The Soviet Union was rotting from within.
It was the kind of defining fact-on-the-ground that made opportunity, new rules of the game. It was the kind of fact that Hart never missed, and never forgot, the kind he’d built his career on: simple, fundamental, so apparent ... why didn’t others see it? They never seemed to catch on. But once weighed for the ripples it would launch as it hit home, such a plain, radical truth could change ... everything. From that kind of fact, a Gary Hart fact, he could reckon out to the ends of the earth.
That was the joy of being with Hart: the shared, secret knowledge. Once you saw one of those Hart-facts, saw it as he did, started riding the ripples, you belonged. Not that you could keep the secret to yourself: it was the ethic of his life, and of those in his orbit, to build the power of those truths by sharing them, spreading them, if need be, by forcing them upon the world.
But the awareness was the fun. It was like seeing the world (watching even yourself!) with a second set of eyes, more knowledgeable, privileged, as if removed to a hillside above the action. ... And always, with Hart, you knew he knew! That was shared, even without words: by a lungful of laugh that burst from Hart, like a bark, when some absurd detail caught his eye. Or he could include you without a sound: with his lips pursed, he’d just toss you a look, and a slight, intimate shrug of his eyebrows, with the joke—he knew you knew—lurking in his eyes beneath ... like the look he flashed for a half-second now to Doug Wilson, his foreign policy staffer, as the elevator lurched and sighed to a halt at the ground floor.
Everything made such delicious sense, once you knew ... and Wilson knew. He’d worked with Hart for five years now, worked his way into the First Circle, worked for two years on this meeting: researching, scouting expert help, writing letters, nudging the Soviets toward a face-to-face, visiting the embassy with articles and opinion polls: HART URGES SHIFT IN U.S. POLICY...HART FRONT-RUNNER AMONG DEMOCRATS ... No one knew better how hard Hart had worked for this, his elation now, his relief... what it meant. Wilson looked at his watch: three—no, three and a half hours! His mind flashed back through the meeting: it was amazing, in its sweep—and rich with ironic detail. For Wilson, the detail was the pastry, that blueberry pastry, so delicate, finely wrought, so unlike anything any normal Soviet citizen would ever see ... the pastries, on two little plates, which rested for four hours, on the green felt of the table, in front of Mikhail Gorbachev.
God, Wilson wanted one of those pastries! Gorbachev even offered—urged Doug to leave his notes and eat! But, no, he bent to his frantic scrawl, like the Soviet notetaker, across the green baize. And Hart, of course, didn’t touch them. Probably never looked at them, he was so intent, so on his game, so ... excited. He was right! What he’d said about this new Soviet leader, what he’d seen, that new and enormous Hart-fact, it was ... so apparent: Mikhail Gorbachev was riding the ripples, too, reckoning out to a new world order. The old Cold War rules did not have to apply.
Of course, you had to know Hart: you couldn’t see his excitement. Hart was especially still in his moments of apotheosis—the ’72 convention when he watched George McGovern go over the top, the night in ’84 when Hart won New Hampshire. ... It was as if the new certainty that he was right—from the start—gave him ease instead of adrenaline. There was excitement, yes, but he did not permit himself amazement.
That was left to his daughter, Andrea, who was twenty-two, and had just spent three and a half hours with the leader of the Soviet Union and her father, who had sat down across from each other and discussed the world, the planet, with no apparent discomfort, but with intensity, understanding, and such a calm, shared sense of future and purpose—like two guys getting together to build a boat. In many ways, Andrea was like her father: there wasn’t much gee-whiz about her. In fact, her usual gaze on the world gave even less away than his. But every once in a while, she was suddenly shocked: that guy on TV, the man at the podium in front of thousands, was her father!
