"Hill Rat" by John Jackley: C-SPAN Booknotes Series (1992)
"Hill Rat" by John Jackley: C-SPAN Booknotes Series (1992)
The inside story about congressional operations and life on the Hill as told by a former staff member
*Access to the full video and transcript of this interview can be found here.*
John Jackley interviewed by Brian Lamb for his 1992 publication Hill Rat gave many readers a glimpse as to what life as a Hill staffer is, a topic few Americans are regularly informed about unless they knew someone who worked there. The book in and of itself received high praise privately by congressional staffers, yet it was jeered by Washington Beltway insiders who included members of Congress, and those in the press, so much so that the book was refused for sale in the House stationery store. A story of sufficient magnitude told by a gentleman who left his life as a Hill rat to seek higher elevation in the mountains out West, even if that meant leaving politics forever.
At the beginning of the interview, Lamb spoke to Jackley about the reception for the publication of his book. Jackley recalled that the book party was originally planned in the traditional reception rooms, located in the basement portion of the Rayburn House Office Building, units B336 and B337. The gathering was sponsored by Floridian Rep. Bill McCollum, and the support of North Carolinian Rep. Charlie Rose, which was later dropped the night before. The reasoning for such cancellation was because the leadership in the House Administration Committee noted that since the book had the involvement of a commercial venture publisher, there were to be no commercial venture events taking place in the House office buildings. But Jackley was quick to say events similar to his happened all the time, with examples including Jim Wright and Claude Pepper. “Book parties are pretty common. I think it had more to do with the content of the book and what I chose to write about than the fact that it was just a book,” Jackley pondered. Not to mention, the book was not to be sold in House bookstores, or its stationary store.
The event itself was to be for the press, as a matter of fact, yet because of the controversy created, not only was the event moved to Bullfeathers [a popular restaurant bar amongst those who work on this HIll located a short walking distance away] the attendance had doubled too!
Lamb questioned Jackley about what a Hill rat was. At best, Jackley broke it down into two definitions. The first was a person who would not know how to do anything else, mentioning a man he ran into at a bar during his time. That person was to say, “I’m a Hill rat. That’s all I am. I don’t know how to do anything else. Don’t want to. My career is here.” The term is also used by congressional staffers who are known to conduct most of the behind-the-scenes action and daily work of government in the legislative body, with an estimated 11,000-18,000 staff [at the time of the interview according to Jackley’s prediction.]
When asked about his time on the Hill, Jackley began his work in the House in 1978 for Tom Luken of Ohio whose tenure was cut short a year later in mid-1979 due to retirement and sought out a democratic consulting job for two years. It wasn’t until 1981 that Jackley decided to go back to work on the Hill for Jim Mattox of Texas (1981-1982), and Ron Coleman of Texas (1983-90).
Reflecting on his time leaving the DC area, Jackley stated that in his early years as a congressional staffer, not only was he determined to be “one of the most gung-ho Hill rat,” per se, but he found enjoyment working next to power [something modern-day staffers can attain to] even though staff generally do not hold as such a power that public officials may hold dear. Furthermore, Jackley found amusement in the actions that were taken in Washington and in participating in government. But as Congress changed in the 1980s so did he, portraying, “something happened, something that caused self-interest to rise above everything else.”
The opportunity to travel outside the Beltway thousands of miles to the West gave Jackley the term “deep gap.” It was coined to recognize the differences in assumptions between members of Congress, and those held by many Americans further away into the vast country outside of the DC bubble. His book was one of a personal story, through the lens of an experienced Hill staffer that could be read by the common folk, and not the standard political science approach towards writing. His approach toward the workings of Congress altogether took many years including the birth of two children to realize there was more to life than working for congressional politicians.
Lamb moved the subject to discuss his experience with Tom Luken, a congressman-turned-lobbyist. “You write this on page 38,” said Lamb, “Luken was dangerous, ugly, and everyone on the outside thought they could handle him.” In response, Jackley acknowledged that his office [Luken’s] had one of the highest turnover rates on the Hill. Because of such high turnover, after Jackley had left, he heard an aide found Luken so difficult to work with, not only did that person quit, they even sent a letter excoriating Luken to the entire House Energy of Commerce Committee. Although there was an apparent dislike for Luken, at the same time, Jackley did credit Luken for teaching Hill rats how to develop investigative skills, “anything down to the ninth [sic] degree.”
