Gore Vidal

by Fred Kaplan

  Actually his mind was more on the general issues of the country than on “Pink Triangle and Yellow Star.” Whatever their attitude toward homosexuals, the neoconservatives’ influence on national politics was of greater importance. William Buckley now had good friends in the White House. Barry Goldwater’s values were alive and well in Washington, and his son, Barry Goldwater, Jr., was the likely Republican Party candidate for senator from California in 1982. Elected in 1980, Ronald Reagan had successfully advocated an expensive defense budget and minuscule support for social welfare. As Vidal observed national politics, he began to feel the stirring of his latent desire to hold elective office. His own time would run out soon on even the possibility of fulfilling that ambition. When he toured California in the late 1970s and in 1980, speaking to audiences at college campuses, he was astounded at how much name recognition he had and how many thousands of people lined up to hear his words. In as conservative a city as Santa Barbara, five thousand people paid to listen to him. That he could be a viable candidate in 1982 in California, where he had a home, began to seem possible.

  The obstacles, though, were formidable. To have a chance of being elected to the Senate he would need to have the Democratic Party nomination. His experience with the People’s Party in 1968 had demonstrated the odds against a third party’s having electoral success, though that had not prevented his donating $1,000 to the third-party candidacy of John Anderson in 1980. The Democratic nomination would not come cheaply. Two-term Governor Jerry Brown, the son of former governor Pat Brown, would be the candidate the party machine, weak as it was, would support. Vidal would be an outsider, with some friends within the Democratic ranks, particularly on the left; some of his Hollywood colleagues would support him; many of those who disapproved of or had fallen out with Jerry Brown would give his candidacy ballast; there would be votes for him in the gay and intellectual communities, though Brown had influence and strong supporters in both those constituencies; the generally disaffected might rally behind him, particularly those, like himself, who were disaffiliated from and found so little difference between both parties that they elevated not voting into a political statement. But to be competitive he would need to attract large numbers of ordinary Democrats, many of whom usually pulled the party lever automatically. That would cost money, though his estimate was that Brown’s unpopularity would allow him to make a credible run at a cost that he himself could afford to pay, about $300,000. If Vidal made it a point not to accept large contributions, he could make his campaign an exemplification of his belief that elections were preposterously expensive and therefore corrupt. He could attack the huge defense budget and advocate more funds for schools, effective gun-control laws, a stronger defense of civil liberties, the decriminalization of victimless crimes, a new constitutional convention to promote more direct democracy, and a fairer tax structure that would feature a 10- to 15-percent tax on all corporations. Brown, he felt, could be beaten, and even if he himself did not in the end gain the nomination, the opportunity to have a larger platform for his views began to be difficult to resist. The expense would hardly deplete his overall resources. He did, though, have two serious concerns. If he won the nomination, where would he get the money to pay for the general campaign against a well-financed Republican opponent? That cost would be immense. He would be dependent on the Democratic Party machine and on influence-buying fat-cat contributors from the very industries and corporations he would be denouncing, though he factored in that if Barry Goldwater, Jr., were the Republican nominee he would have a weak opponent. Then $1 million of his own money, he hypothesized, would put him in the Senate. That seemed a worthwhile expenditure. But if he actually were elected, what would his life be like? “Does one want to win?” he wrote to Judith Halfpenny, who was surprised to learn of his plans. “Ah, that’s a question…. You’re right, though, that if I go to the Senate, survive the six year term (age 57—63), I’ll be unable to write anything worth reading—be too old and raddled at the end to do much more than become a national trombone as the Italians say.”

