They were Democrats all, when he first moved among them, in the forties ... when the Democrats brought to the South the schools, hospitals, the electric lines that it so desperately needed. And he lived among them through the fifties, while the region caught up in development and wealth ... and into the sixties, when the Democratic Party identified itself with the struggle for civil rights. ... For four decades, Bush had watched these people as they moved in from the countryside—or the cities moved out to meet them—where they now had roads, schools, hospitals, country clubs ... and homes in suburbs, attained and established, they insisted, by their labor ... and the last goddam thing they wanted was the government to come in and get in their way ... to take more taxes, for example ... or, worse still, to erode, to take away, any measure of the security and comfort they had attained ... those schools, houses, neighborhoods, jobs ... in any effort to bring along the have-nots—blacks, for instance, or the poor in those rotting cities, the workers in rust-belt factories ... bailouts, affirmative action, Congressional mandates, federal court orders ... no!
These were the got-mines that Joe Biden used to talk about:
“Got mine ... go get yours!”
These were people who thought they wanted government to do ... well, not much ... save to stand tall for America, God bless her.
“I’ll never apologize for her,” Bush vowed, in Super Tuesday speeches.
As it turned out, George Bush was perfect for Super Tuesday.
“I wouldn’t mind if I could get the paper to recognize how mindless it is ...”
This was David Hoffman, The Washington Post’s lead reporter on the Bush campaign. He was in Greensboro, North Carolina—the Four Seasons Mall. Bush was receiving a merit badge from the Boy Scouts at the Greensboro Scout-o-Rama—six months of Advance, six minutes of event: “The Boy Scouts,” Bush said, “represent American values.”
Hoffman was a man near the end of his rope. He was, among the big-feet, the most thorough and ambitious reporter. He had files that went back years, on everything Bush said. He had them organized for instant access to the history of Bush-thought—or at least Bush-speak—on any subject of moment: arms control, Soviet relations, civil rights, education, the environment ... Hoffman was ready.
“The Boy Scouts,” George Bush affirmed, “represent the best of America!”
Hoffman was stuffing his mouth with a two-dollar cookie. He’d just got off the pay phone outside of Scribbles ’n’ Giggles. “I can’t get this shit in the paper.”
Behind him, Marie Cocco of Newsday was on the phone with her editors. “He hasn’t talked to the traveling press in eight days,” she said. “The other day, we jumped him about something in his speech, and it was right behind a diesel. He acted like he couldn’t hear—just like Reagan.”
Bush was already finished with the Scout-o-Rama. He’d been whisked away for three local TV “interviews” at a hotel. The big-feet and big-feet-to-be were not invited. It was just the VP and a single blow-dry in matching armchairs—very intimate—they could really get to know one another ... you know, for four minutes and thirty seconds.
(“You really must be running around!” said Action News, Channel Five. “Oohhhh,” said George Bush. “Exhausting!”)
Meanwhile, the fleet of Greyhounds had deposited the national press in a cold gray wind in the middle of a rock quarry. There were craters in the ground and mountains of gray gravel and stone. No one could figure why they were standing for a half-hour in this chill moonscape.
David Hoffman was furious. He’d had a standing request to interview George Bush for a year and a half—since October 1986. Once he got so close as to have a talk with Bush about why he should get to talk to Bush. Then he called Craig Fuller forty times. Then he had to write a letter. But by that time, Iran-contra had transpired and Bush had gone to ground—Bush talked to no one. Then, the Wimp Factor surfaced—Bush talked to no one. The only interview Hoffman ever saw was a wet kiss from David Frost, the celebrated English brownnose. Hoffman said the white men had prepared Bush for days ... “like it was some kind of goddam summit meeting.” Bush never did the Marvin Kalb interview, like all the other candidates.
“He’s never done a substantive interview on anything,” Hoffman said.
George Bush was arriving, in a whoosh of thirty vehicles ... straight into the rock quarry, where the pod-people set up a ropeline. Secret Service held the limo door for Bush, and Hoffman was at the rope, screaming:
“WHY ARE YOU HERE? ... WHY ARE YOU HERE?”
