“Jane,” Joyce said on one such night, “you married a dork.”
And Jane, who’d made a life loving Dick, said, “I know. He is a dork.”
This time, Joyce was still in St. Louis, and the new people couldn’t figure Dick, at all. Most of them had worked campaigns before, but they’d never seen a guy who’d just do it. They’d get around a big table for a schedule meeting, and they’d throw together whatever invitations they had: two states a thousand miles distant, the same weekend, flying coach, night flight through Chicago, on to Des Moines, and then a two-hour drive in a van ... and Dick would just do it.
One time, the Scheduler lady said in the meeting: “Lemme ask you guys something ... does Dick always agree with you?”
Don Foley, the press guy, the only one who went back with Dick, smiled as if to himself, and said: “As a matter of fact ... yes.”
And they all started giggling at the table.
But announcement was different. You couldn’t just toss it together—even with Dick, who could make up for a lot of sloppy work ... no. Announcement was big, had to be right. That would be the tape clip that would run for the next year and a half. That day would define the theme, the melody of the whole campaign.
That’s why the speech was so important—but a week before the announcement, they still didn’t have the speech. See, Shrum was a genius ... genius needed time.
So they worked around the speech. They had the site: Union Station, St. Louis. It was perfect: there was the echo of Harry Truman, the underdog from Missouri, who got the ’48 election-night papers on that Union Station concourse, and gleefully held up the headline from Chicago: DEWEY BEATS TRUMAN. Harry had the last laugh. ... There were echoes there of Dick’s own career: Union Station was the city’s most conspicuous renovation, the emblem of its downtown renewal, a renaissance begun by Dick Gephardt and his fellow Young Turks on the Board of Aldermen fifteen years before. ... And there were echoes of Dick’s own family, of King St. Clair Cassell, Loreen’s dad, who worked the Pullmans from that station, so many years, so many years ago. ...
Problem was, the Advance staff couldn’t hear the echoes, didn’t know Dick’s history. They were pros, and proud of it. Carrick had gone out and bought the best: Barry Wyatt, from California. He’d done White House Advance, done Kennedy Advance all over the country. Wyatt and the boys—there were twenty-four deputies by the day of announcement—knew how to treat a man in the bubble. (That’s what the campaign wanted, right? A professional operation.)
So they flew in a week before, rented a room in Union Station (The Cannonball Express Room), and sat down with the locals. But the locals didn’t have much to say, once the pros started putting together a bible:
10:08 A.M. RAG to holding room, Union Station.
Dick didn’t have a truly biblical title yet, so they just used his initials. Loreen was upset: “It just makes him sound, well ... like a rag.” But they didn’t ask Loreen, didn’t even know her. They did know about her: she was on the list ...
“We move the family on stage with him?”
“Move ’em before. Let people see him come up alone.”
“Okay, we move the candidate’s wife ... kids—what is it, four? ... three, okay ... candidate’s mother. Is the mother with the wife?”
“Who’s gonna move the candidate’s wife?”
“I got the brother, brother’s wife ...”
“Who’s got the candidate’s wife?”
Finally, someone who knew Dick and Jane interrupted. It was just ... wrong, somehow. She had to say something. JoJo Crosby, the wife of Dick’s old friend John Crosby, broke in to say: “Her name is Jane.”
“Who?”
“Dick’s wife. Her name is Jane.”
They looked at JoJo like she’d landed from Mars. What the hell difference did that make?
He was in this to listen, but listen to what? Michael had scores of meetings about this campaign question ... but it was he who asked the questions, so he got the answers he wanted. Michael was enough of a lawyer for that.
What he wanted were the mechanics, tactics, politics:
How does a Dukakis sell in the South?
Would I have a chance to finish well—well enough—in Iowa?
What is it like? Say, an average week—what would I have to do?
What he didn’t ask was about the job, save in the broadest terms: Could he do it? Of course, they said he could. They were all politicians. What was their percentage in telling him anything different?