  Did he actually want to give up his life as a writer? Probably not, though he would have to face that reality only if he won the election, which seemed less likely even to his friends and well-wishers than it did to him. Most thought his chances minuscule. He himself performed the enabling act of suspension of disbelief, which, combined with the attraction of having large audiences and being dramatically front and center as well as trying on, without necessarily ever having to wear, his grandfather’s senatorial suit, allowed him to commit himself in his own mind to giving it a try. Six years in the Senate would provide a prominent national platform for his views. Beginning in August 1980 he more and more frequently presented his “State of the Union” talk, an elaborate form of what was to become his campaign speech, to audiences around the state and sound bites from the speech to television audiences during his usual talk-show appearances. By January 1981 newspapers were reporting that “Gore Vidal, Critic of Voting, May Seek Office,” as the unfriendly Los Angeles Times put it. Max Palevsky, the wealthy Californian who had already made a career as a power broker, contributing large sums to Democratic candidates, and who no longer wanted to support Jerry Brown, began to push the possibility of Gore’s candidacy. Palevsky, on whom Norman Mailer had fallen at Lally Weymouth’s party in New York in 1977, volunteered to serve as campaign treasurer. Paul Ziffern, a prominent show-business attorney Gore had known for a long time, who had been and continued to be the most powerful behind-the-scenes Democrat in California, gave him encouragement and advice. Ziffern disliked Brown, who was his neighbor in Malibu. “Jerry had a house at that time—he was then with Linda Ronstadt—right down the beach from the Zifferns’ place in Malibu,” Jay Allan remembered, “and he would think nothing of coming right over the wall and into their house. So they trained their dog to attack him if he’d jump over the wall. Seriously. They didn’t like him.” Ziffern gave Vidal “advice and said he’d like to see him elected but he didn’t see a chance of it.” Palevsky’s call to the Los Angeles Times initiated the newspaper speculation about Vidal’s running for the senate.

  No, Vidal wrote to People magazine in February, “I have not ‘thrown my hat in the ring’ for the Democratic senatorial nomination in 1982. I am not a candidate. I am barely at the stage known as ‘seriously considering a race,’ which means, in English, where is the money going to come from?” The money, he had decided by summer 1981, would come from himself and from small contributions. “I am sauntering for the Senate,” he told Judith Halfpenny. “A couple of dozen speeches about the state (I can file as late as March 16). I attack the tax structure which favors the rich (who pay little or no tax) and the corporations (who now pay almost nothing at all) and I propose doing away with the graduated income tax. One would figure the amount needed for the next year’s budget and then raise, through taxes, the money needed with a flat 10—15% on the gross adjusted income of the corporations—more than enough to defend the free world and enrich Congress with, perhaps, the same tax for those earning more than 20,000—the rest would pay no Fed tax at all: they’re broke anyway. Also, cut the Pentagon by 25%—learn to think modestly of the US as simply another country in no way special except for its megalomania and its bad management of public affairs…. We shall see. In the winter, in a field of three, I was 10%. I’m now down to a mere 4% but that changes with the number of appearances. The press is thrilled I’m in the race: good copy. But one is constantly warned that no issues should ever be discussed, only personalities, polls, money raised. Presently, I eschew the first, ignore the second, and do nothing about the third. People are stunned when they hear I don’t want contributions yet.” By Halloween his speaking schedule had intensified. Early in 1982 the interviewer for San Diego Magazine, who found him catching his breath and losing weight at La Costa, remarked that, unlike most candidates for statewide office, he traveled without any retinue, often by himself. It made for a distinctive but unprofessional-looking campaig
n. “I’m now about to be raising $ for the senate and will seldom be out of the Gilded State,” he wrote to John Mitzel. On March 9, in Los Angeles, he filed for the Democratic nomination. Polls showed he was second, though a distant second, in a field of five. The Gore Vidal for U.S. Senate organization soon placed an advertisement in The New York Review of Books. “I don’t have to explain to you who I am or what I stand for as I take this occasion, in these familiar pages, to ask for help.”

