You’ve seen his name in stories about the White House and media, and on the spines of many influential books. And now Stephen Hess, the well-known Brookings Institution senior fellow emeritus, has finally written his story.
But Bit Player: My Life with Presidents and Ideas vastly underplays the role of the political guru who worked with five presidents and has been the go-to expert for hundreds of reporters.
Just consider this fact: Three of his Brookings interns became Cabinet officers, and he helped orchestrate the selection of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the Supreme Court. He worked with Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Pat Moynihan, Spiro Agnew, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, Dick Cheney, and Ronald Reagan. He also danced with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
His book tells one amazing personal story after another, a highlight being his help for family member Ginsburg. She is his wife’s first cousin, and he worked to get his pal Sen. Moynihan to champion her nomination by former President Bill Clinton. Moynihan and he worked together for Nixon.
“He was my best friend and Ruth would become our cause,” Hess wrote.
A Washington “quote machine,” Hess decided to go radio silent with the election of President Trump. “I served Ike, Nixon, Ford and Reagan. But I can’t vote for Trump,” he wrote.
And, thus, he finally had time to write his new memoir. “The more I remember, the more I feel I have lived a Lanny Budd life,” he said, referencing the lead in author Upton Sinclair’s Lanny Budd series.
