reporter calls about the state of the presidential serve. After all, if Walter Mondale's advisers got queasy in the 1984 campaign about how tennis footage might go down with the boys at the plant gate, no wonder a popcorn-loving patrician who spent the 1988 election appearing to enjoy pork rinds might be sensitive on the subject.

"Have you ever seen any pictures of him playing tennis?" asks Art Buchwald pointedly.

"I think the president is worried about the country club Republican image," says ABC White House correspondent Brit Hume. "He isn't hiding his tennis, but he's emphasizing the more democratic sports."

This may explain why, in comparison with the opening of the presidential horseshoe season -- with its glittering guest list of 160 and wall-to-wall photographers -- the president's private pro-am tennis tournament had the air of a covert White House operation. No mention on his schedule. Only a press pool hustled off after the first set and lobbed a desultory background briefing, despite the fact that Bush himself had planned the game weeks in advance. Republican National Committee Chairman Lee Atwater, a dedicated non-tennis player, has already indicated that of all the presidential sports, he hopes horseshoes will prevail -- at least in public. "I think it's more becoming for Republicans," he sniffs.

Indeed, in Washington, the subject of power tennis can elicit a certain ambivalence. On the one hand, everybody wants to talk about his game (Fitzwater calls his "deceptively slow"). On the other hand, image-makers wince at the memory of all those old Noel Coward plays where aristocrats in their whites seemed to bound through the French doors crying, "Tennis, anyone?"

Photo-op-wise, this would seem to be a fishing and jogging presidency -- a decision perhaps not motivated entirely by class associations. One of the few pictures of Bush on the court, a 1970 snap that appears to have liberal distribution in photographic archives, features him in an overly graceful pas de deux with then-Postmaster General Winton Blount, both feet off the ground in a leap that might have inspired Baryshnikov to call him up for pointers. And then there was that unfortunate moment when, upon returning from his stint as Nixon's envoy to the People's Republic of China, Bush was asked if he had ever gotten to know any ordinary Chinese. "Oh, yes," he replied. "They gave me a boy to play tennis with."

But if the tennis court proved too much of a minefield for the presidential campaign, anybody who thinks the sport doesn't occupy a prime place on the White House agenda hasn't been paying attention to a president who, when he wished to make a point to the current Chinese leadership during the early days of the student uprising in Beijing, canceled a tennis game with former partner Wan Li, the visiting chairman of the National People's Congress. Before he had been in office four months, the new commander in chief had already seen to it that the military resurfaced the Camp David court. And when the president and First Lady came to exchange gifts for their June birthdays last month, consider these tokens of their affection: He gave her a new racket; she gave him tennis shorts.

As vice president, Bush was never "out of the loop" when it came to tennis. Already offering a glimpse of the hands-on management style the nation was to discover, he called aides Donald Gregg and Boyden Gray whenever he heard they had played Secretary of State George Shultz on the White House court: He wanted a full report on the score.

Once he imported Ivan Lendl to Kennebunkport for the weekend, and twice then-Swedish Ambassador Wilhelm Wachtmeister called on Bjorn Borg to serve his country as a vice presidential doubles partners. The last occasion happened to coincide with the first visit to Washington of new Swedish Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson, who contentedly stood on the sidelines at the vice president's residence for more than an hour on a steamy September afternoon while Bush and Borg thrashed his ambassador and Vitas Gerulaitis. "I used to say those who called the vice president a wimp had never played tennis with him," observes Wachtmeister.

Early in the 1988 presidential campaign, the same thought crossed the mind of Marlin Fitzwater when he found himself in a rare doubles match with his boss. "The day was a scorcher, about 105 degrees," he recalls. "We were in the second set, and my body had wilted down to about 25 pounds from its usual 230 and the vice president would not yield. There was no mercy. That's when I knew he was going to be president."

That competitive spirit appears to be hereditary. The president's grandfather, Samuel Prescott Bush, founded the first tennis club in Columbus, Ohio, and one of the closest friends of Bush's maternal grandfather in St. Louis was Dwight Davis, who gave the world the Davis Cup. Bush likes to tell friends about the time his mother was bicycling into Kennebunkport one day for groceries when she hit a rock, fell into a ditch and broke her collarbone. She managed to call out to a young boy passing by, begging him to ask his parents for help. The boy returned to announce that they would have liked to come but they were busy with a tennis match. To that, Dorothy Bush is alleged to have replied, "That's perfectly understandable."