As for a detailed description of Luken, especially from those who had worked for him, Lamb read another sentence from the book which read, “Congressman Luken, for all intents and purposes, left the human race.” Jackley expressed that impression was solely by those who worked for him, due to the fact it was incredibly hard to accomplish anything, let alone to get anything done from legislation to press releases, “because the volume level in the office was very high,” Jackley added.
In one instance there was a former television reporter from Cincinnati who recently joined the office. This staffer not only lasted six months on the job, but Luken’s tirades to his staff were so bad that at times it made said staffer throw up. In mundane terms claiming the office as a revolving door, people would join the office in the morning and never return after lunch. Yet despite his flaws and professional attitude with staff, Jackley mentioned Luken conducted a solid job in his public office representing the needs of his district. Whereby his voting record reflected those needs for his district, he was to say, a complex figure nevertheless. “And I used him in the book because it was a good example of how complex members of Congress are,” explained Jackley. “You can have a Tom Luken, who is a virtual tyrant to work for, and yet he can do a good job representing his constituents. That kind of complexity, people who read the book will find, is evident in a lot of Capitol Hill offices and with a lot of members.”
What made Jackley equipped with the ability to write his book was due to the skills he learned in graduate school as a trained historian, applying the techniques of historical evidence and documentation, he was to say.
Lamb, turning back to the topic of Luken, stated Jackley brought out in his chapter that no job nor boss would ever be as bad after Luken. In both a small analogy and life lesson type of response to Lamb, Jackley expressed, “That's right. It's kind of like hitting yourself on the hammer and then having it feel good when it stops. It was a real experience, but I think it toughened people who worked for him. If you could survive Congressman Luken's office, you could survive on the Hill.” Given the drawbacks, Luken, in Jackley’s words, had a good sense of personal integrity, where he didn’t bounce a check, was honest with staff, didn’t chase women, and wasn’t a drinker.
Shifting gears towards members of Congress in general, Lamb asked if lawmakers could be bought. Jackley, in a casual yet smart response, said although they may not be for sale, you can rent them in some respects. However, given the history of Congress in general, with lawmakers being judged solely on their voting record most likely, “political action committees [PACs] get what they pay their money for.”
Asked about Speaker Foley, Jackley viewed Foley as a man whose speakership was in jeopardy, with scandals ranging from bouncing checks, post office, and actions from his wife. All of which was becoming controversial, and members of the House did not need a leader like that. Instead, he vented, there should be a speaker who was willing to take the heat without creating any of his own. In retrospect, this was because Foley was a lawmaker who viewed the political process as a ‘get along to go along’ mantra, and was not suitable to become a tough partisan figure who made strong stances for his party nationwide during elections. “That’s been one of the recurring criticisms of him politically,” Jackley suggested.
It’s been known amongst staff members [today] that working on the Hill may entail having to sacrifice their political principles to get ahead, and Lamb challenged Jackley if he ever had to compromise his principles when he served as press secretary. In a plain tone, he disclosed he never lied to the press, and understood that concept itself was crazy for a politician to do, let alone someone in the position of press secretary. With the follow-up question brought up by Lamb if any member of Congress wanted him to lie, Jackley denied such a thing, saying that nobody ever asked him to, including Coleman, Mattox, and Luken altogether.
The work environment on Capitol Hill to some extent may be the premise of “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” which was what Jackley felt regularly. On the other hand, he called the Hill a place that held a very complex set of dynamics. Whereas, one may not be able to change the institute from the inside, because most of the time it’s an environment where many have to toe-to-toe with the program or it’s headed towards the exit door, out of the job.
Jackley explained those who leave the Hill generally move in the professional direction towards a lobbying firm to become a lobbyist or political consultant. Adding his description at further length, “I took a somewhat different approach. And some of them still can't believe that, that someone would actually leave the political culture and move out to the mountains of the Northwest and undertake a completely different life. I'm out of politics. I registered to vote, and I vote. But I'm done with it as a participant sport.” He told Lamb the Hill part of his life was over, never to return. Tired of politics altogether, Jackley was not into political life anymore and had no need for the use of the professional political class.
