by John Kerry
Press, pundits and nervous Democrats were calling for a campaign purge. My staff had been loyal and committed. The bed-wetting and hand-wringing by the pundits weren’t fair to them.
I was as furious as anyone, more so than anyone, about the damage that had been done to us. Blowing up the campaign wasn’t going to fix it. The calls for resignations and firings were sophomoric. Weren’t the people they said I should now fire the same people who had been hailed as heroes when we were winning Iowa and New Hampshire against all odds? Weren’t the new geniuses in the Bush operation the same ones who had overseen a drop in the incumbent president’s approval ratings from historic post-9/11 highs to trailing me after my convention in July? What an unproductive and unforgiving ride in the barrel it can be for staff who work long hours with little reward.
We were headed into Labor Day and President Clinton knew as well as anyone that people were starting to write off our campaign. After forty-five minutes or so, I hung up the phone with President Clinton. His advice had been freewheeling and candid. Some resonated, some didn’t. I was touched that the night before a serious heart procedure, he cared enough to talk at all.
I knew I had to get back on offense in this race or I was finished. I called an old friend from politics: Ron Rosenblith. Ron was always there when times were difficult. He had believed in my potential political resurgence after I’d lost in 1972. He saw that I could win in 1982 and 1984, saddled up again in 1996, and was back now for a campaign that had hit turbulence.
Ron was matter-of-fact in his analysis of the race. “You have to change the dynamic, and you’ve got fifty-four days to change the dynamic,” he said. “You need to turn the boat into the shore.” Ron’s shorthand reflected the words of someone who really knew me and my history.
There would be no bigger or more consequential opportunity to do that than in the presidential and vice presidential debates less than one month away, the few opportunities a country ever gets, without the filter of the media, to measure the candidates side by side.
September 30 at the University of Miami became our campaign’s shot at redemption: I had to win the first debate and win it handily.
I was itching for that moment to stand on a stage on live television, in front of tens of millions of Americans, and speak for myself directly to the country.
But first I had to prepare.
In campaigns, you’re always fighting the drawing down of daylight, you never get back the time you lose. The pressure to schedule every minute becomes intense in the last weeks of a race. But you can easily lose track of the big picture that way too. We simply needed to invest time in preparing for the debates, even as we kept up a grueling pace in September. The time was costly, but I could never get back the ninety minutes of each debate: it was do-or-die. I was not going to sacrifice preparation for squeezing in one or two extra stops on the trail.
On the campaign plane for two weeks, I held debate prep sessions, straining to hear over the hum of the engines. Ron Klain managed the prep process, Bob Shrum provided expert advice on the back-and-forth. But I knew the real work would come when we stopped the campaign for five full days of preparation off the trail.
A week before the debate in Florida, we set off for Spring Green, Wisconsin, and a tucked-away treasure of a retreat site amid the green hills forty miles outside Madison: the House on the Rock resort, a vacation destination that was largely vacant after Labor Day.
The air was turning a little cooler, but the leaves weren’t yet changing colors. It felt like what I’d known at home in Massachusetts: political weather, campaign weather.
The campaign headquarters had cleverly chosen to schedule our debate camp in a swing state, so we’d benefit from daily media coverage in a relevant media market. Whatever I did—a quick press conference, or even heading into town for ice cream—was treated as a news event.
But the real event was happening far away from any cameras. Just a few years before the campaign, Brad Pitt had starred in the movie Fight Club, which made famous a line that my young campaign team often quoted: “the first rule of fight club is never talk about fight club.” I felt the same way about debate preparation. I had no tolerance for the temptation of some political operatives to leak debate strategy. Tipping your hand to your opponent isn’t just undisciplined; it’s a great way to lose before you’ve even shown up. It also turns off voters—if everything’s a game, if it’s all theater, no wonder people think politicians offer precious little relevant to their lives.