Her son George was on the court at age 5 -- tutored by a Connecticut neighbor who had been a Paris model -- but he paid tribute to his most influential coach in a 1985 Mother's Day reminiscence for the Greenwich Time. "I hear her now: 'You can do it. You'll get it.' And she would be patient and tireless and always absolutely sure we would eventually get it," he wrote. "She also tamed our arrogance. I'll never forget years ago saying rather innocently, I thought, 'I was off my game.' Mother jumped all over me. 'You are just learning. You don't have a game.' "

Now that he does, his partners call it fast, fierce and cagey. Shriver describes the presidential forehand as "solid," his serve "pretty good" and his backhand "weaker." She blames it on his ambidexterity; a southpaw, he nevertheless swings, as he does most things, with his right hand. "If he developed a left-handed forehand, he'd be better," she says.

Hector Salazar, the 71-year-old pro at the Houston Country Club who has taught the whole family, notes that Bush used to have a good backhand. "Maybe horseshoes have ruined it," he worries.

Bush first learned to mix tennis and politics in Houston. To fan publicity for his 1970 senatorial campaign against Lloyd Bentsen, he began playing in celebrity matches. In one, teaming up with Australian star Tony Roche at Rice University Stadium, he slaughtered Dan Sandifer, a former Washington Redskins player, and another Aussie star, John Newcombe. It was at the Houston Country Club too that, as a newcomer in town, he found himself paired with a local lawyer named James Baker, a former state-ranked junior player and captain of the tennis team at Pennsylvania's tony Hill School, Class of '48. Their doubles partnership went on not only to win two club championships but to a special swearing-in ceremony in the White House East Room last January. Taking his oath of office, the 61st secretary of state turned to the 41st president to express the hope that in foreign affairs "we will make a better team than we often did on the tennis courts in Texas."

Baker, Salazar says, was "very deceptive in his game. When you're expecting a big forehand, you get a drop shot. He's a great strategist." But he claims that after playing Bush, "I realized he was different than the rest. There was just something about him. He was a gentleman."

Jeb Bush, who played a year for the University of Texas team and is now a Florida real estate developer, once told a reporter he learned his values from his father on the tennis court, not from heart-to-hearts at the dinner table. "That's not how Dad taught us, by talking to us," he said. "But we could see the discipline the guy has. The tremendous competitive spirit. Playing tennis with him is where I learned that."

Marvin, a Virginia investment counselor, has overtaken Jeb as the family's best player and notes that the game is one of the glues that bind the Bushes together; they all play. "Tennis could almost serve as a metaphor for life," he says. "Tennis tests your resilience, your ability to bounce back. It also tests your graciousness. You don't win 'em all." Not that losing has ever been easy in a family where the president himself has no patience for mixed doubles, prompting Barbara Bush to scout out her own partners, among them Sandra Day O'Connor.

In fact, anyone who tries to pretend that Bush does not take his tennis seriously does not know the man who once ran down a point so single-mindedly in Kennebunkport that he separated his shoulder in a collision with a raised porch. "It was scary," Marvin remembers. "His arm was kind of hanging lower than it was supposed to be. They had to rush him to the hospital."

As Bush knows all too well, tennis in high places is not without its perils. On July 13, 1985, as Reagan prepared to go under anesthesia for intestinal surgery, he signed letters temporarily transferring his constitutional authority to his vice president. For 7 hours and 54 minutes, Bush held the office to which he would later be elected, a fact his 1988 campaign literature duly noted. What it failed to add was that, during his brief foretaste of power, the acting leader of the free world played a doubles match at his residence, slipped, hit his head and, as one aide put it, had to "sleep it off."

IN WASHINGTON, BUSH DOES NOT LACK FOR PARTNERS who share his dedication. In a town where the local industry is routinely referred to as a game, it hardly comes as a surprise that some citizens approach their after-hours sports with competitive zest. Jack Kemp's children describe his mellowing in terms of the frequency he now arrives home after a match without his racket mangled in fury. And during one mixed doubles draw at the Regency Sport and Health Club in McLean, a former government official of global renown became so enraged at yet another of his partner's flubbed shots, he turned around and, in full view of the spectators, screamed, "If you can't play, why the hell did you sign up?"

