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285 38 Engaged in the Work of Democracy How did Matt Myers meet the standards I’ve applied to others? Of course, my judgment is especially suspect here. After all, as I have acknowledged, my first impulse to write this book came from my own anguish and anger at what I saw as the unfairness of Matt’s critics . Still I have tried throughout this book, if not always to keep my judgments at arm’s length, at least to allow Matt and the other key players to have their say in their own words. In citing published sources and direct interviews, I did not scant Matt’s keenest critics. And I have sought to test my instinct to defend Matt’s actions against the same standards to which I have held the others. Did I learn much about Matt’s thinking and behavior of which I had no inkling when I started researching this chronicle? Absolutely. Did what I learn change my view of Matt’s motivations or the rightness of his actions? Mostly it strengthened the convictions with which I began . I was prepared, for example, to accept the criticism that Matt’s outsize ego, his exaggerated confidence in his own judgment and abilities —his “supreme” confidence, as one critic put it—led him to consult only himself in participating in the negotiations, to go it largely alone. I was wrong. To be sure, it took uncommon confidence to stay with the negotiations when he was under assault from colleagues whose judgment he had earlier relied upon. And it is also true, as Nancy Kaufman wryly observed: “Oh, sure, Matt has a big ego too. Let’s be honest here. Matt loved being the guy at the table, and all the surrounding hoopla—you know, NBC coming out to interview him, and all that. There’s a part of Matt that loves being the center of attention, loves being quoted by the press, and he too, wants to be the head Mullah. I 286 Smoke in Their Eyes think that’s somewhat why he resisted several of us saying, ‘Don’t go in there alone; this is a huge mistake.’ ” Yes, Matt went in there alone—but it was not without almost desperately seeking others, especially David Kessler, to join him at the negotiating table. We know now how determinedly Matt and Bill Novelli regularly briefed and took counsel from the steering committee of public health CEOs, including, until he withdrew, the American Lung Association’s John Garrison. Matt had, almost daily, briefed either David Kessler or Mitch Zeller; had sought guidance from FDA on critical drafting issues; had briefed Dr. Koop at great length shortly after the negotiations leaked; and had unsuccessfully urged Dick Scruggs and his colleagues at the onset of the negotiations to inform and involve Henry Waxman. As Nancy Kaufman also acknowledges: “Matt didn’t see himself as omniscient, as knowing everything. You could pull Matt back. You could say, ‘Here’s a point; and here’s a point, and there’s a point.’ And he’d listen, internalize, and later he would act on it. It wasn’t, ‘I’m in charge of making every decision and I’m the only one who knows what’s good for everybody.’ I didn’t hear that coming out of Matt, and I did hear that coming from the other Mullahs.” Rather than egotism, the quality Matt displayed in the days that he characterized as “the worst days of my professional life” is better captured by that cliché of leadership, the courage of his convictions. In another misapprehension, I initially assumed that Matt had been ready to trade off virtually any liability relief for the industry in exchange for the public health objectives that were uppermost on his agenda. What I discovered is that he cared as passionately as most about holding the companies accountable; that he had fought unremittingly against excessive liability concessions to the industry, from the settlement negotiations through the McCain bill negotiations; and that he fought against them harder than most of the attorneys general or the trial lawyers at the table—and suffered their enmity for his efforts. One safeguard against my having too rosy a view of Matt came from Matt’s own unrelenting criticism of himself—some of which, it must be noted, is well taken: Among the mistakes I made was not doing more between November 1994 and April 1997 to force a discussion more broadly in the...

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