So we practiced each day, bright and early, beneath the tin roof and iron beams of an air-conditioned barn in a secluded corner of the property, where a perfect copy of the actual presidential debate set had been assembled, replete with matching insignia and exact replicas of the podiums President Bush and I would be using in Florida.
If the practice stage had been painfully replicated, the debate format had been meticulously negotiated. Debate negotiations are informed by each candidate’s idiosyncrasies, but also by immediate history. Legend had it that four years before, when Al Gore had been the nominee, the Gore team came in with a long list of demands, everything from the temperature of the studio (they feared a Nixon-Kennedy 1960 moment of sweaty contrast) to the length of the segments and the division among topics. The Bush team, represented by former secretary of state James Baker, had just three demands, but they were committed to fighting for them. It ended up an easy trade: Baker happily gave Gore his dozen-plus demands in return for the three that really mattered to Bush.
Come 2004, we knew that the format was important, but the most critical issue for us was more fundamental: We wanted three debates. President Bush’s team wanted just one. He was an incumbent wartime president and they wanted him to bask in the glow of the office instead of looking like a candidate. They also knew that the more often Bush was exposed to questions, the more room there was for error. They weren’t going to let me back into the race; I’d have to maximize my opportunity.
The tables were turned from 2000. The White House team came in with a long list of demands. Remembering the way Al Gore had invaded then governor Bush’s personal space in the 2000 debate in Boston, the Bush team requested that neither one of us could step out from behind our lectern. Remembering my history in the eight Lincoln-Douglas-style Kerry-Weld debates, they requested that we be able to ask only rhetorical questions, not questions explicitly directed to the other candidate. They had specific demands about how far apart the podiums would be. They had specific camera angles they deemed acceptable and unacceptable. Most of all, in a tactic designed to take advantage of any senatorial tendencies toward long-windedness, they requested strict time limits: one-minute answers, thirty-second follow-ups, and if we spoke for too long, a light would start flashing and a buzzer would sound for all to hear.
I was represented in debate negotiations by the Washington lawyer Vernon Jordan, a legendary figure in the Democratic Party. Vernon stared across the table at the Bush team, looked down at their long list of demands. The representatives from the presidential debate commission suggested that the two sides take a week to review each other’s offers and make counterproposals. Vernon seized the initiative: “No need for counterproposals, we can strike a deal today—we’re fine with the Bush campaign’s many requests as long as we have three debates.” The White House team was stunned. They had no choice but to accept the terms.
I had to chuckle hearing the details. I had no intention of invading Bush’s personal space. That was hardly a concession. I didn’t care how far apart our podiums would be. I didn’t think asking questions of an incumbent president was likely to make me look good; in fact I thought it could come across as petulant or arrogant. So that wasn’t a concession either.
As for the flashing red lights and the buzzers? Well, that’s why God made debate prep.
Debate camp in rural Wisconsin felt comically similar: we were away from the glare of the media and the crowds. A crisp uphill hike to the barn each morning got my blood
flowing, and then I went straight to work through drill after drill: lightning rounds, practice sessions, mastering the lights and the buzzers so my answers stayed short.
Ron Klain and Bob Shrum captained the prep process. Shrum sat in the front row taking notes, chomping on nicotine gum that he’d stick to the top of his coffee cup when he was done, his foot nervously tapping on the floor. Ron was calm and orderly. He kept meticulous notes, demanded real-time research from a gaggle of staffers who seemed to rush in and out by his desk constantly, anticipated any curveballs, and as mock moderator he kept the process moving.
Each night, at the exact hour at which the real debate would occur, we would dim the lights of the barn and rehearse a mock debate, start to finish, as if it were the real deal.
My sparring partner onstage was Greg Craig, my friend, a longtime Kennedy staffer and a Washington lawyer, who dutifully played President Bush. Greg had memorized every Bushism he could find, ripped from transcripts of the president’s rallies and interviews.
As the last day of prep ended and we sat on the edge of the stage drinking ice-cold Leinenkugel’s beers, Greg looked at me wearily and asked how he had done as Bush.