"Maybe it's the political beast in all of us," says Jack Valenti, the film industry's Washington lobbyist. "We take our passions onto the court. When I play singles with Lloyd Bentsen, whom I've known for 40 years, all love and loyalty go out the window. I go for his jugular." In comparison, Hollywood's tennis seems singularly laid back. "In California, if you suggest playing at 7 a.m.," Valenti says, "they look at you as if you've taken leave of your senses."

Washington tennis clearly has a character of its own. In what other city would a partner refer to a "window" in his schedule for a game or would the following qualify as mid-game banter: "If you double-fault, I'll vote for cloture on your amendment"? Says Mount Vernon club pro Kathy Kemper: "In New York, they probably talk about leveraged buyouts after a match. Here they talk about what they're going to say on 'Meet the Press.' "

One reason for the intensity in Powertown, as satirist and wife of the former Canadian ambassador Sondra Gotlieb christened political Washington, is that more is frequently in play than a fuzzy yellow ball. The chief distinguishing feature of power tennis, as opposed to the brand played elsewhere, is its possibilities for giving new meaning to the word "networking." A second distinguishing feature is no one likes to admit that fact; some lobbyists can even summon a straight face to deny their game has ever won them advantage.

Powertowners rhapsodize about the camaraderie and catharsis of the sport, its benefits to the circulatory system and the social agenda. But the truth is that, in a city where a returned phone call can make or break a career, a faultless second serve can turn out to be more useful than a faultless caterer. "Tennis is helpful, there's no doubt," says lawyer-lobbyist Warren Elliott, who freely admits using his racket in the service of his insurance clients. "When you meet someone on the tennis court, you become friends. You can get in to see them when the crunch is on."

The crunch factor also accounts for the media names littering the membership lists of the area's most prestigious clubs. Brit Hume says he never uses his power serve to curry favor with politicians, but it hasn't hurt him since he moved to the White House beat that he once played at the vice president's residence with Sen. J. Bennett Johnston, lawyer Jim Bayliss -- a longtime presidential partner -- and Marvin Bush. "It may," he admits, "help you get a phone call returned."

Information and access -- the local currencies of choice -- glide across the net with the sweet thwock of a Penn on a balmy Sunday. No need for strained small talk or creative excuse-making to escape a status-free bore on the reception circuit. Jackets and other inhibitions peel away; from all accounts, perspiration breeds, at the least, familiarity.

"You can't maintain a formal relationship with someone after you've played tennis with them," says Kennedy Center director Ralph Davidson.

"I have made more real friends in tennis than I have at cocktail parties," claims William Webster, no social recluse. "It's much nicer to get to know people on a tennis court than it is in a hearing room." Not that power tennis doesn't require a certain de'licatesse. "When you really blister someone," says Elliott, "people will joke, 'Well, I guess you didn't have anything going with the Senate Finance Committee this week.' " No one admits to throwing a game to coddle an influential ego. But one former member of the Capitol Hill press corps, begging anonymity, concedes that when playing a certain senator whose passion for the game outweighs his prowess, "You try not to kill the guy."

Elliott says that his clients were not displeased when his longtime tennis partner, George Mitchell, won the race for Senate majority leader. Nor was he astonished in April when the 10th annual Saturday night tennis buffet he has thrown with Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens attracted nearly two dozen more guests than usual: Their co-host, Carla Hills, had recently been named to the Bush Cabinet. Hills and her lawyer husband, Rod, who insists he proposed to her at Stanford before he knew she could beat him at tennis, did not even play this year, pleading tennis knee. But among those who did were names any hostess with social ambitions would love to pencil onto her place cards: Webster, Kemp, O'Connor, Los Angeles Times Bureau Chief Jack Nelson, two ambassadors whose court skills Hills had discovered while discussing trade disputes and virtually every senator who has ever hoisted a racket. Did they talk business over the Alaskan smoked salmon and warring team scores? "Of course we did," says Stevens, who scoffs at pretenses to the contrary. "I talked about the budget numbers with defense, about the oil spill in Alaska. You can't be involved in any action in this town without talking legislation."

That truth has not escaped the attention of some congressmen who have taken to the court to network with each other. When Washington Democrat Norm Dicks arrived on Capitol Hill as a staff aide, Tip O'Neill, then speaker of the House, asked him if he played golf. "When I told him I played tennis, he looked at me as if I was a sissy," Dicks remembers. Now that O'Neill's retirement has cut back on the demand for golf lessons on Capitol Hill, Dicks credits the sweaty collegiality of celebrity tennis matches with forging some of his most useful political alliances, above all with that sometimes alien neighboring power, the Senate. When an Indian land claims bill vital to his district went before a Senate subcommittee this spring, Dicks called not a member of his own party but Mississippi Republican Thad Cochrane. "Thad knows me -- we've played tennis together," he says. "He looked at it, and he gave it a favorable nod."