Bush just waved and grinned, climbed into the cab of a front-end loader. Off to the side, all the plant brass were gathered, and local Bush supporters—women in fur coats. There was a man on the ladder, next to Bush, who knew how to run the machine. He pointed to a lever. Bush pulled the lever.
“WHY ARE YOU HERE?”
Beep-Beep-Beep ... the loader drowned out all other sound with its electronic warning, as the front scoop lifted a ton of rock, preloaded for the Deputy Commander in Chief.
A dump truck rumbled into camera frame.
The man on the ladder pointed to another lever.
“Great,” said one reporter. “Now he can finally drop the full load.”
The next reporter kept his eyes on Bush: “Does he remind you of a three-year-old?”
“My three-year-old has more maturity and sophistication.” There were some hoots behind the rope. “And vision,” someone said. The one with the three-year-old said: “Helen Keller has more vision.”
Bush pushed the lever. Rock tumbled into the dump truck.
The cameras were rolling. They could mock all they wanted. Bush was getting his work done—and they were helping.
Bush Advance and the mobile white men were having a good yuk about Hoffman’s question: “Why the hell do you think we’re here?”
Meanwhile, Bush was ending his inspection of a rock separator. He came to the ropeline for a minute of spasmodic friendliness. Someone got his attention for a question—what was he doing in this quarry?
Bush shrugged. “There’s a lot of show-biz in politics. There are a lot of things about campaigning that I don’t like. One of the things I do like is meeting the people who hold a job, and do the work, building the strongest economy this country’s ever had.”
The limo came purring through the moonscape behind him. Bush disappeared into the backseat. He was having a chuckle, too. These reporters didn’t understand the value of the bubble. The limo was backing to turn around when he grabbed the microphone inside.
“See you, guys!” he called to the quarrymen. One of his arms was flapping out the side of the limo. “See you, guys! Thanks for the visit! Thanks, guys! Appreciate the visit!”
117
The White Lightning Curve
IT WAS JUST HART and Lee sometimes, or Hart and Andrea (Lee’s sinuses were hurting again) ... and one or two friends who’d help. Sue Casey had tried to run the whole campaign from Denver, but she burned out—there were days now you couldn’t find Casey anywhere. When he could, Billy Shore would travel with Gary. Or Mike Stratton would go along. There was a new guy who showed up for some trips, a Californian named Bernie Schneider—Hart called him Bernie the Attorney. Four Advance kids were half-killing themselves, hip-hopping the South, trying to set up something ahead of Hart.
But that was it: his campaign, his crusade, had shrunk to this hardy, hopeless few. You could seat them all at one table for dinner—which he did, almost every night, along with anyone else who took an interest—people who wanted to be delegates, the kid who drove him to his speech at the local campus, the poli-sci professor who introduced him in the lecture hall, a guy from the local radio who’d never met a Senator.
They were strange and fascinating dinners—a dozen people, or fifteen, at a table thrown together by a flustered restaurateur ... with Gary in the center, recalling the doings of the day, theorizing, answering questions, telling stories, feeding the gathering from his faith and experience, that inexhaustible sto
re.
He’d start with a drink, one of his white lightning specials—Stolichnaya vodka on the rocks—and that would loosen the tongue. Someone might mention the Secret Service ... which would remind Hart of a story—had they ever heard about the time the Service and the California Highway Patrol closed the San Diego Freeway for him?
“It was 4:30 ... on a Friday ... in May. Everybody was trying to get out of town. I was coming in—Friday before the primary ... and the Highway Patrol had the freeway blocked for ten miles—all the entrances. ...”
Hart’s eyebrows danced with droll horror.
“And we’re going TWENTY-SEVEN MILES AN HOUR! ... I see guys out on the ramps, shaking their fists at me as we go by—at FUNERAL SPEED! ... I’m literally beating on the shoulders of the shift commander, yelling: ‘GET GOING!’ ...
