by John Kerry
By 1981, I had been back in Massachusetts for almost ten years, ever since the loss in the Fifth Congressional District. I was starting to miss politics again. Michael Dukakis was gearing up to run for governor—but he first had to challenge the incumbent Democrat, Ed King. It seemed like a good time to try to reenter electoral politics. I thought serving as lieutenant governor would be a good way to contribute and also to learn the ropes the right way—paying dues, not rushing in as I had before.
Shortly after I started to nose around, using the law office as my base of operations, a red-haired young kid from Dorchester walked into my office and told me he wanted to work for me. This young self-starter, who knew exactly what he wanted to do, when and for whom, was named Michael Whouley. Little did I know that politics would bring us back together over a lifetime, and that he would become one of the great organizers of a generation.
The race for lieutenant governor shaped up to be a tough, hard-fought primary with several candidates. Normally, the job of lieutenant governor could be written off. I sometimes told the story of Calvin Coolidge, the thirtieth president of the United States, who had earlier been the lieutenant governor of Massachusetts. He was at a dinner party when the woman sitting next to him asked what he did. “I’m lieutenant governor of the state,” he said in the dry clip that characterized his speech. She responded, “Oh, that’s wonderful! Tell me all about the job.” He didn’t miss a beat and replied, “I just did.” But to be number two in Massachusetts was still enticing, especially under Dukakis.
In Massachusetts, politics is a passion fed by ideology and idealism. It’s serious business: intense, demanding and nonstop. Each of the candidates in the donnybrook for lieutenant governor went all out. I barely made the 15 percent at the state convention required to get my name on the primary ballot, but once I did, it was a sprint to primary day in September.
The year 1981 was consumed by the campaign. It was also consumed by a growing tension in my marriage. Julia and I had been on cruise control for a while. The experience of total immersion in the anti-war effort, then the race for Congress, then law school, then the move, then a new job, then more political decision-making—all combined to make us drift apart. I take the lion’s share of blame for this and always have. No matter where the discussions led—and there were lots of discussions, including with professional intervention—the damage was done. Julia was suffering from depression and I was, at first, sadly oblivious. She told me about it, but things got worse before I really understood. She had changed. She had come to detest public life, with its perceptible insincerities and incessant demands. There was no way to find happiness sharing her life and family with politics. In the end, this wonderful relationship—which had started at Yale and carried through Vietnam and the journey of twelve years of marriage—was broken. In midsummer of 1982, we agreed to separate after the election was over.
It was an agonizing decision. I knew our marriage was in trouble. Still, I hated beyond hate the idea of not tucking my kids into bed and being with them at home, no matter how much public life could get in the way of that ideal. I also hated the thought of missing Christmas or sharing it in some lawyer-agreed-upon schedule. I was filled with a sense of failure. It was harder than hell to get out of bed, go out and campaign, put a smile on, when you had just finished a deeply emotional, tugging argument. There were times when I felt like crawling into the fetal position and going into a great sleep like the reporter in All the King’s Men. The great sleep—sometimes I thought maybe I’d wake up out of the nightmare to find the great sleep resulted in the great repair. Not to be. So I entered this strange, dual world—one I lived in, campaigning on automatic, and only half lived in at home. It required all the focus I could summon.
I won the September primary, and on November 2, 1982, Michael Dukakis and I were elected together. I walked into his office shortly thereafter and told him Julia and I were separating. It was the kind of conversation I never anticipated having with the governor as his new lieutenant.