Anyway, he was sure he could do it. Michael did not have a small opinion of his mind. Governing was what the job entailed. Governing was what he knew. For the rest, the scientia, the programs, the federal system, the foreign arcana, the bureaucratic lingo ... well, he’d pick that up as he went along. He was a superior student.
So they told him all kinds of wonderful stuff:
There’s a New South, where Democrats get elected on a biracial base of blacks and white liberals ...
The Iowa race was still wide open—people there wait till they get to know the candidates ...
Michael was already a hero to New Hampshire Democrats, since he stopped the Seabrook nuclear reactor, just over the border. (Michael had refused to file the required evacuation plans.)
Michael took all this into his head, with quick nods, like little check marks: he was in his professional listening mode. Since his loss, in ’78—as he said, so many times—he’d become quite the determined listener. The signature of this new style (what the press liked to call “Duke II”) was always the last question: an open-ended invitation for anyone in the room to talk. “Well, any questions, any comments? ...” That showed he was listening—didn’t it?
What it usually showed was he thought he’d got it. It was up to them now to show him something he’d missed.
Thing was, his method hadn’t changed. Why should it? He had an unshakable faith in his power to arrive at a rational decision. He’d get the facts, he’d make the correct decision—simple as that. It’s the same process he went through deciding whether to go to Harvard Law straight out of college, or do the Army first, and then go to Harvard. He asked people who thought they knew him. He asked people who’d been to the Army. He asked people who’d been to law school. Then, on a timetable previously determined, he made a considered and rational judgment.
Of course, he hated the Army. Most useless two years he ever spent. But that did not shake his faith in the process.
So he filled up his checklist ... anything missing? And he was so much master of this game that no one stopped to ask him, what was it about? Why did he want to be President? What did he mean to do with the job? What was the inarguable base of mission that would drive him on when the taste of his own words was shit in his mouth?
There was that one time, when Ira asked ... but Ira had to write the New Hampshire speech, so that was practical. And there was one time, when Michael brought in his ad guy, Dan Payne, brought him into the State House office for a sitdown at the table, where Michael held most of these matter-of-fact meetings ... that familiar room, with the cool blue carpet bearing the Great Seal of Massachusetts, and the portrait of Samuel Adams, and Michael’s straight-back chair, behind the big desk, with his Styrofoam cup ... the room where Michael was so much at home, where he could solicit efficiently the facts he sought, the facts required for a reasoned conclusion ... in this case, from his adman, some notion of how his campaign would look and sound. What would the words be? ... What look, what themes, would a Dukakis campaign present to the voters?
And, as much as Payne wanted to help, wanted at least to be perceived as a player, he just stared at Dukakis like Michael was talking Greek.
“Governor, it’s not the kind of ... you know, I don’t have a kind of one-size-fits-all thing that I can do ... I mean ...”
But Michael was insistent. Payne had worked on his ’82 comeback, and in ’86. Michael knew he was a charter wise guy at Sasso’s Thursday night sessions. “What wou
ld you do?” Michael said. “I mean, what would, what would the themes, you ... I think you know as well as anybody what a Presidential campaign for me would be like. ...”
But Payne didn’t know—thought he could not know until Dukakis came up with something that mattered to Dukakis. That’s what he tried to say, politely. But Dukakis kept looking at him like he was holding out: Come on! Let’s think up the words!
Kitty was there, next to Michael, and looking at Payne like he was a traitor to the cause. Finally Michael said to her: “Katharine, what do you think? Any questions? Any thoughts? ...” But Kitty had nothing to add, so that’s where it ended.
And Sasso was there, of course, but John wasn’t asking anything. He figured the mission would come, in time. There had to be—there would be—a process of growth. Sasso had no small opinion of his own abilities, either. He would manage this process. He would lead his horse to water. ... Meanwhile, they had something to say: the story of the comeback, the Massachusetts Miracle. That was enough, for the moment. Meanwhile, they had money to get. They had staff to line up. They had press to massage.