Lamb grappled with that last line asking Jackley to explain in further detail what he meant by not having a use for the professional political class. Jackley responded by saying after leaving Congress he didn’t realize this at the time until later years, “You know, you can be so close to something and yet be blind. There really is a professional political class in Washington.” [For context, this professional political class would possibly be regarded in today’s standards as the elite class, DC Elite, or Establishment.]
He also expressed one of the many avenues in creating this professional political class was by author Alan Ehernhalt in the book The United States of Ambition (1991) who Jackey said made the same point as him but in a different style: “That there's a certain Homo-politicus, if you have it, who starts off becoming interested and active in politics in their late teens or early 20s, takes an internship in some political job while they're in college, goes to work on Capitol Hill or in a state legislature, then runs for office themselves. If they make it, fine; they keep working their way up the ladder. If they don't, most of them try again. And there is this professional political class that doesn’t have that much in common with the rest of America.”
In essence, to be someone who works from intern to staff to federal lawmaker, there is a difficult connection to emphasize with average Americans in day-to-day life tackling various financial burdens and personal setbacks. For example, Jackley brought up a man named Bill, a checkout clerk at a supermarket, who would become his friend. “And I will always talk to him, because he’s a good sounding board, and he’s different from my friends back in Washington.” People in positions as cab drivers, checkout clerks, framers, and construction workers took things [the check bouncing scandal at the time] to heart. In essence, this symbolized one of the many themes expressed in his book, where the professional political class was operating on a set of fundamentally different assumptions from the rest of Americans. “I don't think they're doing it in a conspiratorial sense,” Jackley was to say, “but just because of the environment in Washington and what their own life stories have been and what their careers have been, it just works out that way.”
Lamb changed course for Jackley to speak about his former boss Jim Mattox, a congressman who left the Hill to become Texas attorney general. He ran his congressional office by using a method at the time called congressional franking privileges, where a lawmaker would have the ability to mail an unlimited amount of taxpayer-funded mail into one’s district. Mattox was so fierce in this method of mailing campaigns that he was to say to Jackley during a job interview for his office that his job as an elected official was in a district not only full of Republicans but many in the media did not like him one bit. Mattox, who claimed to be barely one step ahead of the world of political undertakers, considered himself lucky if he won by a couple of percentage points in an election. Further emphasizing his tactic on congressional franking privileges, “The only chance I have is mail. We are going to mail, mail, mail, then mail, and mail some more.”
Jackley said Mattox believed in this method because at the time heading into the early 1980s, the conventional wisdom was that incumbents lost due to the right-wing’s ability over direct mailing. Despite Mattox’s congressional career being over in ‘82, Jackley called Mattox to terms as being a postal patron of mailings, in part because congressional offices thereafter began to evolve state-of-the-art direct mail technology.
Before mass mailings, however, Mattox sought out using townhalls to reach out to people, for he loved to debate, and even argue at times, Jackley recalled, because he wanted to fight for the little guy. Opportunities such as town halls in one’s district would only have a handful of people, approximately 10 to 20 in attendance, unless something grand on a national scale than 100 or so, Jackley was to summarize. “But that doesn’t compare to the quarter of a million postcards that you can mail into your district,” acknowledging the newly developed technological change.
That change was put on offense in Jackley's book when writing about his last boss Ron Coleman, who would hold town halls for constituents to meet with their congressman, where such a practice established the usage of accessibility, accountability, and political prominence. But Coleman knew his upper hand was reliant on the House rules with the ability to send out postcards that bear his name and photograph to constituents in his congressional district. “But I think with Coleman and with a lot of other members in the later part of the ‘80s,” Jackley said, “it just became one more way to get ahead.”