We were inaugurated in January 1983. It didn’t take long for me to conclude that Michael was probably going to run for president in due time. It wasn’t that he told me, but certain decisions he made about which duties would be performed by whom made it abundantly clear—or so I thought. One of the ideas I had put forward in the primary was the creation of a crime council that would unite all the law enforcement agencies by holding frequent meetings to coordinate our anti-crime efforts. After I won the primary, Michael agreed that I would chair the crime council, which is what I wanted to do; but very soon after the inauguration, I was called upstairs to meet with him and learned that he had decided to chair the council. When he told me and I reminded him of our earlier discussion, he acknowledged the change, but then said, “I need to do this.” Whether justified, I immediately interpreted the “need” to be the imperative to build a strong law enforcement profile. This was entirely his right and it was understandable why he would do it, but I left that meeting with a great lesson in the nature of lieutenant governors. You don’t live on your own politically in that job—not if you wish to have any job to do. You live with the blessing, or lack thereof, of the governor and his or her team. In principle, I knew that getting into the race, but the reality had an altogether different—and personal—impact.
In fact, Michael was a terrific governor and a great person to work with. He treated me throughout with decency and friendship. He brought intellect and integrity to the job and had a sense of public responsibility as deep as anyone I have ever met. My own father, who had never been involved at the grassroots level in politics, without even talking with me, had been one of Michael’s early delegates to his first state conventions.
As competent as Michael was, at times he could frustrate everyone with his insistence on doing something strictly by the book. He would never bend and everyone knew it. On one occasion, we were headed up to Concord, New Hampshire, for the funeral of Governor Hugh Gallen. By this time Michael’s presidential ambitions were publicly known. He had been asked to deliver one of the eulogies at the statehouse service. It was to be nationally televised—therefore an important moment for Michael on the national stage.
Michael and Kitty, the state’s First Lady, rode up with me to New Hampshire. They were in the back seat of my station wagon. We started out late, but within minutes of hitting Interstate 93 from Boston to Concord, Michael issued an edict to my driver, Chris Greeley: “Not over 60 mph. . . .” Chris and I looked at each other and knew we were never going to have the governor there on time. The minutes were ticking away, and every time Chris would inch above 60 mph, Michael would remind him: “Not over 60.” Finally, as we neared the New Hampshire border, when it was obvious we were dangerously late, I turned to Michael and basically said I was calling the New Hampshire State Police to get an escort or he would miss the funeral. Michael didn’t say anything. Meanwhile, Kitty was lighting yet another cigarette and seemed to be on my side. The New Hampshire State Police picked us up at the tollbooths, and we started following them at breakneck speed, pushing our Buick diesel engine to the absolute limit. I looked back to see Michael clearly unhappy but at least no longer fixated on the speed limit. We arrived at the statehouse, engine smoking, late but not so late that the governor missed speaking.
Michael very graciously asked his colleague governors if they would mind his lieutenant governor chairing a subcommittee of the National Governors Association. Governor John Sununu of New Hampshire and Governor Dick Celeste of Ohio agreed. I may well be the only lieutenant governor who has done so, but thanks to Michael’s delegated authority, I chaired the NGA’s committee on acid rain. John Sununu and Dick Celeste became key partners in developing an approach resulting in a market-based cap-and-trade system to deal with sulfur—the major emission of coal-burning power plants killing our lakes and streams. Here was this market-based method of reining in damaging emissions, dreamed up in several conservative think tanks, which we adopted and which later bec
ame federal law. It successfully eliminated the problem of acid rain.
My work on acid rain soon led me into a race for the U.S. Senate long before I might have considered it. In early 1983, I was on a fact-finding mission about atmospheric pollution for the NGA. I traveled first to Norway and Sweden to witness and try to understand what was happening to the lakes and rivers of Scandinavia. There I saw evidence of extraordinary damage from the high concentrations of sulfur in the rain. Lakes that had once teemed with fish were now completely dead. From the Scandinavian countries, I traveled to Germany’s famous Black Forest. It was beautiful but shocking. The ranger who escorted me into the forest pointed out frightening levels of disease in the trees.