Sasso still worried about the field: Biden was in now, and Biden had talent. Gephardt was announcing, and he’d live in Iowa. Hart was doing everything right this time. ... And Cuomo: John worried about Cuomo, the one man who shared their natural advantages, and had some others uniquely his own—the man they could not get by. But John had talked to Cuomo just the week before (Mario loved Sasso—they talked very well), and Sasso took one comfort from that talk. Cuomo had asked him, twice: When is Dukakis’s date of decision? (Middle of March, middle of March, Sasso said.) So John knew Cuomo would not play it cute—he would make his move, he would let Michael know before Michael had to decide.
Mostly, Sasso worried about Michael—would he go? For the moment, that was the ball game. What was the point of pushing this, or stressing that ... if Michael walked away? Sure, there had to be a theme for the campaign—but first there had to be a campaign. Sure, Michael ought to use the time, now, to learn—but first Michael had to hear what he needed to hear.
There was one time, by happenstance, Michael collided with a chance to learn. He had an event at the Harvard Club, in Boston. It was early evening, after a day at the State House; Michael was making for his meeting room ...
“Hey, great to see you, Mike. Glad you’re here ...”
That was Teddy Kennedy, the first guy they ran into at the club. Kennedy was hosting a confab on arms control, and the major-league multiple-reentry-first-strike-throw-weight muckamucks had flown in.
“Listen,” Kennedy said. “I’m having a few of these guys up to my hotel room, after. You know, just to kick things around ... love to have you sit in ...”
This took Michael completely by surprise, so he murmured thanks ... said he’d certainly try.
But after Michael’s event, when it came time to go to Kennedy’s soirée, Dukakis was antsy.
“This isn’t gonna be all night, is it?” That’s what he wanted to know from Mitropoulos.
“We’ll stay as long as you want, Governor.”
Michael knew he ought to go—the words “D-5 missile,” after all, had never escaped his lips, and soon he’d have to talk about how many the U.S. ought to build, and why. ... But Dukakis does not like to be the dumbest guy in the room. Michael is always the smartest guy in the room.
“I don’t know ...” Michael was frowning at his watch. “Ahhh ... I don’t wanna go in there.”
Mitropoulos shrugged, and stopped. “Up to you,” he said.
Michael’s eyes were down at his watch again, and he muttered something about the Stop & Shop. He said: “It’s my night for groceries.”
What he wanted them to have was a sense of mission. It could not be just a campaign for office. Wouldn’t work that way ... and wouldn’t matter. He wanted them to feel they were working for the people, to change the country ... not just for Gary Hart. It was not about him.
That’s the way he’d always worked: the mission, this crusade, was his lever to move the earth ... ever since 1971, when he marched in his cowboy boots straight to the big time in American politics as manager of George McGovern’s campaign for the White House. Of course, in those days, it was easy. They were all young, for one thing—McGovern’s “army,” and its general, Hart—and they didn’t fit in with the pros who ran politics. Hart would show up in those boots and his skinny blue jeans, shirt open at the neck, and too-long hair, and he’d start to talk, and you could see, you could feel, how different it was with him, the freshness of his thought and his faith in the power of ideas.
He was quiet, and mannerly, with that diffident Kansas politeness that had nothing to do with politesse, and a preacherly belief about the campaign—like his boss, Senator McGovern, from Hart’s neighbor state of South Dakota, the son of a Methodist pastor (that same crusading Wesleyan gospel), who was so decent. ... “George McGovern,” Hart used to tell the kids in the office, “is who we are.” It was easy to see that theirs was a campaign to change American values, a campaign for the dignity of each man, the future of all men. Then, too, if matters got muddy, they had this gyroscopic certainty: they were working to unseat the evil Nixon. They were working to bring the boys home from Vietnam. To change the system ... end the war ... bring the country back to its senses. That’s why Hart could tell those college kids: it didn’t matter that they were sleeping on floors, fifteen to a room, with hot dogs to fuel another day, canvassing through the snow. They had a mission. ... That’s why the McGovern campaign could take a dive at the convention on the South Carolina credentials challenge: sure, purity would argue for more blacks, more women, in the South Carolina delegation. But not at the risk of losing this prize. “Now, wait a minute ...” Hart would tell the black caucus, the women’s caucus. “Remember who it is we’re running against. It’s Richard Nixon.”