  For the next ninety days he energetically, methodically devoted himself to a statewide campaign in Northern and Southern California, speaking at college and university campuses, at rallies in the major and many of the minor cities. His likely supporters were in Los Angeles and San Francisco, where he attended the inevitable fund-raisers, mainly small gatherings in handsome homes in Beverly Hills and Pacific Heights. His most enthusiastic supporters were on the campuses, where much of the filming of a documentary, Gore Vidal, The Man Who Said No, directed by Gary Conklin, was done. Some of the shots were so arty, indirect, or irrelevant that Vidal felt they may have been purposely double-edged. Headquarters were set up at the Outpost Drive house. There was no shortage of volunteers to stuff envelopes, answer telephones, and drive him to events. Hugh Guilbeau, a young volunteer in San Francisco, accompanied him to talks and made his Northern California arrangements. At Fresno he spoke to the Democratic statewide delegates, many of whom found his wit entertaining but his politics unrealistic. Modest contributions came from friends and supporters. Elizabeth Hardwick, Christopher Isherwood, John Hallowell, and Richard Poirier, among others, sent contributions; so too did most of Gore’s Hollywood friends. For the time being, money was a secondary issue. His own funds would carry him through the primary. There was a small budget for media advertisements. Saturation television exposure had not yet become a widespread campaign technique. Local radio and television covered statewide candidates, who usually scheduled appearances and press conferences in order to make the early-evening news. Questions frequently arose about whether Vidal was indeed a serious candidate, mainly because he seemed too entertaining to be a politician, too irreverent to be serious. His barbed wit encouraged some, who otherwise might have known better, to believe that he was against everything rather than for something. Jerry Brown, of course, declined to accept his challenge that they debate. The same polls that indicated Brown would lose in the general election to any of the Republican candidates showed he had a large lead over Vidal in the primary. The businessman/hairdresser Vidal Sassoon sent Gore—with a note that said, “This has to be worth 10,000 votes”—a copy of a San Francisco Chronicle cartoon that depicted two identical Gore Vidals, the first of whom says, “And I have 38% name recognition,” the second of whom is asked by a reporter, “How will that translate into votes, Mr. Sassoon?” Neither anti-Semitism nor homosexuality was an issue. In the Hollywood world, where Vidal had worked and played amiably with many Jews, his philo-Jewishness was taken for granted. “Norman Lear,” Vidal told Armistead Maupin—the San Francisco novelist with a cult following in the gay community, who interviewed him at length for California magazine—had loved “Pink Triangle and Yellow Star” and “had copies sent around.” It was, Vidal insisted, a political, not a sexual, document. When Maupin queried him about his sexuality, Vidal stuck to his usual line: it was a private matter; if there was any social significance to his running for the Senate, that was for others to comment on; and he and Howard were “old friends…. He’s lived various places, I’ve lived various places. We travel together, we travel separately.” When the actor Rock Hudson, an admirer, volunteered, with his companion, to work in his campaign, Jay Allen told Gore “that if I were you, I’d avoid that association. I’d avoid anything to do with Rock or his friend because they were such well-known homosexuals…. But he ignored my advice. But homosexuality never became an issue in that campaign. Let’s face it. There was too much whispering going on about whether or not Jerry was homosexual.”

  And Brown studiously ignored him. How can I reply to one-liners? he said to reporters, attempting to avoid talking about issues and to trivialize Vidal’s candidacy. A newspaper cartoon depicted Vidal behind a podium casting a fishing rod with a microphone at the end toward the mouth of Jerry Brown, represented as a sphinx decorated by signs that said, “Silence is Golden,” “A Closed Mouth Catches No Flies,” and “Mum’s the Word.” Finally, in late May, they appeared on the same program in a nondebate format, each giving a brief presentation and answering questions at the annual meeting of the American Editorial Cartoonists in San Francisco. There was a fine balance of humor and venom in the questions and answers, such as Gore’s references to the secretary of state as “Alexander the Great Haig,” Richard Nixon as “his satanic majesty,” and Jerry Brown as “Lord of the Flies.” Vidal publicly offered to give $25,000 to Brown’s favorite charity if he would debate the author on election eve. Both men seemed tired. For Brown the “fatigue factor” had set in long before, partly the result of his awareness that California voters in general were tired of him on, so to speak, an existential level. Vidal, who had failed to make significant inroads on Brown’s lead, had to deal with exhaustion and the reality that in the latest polls Brown had decisively pulled away from him. And both had been nervously looking over their shoulders, not so much at one another as at the Republican primary campaign. From the start the polls had shown that Brown would lose to either of the two major candidates—the initial leader, Barry Goldwater, Jr., and by a larger margin to Goldwater’s competitor, Mayor Pete Wilson of San Diego. At first Wilson seemed unlikely to over-take Goldwater in the primary.

