Love & War

by James Carville

  Once we decided to turn our office frustrations into physical fitness, it occurred to us that Mrs. Bush had a trainer, the preternaturally toned cardio goddess Trish, who came every day to the White House to work out with her. In fact, she’d moved up from Texas with the Bushes, so we figured she might be looking for more to do.

  We tried an after-office-hours kind of thing, but it didn’t work. Too hard to coordinate, and at the end of the day, we were too wiped out. So we tried midday, lunch hour workouts together, doing lunges down the hall in the OEOB and running up and down the long circular marble staircases in our work clothes and pantyhose and gym shoes. But it wound up being kind of dangerous, not to mention all the mean looks and slammed doors we got from our distracted colleagues who were working and the sweaty clothes we had to wear the rest of the afternoon.

  That’s when we decided to pick an hour, three times a week, and do a full-fledged workout in the senior staff gym in the OEOB, changing into gym clothes and doing it right. Obviously, there were days we cut it short or abandoned it totally. But we often got in a full hour of strength and cardio—lots of weights, lots of endurance, really working the machines and finishing up with some cool-down yoga stretches—then we took a slam-bam shower. If we ran out of time, we just splashed water on the critical areas, what my mom called a “futsky bath,” and then we’d run back to our offices. Refreshed, strong, and guilt-free about the extra LUNA bar that was our lunch.

  We followed basic gym etiquette. You didn’t talk to your fellow gym rats unless they wanted to talk. But as our commitment increased and our workouts became consistent, our group signed up for a gym hour when we’d be alone; and while we were working out, we had fun and even laughed—a rare occurrence at the White House. Unlike a campaign, it’s a much more serious environment. But in the gym with my gal pals, we guffawed, gossiped, got our endorphins going. We’d go back to our offices feeling renewed at the cellular level.

  And we started looking better too—without dieting, which we’d all been compelled to constantly do just to compensate for the chair time and its less than enchanting effect on our behinds. Trish was violently antidiet (easy for a twenty-something who weighs eighty pounds soaking wet) and would regularly admonish us forty-somethings whose use of spandex was the only thing keeping all the loose flesh from flapping in a strong breeze: “Forget all of that dieting. Just follow this exercise routine for six weeks and I guarantee you’ll lose inches. Your clothes are going to fit better.”

  And she was right. Trish worked us so hard that we couldn’t even sit down to go to the bathroom because our quads hurt so bad; we couldn’t raise our hands to get attention in the meetings dominated by men because our triceps were paralyzed in pain. I mean, she killed us. It was boot camp. Just when we were about to give into the pain, we were all wearing clothes that hadn’t fit in forever—able to sliver into frocks that had been reduced to an almost permanent status in the skinny section of our closets, quite separate from the bloat-days section and the flat-out-fat sections.

  Overall, of course, I was still basically a mess—with ever-present one-inch roots belying my attempt to appear devoid of ever-increasing gray streaks and a makeup regime that consisted solely of ChapStick—but the difference was, I felt really good. And when you feel good, you look better and work better. It’s true. It wasn’t a vanity thing. It was a sanity thing.

  An equally unexpected but more important by-product was how much we accomplished workwise while we were lifting weights and running on the treadmill. What started out as a reprieve and relief from work turned into our most productive and clearheaded hours. We shared information and ideas. We saw ways to help each other solve problems and think through things, and developed economies of scale and divisions of labor strategies.

  We got to know each other better too. Karen’s the most amazing, talented, faithful person I’ve ever worked with. She taught me by her example how to apply the principles and values of faith to one’s work. And despite a schedule from hell, she always took time for reflection and prayer and gratitude.

  I didn’t know Margaret Spellings when we started, but it turned out we were basically the same person (except she is a natural blond). And I loved Condi Rice, always stately in the gym or even with sponge rollers in her hair, which we shared as occasional bunkmates at Camp David after 9/11. Despite our girl chitchat and attempts at normalcy, post-9/11 Camp David was hardly a gals’ sleepover kind of thing.