She always remembered the first time it happened, that dizzying hour on the platform of the Moscone Center in San Francisco. It was the night of Hart’s speech to the Democratic Party, to a convention that should have been his. It was the night of the eighteenth of June, 1984. She’d asked him if it was going to be, you know ... was she going to be in tears? And he’d said, well, yeah, perhaps. So she brought a wad of Kleenex, and she thought she was ready, as she sat down just behind the podium, a little to the right, with her mother and brother. And all the delegates were before her, thousands, and the alternates stretched off to both sides, and the guests in back, farther than she could see, as if the people of a nation were massed in the hall, and rising from their midst, two great black towers, where the networks, CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, had their studios and signs, and light poured down on them all. And then, he passed in front of her, to the podium, and the ocean of people rose and began to roar, and the great force and heat and noise rushed up and struck her ... and she knew somewhere in her head that their staff had passed the word to the floor to scream and shout just as long as they could, but these people—this had been their life for a year and a half, and it had been her life for a year and a half, and she looked at him at the podium, and it was so strange ... all the months, the days and nights, the frustration, joy, the fear, hope, hate, came through her, welled up in a jumble-rush like the signs HART HART HART HART HART HART HART HART HART leaping red everywhere in front of her eyes, and she looked over and she saw him ... Dad! ... It was like she realized for the first time. He’d come from Ottawa, Kansas ... to this ... from parents who never finished high school ... to this. ... And she must have looked like a raccoon, with her eye makeup streaming down, as she searched her hands for Kleenex, but it was gone, and she looked down and there it was, on the floor in twisted shreds, and she bent to pick it up, she’d clean it up ... but the people were screaming and she looked up at him, and he was saying softly, thank you, thank you ... trying to calm them.
She guessed another man might have pinched himself, just to know it was real, when it was so ... amazing like that, like it was now, this morning. ... But it wasn’t another man, it was Dad, who wasn’t like that, usually. No ... then again, this wasn’t usual, was it? Hart did the next best thing to squeezing himself. Without looking down, he reached out and grasped his daughter’s hand, held on to her, as they walked to their car through the Kremlin.
The surprise for Hart was how easy it was, how natural, right from the start. Of course, by the end of the meeting, he’d come to expect that from Gorbachev. But it was like every step Hart had taken: he never really knew until it happened, couldn’t be sure how it would be. This was just as much an act of bold and blessed faith as the first step, from Ottawa out to the wide world. He couldn’t be sure when he went off to college that he even belonged out there—maybe they were all geniuses ... how could he know? ... until he made that push and the door swung open ... just as Yale’s door did afterward, and Washington’s, the McGovern campaign, the Senate. ... There it was, every time, the opportunity, just like he’d imagined.
That’s what he never could make them see—the writers, the Washington big-feet, the pols (what Gary Hart, front-runner, at the doorstep of the White House, still was pleased to call the Establishment). He never could make them understand that he was not a plotter. He didn’t have any grand strategy to advance himself. He had ideas. He put them forth. And people accepted them ... or they didn’t. What had to happen, happened. But they always wrote about it like it was some kind of trick, a tactic, like he was some master schemer.
He’d try to explain: “I’m very existential.”
Of course, that only made it worse.
But it wasn’t like that today—not at all. (Funny, it never was overseas.) Gorbachev was so ready. From the moment that door swung open, and there he was—no fanfare, entourage, announcement, just him and Dobrynin, and a guy to take notes—it was natural, obvious, that they met to discuss important matters at the highest level of engagement. The only momen
t of uncertainty, the only stutter-step, was at the beginning, when Hart introduced Andrea. He said he’d brought his daughter so she could meet the General Secretary, get a chance to shake his hand. The implication was, she’d wait in an anteroom—if there were somewhere she could go, if the General Secretary could suggest ... but Gorbachev couldn’t have been nicer: she should stay ... he insisted! Sit! Sit!
And then Hart started, by way of introduction, to tell the General Secretary something about himself. He meant to do all that in a minute (he thought he’d only have a half-hour, tops): two terms in the Senate from Colorado, the run for President in ’84, a voting record that differed ...
But Gorbachev waved him off.
“No, I know about you,” Gorbachev said. “They call me the Soviet Gary Hart. They say I have New Ideas ...”
Back at the hotel, there was a gaggle of press: cameras and correspondents in the lobby of the National; lights came bobbing at him like an attack of killer fireflies. It was an onslaught of the eighties in this perfect 1930s lobby: the heavy curvilinear chairs with their standard Stalinist upholstery that looked exactly like the carpet; the smell that hung in all Soviet lobbies, stale black tobacco smoke atop oily fumes from the heaters ... and here were the halogen fireflies, and the Minicams, and cameramen with vests of ripstop nylon, and battery belts, and Velcro pockets, and the questions:
“How would you characterize the meeting?”
