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Sitting in the Oval Office on Tuesday, the principals listened as Panetta stood before an easel with a big pad of white paper and made a list of 11 issues they needed to resolve if they wanted to walk out with a budget. On some, according to a source close to the bargaining, Panetta would say, "We can meet you in the middle," while on others, like Medicare, he declared that there was no more ground to give. ''If we're going to get a deal," Panetta told the Republicans, ''we need some wins, and you need some wins.''
Panetta's soliloquy was followed by a free-for-all that brought Clinton to his feet and up to the easel. Any semblance of a systematic bargaining process disappeared. Clinton's allies, especially veterans of the '92 campaign, were reminded once more that the boss can't run a meeting. His wife can, but she was not in the room. Instead the discussion skipped from Medicare to tax cuts, Alaska oil drilling to agriculture and welfare reform. Because the meetings were taking place in his house and he is the leader of the free world, none of the others present felt they could impose their own order on the debate. And so after moving the group on the first night from the Oval Office to the residence for dinner, Clinton sat before the fire, eating pasta with shrimp and debating Medicare Part B premiums and enjoying himself so much that the others privately wondered whether he would ever want the talks to end.
As the President declaimed, the agenda of his audience was plain to see. Armey sat with his head in his hands, looking skeptical. Gephardt looked bored. Dole, the senior combat veteran, seemed the most comfortable and confident. For all the flak that he was catching from conservatives for trying to end the shutdown, he was clearly in his element, the master of the endgame. His disdain for the rookies became clear during one halftime photo op on Capitol Hill, when House budget chairman John Kasich started telling the assembled reporters that there had been ''no visible signs of progress" in the past few days, only to be cut off by Dole's withering comment: ''He hadn't been there."
The President and the Speaker, twin wonks who never run out of breath, dominated the debate. However much each hates what the other stands for, they love competing to be the smartest boy in the class. "Clinton and Gingrich," said press secretary Mike McCurry, "went down into the weeds on a lot of these policy discussions.'' Said Tony Blankley: "I think this was the way the Founding Fathers intended it.'' Clinton and Gingrich took turns in front of the easels, waving Magic Markers and playing charades, as both camps tried to figure out what game they were really playing.
Gingrich realized that many Republicans in the House had come to believe they were being suckered by a President who saw the advantage of stalling. Private White House polls showed the President had been winning the public relations war, at least until recent days. He was reassuring his party base, and the public at large as well, that there were actually some principles he would not abandon under pressure.