"Tennis transcends party lines," seconds John Breaux, the junior Democratic senator from Louisiana. At least, he is hoping it does. Considered to be somewhat of an expert on the subject -- as well as the best player on Capitol Hill -- Breaux once captained his University of Southwestern Louisiana team. Now his Hart building office, decorated in the locker room mode, still bears vivid witness to his daily, occasionally twice-daily, pastime. Along with rows of football helmets and dead ducks, his foyer walls are studded with photographs of him in midserve, sneakers suspended a foot above the fault line, and his wastebasket is an overgrown Wilson ball can. Beside his desk, usually ornamented with his three Wilson Profile rackets, trophies fill a shelf, but the one he is proudest of sits apart, displayed in its own glass cabinet: a silver cup he won in a 1976 CBS tournament as a second-term congressman partnered with then-CIA Director George Bush. Their court ties have survived his bruising 1986 Senate race, when Bush made four trips to Louisiana to campaign for Breaux's Republican opponent, Henson Moore, then turned up at Breaux's swearing-in, puckishly displaying a button under his lapel: "I elected John Breaux to the U.S. Senate." Nor did Bush hold it against the senator that he chaired his state's campaign for Michael Dukakis. Only a month before Bush's nominating convention, he invited Breaux to the vice presidential residence for a doubles match with Marvin Bush and Pam Shriver, showing a bipartisanship that managed to confuse even the visiting pro. Shriver remarked that Breaux must be excited about the upcoming Republican shindig in New Orleans. "Well, actually," the Cajun Democrat tried to explain, "I don't think I'll be going."

Then last February, Bush invited Breaux to the Oval Office. They chatted about tennis, and not incidentally John Tower's embattled nomination as secretary of defense. The senator declined to change his vote. Could it be mere coincidence that Pennsylvania Republican John Heinz, another top Capitol Hill player, who voted in favor of the Tower nomination, got the call for one of the initial games on the First Court? "Come to think of it," says Breaux, "I haven't been invited back."

ON THE JANUARY AFTERNOON AFTER the inaugural parade, one of the first things the Bush family did upon taking possession of the White House was to bound out to inspect their new tennis court. Marvin Bush says it still fills them with awe to play there: "Someone throws up a lob and you look up and all of a sudden the Washington Monument is splitting your vision," he says. "I still get goose bumps."

He finds it such a thrill that he has offered to host any of his father's friends in a game on the First Court -- an offer that, if it gets around, could easily win him election to the White House himself. For tennis players, this could be the opportunity of a lifetime.

Just imagine: There you are with him on that court, trying not to be distracted by the Washington Monument, when the First Player strolls by. You know how he is about spur-of-the-minute invitations. Anybody can get a bounce on the Lincoln Bed these days, it seems, but trading volleys with the leader of the western world on the nation's most exclusive tennis court? Now you're talking cachet.

While Marlin Fitzwater concedes that Bush is always on the lookout for new tennis partners, he warns, "No laggards and soft shoes and Sunday afternoon social tennis players need apply." All would-be presidential partners (even Pam Shriver) have to pass through the Ranking Committee -- a body that the president constantly refers to but no one claims to have encountered. Fitzwater calls it "a somewhat mystical group he conjures up for his own uses. It kind of exists in his own mind." Some report it is headed by regular presidential partner David Bates, who grew up playing tennis with Jeb Bush at the Houston Country Club. In fact, most of the president's court mates these days come from the club's second generation, including lawyer Jim Bayliss and Dorrance Smith, executive producer of "This Week With David Brinkley." One longtime Bush friend speculates that only the club connection would now get James Baker, who has hurt his shoulder and seldom plays, past the keen scrutiny of the Ranking Committee. Agrees Fitzwater: "Baker has kind of slipped down into the B League ever since he became an A-level Cabinet member."