It was easy then for Hart to construct a new kind of campaign: there was no model for that sort of insurgency, and they had no choice about being different. Hart had a list in the office: all the Party chairmen, local officials, Congressmen—the regulars. And Gary insisted that his kids make an effort to call them, try to include them, let them know when McGovern was coming to their districts. But none of the political pros took much note. They couldn’t feel the ground moving under them. The press couldn’t see it coming, either, kept writing that McGovern was “a one-issue candidate” ... “from a small state” ... “no money, no endorsement” ... “lacks Muskie’s broad support.” Hart would fume at the morning papers—it was so frustrating: “They just can’t get it, can they?”
No, they’d have to be shown. So whenever someone within the campaign would complain that McGovern was slighted by Party bigwigs, or McGovern was left out of some news story, Hart would quote Tolstoy’s General Kutuzov: “Time and patience ... patience and time.” Hart would never authorize the purchase of a conference table, or chairs, for the meeting room. He hated meetings: theory was, if there were no chairs, people would say what they had to, and wrap it up. Yet, as often as he had to, Hart would sit for an hour, two hours, with his rangy frame folded atilt into a straight-backed seat, his cowboy boots propped on the edge of his desk, explaining: sure, they were thirty points back in the polls, but that’d change if they won Wisconsin ... and here’s how they could win Wisconsin. ... He’d listen for hours on the phone to his man in Milwaukee, Gene Pokorney, bitching and moaning: How was he supposed to win Wisconsin with no money? Then he’d listen to the daily whine from his New Hampshire coordinator, Joe Grandmaison: “I’m doing everything for this campaign. I’m going to the wall for the candidate. What are you doing for me, Gary?” He’d listen forever to Jesse Jackson, hectoring about what was owed to South Chicago, punctuating his demands with his favorite phrase of the time: “You hear where I’m comin’ from? ...” Hart heard, and heard again and again, and he’d sympathize, reason with them, try to explain ... he never blew. They shared a mission. There was no end to his patience.
&n
bsp; And that’s how he wanted it to be. A different campaign, a shared sense of mission, a battle plan for a great crusade ... But somehow, now that it was his candidacy, now that he was thirty points ahead in the polls, now that there were professionals in Denver, plotting for him, moving him, and there were chairs in the meeting room, and a conference table, conference calls ... it was harder to keep it straight. Fifteen years ... time and patience. But time was short now. They gave him no time. He couldn’t sit around, for hours, explaining. He’d have to cut past explaining: they’d just have to be shown. And, tell the truth, that suited him now. Somewhere, in those fifteen years, the patience had worn thin. If they just couldn’t get it ... well, that was their problem. If they wanted him in Iowa, and the best they could come up with was a full day of kissing ass in the state capitol, “private meetings” with “important Democrats” ... well, then, they’d just get it back in their faces: No. It didn’t matter if they sent in twenty call slips for Hart to phone this important local candidate from the last election. He’d already talked to the guy in person ... visited the smarmy creep. So every one of those call slips would slide into the side pocket of Hart’s sport coat, and that was the last they were seen. It wasn’t that he disrespected his staff—for God’s sake, he’d made himself slave to their schedule! Hart had the best in the business in Denver. He’d seen to it. But he wasn’t going to lower the level of his game. Not for anyone. Not this time.
So the white boys would visit the law office, whenever Hart had a day in town ... and they would talk. But for the rest—the colonels and captains in the “army”—they seldom saw Hart. They’d have to make an appointment. Even the ones who went back with him, all the way to ’72—they were middle-aged now, and there weren’t too many who could move their lives to Denver for this new crusade ... but there were a handful. Even they never sat and talked with Hart anymore. Judy Harrington worked on the field desk for McGovern, fifteen years before, and now she was running Hart’s tank. It was her people who monitored the states, and she was the one who had to pass on their urgencies:
What It Takes Page 50