  One day, our private White House boot camp in the gym was interrupted by a call to an emergency meeting, aka “an uncalled meeting” in the West Wing. So we ran, sweaty in our workout duds, from the OEOB across the hot parking lot and up the stairs to the West Wing Oval Office, which I’m proud to say we could do now without panting and wheezing. An inviolate POTUS 43 law was being on time to meetings, even ones you didn’t know about—he demanded punctuality in all things, small and large—so we arrived in our running shoes and weightlifting gloves.

  The president, who had a wonderful habit of siding with the women in the morning staff meetings, glanced up and quickly said, in his droll Texas deadpan, “Hey, it’s the chicks with mitts. Glad you could make it!” That got a big laugh.

  In meetings after that, he’d sometimes say to us, “Flex!” or “Show these puny boys some bicep action!”

  Our arms were incredible. They were rock hard and impressive (in a forty-plus way). So impressive, we got special dispensation from the jackets-must-be-worn-in-the-West-Wing-24/7 rule and were allowed to wear sleeveless dresses and tops, which was very cool, because in the spring and summer D.C. is very hot. (And even in the winter, the old West Wing was horribly overheated.) When the mood struck him, which was frequent, the president would ask the guys to remove their jackets and show their bare arms—and “flex!”

  What an embarrassment for them. The White House men had no tone or definition at all. It was like the scene in Popeye—only a gender-reverse version—when spindly Olive Oyl pulls out her stick arm and a tiny muscle appears at the top of her upper arm, then wobbles and falls, appearing underneath. Oh, the president loved that.

  JAMES

  I WAS RIGHT ABOUT what I said that morning when the planes hit the twin towers: it did change everything. At least for a while.

  I didn’t know exactly how, but it was clear that the contours of American politics were going to be altered for the foreseeable future. Its immediate effect was pretty dramatic. The conversation, what people thought about and talked about, it all changed. You seemed trite if you were talking about environmental concerns or income inequality or schools or whatever. National security was foremost in everyone’s mind.

  Politically, that change was favorable to Bush and the Republicans, no doubt about it. It conferred on them an aura of competence. As in, you may not like what they do. They may be kind of personally arrogant. But, man, they know how to get things done. They might not represent everything you believe in, but they are serious, strong, capable, hard-ass people.

  I recall friends of mine at the time saying stuff like, “I’m glad Bush is in charge.” I heard Democrats say, “It’s better this way. They can do this better.” It was a pretty persuasive feeling at the time. That effect lasted for a few years. Bush’s numbers went up. Republicans had two good elections in a row, in 2002 and 2004, which hadn’t happened since 1978 and 1980.

  Several things happened by 2005 that exposed just how incompetent Bush and the Republicans actually were. The White House and congressional Republicans intervened in the Terri Schiavo case in Florida, which was infuriating and offensive. Not too long afterward came the bungled Hurricane Katrina response, which along with the ongoing Iraq War debacle opened the eyes of anyone who wasn’t already a skeptic of the Bush administration.

  Until all that happened, some people really thought there was a fundamental change taking place in American politics after 9/11. Ultimately, it turned out to be a temporary phenomenon. It di
dn’t permanently change everything, but it temporarily changed a lot.

  MARY

  I LOVED MY HUSBAND before the Christmas of 2001, but then a moment came—one of those sudden illuminations when you see your spouse in sharp, clear light—and I decided I loved him more than I ever had. I loved him madly, truly and deeply.

  I had been traveling almost all of that fall, drifting in Cheney world from one undisclosed secure location to another. It didn’t make much difference where we were—the living room of the vice president’s residence, a cabin at Camp David or flying around in Air Force Two. Whether you’re two miles from your house or two thousand, being away from your family, totally incommunicado and not knowing where you’ll be tomorrow, is tough.

  I didn’t have to go on all the trips, and when I did, it was mostly to try to keep the West Wing and the vice president’s office integrated, connected and working as seamlessly as possible together, despite the fact that the two principals could not be in the same city and then later, when things relaxed, couldn’t be in the same building. When I traveled with the vice president, having the top-level clearance I did required that I not tell James—or anybody else—where or when I was going or when I’d return. This wasn’t too good for a compulsively structured guy.