Some members of that select group were among those who slipped through the wall of white netting at the Senate's Hart building court on the afternoon that Bush threw his own private pro-am tournament: Webster, Commerce Secretary Robert Mosbacher, presidential assistant Gregg Petersmeyer and Michael Boskin, who, before his appointment as chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, had shown the wisdom to report in a Stanford press release that he had taught introductory economics to tennis stars such as Kathy Jordan. From Capitol Hill key players made a pilgrimage from both sides of the aisle: Rep. Sonny Montgomery and Sens. John Warner, Thad Cochran, Bennett Johnston and John Breaux, former presidential partners all.

Many of them had rushed across town to accept the president's personal invitation to an event for which Jeb Bush had been training three times a week back home in Miami, acquiring blisters in the process. For two and a half hours, they stood on the sidelines watching the Bush team whip the professionals, 6-3, 1-6, 6-4. The nation's business was put on hold as the president metamorphosed from neutral tournament convener to astounded proud parent boasting about his role in the family rout -- like the time he installed outdoor lights by the garage so he could help Marvin practice his strokes at night after his homework.

"He was taking credit for it, and my friends were eating it up," huffs Marvin. "And it was all bs!" The caretakers of Bush's image may have decided to keep tennis as a private presidential passion, but, muses a longtime Bush family friend: "If you asked the president what was the highlight of his first 120 days in office, he'd probably say it was Marvin and Jeb's victory over Chris Evert and Pam Shriver."

Marci McDonald is the Washington bureau chief for Macleans, the Canadian newsweekly.

TALKING TENNIS WITH GEORGE

Bushspeak, that unique brand of presidential English first heard during last year's campaign, includes, it turns out, a local tennis dialect. Its lexicon, like that of everyday Bushspeak, is characterized by vivid phraseology freed from the encumbrance of verbs. "Power outage," a cry occasionally also encountered at the horseshoe pit, means a limp shot. "Four points away from immortality" is usually translated as one game short of winning while "No prisoners" appears self-explanatory. Talk of "the arrogance factor" indicates an opponent has attempted a tight shot -- and scored. When you hear the president mutter threateningly about "the leaf," beware: This is an abbreviation for "the falling leaf," which refers to his contention that his serve is as difficult to touch as a leaf falling from a tree. A variation of this shot, which he claims to have picked up in China, appears in another phrase intended to incapacitate opponents through sheer verbal audacity: At key points in the game he may inquire, "Should I unleash Chang?"

Rules to Play By

NETWORKING IN POWER TENNIS Society poses questions of etiquette that seldom come up over white wine and canapes. Consider the case of New York Rep. Stephen Solarz, chairman of the House subcommittee on Asian and Pacific affairs. After China's top-seeded woman player, Hu Na, defected to the United States, he invited her home for a doubles match on his private court; a week later, the Chinese ambassador informed him that if he played tennis with Hu Na again, the ambassador would have to forgo their next lunch. In such a situation, what would Miss Manners advise?

Herewith some guidelines to the game's local twists:

Rule One: Never betray your astonishment at whom you find playing together. Power tennis makes even stranger bedfellows than politics. Reporters mindful of this rule would not have been caught off guard during the 1986 confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia when liberal Sen. Howard Metzenbaum questioned not Scalia's conservative opinions but his recent drubbing of Metzenbaum at St. Alban's. Replied the nominee: "It was a case of my integrity overcoming my judgment, senator."

Rule Two: Gauge the status of a tennis club in inverse proportion to its comforts. At the Arlington Y, where William Webster and former secretary of state Alexander Haig can be found on winter Saturday mornings, the glass-walled upstairs lounge sports nondescript brown plaid decor that would not be allowed to loiter in your average basement rec room. Nor do its locker rooms offer the thick robes and other embellishments of the Regency Sport and Health Club in McLean. That, it turns out, is precisely the way the Y's regulars want things to stay. "Every slightest little change I propose down there," says managing partner Cwi Steiman, "it sets off a petition." Similarly, at St. Alban's, pro Allie Ritzenberg takes pride in the fact that the locker room there is so minuscule some members are unaware one even exists. Nor is there a clubhouse. For 27 years even those with the authority to unleash F-16 raids on foreign shores have had to cool their heels on the entrance steps, lining up for one of the 10 clay courts, which cannot be reserved. If anything, such asceticism has only fattened the club's waiting list, and some applications have been bogged down for a decade.

