Primary Colors

by Joe Klein

  Actually, Stanton walked right into it. He went after Harris playfully, as if he didn't quite take him seriously. "You say you want to improve the economy and the environment, and invest in the future-and yet you are proposing the stiffest gasoline tax increase in history," the governor said, with a not-very-convincing chuckle. "How you gonna improve the economy by taking money out of people's pockets?"

  "Well, that's a difference between you and me, Governor Stanton," Harris said-insufferable, obnoxious. And lethal. "I tell the people how I'm going to pay for the things I want to do. You don't." "That's not true, Larry, and you know it," Stanton shouted-suddenly, stupidly, out of control. "I've proposed a tax increase for the wealthiest Americans."

  "Which won't raise a quarter of what you'll need to keep all the extravagant promises you've made, Jack," Harris said. "You see, folks: this is politics as usual."

  "Larry, for God's sake."

  "This is what the American people are sick and tired of. This man will say just about anything to get elected."

  The governor maintained his discipline admirably after it was over. He even chatted with scorps. He did not trash his room. He trashed mine. "Fuck all, Henry!" he said, barging in about midnight, as I was commiserating with Daisy on the phone. (The debate had looked as awful in Washington as in Colorado.) "Fuck all. We can't get it together to do even a half-assed prep?" He pounded his fist on my desk. "I-can't-fucking-believe it!" He swept the lamp off the desk, knocking it into the television cabinet, smashing the bulb. "So what the fuck was I supposed to say, 'No, Larry, I won't say just about anything to get elected-just a couple of things I don't quite believe'? What was I supposed to fucking say?"

  "I don't know," I said.

  He picked up the desk chair and smashed it down, cracking a leg. "Henry, this sucks." He sat down on my bed. "What do we do now?" "Stick with the plan," I said. "We'll win down home."

  "The scorps have already discounted that," he said. "It won't mean anything, except in delegate count, especially not after tonight. You know half of Washington was watching this damn thing. That's all they do up there, watch C-SPAN. They break up dinner parties, they hold the dessert. The hostess says, 'We'll have baked Alaska in an hour, but first let's watch Stanton and Harris mess each other up.' And then they congratulate themselves on how much better they would've done. What did Daisy say?"

  "A bunch of nasty things about Lawrence Harris."

  "Great. Just fucking fabulous." He was calmer now "Henry, I think this is the worst it's been. New Hampshire was bad there, for a few weeks, but I always felt I could do something about it. I could work, go to a mall, stand out on a street corner, whatever. But, you know what? This is one big empty country. You stand on a street corner and the cars whizz by. I don't know how you do politics if you can't see the folks. Dunno if I want to do politics if you can't see the folks. I was born too late. I would've loved torchlight parades, whistle-stop tours. You know?"

  He stood up. Thought a moment. Sat down again. "You think we're gonna get a Washington candidate? Larkin?"

  "I don't think so," I said.

  "He'd be good," Stanton said. "He'd come out, work hard, stay on message. He's clean."

  "He's sterile."

  "Henry, my man," he said, standing again. "Sterile is what's happening. Larry's the next thing to sterile-he's smart, he smells of chalk and erasers. You can trust a fella like that. Not so sure you want to vote for him: he might assign homework. But you can trust him. Good thing he doesn't understand Stanton's Third Rule: You don't want to go around campaigning for office and acting too smart. Certainly not book-smart. The only kind of smart that folks in this country'll tolerate is country-smart. See, if it's just me and Lawrence, I may have a shot-if I can make him look prideful and preachy and cold and pointy-headed. But I can't attack him frontally. I know Richard and all of them are itchy to drop the big one. But it's too damn dangerous, given how people think of me." *

  "But can you just let him keep on hammering you, the may he did tonight?"

  He shook his head, as if to say no. "Damnedest thing," he said. "I watch elections all the time, study 'ens, love 'em. Usually I can figure out what each guy should do, doesn't make a difference if they're Democrat or Republican-there's always something. But I can't crack this one. I can't figure it out. Probably just too close to it-that's why you hire hired guns, I guess." He moved toward the door, opened it, then turned: "It's also why, I gotta tell you, Henry, if I'm a God-fearing Democrat sitting in Washington tonight, or maybe even someplace else, and I've ever had an itch to be president of the United States, I may be scratching just a little."