That night I was sound asleep in my hotel when the phone rang. It was my second 3:00 a.m. phone call in politics. The voice at the other end belonged to Ron Rosenblith, one of my closest, most valued political advisors. He said, “Are you sitting down?” I laughed and said, “No—I’m lying down. I was sound asleep.” He apologized for waking me but immediately explained the reason for the call: Paul Tsongas had just announced he was not going to run for reelection to the U.S. Senate because he had cancer. I was stunned. He was only a few years older than me and he was in his first term. We had been through my battle and his in Lowell. Ron went on to say that two congressmen, Ed Markey and Jimmy Shannon, as well as Speaker of the Massachusetts House David Bartley had already announced they were in. Ron said I had about forty-eight hours to decide whether I was going to contest for this seat. I was floored but wide-awake.
There was no way I was going to decide in forty-eight hours. To the frustration of my team and those who wanted me to run, I said I would complete the trip and we would sit down when I got back to make a rational decision. Moreover, I clearly had a first stop—with the governor. I had been lieutenant governor for only one year, and if I ran, I’d need to start running full-time. I had to get a handle on my own feelings, then determine the politics.
Immediately on my return to Boston I was inundated with advice. The principal tension was the short span of time I had served as lieutenant governor versus my lifelong concern with issues of war and peace, as well as global environmental matters. I had always known what I wanted to do but I was chastened by my own impatience in 1972. I knew that if I ran and failed now, that would essentially be it for elective office. It was gut-check time. No one could make this decision for me.
I spent time with myself—just stood back, prayed for guidance and tried to plumb for what would make me comfortable with my decision. In the end, I was more than ready to go. It was 1983. Ronald Reagan was president. The war in Central America was raging. Drugs were rampant. President Reagan had come to office with a determination to significantly increase the defense budget during difficult economic times in the United States. Russia and the United States had absurd numbers of nuclear weapons pointed at each other.
In the first years of the administration there had been considerable rhetoric about potential use of nuclear weapons. At one point, Secretary of State Alexander Haig actually talked about the possibility of firing a “nuclear warning shot” in Europe. One of Reagan’s National Security Council team members asserted that there was a 40 percent chance of nuclear war, and the president himself had said at an October 1981 press conference that it was his opinion tactical nuclear weapons could be employed on certain battlefields without leading to an all-out nuclear war. There was talk and concern about the direction of the administration at that moment. Cold War proxy battles in El Salvador and neighboring Nicaragua, which had undergone a left-wing coup, flashed warning signs that the Reagan administration could take us into another quagmire.
Issues of war and peace were very much back on the front burner, the issues that had brought me into politics more than a decade before. I just couldn’t stomach sitting on the sidelines of a race that could potentially put me in a position to help decide such important issues. I also knew that this might be the only chance in my generation to run for the Senate, because it was sure as hell certain Ted Kennedy wasn’t going to vacate his seat. Something told me to run. Was I brimming with confidence that I would win no matter what? Absolutely not. Was I brimming with confidence at my ability to make this work because it was the right thing to do? Undeniably. I had to take the leap if I wanted to be involved with the issues that most motivated me. Suddenly, I was back out there asking the voters of Massachusetts to send me to Washington.
The fight for the nomination would be tough. Ed Markey and Jim Shannon were especially able competitors. But Markey, who is very smart, never found his stride and decided to run for reelection to the House instead. Shannon and I dueled to differentiate ourselves from each other. Our policy positions were almost inseparable. But in a debate late in the campaign, days before the primary, Jim inadvertently highlighted a real difference between us. I had brought up Jim’s change of heart on one of Reagan’s proposed military increases. Jim shot back—oddly—that people can change their mind and said that, for example, by the standard I’d set out, if I’d really been opposed to Vietnam, I shouldn’t have gone to the war. It was strange. I didn’t think much of it in the moment. But our campaign phones started ringing off the hook. Veterans were calling in from all over the state, angry that, to their ears, Shannon had called them stupid: they felt he had questioned their character by impugning the right of veterans to speak their conscience, right or wrong. I fired back at Shannon over the issue in the very next debate and demanded he apologize. “John, that dog won’t hunt,” he replied. Veterans booed Jim, and a group of vets followed him everywhere he went the next few days, drowning out his message. They called themselves “the Doghunters.” I won the primary, thanks to hard work and thanks to each of them. It was on to the general election.
