(FORTUNE Magazine) – For Henry Kissinger it was the ultimate aphrodisiac. For Tacitus it was the most flagrant of all passions. For Oliver Wendell Holmes it was the only prize much cared for by the powerful. Endlessly fascinating and perpetually sought, power is an art seldom mastered and rarely understood, even by most who wield it. The craft -- the ability to force or prevent action by others -- remains mysterious, masked by an elusive nature and a paucity of analysis. In The Power Game (Random House, $22.50), New York Times correspondent Hedrick Smith aims to light up the darkness surrounding power of one compelling kind: the power that enthralls Washington. He succeeds brilliantly. With precision, clarity, and insight, Smith dissects and reveals the ''unwritten rules, rituals, and patterns'' by which the United States is governed. As his title suggests, Smith's organizing metaphor is games, partly reflecting the firm grip of sports -- winning, losing, and sheer competition -- on the American psyche. Elected officials commonly speak of politics as a game and of themselves as its players. The dynamics of the power game are complex. Smith sees not just one power game but an ''olympiad of games'' in simultaneous action, one often affecting another, and he is admirably clear in explaining the nature of individual games, the tactics of the players, and the resulting synergisms of the olympiad. In the process he provides a virtual encyclopedia of contemporary power techniques, something power aficionados everywhere are sure to savor. The Power Game gets its life not from Smith's analysis but from the engaging way he illustrates his insights and maxims with dozens of mostly fresh vignettes. When he says, for instance, that ''staff is often the key on any substantive issue,'' he exemplifies the point with a story about Thomas Wyman, former chief of CBS. Wyman went to the White House to lobby Edwin Meese, then counselor to President Reagan, about federal action affecting ownership of syndication rights for television movies. When Meese was forced to delay the meeting for an hour, he suggested that Wyman meet with Craig Fuller, then secretary of the Cabinet and a top adviser to Meese. Fuller offered to listen and help. But, Smith reports, Wyman chose to read a magazine and wait for Meese's return. By refusing to deal with anyone below the top man, Wyman made a mistake common to those not wise to the arcane ways of Washington power games. The staff, as Smith explains, do the reading, thinking, and writing for most government officials because their higher-ups lack the time or ability. Fuller was the person who would draft the decision memo for the President, and Wyman missed his best opportunity to make CBS's case. Who wields the greatest power in Washington? It depends on what day you ask. Through complex dynamics, Smith says, power is in constant motion, shifting among members of Congress, the President and executive branch, the Federal Reserve, governors, mayors, state legislators, and powerful interests and alliances. Result: ''power float,'' an environment of impermanence, where those who dominated yesterday may be subservient tomorrow. These prospects alone are enough to keep many compulsive players in the power game. The power float, moreover, is not a temporary phenomenon. Rather it is sure to endure, largely because of the basic transformation that has occurred in politics and political institutions over the past two decades. As Smith reports, the influence of political parties has largely been replaced by that of television and political action committees. Drawing on these diverse sources of money and exposure, most elected officials have become independent operators. At the same time, post-Watergate reforms in Congress have weakened the seniority system as the dominant means of political succession and, in the process, have atomized authority among hundreds of committees and subcommittees. The trade legislation at the forefront of the 100th Congress, for instance, involves 23 committees and subcommittees; the conference committee responsible for resolving the differences between the House and Senate bills claims 199 members. This example is extreme but not unique. Consequently, action in Washington, which in the past proceeded at a tortoise's pace, now creeps along like an arthritic snail -- even on critical issues like reducing the budget deficit. More than in the past, posturing supplants action. Smith reveals how, in a world in which most politicians strive to please and be loved, a few exert enormous power because they are willing, at times even eager, to offend colleagues. Calling this ''porcupine power,'' he relates how Senators Jesse Helms (R-North Carolina) and Howard Metzenbaum (D-Ohio) often get their way via prickly obstructionism. He also quotes Christopher Matthews, formerly a top aide to Tip O'Neill, recalling that former Senator Ed Muskie pushed more of his own bills into law than most of his colleagues ever could because of the influence he derived from his ''purposeful crankiness'' -- the crafty ability to make his opponents