Well, maybe check the podium.
Then, two days later, they’d call back: “Can we do a reception? Will he stay for a dinner?”
The point was, it felt like a campaign ... but better—none of the pressure. There were reporters at the speeches—but local reporters, who’d write about the warm reception he got. People waited a half-hour sometimes, just to shake Hart’s hand, or tell him he never should have quit. Hart didn’t have to watch what he said, or temper his positions. If he wanted to blast away at the teachers’ unions ... well, give ’em hell! And the crowds—he played to those crowds like he never would as a candidate. They gave him back a warmth that was ... it was like life again.
Invariably, he’d get back to Denver with some eyebrow-raising fact-on-the-ground:
“They say we can do it in Ohio.”
“They say we could put it together in upstate New York.”
“They say it’s still there in North Carolina.”
“Gary ...” the attending physicians would warn. “They’ll beat your brains out. They’ll burn you alive! Blow torches!”
“I’ve got asbestos feet now ...” And he had a theory. (With Hart, there was always a theory.) If the press turned up the heat too high, reaction would kick in—the backlash would fuel his campaign.
“Gary, you can’t be serious ...”
More and more, as October waned, Hart would say: “Why not?”
He was the one who was out there, with the people—they were begging him: just say the word!
He had the scene in his mind, like a piece of a novel—it would be sensational. He had a speech scheduled at Boston University ... he’d do it there.
Boston was a great town for him. A few weeks before—Boston College, a speech about Bork—Hart drew a mob at the basketball arena, a line around the block ... must have been four thousand people (though the Globe nincompoops called it “over a thousand”) ... and that was charging five bucks to get in ... up against a hockey game! ... Boston was spectacular.
Anyway, for BU, he wasn’t going to tell anyone. Except John. He called John in Worcester and read him the statement—Why Hart Must Speak Out. Actually, he’d written it while he and John were in Ireland together. John was so excited ... his dad was coming out to fight! He had prevailed!
Gary would read the statement at the end of his speech ... to the hushed hall ... which would break into cheers. It really couldn’t be better. The BU student activities group had a rule, no press—which meant they’d be fighting to get in. (The BU group was going to refund the tickets if the press came in.)
The place would be full—Hart knew exactly how he’d construct the speech, idea by idea, the need for reform, the need to speak out, the emptiness of the current campaign ... which was why ... it was so simple, so apparent to him ... he would reveal:
The next day, they were going—Gary and John, together—to New Hampshire, to the statehouse in Concord. Gary would deliver a check for a thousand dollars ... and file for the primary. Gary Hart would be back in the race!
Let the people decide!
It would be simply explosive.
When Gary got to Boston, to the hotel, there was John ... in a suit. John was so excited, he went out and bought a suit. ... Gary said to Billy Shore:
“Give me ten minutes. I’ve got to go to the room.” He had to take John upstairs—to tell him.
“John ... I can’t do it.”
Hart saw his son’s face fall. “John, I’ve told you, this is going to be hard. Everybody’s got to be together, in the family ...”
Gary could see he wasn’t getting through. But he didn’t want to say more. He couldn’t say ...
“Your mother may not, uh ... this may not be the right time.”
He didn’t want to say what had happened—the extraordinary fact: he was on his way to Boston, to his destiny, the new campaign ... when, for the first time in their lives together, Lee Hart told him:
“No.”
She wouldn’t have it. She wasn’t ready. No one had asked about her life. They hadn’t really talked. She needed time, she needed ... what? She didn’t know. But she was not going through it again. Not like this.
“No! Gary, I will not.”
So Gary had to explain to John, and he didn’t want to seem like he was blaming Lee. It was so ... it wasn’t her fault. She shouldn’t have to feel forced ... but John was so set on this, he might ... suddenly, it wasn’t simple at all.
“This may not be the right time ... your mother looks at this differently than you do. It may be harder for her. John, you have to un—John!”
John had turned and was heading for the balcony of the room. Gary started after him, but the phone was ringing. He went around the bed and picked it up.