“Senator! What did you think of Gorbachev?”
Hart’s eyebrows leapt again: surprise mingled with amusement. To the cameras he said only: “I’ll be back ...” and he strode past to the elevators. He had to have a minute to collect himself, throw some water on his face: What was he going to say? With the Kremlinoid driver at the wheel, he hadn’t even had a chance to talk to Wilson or Andrea. Not even: “What did you think? ...” which was always his first question, open-ended, a challenge for them to put words on it.
“Well,” Wilson answered with a happy shrug. “I mean ... what can I say?” That was the confirmation, the assurance that it was as it seemed ... extraordinary. Andrea was surprised at Gorbachev’s warmth. He’d been charmed by her greeting in Russian—Russian Language 101, from the University of Denver. He’d invited her back to the Soviet Union, as his guest, whenever she wanted. She was so surprised, she told him she’d have to think about it.
Hart’s voice held a fond, fatherly needle as he said to her now, up in the suite: “Well, I guess that’s the nicest way to kiss off one of the most powerful men in the world.” And Andrea was stunned, suddenly fretful: Did it sound like that? She’d just told him what came into her head: her father’s campaign was starting, and that was her priority for the next two years. ... It wasn’t that she wasn’t grateful, but it was true!
Hart knew that. It wasn’t that he wasn’t grateful ... but as a father he wanted that trip for her. He knew how she felt about the campaign. They’d always had that understanding, an identity of feeling that didn’t need explaining. His daughter was, in Lee’s homely phrase, the apple of his eye. Hart didn’t permit himself that kind of cliché. He’d say it was just ... easier with her.
John was the hard one, his son, now twenty. Hart worried about him. Sometimes he seemed so bitter! And Hart had asked himself a thousand times if he was being unfair, twisting John’s life for the sake of his own. John didn’t want much part of the campaign—not the last one, anyway. He took off to Europe, in the winter of ’83, got the hell out. He didn’t want to be a spectacle, to be interviewed, and watched, and filmed. Hart knew how that was. He’d talk to John—next week, home, Christmas—to tell him he understood ... really.
Words never came easily between them. They were freighted with too much meaning. Hart had to make John see it was all right: if John didn’t want a campaign, there would be no campaign. Hart told himself, as he had so often: No campaign. No interviews. No Secret Service. No White House. None of it. Not if John didn’t want it. He’d tell John, next week ... if they could talk. Hart didn’t know. He’d talk to Wilson first.
John talked to Wilson more than his father. It was strange, but Hart had come to depend on Doug. One time, a couple of months back, on another trip, Doug and Hart had a walk through London, after dinner at the Wilton Inn. They talked for hours, through lanes and mews, in the misted lamplight. Hart was so worried about John. He’d gotten into a scrape in Washington, got mad, punched a dent in the side of his own car. Hart couldn’t understand that, John’s streak of violence, that temper!
“Don’t worry,” Doug said. “John’s headstrong. He has a temper. But he’ll never hurt anyone.”
“How do you know?” Hart said.
“Because he’s just like you. What provokes his anger is injustice ... like you.”
Hart stopped and peered, eyebrows up, at Doug’s face.
Doug said: “You two are more alike than anybody I know ... even more than Andrea.” They passed another few houses, silent, Hart looking down.
“You really think so?”
He sounded relieved—but puzzled, too: he never thought of himself as angry.
That’s what Lee tried to tell him—must have told him a half-dozen times over the years, when things were difficult, when they had to talk: It’s okay to be angry.
But words were hard with them, too. Sometimes what one of them said just sailed past the other. Lee would tell him: “It’s okay! You don’t have to like everything about me. It’s all right to be angry with parts of me ...”
But Gary would give her that blank look, or stiffen at the edge of annoyance, and insist, like she didn’t get it: “Babe, I’m not... angry.”