Rule Three: Use your ingenuity to get into the right club. One way around the St. Alban's waiting list: Enroll your son in St. Alban's School for Boys, where parents automatically earn court privileges for the price of the $ 8,265-a-year tuition -- a mere $ 7,565 more than the regular $ 700 membership fee. Another ploy: Get a prominent political job, preferably in the administration. Ritzenberg looks kindly on newcomers to town who are "making a contribution to the country" -- but he also admitted new Democratic National Committee Chairman Ron Brown. As a last resort you could produce credentials as a member of that unfashionable breed still loyal to the "L" word. When Ritzenberg heard that National Public Radio commentator Daniel Schorr was on the media hit list of conservative beer magnate Joseph Coors, he immediately waved Schorr's long-stalled application through. "Anybody who's on Joseph Coors' hit list," he says, "is all right with me."

Rule Four: Study a committee chairman's swing before approaching his hearing room. "People play like they legislate," says Rep. Norm Dicks. "On the tennis court, you learn how they strategize. Take Bennett Johnston. He's very cagey, very shrewd. He waits till the very last second before he commits himself to a shot. And that's exactly how he runs the [Senate] Energy Committee." Rep. Byron Dorgan, a Democrat, offers a corollary to this rule: "Conservatives hit these little dink shots, play very cautiously. Liberals have the big full swing, knock the cover off the ball." Republicans tend not to favor this corollary.

Rule Five: Never talk business right on the court. Try to wait at least until you get to the locker room. Or maybe even on the way to the car. Congressmen are very fussy about such niceties. Rep. Sonny Montgomery says he doesn't mind a lobbyist getting down to nuts and bolts after the game, "but nobody's ever come up to me on a tennis court and said, 'You should buy this tank.' " Those who do break this rule could come to regret it. "I had a fellow try it once," says Lloyd Bentsen. "That was the last time I played with him."

Rule Six: Pander at your own risk. Blowing a serve or throwing a game requires extraordinary skill. An attempt to ingratiate, if detected, can be interpreted as a patronizing insult. Experts on Capitol Hill have learned to talk about "making the game fun" and "keeping the ball in play," but Marlin Fitzwater warns not to try it with Bush. You'd never be invited back. @

A Short History of White House Tennis

TENNIS HAS ENJOYED MIXED RELAtions with governance ever since France's Charles V testified to his affection for the game by trying to outlaw it as a pastime for the lower classes. Napoleon III was such a player he took time out from his flirtations and foreign campaigns to build Paris's Jeu de Paume, not as an art gallery but to accommodate his rounds of court tennis. But it wasn't until three decades after the first American game was imported by a Staten Island socialite in 1874 that Theodore Roosevelt brought it to the White House.

The sport took somewhat longer to attain its current level of presidential chic. (One possible setback: After acquiring a blister on the White House court, Calvin Coolidge Jr., 16, dropped dead of blood poisoning.) In 1961, when the Kennedy clan blew into town with its boisterous energy and mania for competition, it made Dwight Eisenhower's romance with the putting greens look plodding and passe. "They were young, vibrant," reminisces Allie Ritzenberg, the maverick 70-year-old pro at St. Alban's, who took them under his wing. "They worked hard, and they played hard; they didn't have time for 18 holes on the golf course."

Hampered by his bad back, John Kennedy himself seldom played. But Jackie, the administration's premier style-setter, summoned Ritzenberg to the White House for lessons, stamping him -- and St. Alban's -- overnight with a social cachet that remains intact. Second only to the Sunday afternoon sets at Bobby and Ethel Kennedy's McLean estate, Hickory Hill, the club became such a mecca for administration faithful that Art Buchwald insists the whole Cuban missile crisis was cooked up on its courts.

Jacqueline Kennedy was, Ritzenberg says, "a fair to medium player. She wasn't overenthusiastic." But generations of White House tennis buffs since can be grateful for her reticence; it was she who ordered the shrubbery that now screens the occasional humiliation of high office on the South Lawn court from the prying gaze of passersby.

Another case of shyness also had a lasting effect. When Kennedy's defense secretary, Robert McNamara, signed up to take lessons at St. Alban's with Ritzenberg, he was bashful about letting anyone witness his game. The pro suggested that at 7 a.m. their privacy would be assured. But suddenly, perhaps sens- ing the threat of workaholic one- upmanship, everyone seemed to want to play at that time. On a recent dawn, as McNamara arrived for his 28th year of twice-weekly lessons with Ritzenberg at 6:55 a.m., limousines were already lining up outside St. Alban's, vying for court space. Only journalists and other laggards, says Ritzenberg, straggle in at 8.