  Two things happened the next Monday that changed Jack Stanton's mind about going negative, and set us on the strange path that led to the third candidate he was dreading. The first was a scary Leon poll from Florida. We were ahead, but not convincingly-35 to 21, with a lot undecided and Stanton's negatives at 45, and 62 percent saying they'd like to see another candidate in the race. "You know what it looks like?" the governor said. "It looks like New Hampshire in reverse. If we can't do better in Florida than he did in New Hampshire, we may be mortally fucked."

  The other thing was that Lawrence Harris-or, more likely, Paul Shaplen-made a mistake. They went negative on us in Colorado. It was a strange ad. It started with drums and deep horns and pictures of the war in Vietnam, the flag waving, and then scruffy protesters marching in the streets. "When our country was at war, Jack Stanton didn't just opt out-he used pull to get himself out." A jail door slid open with a rusty squeak. "Now our country is facing another crisis." And there was Lawrence Harris, back in the damn meadow: "It's a silent crisis. A fiscal crisis. An economic crisis. I'll face that crisis. I won't run away."

  "Have you seen it?" I asked Richard by phone. Stanton had asked me to stay with him after the debate. We were trying to make sure we held our base in Georgia, which would be voting the same day as Colorado. We were in Macon, at one of those rare events the governor actually enjoyed-a town meeting at a local high school. It was probably a waste of time, but I'd argued for it with Lucille, who was now doing scheduling: "It's like vitamins," I said. "It keeps him pumped the rest of the day"

  But he wouldn't need the stimulation this day. He knew about the poll and the ad before he started the town meeting-and he seemed to race through the questions from the audience, impatient, on autopilot, giving stock answers instead of locking in on the folks: this was, I realized, how politicians who were not Jack Stanton routinely worked these sorts of events. Having caught the drift, I went outside-it was a fabulously warm and bright day; birds were singing-and called Richard.

  "Yeah, I saw the ad," he said. "It's completely fucking bizarre, like they started to do one spot, a slice-and-dice on us, then suddenly changed their minds. I mean, what are they after here? Enviro veterans? It's flicking idiotic. If they wanted to go negative, whyn't they just use that clip from the debate where he lit us up?"

  "Because Jack mentioned that Harris wanted to raise taxes right in the middle of it?"

  "Mebbe," Richard said. "But the 'politics as usual' line was dynamite. And then the 'He'll say anything to get elected' without a comeback from Jack: slam-fucking-dunk. I'd wear that out, I was them. It wouldn't even be perceived as going negative: It's like a fact, y'know? It's reality. He's just sayin': Lookit what happened last Saturday night-y'knowhattarnean? It's a no-brainer. But you know what's even more lucked up? Why on earth did they go negative on us-in Colorado-in the first place? They shoulda waited, sprung it on us in Florida. Weren't you the one saying Shaplen was so good?" "No, you were. You liked 'Rocky Mountain Hiya.' "

  "He's a union Jew?"

  I didn't know. Richard believed there were three basic categories of Democratic Party pols: Bottom, Southerns and Jews. Shaplen, corning from the Mine Workers and Louisville, had been intriguing. "I think he's Jewish," Richard said. "Shaplen could be anything right? Shortened Shapiro maybe."

  "What difference does it make?" I asked.


  "Know thine enemy," he said.

  "The Jewish move would be to go negative in Colorado?" I said, teasing him.

  "No, that's just it. The Jewish move would be to be freaked by cowboys. Be cautious. Drop the big one in Colorado to make sure Stanton doesn't come back and win it-and use a patriotic spot, a flag-waver. You gotta love it. Y'know, it probably has something to do with the mine workers never having much luck organizing out west-least, not as much as back east. Western labor guys tend to be scary, anarchists-Wobblies, gun nuts. The guys from Brooklyn go out there to organize, they figure they've gotta be Wyatt Earp."

  "Richard, that is ninety-eight percent bullshit," I said. "You don't even know if Shaplen's Jewish."

  "Oh, he's Jewish. And he's fucked up bigtime. He knows we're fighting with one arm, he knows we ain't gonna go negative first. So, I would've held off till Florida, then clocked us there."