And she knew (she’d grown up in the church, too, wrapped even tighter in it than he) that he could not allow that. Frustration, yes, but anger was ... unworthy, like swearing, or the sin of pride. And you could not push Gary—not into something he considered unworthy. She could not.
But she knew. ... Funny, on a lot of things she was smarter than he, though you’d never know it to hear her talk. Ten times a day, she’d break off, amid something she was saying, and skitter, breathless, into explanation that, of course, she didn’t learn all this herself, but Gary always said ... You had to be a very good friend indeed before Lee would let an hour pass without reminding you who was the intellect in that household. When he was around, she’d do it every ten minutes, sometimes with every sentence, like a nervous tic, a dripping faucet. Of course, it drove him nuts.
But she believed it: look what he’d done! He’d been right from the start, on all the big things: when Gary said George McGovern could win the nomination; when Gary said he, Hart, could come from nowhere (against three people well known in the state!) to win the Senate seat from Colorado; when he said the race in ’84 would come down to him and Mondale—Glenn wasn’t a factor, Glenn was no choice—forget the polls, endorsements, forget the money (he mortgaged their house!) ... the choice would be between the old way ... and him. How could she not believe in him? She guessed (this was not something Gary said) that they were all smart, all the men who got to run, who got to that level. But Gary was different, she knew that.
And she was right. They were all smart, but Hart’s mind was of another order. If, say, George Bush’s intelligence was a silken windsock, so supple, so brightly sensitive to the currents of air around him, Hart’s was something harder, unyielding—industrial-grade, a diamond-pointed tool on the landscape. It was proof not only to shifting air, but to layers of surface “fact,” the lava-crust from Washington’s eternal volcano, this year’s, this month’s every-body-knows it-goes-without-saying op-ed magma.
“I don’t understand why ...” he’d start, and the staff would brace in their seats, knowing they were in for a trip to the center of the earth ... or at least to the nearest stratum of rock, the first available Hart-fact. Sometimes, in a rush toward some bold idea, which captivated him just by its boldness, he’d auger and slice, kick up only ash and dust. But he never stopped bearing down on that diamond bit, weighte
d as it was with his will. In fact, it was that process of continuous cutting, always against the grain of common wisdom (Mondale had that nomination all locked up ... Reagan wins elections ’cause he’s good on TV) that kept Hart’s edge so sharp.
But who would turn that vicious tool inward, into his own soft center? The answer was: he would not, no matter how many profile writers and armchair political shrinks wanted to see him sliced open like a mango. He kept telling them: it wasn’t about him. That’s not what people wanted to know. They had to know where he stood, that he stood for something, something that made sense. He had a long public record. He’d given half his life to building that record, and it was out there. He’d never tried to hide. He’d gone against the grain, tried to change the Party, the country. And he’d been right.
That must be what threatened them: if he’d been right—every step of the way—then all the big-feet, the consultants, the Party pros, the inside players, had been wrong, from the start. That’s why they had to come at him, to make him the issue: Who is this guy? ...
It was different with Hart and the voters. He couldn’t stomach a profile interview of fifteen minutes, wouldn’t sit for a picture for thirty seconds. But he’d stand for an hour in a Legion Hall, trying to explain military reform to a guy who thought Hart must be antidefense. That man wanted to know what he thought! Hart had the greatest respect for the citizenry. He thought they were like him.
That’s what he’d tried to tell Gorbachev: the American people were not confused. They understood the need for arms control, an end to the crazy spiral. They were not distracted by the Iran scandal. There was no point in Gorbachev’s waiting for an end to all that hubbub, or waiting two years for a new administration, to try to get an arms deal.
Actually, it was Gorbachev who bore down on the subject: he couldn’t understand Reykjavík, why Ronald Reagan kept retreating to the same stupid formulas—wouldn’t try to make the world new with a bold stroke. Reagan wanted to—Gorbachev knew that, he could feel it. He and Reagan had talked well together, they agreed ... as long as they were alone. Then they’d break, go back to their own delegations, and when Reagan returned, everything had changed! Reagan couldn’t deliver! Gorbachev would say something they’d agreed upon two hours before, and Reagan’s old head would begin to shake, and he’d say: “Well, uh, no ... no, we, uh, don’t accept that.”
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