“So, we get in. The Secret Service guy is hanging his head—like this. I said: ‘NEVER ... do that again. NEVER ...DO THAT! You just lost me a quarter-million votes. Do you understand? NEVER!’ ”
Then Hart would lean back and laugh, softly. No one ever mentioned how the Service had now departed Hart’s side—they left after he finished under four percent in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Over dinner, or after, there might be another Stoly ... and Hart’s remarks would grow sharper, more topical and telling. He talked about Dukakis, piling up delegates, step by cautious step. Dukakis never got more than thirty-five or forty percent anywhere—he had a ceiling, he couldn’t win—why didn’t anybody write that? It reminded Hart of Mondale, in ’84, plodding on with that same stupid inevitability ... reminded him of Barbara Tuchman’s book The March of Folly, in which the Great Powers lurched to war—“like this ...”
And Hart’s hand darted toward the edge of the table, then disappeared below.
“... like watching someone go over a cliff.”
The other night, in debate, after Hart brought up an idea, said he hadn’t heard it from the other candidates, Dukakis swiveled in his chair, and with an edge of contempt in his voice, reminded Hart (and the audience): “You’d have heard it ... if you’d been around for the last six months ...”
That was when Jesse Jackson reached over, patted Hart’s hand, and whispered: “I don’t like that guy ... he’s mean.”
It was a good word, Hart thought. Mean was the word they used in Ireland for small, ignoble ... they used it for cheap, or stingy, narrow ... a mean understanding was not much understanding.
That was one reason Hart couldn’t get out of the race—why his gut wouldn’t let him get out. All the others (save for Jesse) were playing traditional old-line politics—pleasing the interests. Every day, Hart would comfort his crowds (and himself) about the polls, or his own dismal results in the first primaries: the rest of the field, he’d say, was contesting only for the mantle of old Mondale-style politics ... then the winner would have to face Gary and his New Ideas. Sooner or later, Hart would not be ignored—or ignorable—if he could just stick it out. And he would, he vowed. He knew he was right—right about Mondale, right about Dukakis. He’s for good jobs at good wages. ... I’m waiting for the candidate who’s for bad jobs at low wages.
That always got a laugh on the stump. Hart’s crowds laughed at all the right places, they cheered the right lines, they were impressed, informed, swayed ... but he could see this thing behind their smiles: they were listening, they liked what they heard—but the doubt and derision, that thing was tugging at them, pulling them away from him. That’s why he told his Advance kids: no podiums. Hart could not afford to put anything between himself and the voters. He had to get so close, they could not pull away. ... “The closer I can stay—physically closer—somehow, I need that. It’s very curious. ...” Still, he couldn’t get the people to articulate their doubt about him, so he could answer, he could make them see him again—he’d make the press see ... if there were press.
The CBS crew had stopped trailing Hart after he finished as an asterisk in Minnesota and South Dakota. Now, before Super Tuesday, the whole traveling corps consisted of Judy Penniman from ABC. But she had to scramble at every stop to get a crew from the local affiliate, if she wanted any chance of getting a story on the air. Most days, there was no chance. Hart had become a nonstory, or at best, a feature, an “On the Road” piece: it was Gary Hart and his daughter, campaigning through the South ... or some guy who’d built a four-story castle out of tin cans in his backyard. Hart was a curiosity.
And that’s what got to him, late at night—say, with the third Stolichnaya, on the backside of the White Lightning Curve. You could hear the sadness creep into his voice, it got smaller ... you could just about see the lights go out, behind his eyes. He was wracking his brain for some way to beat the dread and fatal affliction ... but there was no answer. He had to stop thinking, sometime. The Stoly helped, it sent him to sleep. “I’m hacking a path through the wilderness,” he’d say, “with no map and no compass. Sometimes, true north is hard to find.”
He was better off in daylight, in better command. He was never at a loss with an audience—he was of size, and absolutely sure. He was at his best on a campus—he’d ask for a blackboard on stage ... then he’d strip off his beat-up brown herringbone sport coat, and with his issues book in his left hand, a piece of chalk swooping like a baton in his right, he would begin to inform the room.
Four days before Super Tuesday, he took as his text the job of President. He asked the audience: What is it?