  Somehow he got used to that, or he just never complained. That alone should have shown me something about his character, but I was living and breathing work in those weeks, an absent parent—barely a drive-by mother—and I was not able to focus on much in my home or personal life.

  I came home when I came home—and spent as much time with the girls as I could. Maria Cino would always be there too, and we’d open a bottle of wine, never uttering a word of politics, and the girls would do dance recitals and put on various shows for us, usually while wearing their fluffy tutus and falling all over the floor. Reyes and Buck-Buck, our high-spirited spaniels, would do their high-pitched yapping while circling the girls and jumping around their feet. Our chocolate Lab puppy, Paws—so named for his yellow feet—would attack them with all his knife-edged puppy teeth, diving for the ruffle of Matty’s tutu and hanging on for dear life, while Matty spun around and around, lifting Paws into the air, forcing him to orbit our family room, with all his yellow paws akimbo, like some kind of gravity-defying dog. We had moved down the street from Maria (not for the first time), who religiously checked in with the girls during my frequent and extended absences, with or without dance performances. She was their second mother. God knows they needed one. To this day, we all call her “the Good Mother” while I remain “Monster Mom.”

  The “read-in” (lingo for a top-level security clearance) senior staff would trade off doing travel duty, Chief of Staff Scooter Libby, counselor David Addington or foreign policy expert Eric Edelman—all longtime Cheney vets from his Defense and Hill days and way more useful to the VP than I was. It was an ad hoc rotation, just as horrible for them because they had families too. What we tried to do was keep the travel equitable, not forcing one senior staff member to log too many miles, or do back-to-back trips. But the boys got the brunt of the work, punishment for their extraordinary expertise, while I was rewarded with a stay-at-home base for being a worthless roadie.

  Sometimes we would go together, a mobile feel-your-pain consortium. Halloween was brutal—and a wake-up call for me. It’s my favorite kid holiday—well, really, with or without kids, an all-around favorite celebration of mine. Every year, I dressed up as Tigger and Matty was Pooh. Emerson was not a Winnie type and would don nothing except a princess outfit even though one year she was Marilyn Monroe.

  We went trick-or-treating around our Old Town neighborhood together, the girls toting their orange plastic candy-collecting pumpkins, me with my sippy cup full of red wine. (One year I accidently filled my sippy with vintage Château Latour from James’s secret special stash, which really ticked him off, because, as he said, it should never touch plastic or be aerated through a plastic sippy straw.) Every house was open and decorated, replete with scary witches and ghost sounds. The Old Town streets were filled with kids, adults in the best costumes sat on porches, and John Warner, the governor then, had the best open house of all, drawing hordes of young goblins and an equal number of adults, all old enough to know better but still outrageously costumed in lace bustiers and pirate garb.

  When Halloween 2001 came around, I tried not to think that much about our sacred Halloween tradition—of course I’d be working and of course that’s what I was supposed to be doing. And sure enough, I found myself that Halloween in a not unpleasant but nonetheless undisclosed secure location, unable to even call my family. There were some kids with us, Cheney grandkids mostly, who dressed in their costumes, trying to enjoy the night. We even put on a tiny two-house trick-or-treat thing, pretending we were normal, but when Scooter and I closed the door and said good-bye to the last of the intrepid trick-or-treaters, we just looked at each other mournfully, deriving no comfort in feeling each other’s pain. I wanted so much to call my own kids and just say hello. I tried conjuring up a good mood by imagining how they were doing on Lee Street, and the fun they were having in their little Pooh and princess costumes. But that night I cried myself to sleep.

  Christmas approached. The vice president usually spent the holiday in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, with his extended family. There could be no lapse in our post-9/11 work so our amazing take-care-of-all-things office maven, Claire O’Donnell, somehow procured a one-floor condo in Jackson Hole for our whole family to stay for a couple of weeks. We weren’t alone by any means; a good number of Cheney staff, by now our extended family of sorts, would be enjoying a pretend Christmas too.