Not that a dawn tennis date always produces the intended effect. When then Florida Congressman Buddy MacKay was being pro- filed by a visiting reporter from his hometown paper, aide Andy Vermilye proposed a 6:30 a.m. match. "We wanted to impress him with how busy the congressman was," says Vermilye. "So we took him out to a public court at Fourth and F, and this fellow sauntered up who had obviously never been to bed, dropped his pants and mooned us."

Since the Kennedys, presidential tennis uncannily has mirrored its times. Under Lyndon Johnson, as the Vietnam War rocked the foundations of the nation, the White House court crumbled from disuse. Says former Johnson press aide Jack Valenti: "LBJ resented you going to the bathroom for 10 minutes, so we didn't have much time for tennis."

Richard Nixon didn't play, but the men who got things done for him, H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, did. Of course, the president who liked to know what people were saying about him on the phone occasionally checked on their tennis swings. Syndicated columnist Rowland Evans was playing at the White House one Sunday afternoon with three members of the administration when he noticed a figure in black shoes strolling down the lawn. "Suddenly the whole Nixon family appeared at the wire mesh around the court with their fingers pressed through the holes, their noses pressed against the fence," he recalls, "and they wouldn't go away. It became impossible to play because all those three fellows worked for him. We had to stop the game because they were so self-conscious."

Nixon's vice president, Spiro Agnew, proved as unpredictable at the net as he did at the microphone. During one celebrity tournament, he served straight into the skull of his partner, Peace Corps chief Joseph Blatchford, inspiring the president -- when asked about Cambodia at the next Cabinet meeting -- to report: "We're going to send Agnew in there with . . . a tennis racket."

Gerald Ford, Bush's most athletic -- if accident-prone -- predecessor, spent most of his time on the golf links, a proclivity his tennis partners tried to keep in mind. "When you played against the president, you didn't try to lose the game," says former presidential aide John Carlson, "but you didn't get too aggressive." During one doubles match against Ford, however, the newly returned envoy from the People's Republic of China, George Bush, appeared to forget that counsel. "Bush got two or three overhands in a row and smashed them right at the president," Carlson recalls. "I remember Ford saying, 'George, didn't you do anything else in China but play tennis?' "

With stagflation and an apoplectic nation lined up at the gas pumps, Jimmy Carter's White House didn't choose to make much of his tennis -- or the fact that he resurfaced the court. His game only became known as an illustration of his legendary obsession with detail. Appointments to play at the White House had to be cleared through the president's personal secretary, Susan Clough. To book one match, speechwriter James Fallows found himself phoning Air Force One, where Clough was accompanying Carter to a speaking engagement. From the president himself came back the reply: Fallows could use the court, provided he came up with four jokes for the speech.

Carter's game was, according to his national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, "determined." This from a man who boasts his own court and devised his own Zbalanced Handicapping System, once celebrated in Sports Illustrated. In Power and Principle, Brzezinski recounts how tennis punctuated the long tense days for the Americans within the confines of Camp David as Carter nudged Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin toward a peace accord. During one testy standoff, Carter and his national security adviser were venting their frustrations in a doubles match when they noticed a shadow on the court. "We were all in whites," he says, "and along came Begin, wearing a black suit and looking like an undertaker."

Ronald Reagan, whose management style was the most relaxed in the history of the Oval Office, remained similarly detached from the 2,800 square feet of Laykold just down the lawn. But Michael Deaver, Reagan's maestro of spin control, used tennis invitations to stroke the media, and when Nancy Reagan was retailoring her image, she enlisted the sport: Hollywood glitterati accustomed to state dinner invitations suddenly found themselves asked to bring along their rackets to fund-raise for her Just Say No charity.

And even in a city so blase' about racket-wielding Cabinet secretaries that tournament organizers discovered they had to import movie stars to get out a crowd, Secretary of State George Shultz's ritual weekend doubles match with Washington Post Chairman of the Board Katharine Graham at the Arlington Y provoked fascination as an exemplar of sorts. "Now that," says Mount Vernon club pro Kathy Kemper, "is your definition of power tennis." @ Senator Johnson Builds a Court

IN THE HART OFFICE BUILDING OF the U.S. Senate, amid the chambers, the committee rooms and the atrium-style lobby with its famous mobile, is a tennis court. It's the only one on the Hill, and a model of what an indoor court should be: spacious, quiet, well-lit, with a surface that produces uniform bounces.