Lamb brought up a quote used by Jackley from Rep. John R. Rowland of Georgia, “Let’s face it; you have to be a bozo to lose this job.” Lamb followed up on why he would use that quote. Jackley explained that quote from a popular circulation on Capitol Hill called Roll Call newspaper, “He summarized everything about working in Congress as an incumbent. You really do have to be a bozo to lose your seat as an incumbent or you get redistricted or you get indicted or - but what he's referring to is that if you do your job right and if you use the taxpayer-financed resources that are available to all congressional offices, you really do have to be a bozo to lose your job… And I think with the incumbent… reelection rates in the 1980s proved that. It was 98% in 1988; it was 96% in 1990.”
[For the record, the author of this article posted a public poll surveyed on Instagram stories if followers of The Legislative Route agreed or disagreed with the quote given by Rowland. Although the question may not have been a traditional approach to a statistical survey, the results did show that out of the 62 accounts who viewed the story, 15 responded in the following: 12 disagree while 3 agree.]
Despite the high reelection rates for incumbency amongst House members, lawmakers will take their so-called “expertise” elsewhere in Washington, and find work in prominent firms once they are done with their careers on the Hill. This common practice is what is known in politics as the revolving door. Jackley expressed to Lamb in detail that the practice itself was not right. “There just seems to be something wrong in trading your access and your influence - not so much your expertise, but your ability to pick up the phone and get something done for someone who pays you a fee when you've held a very important sort of public trust as an elected official. I don't like it. I never did…”
It’s not so much about one’s expertise that matters, rather it is having access to staff and influence from key stakeholders who in essence take part in the much grander scheme of the political game. For one to excel in this role, not only must they share high regard of public trust as a former elected official, but it’s being able to show a strong and fiercely determined set of skills to implement a flow of action to get a goal accomplished by whatever client [likely a wealthy organization] they represent.
Lamb, playing devil’s advocate, said to Jackley, by selling a book for nearly $21.95 [at the time of this interview] meant he too was trading profit for his experience on this Hill. “What’s wrong - what’s the difference?” Lamb asked. Jackley responded in a remarkable fashion stating, “Well, it's remarkable that the political class would consider betrayal telling the public the truth about what goes on in Congress when it's perfectly acceptable for a member of Congress to trade in on his access and influence to become a lobbyist and lobby the same committees that he served on and his former colleagues that he worked with. I don't think there's any problem with telling the public the truth about what I saw and did on Capitol Hill. I'm proud of it. The public reaction has been tremendous…”
Jackley also called upon those in the Beltway to stop being political parties first, quit being members of the prominent political class, and start being Americans. Although lawmakers may disagree with his publication, he felt that he had a higher duty to inform the public and the country at-large about life on the Hill. Positive feedback was an occurrence amongst aides on Capitol Hill, saying to Jackley that although they were not able to say it publicly, he’s been right on, and was doing a great job.
For House leadership to ban such a book from its stationary, and having to cancel the book party altogether did not help them to their benefit, for it was instead an emotional reaction. Jackley was to recall, “I wouldn’t have expected from people with such a professional reputation as those.”
Lamb, wanting to go back to his role as press secretary for Ron Coleman, remarked that Jackley called his last boss as lazy as well as other things, “Is that true, you don’t like the guy?” asked Lamb. In response, Jackley called Coleman one of the few in Congress who were the smartest, for he took graduate studies at Cambridge and was a man of extraordinary high intellect. However, he was a very complex man. The public views most members of Congress the wrong way in black and white terms as either to be good or bad. Because the legislative body holds over 435+ members, there has to be a recognition that not every lawmaker is going to be straightforward, and some figures are going to be complex. For example, despite Coleman in particular holding a strong set of educational smarts, he was prone to faults of his own. According to Jackley, “he went from being the Dallas Times Herald's rising star of the Texas delegation in 1985 to being the seventh worst check bouncer in the nation in 1992.” Continuing in his explanation, Coleman was able to do a very good job for his district, but he could have done so much more.
The check bouncing scandal in the early 1990s showed that Coleman, according to Jackley’s estimates, was going to be difficult for his former boss to recover from, considering the fact he lied to his district. “He somehow got a bogus letter on [the] Sergeant of Arms letterhead from Jack Russ stating that he had only bounced four checks for $285 when, in fact, the Ethics Committee revealed that it was 673 checks for nearly $300,000. But if he can get over that - and maybe this book will jolt him into action. I hope so, a Democrat. I hope he can fulfill that promise. I think it would be great for his district, and I think it would be great for Texas.”