  "He might do that anyway," I said.

  "He might," Richard said. "But it won't be as elegant. He's lost my fucking respect-and he's given us the opportunity to fight back. I was figuring on having a knock-down, drag-out with ol' Jackie, get him to whomp this shitbird before he whomped us. I was expectin' to have to threaten to quit or start exposing myself to muffins again. Y'know? But that may not be necessary now. Shaplen did our work for us."

  "Not Shaplen-it's more Leon," I said. "Stanton'll care more about the poll than that stupid ad."

  "Probably so," Richard said. "Whichever: my guess is our Jacicie'll be ready to play."

  It certainly seemed so. Stanton raced out of the town meeting in Macon, back to the plane for a short hop to Atlanta, with his game face on. "Call everyone," he said in the car. "Get Richard, Leon and Libby. I want them at the hotel tonight. Tell Libby I want to see every flicking vote Harris cast when he was in the Senate, especially on foreign policy-tell her to check committee votes on that, if she can. I think he was on Foreign Relations, right?" I nodded. "And tell Lucille I want to cancel everything but money events in every state but Florida, and start working up some new stuff there. Radio shows. The old folks listen to a lot of radio. And let's see what Daisy has. Call Daisy, have her come down too, bring her silver bullets-that should make you happy, Henri. Tell her to pack a bag. We'll set her up with an edit studio in Miami-or maybe Orlando, they've got facilities there now, and it's more in the center of the state. Have Brad figure it out."

  He sat back, stared out the window. "If we can't build me up," he said quietly, "we are going to tear that mother-fucker down. I am going to break his fucking back."

  The Florida campaign opened symmetrically. On Tuesday night, Harris celebrated his Colorado victory in Miami, where he was trying to build a base along condo row-and we celebrated our Georgia victory up in Tampa, trying to protect our strength among "yellow dog" Democrats in the northern half of the state. On Wednesday, both campaigns moved into enemy turf and unveiled their secret weapons. Harris's was Freddy Picker, which didn't seem such a big deal at first. I remembered him vaguely, but fondly. He was one of the New Southerners who'd suddenly materialized in the 1970s, the first politicians elected with both black and white votes south of the Mason-Dixon line. I was a teenager then. My grandfather was a decade dead, my father was several years disappeared, but those pale, bland Southern Democrats seemed a down payment on the family dream. It was a whisper of a revolution; there wasn't much blood or lust to it, just the promise of Northern money-new factories, new branch offices-in return for the appearance of racial harmony. Amazingly, the Crackers went for it. It happened so smoothly nobody noticed. But I noticed. I saw Jimmy Carter corning, even before the series of speculative articles in The New York Times at the beginning of the 1976 campaign: could a little-known Southern governor make a name for himself in national politics? That seemed dense. Of course he could. If he'd managed to get himself elected governor of Georgia with both black and white votes, what couldn't he do?

  Fred Picker had gotten himself elected governor of Florida around that same time and was speculated upon as well. There had been a Picker-for-president moment-but it had come and gone, just as he had I didn't remember his being disgraced or defeated, but . . . Had he served one terns or two? His name never surfaced anymore. I hadn't heard or thought of him in years-until the Thursday before the Florida primary, when he suddenly appeared, with Lawrence Harris, at a Tallahassee press conference.

  "I am very proud to announce," Harris said, wearing a seersucker suit that vibrated crazily on television, "that former governor Fred Picker has not only agreed to endorse my candidacy, but he will chair my effort here in Florida-and he will remain with me, after the primary, in a significant advisory capacity. I think most Floridians know that Governor Picker is a man with little tolerance for politics as usual. They understand what it means when a man of his integrity steps forward."

  At which point, Freddy Picker stepped forward. He was still trim-in fact, he seemed tauter, more serious, than my fuzzy recollection of him as governor. He had a great hawklike nose and arched eyebrows that seemed playful, ironic. He was wearing a blue blazer and a muted plaid shirt; no tie. He had the look of a man who, after no small struggle, had come to terms with himself-though perhaps just barely. His eyes were sharp, dark; he didn't scan an audience, the way most poll do, but darted from face to face, like a bird. You could sense an edge of wildness in those eyes. He looked out at the assembled scorps, blinked once, and said, "You guys are still ugly."