But the court is also a symbol of how a senator with influence and know-how can get what he wants.

The senator is J. Bennett Johnston, 57, senior Democrat from Louisiana. Johnston, one of the most passionate and skilled tennis players in Congress, is so closely identified with the Hart building court that in Washington's power tennis circles it's known as "Bennett's court."

Since it came into full operation in 1987, it has ranked second in prestige only to the outdoor court that graces the White House grounds. Located on the Hart building's fifth floor, it is literally an inner sanctum, reached only by passing through two locked doors. Boasting no frills, not even in the cramped shower room, the place stands wholly removed from the legislative process save a single intrusion: the ubiquitous buzzer that alerts senators to an upcoming floor vote.

Only about 10 senators play regularly there. In addition to Johnston and his Louisiana colleague, John Breaux, they include Virginia's John Warner, Alaska's Ted Stevens and Ohio's Howard Metzenbaum. The tennis-playing members of the House, like most outsiders, can only use the court as a guest of a senator.

Doubles is the customary game, but it seldom involves four senators. Foursomes are often filled out by lobbyists, other well-connected outsiders or select Senate staffers. The staff ranks usually include several young men and women who played for their college teams.

"Bennett's court" almost didn't happen. The original plans for the Hart building included a multi-purpose physical fitness center whose floor, marked with tennis court lines and net post holes, could be converted to a tennis court. But when the building's projected completion cost reached $ 175 million, the fitness facility and its locker rooms were cut from the plans. The chairman of the committee that approved the cuts was Johnston. Perhaps he still had tennis on his mind when he also approved this memo wording: "[The] space will be available for an alternative use." In mid-1982, Johnston asked Capitol Architect George White to turn that space into a rudimentary tennis court. White promptly applied "maintenance" and other discretionary funds to put down court lines and add makeshift lights. So Johnston and his tennis buddies got a court with a slippery concrete floor and without heat or air conditioning. They played on it that way for five years.

Power tennis types around town recount with admiration how Johnston worked to upgrade the court. Appropriately for the Reagan era, no government money was involved. Instead, Johnston obtained private funds from the Capitol Art Foundation, a non-profit organization whose stated purpose is to provide artistic improvements to buildings on Capitol Hill. Its key figure is Nicholas Brady, who filled an unexpired Senate term in 1982 and recently became secretary of the treasury.

Donors who contributed to the Capitol Art Foundation took pleasure in its major gift to the Hart Office Building: the Alexander Calder mobile "Mountain and Clouds" in the lobby. But few seem to have known they were responsible for the additional $ 40,000 that was earmarked for tennis court improvements. Says a spokesman for Brady, who declined direct comment, "The foundation had a limited amount of money left [from the Calder project], and this seemed an appropriate way to spend it." Says Johnston: "Is it art? No. But I don't see that the gift is inappropriate, since it was for finishing off a space in a Senate building."

GRAPHIC: ILLUSTRATION, LIKE ANY GOOD DRAMA, POWER TENNIS HAS BOTH A TRAGIC AND A COMIC SIDE. CALVIN COOLIDGE JR., FAR LEFT, SHOWN WITH HIS MOTHER, DIED AT AGE 16 FROM BLOOD POISONING CONTRACTED AFTER GETTING A TENNIS BLISTER DURING A WHITE HOUSE MATCH. SPIRO AGNEW, ABOVE LEFT, MISFIRED A SERVE IN 1970 AND HIT ON THE HEAD HIS UNSUSPECTING PARTNER, PEACE CORPS DIRECTOR JOSEPH BLATCHFORD. IN THE '60S, BELOW, IF ONLY FOR A WHILE, BOBBY AND ETHEL KENNEDY'S HICKORY HILL BECAME THE COURT OF CAMELOT. TO BE POLITE, IT COULD BE SAID THAT GERALD FORD, ABOVE RIGHT, WAS BEST KNOWN FOR HIS GOLF GAME. MICHAEL WITTE

[dearieme]

"Why is this family ruling us, again?" Er, because you pick twerps like John Kerry to run against them?

[Basharov]

Dimwit also spent a summer in Scotland (at the country estate of a Scottish lord who was friends with Poppy) when he was twelve. He also joined the old man when Bush went to Saudi Arabia after the first Gulf war to be wined and dined by the sheiks at an appreciation dinner.