As for the district he presented itself in, Jackley described Coleman’s district as like those whose members were able to connect with their community, such as Mary Rose Oakar of Ohio. But these types of districts were cause for concern, especially to members like Coleman who had ethical issues, “These kinds of districts are going to be good bellwethers for the electorate.”
Lamb soon asked a burning question, wondering if Jackley held those feelings, why did he continue to work for Coleman for so long? To describe his reply in one word, hope. Jackley and many of his former colleagues kept holding on to hope, hoping Coleman would turn around for the better. “But it was this sense of promise unfulfilled, and it was the fact that he had that promise. You know, if he'd been a complete bozo, you know, a real dimwit, I think myself and a lot of other people on the staff would have left long ago. But he had the brains and he had the skill, and he had the potential for so long. I think a lot of us hung on, hoping that he would do something with it. I think we're still hoping.”
Lamb brought up his earlier question once more figuring out what a Hill rat meant. Again Jackley replied it was slang for congressional staff who are part of the day-to-day work behind the scenes in congressional lawmaking. Lamb read a small sentence from his book which read, “Like many Hill rats, Paul Rogers represented the Hill’s contradiction.” Paul Rogers was the staff director for the office, belonging as the immediate boss of Jackley. Despite Jackley making an estimate of $30,000, Rogers allowed Jackley as much time as he needed to recoup, or take time off when his children were sick, and during the Christmas season a holiday bonus with a yearly pay increase.
Nonetheless, Jackley used both Coleman and Rogers as metaphors for Capitol Hill, where almost everything is legal, such as, “House rules are written for the benefit of the members and by corollary, the staff. And it's very, very difficult to break a law or a House rule on the Hill. No, the things they did are pretty common.”
Such an ego-tactic known by much congressional staff in top positions would act as if they were the congressmen themselves. According to Jackley this was a bonding process, and in his theory, “when you work with someone for so long, whom you probably admire, who you respect or at least whom you share the same kind of politics, you work day in and day out, and in the case of staff directors like Paul [Rogers,] you're making decisions that a generation ago were only made by elected officials, I think a certain osmosis takes place, and you start thinking that, well, you're a part of the member or you're a deputy member. That kind of thing is very common on Capitol Hill.”
Staff in high positions in the hierarchy of the office per se, such as Rogers as staff director, were to make all the fundamental political decisions of that office. Yet despite their title, some may not have produced anything meaningful at work, limiting their time on certain projects for constituents, whereby the only task they knew well enough was how to run the upcoming political fundraiser. “Again, that's the way things work on Capitol Hill,” Jackley said. “It's not surprising, and it's certainly not uncommon.”
When Lamb pressed about the [National] Democratic Club, Jackley referred to it as Rick’s from the historical movie Casablanca, where lawmakers and their staff, with the addition of lobbyists, are allowed in, for it’s a venue where all wind down from the hassles office life brings, have some food, a drink, and let loose a bit. Journalists are not allowed in, hence it’s a very private venue. Not even photographers are allowed in. Across the party aisle, the Republicans have their club too, called the Capitol Hill Club.
If one wants to know how politics truly worked, political clubs like these were the places to be. Jackley expressed his knowledge by attending such events, “I probably learned more about Capitol Hill and how it really worked at places like the club than I did in any political science class in college or high school.” It’s one thing to see the floor or a committee in action on networks such as C-SPAN, but what those people tend to see via television programming was surface whitecaps, Jackley recalled. Below those caps lay a very deep [unexplored] ocean. The latter reveals the true art of politics inside Washington.
Those who attend events at the Democratic Club or the Capitol Hill Club make for small bar talk, hoping that one day those unrecorded conversations might be called the talk of history to come. All in all, it's a venue where one may want to know what congressional leadership is talking about or spark up a conversation with a lobbyist about policy matters that they would know more about compared to other average lawmakers or staff.