“Make the budget,” someone offered from the seats. Hart turned to the blackboard and wrote: Head of Government.
“He has to meet Gorbachev ...”
Hart’s chalk baton pointed in approval, and he turned to write: Head of State. “What else?” he demanded. “One more!”
People called out answers tentatively ... Hart’s eyes peered through the stage lights to locate the voice that had said “Defense.”
“Who said that? Defense—who was that? What’s your name?”
Students were embarrassed to name themselves in front of a crowd. The answer—Sandra McDowell—echoed back timidly. So while he wrote on the blackboard. Commander in Chief, Hart boomed out:
“VICE PRESIDENT McDOWELL SAYS DEFENSE! AND SHE’S RIGHT!”
Then they were laughing, and he had them ... as that answer led to military reform, a concept he’d helped to invent, a subject he’d worked on since 1978. It was a topic much misunderstood ... but not with Hart at the blackboard.
“Now, I want to ask another. Which of you brilliant people can tell me: What wins wars? ... What is the one essential element of combat that’s going to make the difference between victory and defeat? ...
“... SECRETARY OF DEFENSE GOLDSTEIN SAYS PEOPLE! Exactly right! ... Now, most of the generals and Defense Department bureaucrats would have said weapons. The whole defense debate in this country has been about weapons and spending—do we buy more, or do we buy less? But think about it ...” And he was on another dive back to Hart-fact, bearing down for a moment into the battle deployment of NATO forces, the folly of naval power based on thirteen gigantic aircraft carriers. ...
He’d turned out to be a hell of a teacher, or a preacher, after all. There was in his “chalk talk,” as he came to call it, the kind of detail that demystified the job, and that detail built back to the fundamental question—what the nation would require from its President.
“The economy of a country is like a house. ... What Reagan did—he put a coat of paint on, no scraping, nothing repaired—put a coat of paint on, put glass in the windows, and the house looked a lot better, for a while.”
Hart drew a house on his blackboard—too near the top of the board, and out of kilter. He drew like a child.
“But what he did that was worse—he did not repair the foundation! Now, what are the pillars of our national house’s foundation? They are: manufacturing—we’ve lost three million jobs!” (Hart now started to fill in the board with fat foundation pilings.)
“... Agriculture and energy, that’s anoth
er. ... Infrastructure—now what is that? That’s our roads and harbors, and public works, our sewer systems, transit systems, and bridges—there’s bridges falling down in this country in every state of the union! That’s how to put our people back to work! ...
“Now let’s look: what would happen with the HART BUDGET ...”
By this time, Hart’s voice had risen to a messianic contralto. He’d wave his budget and slap the air with his black-and-white brochure, and in those moments, he was riveting—and convincing: there was a better way ... this could be done! This was the optimism that wins elections. This was an effort to empower ... and it was without effect.
Because the underlying premise—the required leap of faith—was that they and he would do it ... and they’d all seen on TV, of course, that Hart couldn’t really do anything ... he was a flake, and a fuck-up. He was out there alone. What kind of candidacy was that?
Three nights before Super Tuesday, there was a J-J dinner in Raleigh, North Carolina, in a cinderblock shed about the size of a football field. It was an unprepossessing place to make a speech. Hundreds of people stood in long, noisy lines for chicken, iced tea, and shiny, gelatinous pecan pie. Wizened salads in soldierly ranks had sat out on tables since the afternoon.
Now, at 8:00 P.M., here was Al Gore, screaming about Working Men and Women. Gore discovered Working Men and Women after Dick Gephardt won Iowa. Actually, what Gore discovered was that phrase, which was rebounding off the concrete floor and cinderblock walls once every ninety seconds or so, whenever Al finished up another of his daddy’s ol’ country stories.
Vying with Gore’s grits-and-gravy scream was the din of people howdying, talking at the tables, the scraping of a thousand folding chairs on concrete. Hart was busily writing at the head table, head down.
“... changing and growing and learning, ladies and gentlemen!” Gore was wrapping up. He had two more events that would land him in Tampa that night. “One trillion dollars a year!... We can do it, ladies and gentlemen! I want you to dream with me!”
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