“We gotta go ...” Billy’s voice.
“Take your time. I’ve got John here, we have to talk. Even if we’re late. Just give me a few minutes.”
Hart cradled the phone and straightened himself. He walked to the balcony door. “John ...”
But John was gone. Gary’s heart went to his throat ... and stayed. Jesus! Did he jump? No ... God, where was John? Hart had to go to that speech ... he had to give that empty speech ... with the question screaming in his head: Where was John?
Was he, at that moment, driving Gary’s car on some dark road, a hundred miles an hour? ... In rage? In tears? ... Headed where?
Where was John?
80
I Am a Man
TO VICE PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH, it was simple. He’d do whatever it took, to win—he had no doubt about that ... his family had none. Strange he should have to prove it.
But that’s what they told him. He had to go down to Florida—the state convention in Orlando—and show those delegates he wanted their support. It was another straw poll. Bush had to win. (After his debacle at the Ames Cavalcade, he really had to win.) There were 220 press credentials issued, 2,400 delegates, and an expectation among the big-feet that Bush had to win fifty percent—or he’d look like dead meat in the papers again.
(The “new” Press Secretary, the old Veep-friend Pete Teeley, tried to peddle the line that they’d be happy with any win—one vote better than their nearest opponent ... but Atwater already told The Miami Herald he wanted a clear majority. So much for Teeley’s spin control.)
By the day of the convention, Bush, Inc., had the place wired: delegate lists, field staff, floor captains, coordinators, walkie-talkies, minions running in and out. (The guy at the door wasn’t supposed to let anybody back onto the floor once they’d left the hall. But he sold out for a picture with the Veep, so Bush, Inc., had people shuttling all day.) ... This time, the Bush campaign would not rely on organization alone. They wheeled in the juice. Jeb Bush lived in-state—he was big in the Party. And they brought in Junior, with Atwater and the rest of the brass. And then the Big Gulp: they flew in the Veep a day before the vote and worked him like a pump, till they couldn’t find any more hands for him to shake.
He did four meetings with leaders from all over Florida: four speeches, each to about a hundred people. That night he did a rally—another 750 souls. Then he stood grinning and chatting, for hours, so every single leader could have his picture-with-the-Veep. The day of the vote, GBFP set up three hotel rooms: one for Jebbie, one for Junior, and one for Congressman Clay Shaw. Then, in groups of ten or fifteen, they ran the uncommitted delegates through. Jebbie, Junior, or Shaw would get to talking about the importance of this vote, and Florida, to George Bush, who was just saying, on the plane yesterday ... and then there’d come a knock at the door, and Bush, Sr., would walk in, sit down on a bed ... and just flat visit. Knocked those delegates for a loop, every time. (He came in—just regular, you know. Asked for their votes ... personally!) After he closed the deal—ten or fifteen minutes—he’d get up, walk down the hall, and “surprise” another group of uncommitteds. They moved 130 votes through those rooms that morning. Then Bush went downstairs and gave his convention address.
As
he stepped off the stage, the crowd was chanting “Bush. Bush, Bush. Bush ...” and the Veep wore a weary grin as the wall of suits wedged him back to his holding room ... where Atwater stepped forward, and said: “Ah gotta talk to you, Mr. Vahz Pres’ent ... uh, Ah gotta explain somethin’.”
“Yeah, what?” Bush almost snapped the question.
“Well, our numbers show we kin git up to fifty-five percent plus ... but, uh, our count only shows us up to fifty-two. It’s, uhhh ... conceivable we could be closer to fifty ...”
Bush lifted his nose like he smelt bullshit. Now they were telling him he could fall under fifty percent? ... Matter of fact, it was starting to smell like ... Iowa.
Lee was very busy explaining:
There were 2,400 votes, but so far they couldn’t physically find 300 of the delegates. “We just don’ know where they are, sir ...”
Junior broke in:
“Why the hell don’t we know where they are?”