Lamb, trying to generalize Jackley’s description about those who attend events: limos parked outside, bars full of lobbyists, staff playing poker, members eating dinner with the two groups mentioned - all trading information with no cameras or journalists allowed. “Is there something sinister about all this?” asked Lamb. Jackley answered the question declining it was ever sinister. Such a place was made for all the players in the political world to come together and talk - further emphasizing, “It's where the Democratic operators meet, people from the Democratic National Committee, people you see on television, people who never want to be seen on television. It was for me and for a lot of my contemporaries, places like that were probably the single best source of political intelligence available on the Capitol.”
Lamb transitioned the conversation towards asking Jackley about how he was able to get his publisher. Jackley said that the process to publish his piece was a story in itself: After he left Capitol Hill in the summer of 1990, he thought of the idea to have a publication that told the story about a Hill staffer and its political culture. Before moving out West, Jackley had sent his press release to 500 press offices in Washington and contacted the National Press Club. A friend in DC eventually told him, “Well John, this is a good idea, but we don’t think there’s anything new here.”
Feeling a sense of discouragement, and having moved to Oregon by then, Jackley tried one last attempt with a different tactic - send the same press release with some minor tweaks to make it look like it could fit in a newspaper, and send it to newspaper publications across the country as the New York, Seattle, Phoenix, and areas of Texas, except for Washington DC. His piece would soon lead the op-ed pages of the New York Times.
Jackley also shared a small story from his publisher when the op-ed was in circulation, “My publisher was in New York in another newspaperman's office. And he was reading the newspaper, and he said, `Look at this. Do you know this guy?' And the other reporter said, `Well, yeah, we got something from him, too.' And my publisher said, 'I've got to have this book,' and he called me up and we got the contract.”
When DC press came around, especially Roll Call, their headline was, “Hill Rat wins big attention, but loses reception,” referring to the earlier reception on the Hill as mentioned earlier.
Because such a publication was disapproved by several lawmakers, including Jackley’s former boss Coleman who said, “I feel saddened for the guy that he was willing to sacrifice ethics and truth and honesty for personal monetary gain.” Jackley was quick to respond saying the statement made by his former boss was ludicrous, and that the book’s advance at an incredibly low rate of $10,000. Hence the reasoning no one thought people would be interested in Congress, let alone the life of a staffer. Jackley was to say, “See, you've got to remember I didn't start writing this book when the check bouncing scandals broke out. I started this book in the summer of 1990. There was almost no interest in the publishing community in books about Congress and the inside of Congress two years ago. And between my wife's salary and my $10,000 to last two years of - of writing, that's hardly monetary gain.”
Many in DC circles didn’t publicly favor Jackley’s book because, according to his view, Beltway standards were that he was best to keep his mouth shut, stay within the political culture of Washington, and work for an upscale law or consulting firm.
Jackley recognized leadership amongst Democrats was coming to an end in some shape or form, which Lamb read on page 319, “But the current Democratic leadership of Speaker Thomas Foley and Majority Leader Richard Gephardt is devoid of true belief. Like Newt Gingrich among the Republicans, their belief starts and ends with what they see every morning in the bathroom mirror.” Jackley understood the current leadership in Democratic circles was fading away because they didn’t stand for anything, and to stay on top of the political game, it was by success and only success that would get you there.
The mantra of ideological entrepreneurs like Sam Rayburn and Newt Gingrich was that they never pretended to represent a party they weren’t a part of.
Lamb moved on to talk about former House Democratic leader Richard Gephardt, an expert from Jackley’s book who read, “I will trust a clash of convictions anytime, any day, over bloodless, blow-dried, poll-driven talking heads like Richard Gephardt.” In response, Jackley believed Gephardt was a plastic politician of the era between the ’80s and ’90s, “You know, he's flip-flopped on abortion for the demands of his earlier presidential campaign. He's taken the equivalent of a student deferment in the current war over perks and checks and special privileges. These guys pop up and down on the political and the media radar screen when it suits them. They don't believe in anything, and that's my fundamental beef.”
From leaving Congress altogether Jackley admired two lawmakers from opposite sides of the political spectrum, Bob Dornan of California, and Barney Frank of Massachusetts. What both those men shared, according to Jackley, was that they did not sell out their beliefs in private.