“I don’t like you very much right now,” I said. “So I guess that means you did a hell of a job.”
It was a four-and-a-half-hour flight from Madison to Miami. We arrived in time to get a good night’s sleep.
Debate days are among the quietest the candidate ever experiences, eerily so. Almost all the staff disappears early in the morning to do television and radio interviews all day long at the debate site, anything to help fill in the blocks of cable coverage. There’s a surreal location set up by the media called “Spin Alley,” where political operatives from both parties swing through like celebrities and offer their canned predictions and deliver their side of the story. Largely it’s a game of managing expectations, puffing up the other side’s debate skill while lowering expectations on your side. The Bush people were famous for doing this, shameless even. In 2000, they’d convinced the media that if Governor Bush managed to utter a coherent phrase against Vice President Gore, the master debater, then it was a big victory. It’s hucksterism at its finest, and you just have to laugh. Of course, it’s all covered breathlessly by cable news, as if there was anything unexpected that either campaign would say on a day like that.
As for me, after a leisurely morning with Teresa, and generous calls from my brother and sisters wishing me luck, I made the mistake of turning on the television. CNN’s chyron announced, “Bush campaign to go for kill shot in first debate.”
My competitive instincts didn’t need much of a jolt, but this would certainly do. The Bush campaign had demanded that the national security debate lead off the trio of debates. It was the topic they considered the president’s strong suit. Now, with the incumbent pulling away in the polls, someone on their team had apparently gotten cocky and defied the usual expectations game. “We’ll see, gentlemen,” I said as I sat down to play a few hands of Hearts with Marvin Nicholson and Setti Warren at the hotel.
The motorcade moved quickly to the University of Miami campus in Coral Gables, past cheering Kerry-Edwards supporters waving signs and booing Bush-Cheney supporters delivering one-fingered salutes. Secret Service whisked me, Teresa and Alexandra to my hold room. We were together as a family in a moment few get to experience, an unlikely moment. Vanessa joined by phone: “Kick his butt, Dad,” Nessie encouraged. But soon I was standing there in the green room alone: the families were seated in the audience. In the solitude, I whispered a prayer, not for victory, but for the hope that I would keep faith with who I was and with what had brought me to this unlikely point in my life.
As I fidgeted with my tie, Cam Kerry and David Thorne popped into the room. It seemed only fitting. We’d traveled a lot of miles together. Cam had been through every campaign with me since 1970. “Have fun out there,” he said. David and I had been through it all: college, Vietnam, the anti-war movement, my years in the political wilderness before statewide office beckoned again, the loss of friends and parents. David was the rarest kind of friend on this planet: How many people are still as close as brothers with a former brother-in-law?
“How ya feeling, Johnny?”
“We’ll know soon, Davey.” I smiled.
“You’ll get him. You know these guys. You know how to do this, man.”
There was a knock on the door. It was time to go.
An advance staffer led me down a series of hallways to the wings of a stage, curtained off. Across the way, on the opposite wing of the stage, looking straight ahead, was President George W. Bush. We were doing the exact same exercise at the exact same time. We were like two bulls waiting for the wranglers to pull the chute.
It dawned on me that except for a couple of group Senate meetings here and there, and an occasional handshake in passing at the State of the Union, the next ninety minutes would be far and away the most time I’d ever spent in close proximity to Bush.
What a strange phenomenon in our democracy that two people who went to the same college a couple of years apart can end up running against each other for the highest office in the country, campaign for almost a full year, and not really know each other. Friends insisted I’d had an impassioned conversation with Bush about civil rights in the dining hall my senior year, but I had no memory of it, and I don’t think Bush did either.
But now it was time to live in the moment instead of trying to remember an elusive one. The lights flashed. It was time to debate.
Ninety minutes rushed by like ninety seconds.
