Q 13

PLAYBOY: The press has made you out to be a favorite of the White House. Do you often dine off Nancy's china?

John LeBoutillier: I just had my first meal there. It was a luncheon for the National Hockey League All-Star Game, and they served this ice-cream cake for dessert in the shape of a hockey puck with large hockey sticks that you could eat on the top. It was the best thing I've ever eaten in my life.

They had three people in the receiving line at the White House: Reagan, George Bush and Bob Hope. How do you figure that one? My guess is that Bob Hope lives in the White House. He sure looked like he knew his way around.

Q 14

PLAYBOY: You're related to socially prominent families--Vanderbilts and Whitneys. You come from an affluent district on Long Island. Politicians seem to vie with one another to claim humble origins. Would you like to give it a try?

John LeBoutillier: My immediate family didn't have in any way the type of life that most rich people have. My father was a test pilot, and my family still lives in the same house he was born in. It's on four acres. We can't sell the place; no one wants to buy it. I went to good schools where a lot of the kids were real rich, and at Harvard, certainly, you saw the difference between the middle- and lower-class kids and the upper-class ones. The upper-class ones were far out and left wing, mostly out of guilt over what they had.

Q 15

PLAYBOY: White House advisors, Cabinet Secretaries, Gloria Vanderbilt and a slew of her fashion models appeared at a recent fund raiser on your behalf. Why would they court favor with a freshman Congressman?

John LeBoutillier: I just asked them if they'd help me, and they probably don't get asked very often, so they said yes. The one who's helped me most as far as money goes is Justin Dart. He's a great friend of the Reagans' and of mine. He's the kind of man every American should idolize, because he started out with very little and built a couple of businesses--Rexall Drugs and West Bend and Tupperware. He and Holmes Tuttle held a fund-raising party for me two years ago. They were the guys who helped start Reagan in 1965. On the day Reagan was inaugurated, Dart slapped me on the back and said, "John, you're going to be the best goddamned fucking freshman there ever was."

Q 16

PLAYBOY: Members of Congress don't always deal with the major issues of the day. Aren't you duty bound to provide American flags that have flown over the Capitol to favorite constituents?

John LeBoutillier: I must have given away dozens. But I've got a new proposal to cut down on Government expenditures. There are four or five guys on the Capitol roof who put the flags on a little machine. They run the flags up for a second and then take them down, just so you can say that this flag flew over the Capitol. I propose that we take all the flags right from the factory, put them in a 747 and fly them right over the Capitol. Or we could use an AWACS plane.

Q 17

PLAYBOY: Are you serving your constituents by talking with PLAYBOY?

John LeBoutillier: Absolutely. One of the things you have to figure out is how to communicate with the people in the district. So you try to be in the magazines and the newspapers that they read. I bet PLAYBOY does really well in this district, because a lot of white-collar men and women read it. But I don't buy it just for the articles. I look at everything in PLAYBOY. I wouldn't talk with Penthouse.

Q 18

PLAYBOY: You've visited with Richard Nixon. Does he ever doff his jacket and tie?

John LeBoutillier: He's a lot like you've heard. Jacket and tie all the time. But he's soft-spoken, much more so than people realize. He is a real creature of politics. Nixon, of all the Presidents in this century, was intellectually the best prepared, the man with the most self-discipline, the guy who worked toward a goal more than anybody else.

To this day, after eight years out of office, he still has probably a better command of all the issues than anybody in public life. People should never confuse their moral outrage about his behavior with their judgment of his abilities, because as awful as some people think he is, they should recognize a real brilliance in Nixon.

I've had lengthy conversations with him on three or four occasions, all of which have been nothing but a pleasure. He's very interested in everything that goes on in the House of Representatives and in the Republican Party. And he loves to give advice to people. He's told people I know that he thinks I'm a bomb thrower. He thinks I'm a little outspoken. Maybe he doesn't really like that.

Q 19

PLAYBOY: As an elected official, do you feel obliged to bad-mouth the Federal bureaucracy?

John LeBoutillier: The encounters I've had with career bureaucrats make me mad. I hate them so much I can't put it into words. They are the outgrowth of bad government. They run the Government despite what those of us who are elected to run it say, and we're the ones who get the blame for bad government. Even if Reagan issues a direct order, he'll just be laughed at, because bureaucrats know the President has no power over them.

I'd prefer to go back to the spoils system. We win an election; we run the Government. If we don't run it well, we all get thrown out.

Q 20

PLAYBOY: You're a big fan of the Eagles'. Will you consider a career as a rock-music impresario if the voters don't return you to Congress in November?

John LeBoutillier: I don't know the Eagles, but I hope I get to meet them. I think they're great, though I hear they're now doing individual albums, which is sort of distressing.

I was going to ask George Steinbrenner if he'd let me pitch in the minor leagues. But I don't know. I just don't treat people the way he treats them. There are some dictatorial things in Yankee Stadium that don't quite smack of the old Yankee tradition.

But if something happened so that I couldn't stay in politics, I could do something else for a while. I have all the good things going for me. I have the best educational credentials you can get. I'm just beginning. I'm not burned out. I haven't shot my wad.