To take his point even further, he brought up Neil Kinnock, a member of the British Labor party who saw the writing on the wall about what was happening and sought out a personal responsibility to step down for the benefit of his party. “Neil Kinnock had the guts to stand up and say, `Look, I've lost four elections for our party. My leadership is over, and I think it's best if I resign.' He took, in effect, personal responsibility for the success or failure of his own actions and the policies that he tried to promote.”
When looking at American politics, focusing on politicians such as Foley and Gephardt, these men would not have been able to put their jobs on the line, resulting in a lack of personal accountability. Jackley was to say, “Tom Foley has never yet, in all his media counteroffensive against the check bouncing scandal, simply said they were sorry.”
In another instance to Coleman, Lamb said aloud another excerpt from Jackley, “Coleman… did not read, he did not study, he did not deal with the staff, he did not attend briefings or legislative staff meetings. In short, he made no attempt to learn the issues, surviving instead on the life support system of his staff and damn little else.”
Reflecting on the success of his published book, Jackley pointed out that part of the reason was due to the book’s style of writing, an approach geared towards the general reader, where a larger audience could be reached, and not some political science standard of writing expected by many politicos inside the Washington Beltway.
Lamb, who was curious about Jackley’s thoughts on the space limitations of his book read aloud, “The only frustration… that accompanies a book such as this one is the inability due to space limitations to include everything that ought to be covered. The world of Capitol Hill is vast and its dealings over the last decade even more so…” with the addition of a PO Box address that promised a personal reply. In doing so, Jackley expressed that he wanted to not only make the book interactive, but since leaving Congress, he became fascinated by how Americans think of the legislative branch and how they feel about the institution altogether.
When Lamb asked Jackley about possible intentions of running for public office, Jackley said that he had better things to do, explaining, “Politics really can take a toll on your personal life and your family, and I know a lot of the members feel that kind of pressure, too. The hours are crazy. There's no set schedule. It's a 24-hour-a-day operation, and I just don't want a part of it.”
With the influence of lobbyists from attending events with lawmakers, to lawmakers themselves leaving the Hill for K Street, Lamb stated that former members themselves are able to have access to the House floor if they wanted to, as expressed by Jackley in the account from his book. Although he had not seen a former lawmaker walk on the floor, he did hear about members that walked into the cloakroom. “Which is probably a better place to lobby than the House floor anyway. I don’t know if any of them ever made it to the floor,” recalled Jackley.
Near the conclusion of the interview, he portrayed his boss [Coleman] as a person who saw politics through the lens of doing business, “You vote for your projects and they take care of your lifestyle,” Jackley was to say. In a small example given for clarification purposes, if a member served on the House Appropriations Committee, that member may vote on specific projects which may help several companies or other groups. And in return for voting the corporate way, “I called it a flavor factory… they take care of your lifestyle…”
[Although an elected member of Congress or their staff are not permitted to accept gifts above $25, nor accept cash payments, they are allowed to accept travel expenses hosted by various organizations in connection with fundraising or campaign events sponsored by that organization]
Lamb then brought up Jackley’s ability to keep a closed journal, what led him to build his manuscript overtime on the Hill, “What began as a secret journal for his children to clear his conscience has become ‘Hill Rat,’ a journey behind Congress' closed doors and into the corrupt back alleys of power.” Jackley would go on to explain after 1985 he felt doubtful about Congress as an institutional whole, writing anything he could down into his journal on Sunday nights going over the office, what was tried, and the explorations of those self-doubts.
Even kept a professional journal with heavy details about what he had to do in his time at the office. Journaling for Jackley became such a valuable resource over time resulting in an established work of 37 volumes, tackling over 4,000 pages of stories, anecdotes, phone logs, what was seen, what actions were taken, and more during the day.
Aside from writing a vast amount of information during his time on the Hill, one thing that kept Jackley held dear was living the oath taken as a freshman student while attending Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. The oath was to swear, “you will neither lie, cheat, nor steal, nor tolerate anyone who does. And that moral keel, if you can call it that, sustained me in many of those long, dark hours on Capitol Hill. And it was one of the things that I rested upon in writing the book.”