“Okay, Lee. What do you want?” That was from the Veep. The side talk stopped. Atwater said:
“Uh, Ah’d like you to work the undecided who, uh ...”
“How long?”
“Half-hour?”
“Well, let’s go.”
Of course he’d do it. He hadn’t come down there to lose—or to look like he’d lost. They ran a hundred more delegates in, and he pumped their hands and told them how great it was to know them. And as they were ushered out, Junior grabbed them at the door. “Listen,” he’d say, and they’d stop in their tracks, to hear that same Bush-voice from that same Bush-face, only younger—and right in their face.
“Listen, there’s only one candidate in this race who came down here, personally, to ask for your vote. And that’s George Bush. I hope you’ll remember that.”
Yes, they’d remember. They’d give him his fifty percent, and more. That was after Bush made it back to the airport and onto his Stratoliner, up to the Power Cabin, into the Power Chair, where stewards hied with a Power Martini ... after Bush left the matter in the hands of Atwater, with a Veeply warning, uttered in the holding room, in the hearing of a dozen campaign ops and Secret Service men. Bush fixed Atwater with a stare, none too friendly: “Lee, I hope no one’s coverin’ their beehives on me here.”
Beehives?
Bush was always playing net with himself. He was so sensitive to the currents around him, so desirous that he not offend, so quick of mind and sense, it was almost reflex: he’d doublethink his own mouth.
“Listen, sonofabitch: you lie to me again on this, I’ll kill you ...”
(No. God! There’s a dozen people in the room, strangers, voters!)
“Listen, Lee, you better not be coverin’ your ass on this one ...”
(No! No threats. We’re all on the same team!)
“Lee, I hope no one’s coverin’ their ass on this one ...”
(No! “Ass”—bad word! “Behinds?”)
“Lee. I hope no one’s coverin’ their beehives ...”
It was the brilliance of George Bush that it all happened in a second. It was the price of being Poppy that it made him sound like a prep school weenie ... or, as the press would have it, a wimp.
The reporters kept lists of these things: that time he said the Russians were “tough as horseradish” ... that time in Denver, after a speech, when they tried to ask about taxes and Bush didn’t want to say anything, so all that came out was: “Zippedeedoodah! It’s off to the races!”
There was the time he was trying to recap his experience as Vice President, at Reagan’s side, through good times and bad. ... We’ve had successes, we’ve had setbacks ... but then, he thought, he couldn’t accuse the President of failures. ... It happened somewhere between “successes” and “setbacks,” so all that issued from the Bush-mouth was: “We’ve had sex ...”
Oh God, oh God, oh God!
But all this was as nothing, as ... air—wind! no! a fart in the wind! ... compared to the stinking granddaddy, the one that stuck to George Bush like dog, uh, droppings on his shoes.
It wasn’t a big deal at the time—1986, and Bush just back from a mission to China. The Veep was pretty relaxed, in fact, and that was the start of the problem. He was kicking back in the Power Cabin, over a beer and the public popcorn, with a reporter from The Wall Street Journal, and he remarked upon the reception he’d received in Peking. So friendly! They loved him! ... And Bush wanted people to understand the depth of his personal knowledge of China, and how far we’d come, which was a ratification of sound Republican foreign policy and just the kind of thing that people didn’t understand about him—his ease, his steady certainty in foreign affairs, which was built upon experience of the sort he’d obtained a decade before, in China, when things were tough, when you couldn’t even talk weather, or, you know, tennis, with any decent Maoist, because the poor fellow would wind up with electrodes hooked to his balls, and you’d be thrown out of the country, of course. That’s the way it was ... which people didn’t remember ... which was why Bush wanted to point out, was going to say, if the official who’d greeted him so warmly in Peking last week had talked to him like that when Bush was envoy to China, well, that fellow would’ve been in knee-deep shit. So he said: If the guy had been that nice ten years ago, he woulda ...
(But then Bush thought it might seem undiplomatic, and if the Chinese ... well, they might not get the, uh, metaphor.)