The president and I agreed on a big question for the most powerful country on earth: that the single greatest danger we faced was the risk that nuclear weapons could fall into the hands of extremists. It was a rare but important moment of common ground on an issue that should unite serious people across the ideological spectrum.
But the evening was defined by differences and disagreements. If the Bush campaign believed national security would be the blade on which they cut me to pieces that night, they were sorely mistaken.
I don’t think the president was ready to debate someone who challenged him on issues where he was used to hearing only applause and agreement. His smile turned to a smirk and soon a scowl when I went straight at the heart of his entire case for reelection: that he’d been strong in waging the war on terror.
Wrong, I argued: the president had squandered the goodwill that had come to us after 9/11, pushed away our allies and actually botched the war on terror. Osama bin Laden had murdered thousands of Americans. He’d killed friends of mine from Boston. He should have been rotting in a grave or in a solitary prison cell. I took the fight right at the president.
“Unfortunately, he escaped in the mountains of Tora Bora. We had him surrounded. But we didn’t use American forces—the best trained in the world—to go kill him. The president relied on Afghan warlords—and he outsourced that job too. That’s wrong.” Bush scowled. The president was very effective at going on the attack. He had an easy manner coupled with a lighthearted delivery that allowed him to cut you without seeming mean. Bush went after my position on Iraq hard, mocking my now well-recorded comment about voting on the $87 billion supplemental funding bill. But I was ready.
“I made a mistake in how I talked about the war,” I said. “But the president made a mistake in invading Iraq.” I paused for a beat. “Which is worse?” I knew I got him when I saw the unmistakable grimace on his face as he reached for his pen and frantically took notes.
President Bush looked stunned and perturbed, and he appealed to the moderator, Jim Lehrer, in exasperation. “But the enemy attacked us, Jim,” he said, and continued to defend the decision to go to war almost alone in Iraq before finishing the job in Afghanistan. I wondered if I’d heard him correctly: Had he really conflated Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein?
I pounced: “The president just said something extraordinarily revealing, and frankly very important in this debate .
. . he just said the enemy attacked us. Saddam Hussein didn’t attack us. Osama bin Laden attacked us. Al-Qaeda attacked us.”
Bush frowned. “I know who attacked us,” he replied.
It was amazing just how much of what Greg Craig had rehearsed actually came out of President Bush’s mouth and how many of his answers were either too short or went right through the buzzers his own team had insisted on installing.
I walked off the stage confident, but I didn’t know if my performance could resuscitate our campaign. The instant polls that night and the next morning made it clear we had earned our second chance in this contest. I’d won the debate convincingly. Meanwhile, chatter began to focus on a curious bulge in the president’s suit jacket, as commentators speculated that he had hidden a transmitter back there to convey tips and lines to use in the debate. “If that’s the case, we hope he wears a radio next time too!” quipped Bob Shrum.
The morning after the debate, we were bleary-eyed but feeling good. I told Shrum and Klain we had to be just as sharp in the next two debates as we had been last night. I assured them that Bush would raise his game as well. Teresa was off to campaign for me in Pennsylvania. Everyone was heading their separate ways, returning to the campaign trail: I was off to another stop in Florida before heading to the Midwest, all the more important to capitalize on the momentum of the night before. David Thorne was to join me on the flight.
As we walked out of the hotel to the motorcade, out of the corner of my eye I spotted someone waving, and clearly concerned—just outside the security perimeter. But it wasn’t just “someone”: it was my daughter Alex. Something was wrong. You never forget that look on your child’s face, whether she’s three years old or thirty. After I told my detail, Alex was able to run up to me and her uncle David. She had to talk. She climbed in the limo with us and revealed a terrible secret: Vanessa had just called her with the news that Julia’s cancer had come back in full force throughout her body. The early sense of her personal victory over this curse, as a result of the first round of treatment, was instantly wiped away and replaced by a sense of dread. My God. Alex looked so much like her mother. In the privacy of the limo, as it sped toward the airport, the three of us shared our pain and shock.