  "Governor," asked a television blonde, who was not ugly, "what brought you back into politics after all these years?"

  "Well, electing a president is serious business-but this hasn't been a very serious campaign, except for Senator Harris here. And we need to get serious. I think this country needs to get its act together. I was thinkin' about bringin' out my old broom," he said, suppressing a laugh. "You children probably don't remember, but that was how I ran in '74-time for a clean sweep. But that just doesn't seem technological enough now. Need to keep up with the times. Need a more modern contraption-maybe a Dustbuster."

  Libby Holden's screech could be heard all the way from Mammoth Falls. It was as if someone had broken our code.

  "Governor, what's your opinion of Jack Stanton? You say this hasn't been a serious campaign-is that his fault?" Tom Rickman of The Miami Herald asked.

  "Well, he does have serious hair."

  When the laughter died down, Fred Picker continued, "Look, I'm sure Governor Stanton is a fine man-but we have an extraordinary man right here, a man who's willing to tell it straight to the American people." He put an arm around Larry Harris, who had faded into the background a bit-indeed, Harris came across in black-andwhite, compared with Picker, who was, ineffably, Technicolor.

  "Senator Harris, would you consider Governor Picker as a running mate?"

  "Well, it's a bit premature to be speculating about that," Harris woofed, chest puffed out. "But Governor Picker certainly is the sort of person you'd see in a Harris administration."

  "Not so fast there, Senator-I've only signed on for a week," Picker chided, playfully squeezing the candidate's neck. Then, turning serious, "But I will be out there, between now and next Tuesday, helping this man every way I can."

  Laurene Robinson and I had our heads together, watching this on her transistor television in the lobby outside the cafeteria-auditorium at the Mogen David Senior Center in Pompano Beach. My beeper vibrated-it was Daisy.

  "You see that?" she asked.

  "He's good," I said. "Picker."

  "The governor see it?"

  "No, he's eating lunch with the Old Testament."

  "He's gonna be thrilled with that hair line," Daisy said. "You think this guy's gonna make any difference down here?"

  "Do endorsements ever make a difference?" I asked.

  "It half looked like Harris was endorsing Picker," Daisy said. "Someone should tell the professor that seersucker plus TV equals death. He looked like a carnival ride. Probably caused mass vertigo outbreaks in half the nursing homes i
n Broward County. And if Picker is gonna have a 'significant advisory role in the campaign' after Florida, how come he said he'd only signed on for a week?"

  "Who knows," I said. "You care about that?"

  "Whenever any candidate who isn't mine comes up with anything that isn't bad, it gets my attention," Daisy said.

  "You having fun at Disney World?" I asked.

  'Just hangin' out, ready to roll," she. said. "But I don't know what it is with these guys. You get the feeling they haven't thought it through. They're still running that stupid Vietnam spot from Colorado. Here, in Orlando. Saw it last night, just before Letterman. You gotta figure they'll come in with a Picker endorse spot now But what else? Why aren't they up with more? Where's the strategy here?" "Well, they don't know what we're doing yet either."

  "Yeah, and neither do we. You think our guy is ready to go for it?" "Who knows?" I said, remembering that he had whiffed on attacking Ozio. "We'll know in a minute. Seeya."

  The cafeteria-auditorium of the Mogen David Senior Center was a profoundly depressing room, a file cabinet for human beings: cinder-block walls painted beige, a high narrow line of crank-open windows throwing sharp slants of sunlight across a pea-soup linoleum-tile floor. There were metal and Formica picnic tables in orderly rows; each had a centerpiece--Israeli and American flags. At the front of the room, hanging on a red brick wall, was a dreadful representation of a turquoise-and-brass menorah topped by an oversize Star of David. Scattered about on the walls were faded Israel travel posters and sad, shaky amateur artwork. Near the door was a bulletin board with photos of a recent field trip to the dog track and announcements of canasta tournaments, lectures and "Singles Mix Nights" to come. It all seemed antiseptic, perfunctory, a depository. But, then, we weren't there to spread joy, either. This was not going to be a moment I would cherish.