“... been in ...”
(Well, it was true! Jeez! The Chinese ought to recognize it, too!)
“... deep ...”
(Shit? No! God! His mother’s friends read the Journal!)
“... doo-doo.”
Oh, God! ...
Of course, by October 1987, it was too late for explanation: no one even used the full quote. But there were, in the year of his announcement for President, scores of references to the D-words in newspapers across the nation.
And doo-doo was never deeper than the week of his announcement.
Announcement, of course, meant Profile Season ... and that’s when it happened. Came out, in fact, on October 11, the eve of his announcement. Bush was in Houston for the Big Day. He had the whole magazine read before breakfast. Well, he didn’t read it through ... how could he? What was the point, after that cover?
They’d called him a wimp ... on the cover of Newsweek ... on the day of his announcement! It made his stomach turn, just to look at it. Jesus! ... Those shits!
Margaret!
That was the other heartache: Margaret Warner wrote the story. He liked her! The whole family liked her—such a lady! Had her up to the house—she was a friend! ... And then, she fucked him. Coast to coast, in every checkout line of every supermarket from Maine to California.
GEORGE BUSH: FIGHTING THE “WIMP FACTOR”
There was a picture of him, at the wheel of his boat, body bundled into a jacket, face set against the wind ... like he was battling the cold, clammy whoosh of wimpdom that threatened to blow him away.
The picture wouldn’t have been bad, by itself.
But there was the word—wide as his fist—WIMP ... on the cover!
Bush wanted to hit them ... we’ll see who’s a wimp—or, no! Get them out on the boat. (Tom Pettit, NBC, got him out in the boat, opened her up ... wham! Pettit went down on his ass—broke his tailbone! That oughta, uh, drive the point home, heh heh.) Show those sonsabitches, in their building in New York—what the hell did they know about this country, about who gets along in this country when you dump them out in the middle of Texas and they got to get along with people who work in the sun and dust and mud, see how those sonsabitches get along in the Navy when it’s sink or swim ... those ... those ...
Ailes was right. They were assholes!
Bar was right. They’d never understand him.
Junior was—oh, God, the kids: this would hit them hard. Doro’s probably in tears ... he ought to go to her room, right now, tell her ... no! He had to be on TV—now, this morning, all day! Had to do his announcement—five c
ities, speeches, interviews—and look like nothing was wrong! ... While they asked him, every stop—what did he think about the Wimp Cover?
What the hell could he think?
He did not, could not, understand that kind of journalism—he called it “impact journalism.” (Like Lawrence Taylor was an “impact player” in football: he’d “impact” the other guy insensate.) He could not understand, could not accept, Margaret Warner’s explanation that it wasn’t her—she never used that word! (No, the editors in New York stuck it in her story, then used it for the cover line.) Bush wanted to know: Who was it? ... He could not accept that it was no one in particular—that no one person was out to get him—nothing personal!
It was personal to Bush. He couldn’t understand why they’d do it to him on the day of his announcement. ... What did he know about Profile Season? ... He couldn’t even understand what they meant! Did that word mean coward? (He didn’t see any air medals on their chests.) ... Did they think he was a weakling? (Let’s play two sets, see whose ass is dragging!) ... God! They didn’t mean he was a, uh, homo—did they?
They talked about how he had no positions—except Reagan’s positions. ... Well, how the hell else was he supposed to do his job? Did they want him to deny he was Vice President?
He could not figure how they got to that word—from his life!
But the editors of Newsweek weren’t looking at his life. This was a political judgment ... about Bush’s political identity.
Who defines political identity?
Why ... political observers!
Who all knew Bush was a wimp.
In other words, wise guys, smart guys, and big guys ... who’d talked, just the other day ... with people who were very plugged-in to the campaign ... who heard from people who talked all the time with the Gee-Six ... who all knew (these guys aren’t stupid, you know) ... what lunch-buddies always knew, which was: this campaign had a problem—which was the candidate! Just look at the numbers!
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