  James had been noticeably quiet about the prospect of a Christmas away from home, barely uttering a moan or sigh of complaint, even though he hates cold weather, hates snow, hates icy roads and hates the mountains in winter more than almost anything. Nothing puts that son of Louisiana in a worse state than a white Christmas.

  To keep him from descending into a rotten holiday mood we had tried our best over the years to head south to warmer climes in December after a visit to see my dad in Indiana, where he had moved and remarried. My father’s new wife, Barb, adored him and he always said how God had blessed him with two spectacular wives. A veritable Christmas queen like I was, Barb had four sons and loved pulling out all the tchotchke stops at Christmas. Then we’d be off to Christmas with the Carville clan (who literally filled half the pews and all of the standing-room-only in the back of their church in St. Gabriel, Louisiana, at Christmas Mass). The Carvilles really know how to put the merry into Merry Christmas, complete with old-school Southern comfort of many varieties, including the traditional Christmas singing contest, which I always lost, even when my rousing rendition of “White Christmas” one year was clearly the best. (Maybe the whole anti–white Christmas thing was in their genes.) In any case, none of that was possible this year.

  So I went into Miss Christmas overdrive, determined to produce a holiday so festive nobody could complain. All would be merry . . . or else. I overloaded several giant plastic crates with our homemade ornaments, our lights, our stockings, our family Christmas bric-a-brac—from a global Santa collection to various Sesame Street characters in holiday hats—plus all the presents for Emma and Matty. I had the crates delivered to Air Force Two along with our luggage.

  The overcompensating continued when I called ahead to ask if the unfailingly fine Cheney advance staff in Wyoming could please, please, pretty please pick out a Christmas tree for us as a special favor and stand it in the living room of our rented condo. My Christmas queen idea was that we’d arrive with all our ornaments and a beautiful tree to decorate, and the girls would barely notice that they weren’t at home. And, of course, brilliant Santa Claus would know exactly where we were—and deliver all their presents down the condo chimney! It wouldn’t be a horrible working Christmas away from home after all. It would a super-duper winter wonderland adventure!

&nb
sp; You guessed it. We arrived to a condo that was so small we had to walk single file from one room to the only other room. And the Christmas tree wasn’t a tree so much as a spindly shrub with a few errant branches, a very small version of a freaking Charlie Brown tree. To make things infinitely worse, our teeny condo, smothered under fourteen feet of freezing, hard-packed snow, was indistinguishable from the hundreds of other condos around it, all of their chimneys barely visible under tons of frozen white stuff. This seriously reduced the girls’ confidence in an accurate Santa delivery.

  Meanwhile, I took a hard look at that horrible tree—it didn’t even look like an authentic plant—and cried out, “Are you kidding me?” (Actually I said, right in front of the children, “Are you f–ing kidding me?” and promptly fell apart.)

  I was in a puddle of self-pity, not even able to apologize to the girls, who were tsk-tsking me for my potty mouth. While James, the ultimate bah-humbug hater of white Christmases, had started to croak out Christmas tunes, cocking his head as if hearing reindeer hooves on the roof. He was joyful. He was merry. And, quite impossibly, James had suddenly become the epitome of holiday spirit. What was up with him?

  “Come on, Mary,” he said, pointing at the shrub, “I think it’s kind of cute, in a pathetic kind of way. Isn’t it, girls? Let’s have some Maker’s Mark and start some merriment, darlin’!”

  In the weeks preceding our departure for Wyoming, I had wondered how James would fit in with my office mates—and presumed it would be kind of socially weird to be in a homey holiday together. Later on, we spent so much time together that James became friendly with Cheney’s staff and with the Cheneys themselves, but that first winter, I was sure he would be regarded as evil incarnate. Almost any workplace has its own culture and cultish aspects. It’s almost impossible to avoid coming down with a case of Stockholm syndrome of some kind. But a political job creates a more extreme version of this, because the us-and-them mentality is very strong. And just as I was surely evil incarnate to the Clinton White House staff in the 1990s—and somebody they’d rather not see or speak to or be reminded of, if humanly possible—they never failed to hiss at me when I had to do a forced appearance at a bipartisan gathering—I was certain James wouldn’t be a particularly desirable sight in Cheney World.