  To everyone’s surprise, Goldwater had begun to fade by mid-May, partly because of revelations about his private life, including drug use, mostly because he was an inept campaigner. Suddenly the well-financed Wilson seemed certain to win the nomination. That meant, as the polls showed, certain defeat for either Vidal or Brown in the general election, though Brown would undoubtedly have more financial and party support. Vidal had alienated the main sources of money as a matter of principle. As soon as Wilson seemed the likely opponent, Vidal knew that he did not have a ghost of a chance in the general election. Still, he campaigned aggressively in the waning days of the campaign, though he instructed his treasurer to spend only the minimum necessary. Most of it was his own money. On June 4, primary-election day, the Los Angeles Times commented that “author Gore Vidal, witty and sardonic, promised a lively campaign, but it has turned languid.” The California Eye reported in its sophisticated election analysis that the Democratic Party exit-poll interviews made clear that Brown, “while very resourceful, suffers from a high number of negatives which led voters to vote against him rather than for Gore Vidal…. There is, based on these polls, a very strong belief that Brown could have been beaten in the primary with enough money, preparation and the right issues.” And the right opponent. Brown received 45 percent of the vote, Vidal 15. That night, in Brown’s victory speech, he featured prominently in his election platform the issues Vidal had stressed in the primary campaign. The speech sounded to Vidal as if it could have come out of his own mouth. In November, Brown was to lose decisively to Wilson. California and the American public had made a commitment to views other than Vidal’s or Brown’s. The day after the primary election Vidal was at a Westwood bookstore signing copies of his latest collection of essays, The Second American Revolution. The revolution itself had not and was not about to take place. Soon he was to write, in an essay called “Hollywood,” that “one morning last spring, I cast a vote for myself in the Hollywood hills; then I descended to the flats of Beverly Hills for a haircut at the barber shop in the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, where I found the Wise Hack…. ‘Why do you want to be governor of this schmattah state?’ When I said that I didn’t want to be governor (I was a candidate for the U.S. Senate) he nodded slyly. ‘That’s what I told people,’ he said, cryptic as always.”

  Ironic perspective provided some relief for the loss, though there was also the balan
cing pleasure of returning immediately to the literary life, one expression of which was his decision to attempt to rewrite as a full-length novel a script based on the life of Lincoln that he had first conceived in 1979 as a miniseries for television, a six-hour production that Norman Lear had enthusiastically agreed to produce and had sold to Fred Silverman, the head of NBC. He also had it in mind to do it as a stage play afterward. While watching the actor Tony Perkins, his friend from Chateau Marmont days, perform in a television version of Les Misérables, he had suddenly had the inspiration to do a dramatization of Lincoln’s life. Perkins would be perfect as the Great Emancipator. “Generally, I don’t care for dictators,” he wrote to Judith Halfpenny in 1979, “no matter how cute and all-American.” But “ideally, with a classic subject, and the Civil War is our Trojan War, one could put the whole thing onto film…. After all, that is exactly what the swan of Avon was doing” in his history plays. Through much of 1979 and 1980, he renewed and increased his familiarity with Lincoln and the Civil War, acknowledging that “the best analysis of Lincoln is Wilson’s in Patriotic Gore.” Memories of his grandparents’ comments on the war from their Southern perspective gave personal depth to his reading. He detested slavery, oppression of every sort. But he wondered if it would not have been better for the North to have let the South go. Lincoln’s vision of an all-powerful single nation had been realized at a heavy price. “L. is our Bismarck, and that’s how I plan to show him.”