Hill climbers.

• Author: Meacham, Jon
• Position: Congressional staff members

It's been a terrible six months--months of religiously reading the classifieds in Roll Call and explaining to congressional office managers how your political science major, combined with that volunteer campaign work last fall, uniquely qualify you to draft legislation. You'll take any Capitol Hill job, anything at all; even answering phones for the distinguished freshman from DeFuniak Springs, Florida, would be something. After all, Lyndon Johnson first came to Washington as a secretary, and where do you think George Stephanopoulos cut his teeth? On "Good Morning, America"? He started out on the Hill, too.

Before you get carried away with visions of tete-a-tete cloakroom sessions with Mitchell and Foley, consider what you're up against. Last year, embarrassed by rubber checks and a House Post Office that gave away stamps but charged for cocaine, incumbents made a solemn vow: Hey, we'll cut the staff. Senators Boren and Domenici think 15 to 25 percent sounds about right. Meanwhile, there are 20,000 other staffers competing for power in 535 personal offices and endlessly balkanized committees and subcommittees--266 in all.

This means Hill climbing is getting a bit tougher. With some jobs disappearing, good fortune and friendships--always important in building political careers--are especially critical. What's less apparent but more important for government is what successful Hill staffers do after they've reached the top. Every culture has its archetypes, and the young tend to follow well-traveled paths.

Take Robert Koch, who was House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt's administrative assistant (AA)--one of the plummest of plum jobs--until last year, when he left to become a lobbyist for The Wine Institute. With all due respect to Koch, his trajectory had more than a little to do with good luck. Koch, an aspiring political operative, was just out of college in 1983 when a young congressman named Tony Coehlo needed a driver; Koch's father knew Coehlo, so Koch got the job. "I knew the city, I had a clean driving record, and I could find the cheapest gas in town," Koch says. Coehlo, then chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), slowly gave Koch more to do--handling travel, scheduling, that sort of thing. When Coehlo ran for majority whip in 1986, Koch managed his campaign. When Coehlo won, Koch, at 26, became his AA. Coehlo would resign in 1989, and Gephardt picked up a lot of his alumni, including Koch. "On the Hill, you sit down and figure out who the real members are if you want to climb," says Koch (who, incidentally, married George Bush's daughter last year).

And there's Mike House, for example, who spent eight years with Senator Howell Heflin, then found himself at age 40 with three kids approaching college age and decided to move into lobbying. "I knew that if I was going to go out, I had to do it then," says House, who is now a partner with Hogan & Hartson. (Heflin, by the way, is an ardent opponent of legislation that would make it harder for consumers to sue manufacturers; in a Washington twist, one of House's first clients when he left the Hill was a manufacturers' group. "The Senator and I both get a kick out of that," House says.)

Or you could try a third path and follow in Laura Hudson's footsteps. Her name doesn't ring any bells? It shouldn't, but Hudson's spent a career making government work. An aide to Senator Bennett Johnston, Hudson quietly watches over the Commodity Supplemental Feeding Program, a small project that feeds poor...