My opponent was a self-funded businessman named Ray Shamie—a former John Birch Society conservative who lost to Ted Kennedy in 1982 and then won the Republican nomination against the more moderate Rockefeller Republican Elliot Richardson at the state convention. Shamie was out of touch with Massachusetts, but I took nothing for granted. I remembered the lesson of Lowell in 1972; I knew that certain social conservatives could play the wedge issues and ignite their bases of support. Reagan was cruising to a landslide reelection, and he was pulling Massachusetts into the Republican column again. I was not about to repeat what had happened the last time I’d been on the under ticket of a presidential ballot. A freshman congressman named John S. McCain parachuted into the state for a day to rally veterans for Shamie. He campaigned in South Boston. I didn’t meet him or know him—but I knew that this former POW could draw a crowd. I worked harder to organize veterans on our side, to make sure that the state knew me, not a cardboard cutout. It worked. On election night, I defied the Reagan tide that swept Massachusetts. Running as a “warrior for peace,” I was going to be a U.S. senator.
CHAPTER 7
The Old Senate
“GEORGE BUSH COULDN’T sell pussy on a troop train!”
These were the first words of senatorial conversation I heard on the floor of the world’s greatest deliberative body on January 3, 1985. I don’t think it was a quote from the Federalist Papers.
It happened just after Ted Kennedy walked me onto the floor for the first time and introduced me to three or four colleagues engrossed in conversation about something the Reagan administration was trying to push through Congress. I’m not sure what I expected, but it certainly wasn’t what I heard.
Much about becoming a U.S. senator tended toward the surreal. Here I was, just forty-one years old, ninety-ninth in seniority—I would have been hundredth (dead last) had Paul Tsongas not generously offered to resign a day early so Governor Dukakis could swear me in before I departed Boston, thereby giving me the tiniest edge in an institution built on longevity. I had big shoes to fill. Cancer had cut Paul’s Senate service short, but in just six years he’d built a reputation for a willingness to break with liberal orthodoxy on occasion and as a smart and crea
tive wonk on issues from entitlements to deficits.
Before Paul Tsongas from Lowell had served, there had been Ed Brooke, one of the last remaining African American Republicans from New England, a liberal, the first in his party to demand Nixon’s resignation in 1973. Stretching back before both Paul and Ed (and now me) was a veritable anthology of names seemingly ripped from the membership directory of the Daughters of the American Revolution or the Mayflower Society: Federalists and Whigs, then Republicans and the occasional Democrat, with names like Strong, Sedgwick, Dexter, Foster, Pickering, Rockwell, Hoar, Crane, Coolidge, Lodge and Saltonstall. I suppose, with my patchwork of heritage, I had a foot in both worlds, not entirely the product of either.
I happily accepted some small measure of weight from the history preceding me. It reflected the real story of America. I was proud to now share in it. I’d previously read a great story about then freshman senator Harry S. Truman sitting in the back of the Senate, ninety-ninth in seniority, same as me, writing letters home to his mother in Missouri. He described how he sat there one night and listened to the great debates of the day. He wrote that he could almost hear the voices of giants like Daniel Webster, and being impressed, he would look at his colleagues, pinch himself and ask, “How the hell did I get here?” Months went by. Again, he wrote to his mother: “It’s late at night in the Senate and once again I can hear the voices of the Senate giants from years past. I look out at my colleagues and I pinch myself and ask, ‘How the hell did they get here?’ ” I always laugh at that story, but there’s some hidden wisdom in it too, because it sums up the hypothetical expectations and real-life contradictions in the Senate, as well as the lessons you can learn from both of them.