miserable, to be gross, to smoke a ''god- awful'' cigar, to ''just be difficult ((and)) cantankerous'' so others would give way at the critical moment. SMITH IS ON TARGET in a section analyzing the forces shaping the power game -- the folkways, power networks, political odd couples, shifting strands of power, and growing influence of women -- and the small power games that are seldom seen by outsiders but that set the stage for the big games. Washington players will likely read this section first (after checking for their own names in the index). Even many inside the Beltway will be surprised to learn of the longstanding friendship between Washington Post CEO Katharine Graham and Nancy Reagan or of the enormous respect and cooperation between Senators Strom Thurmond, a fiery, conservative, 85-year-old Southern Republican, and Joe Biden, a fiery, liberal, 45-year-old Democrat. LIKE AN ANTHROPOLOGIST studying a strange culture, Smith describes how PAC financing corrodes, why symbolism and sheen increasingly have triumphed over substance for many elected officials, and how the smooth players use grass- roots lobbying. Among the smoothest: the National Rifle Association, which once generated three million telegrams to Congress in 72 hours and telephoned the legislators so massively that members could not make outgoing calls, and the so-called gray lobby, which once dumped 15 million cards and letters on House Speaker Jim Wright in one day, warning Congress not to tamper with Social Security cost-of-living adjustments. Business is slowly catching on. For example, real estate and insurance agents swarmed over Capitol Hill as the tax reform bill neared a vote. The Power Game is at its best when describing the big power games: foreign policy, the national agenda, major legislation, the clashes most visible to the public and most important to the national well-being. Smith draws critical lessons for future Presidents, members of Congress, and appointed officials from the experiences of the Carter and Reagan Administrations. Example: the importance of a crisp start, illustrated humorously and a bit sadly with a vignette about the first staff meeting of Jimmy Carter's senior aides. Because Carter chose not to put anyone in charge of his staff, no one in attendance would call the meeting to order. When the President's lawyer, Robert Lipshutz, tried, he was ignored. When Hamilton Jordan, the aide closest to the President, was asked what to do, he dodged responsibility. The meeting quickly degenerated into a discussion of Georgia politics, and participants drifted back to their offices. Little surprise that the Carter Administration frittered away its first precious months, when action was most feasible. By contrast, Ronald Reagan surrounded himself in 1981 with such experienced & players as David Stockman and James Baker, who quickly took charge of the power game and skillfully began work on their agenda. But Reagan was unable to repeat this triumph in his second Administration. Smith draws lessons from Reagan's success in 1981 and his failure in 1985. The most important: Have a clear game plan, claim a mandate, start fast, and focus your agenda. Smith spins out instructive lessons on coalition building, crafting foreign policy, and the strategies of opposition. The Democrats haven't done too bad a job as the loyal opposers of Reagan. For most of his years they had a highly visible, media-friendly spokesman in Tip O'Neill, and they followed Smith's rule of blaming the President for everything. Smith adds to the typology of an old political art form, the media leak: There's the preemptive leak, which settles an internal debate over whether to make information public by simply leaking it; the inoculation leak, used to break forthcoming bad news -- for example, by announcing that interest rates seem likely to rise in a few months; the shortcut leak, which forces immediate presidential attention to a problem by getting it in the press; and the brag leak, which makes someone look good by revealing a brilliant inside maneuver. IN THE AMERICAN SYSTEM the application of all this power is supposed to produce forward motion, progress for the nation. The advances seem to be getting slower these days. That is partly because of the increasing disconnection between campaigning and governing, says Smith, and partly because of the fundamental Washington power gridlock in which the majority political party is ''no longer the Democrats, not yet the Republicans.'' What to do? Smith suggests the use of ''team tickets,'' which would require voting a straight party ticket for President, Vice President, Senator, and Representative. He also advocates television subsidies for candidates, to be funded by a levy on TV stations for their operating licenses. Those policy proposals have about as much chance as a senatorial bombast quota. But this book is not about what to do. It is about the nature of power in Washington today and why it is that way. The Power Game is a landmark work on power and governance in contemporary America and should top the reading lists of those who would be President.