Months after Bill Clinton’s impeachment, Al Gore appeared at a black Baptist church and, working hard to empathize, told his audience that he, too, understood prejudice. When he came back from Vietnam, he said, with his short hair and his uniform, all the longhairs made fun of him and looked at him with scorn. “It was a Ralph Ellison moment for me,” the vice president told his black audience. Well . . . why not? Good old stick-in-the-mud, party-pooping Al Gore. Even him! Private schools, Harvard, a senator’s son. Just another white boy who wanted to be black.
[3]
James Carville Kicks Ass
“Okay, he has a problem,” Monica said to Linda Tripp. “And we, the American people, elected him. So let him do his stupid job.”
It was one of those urban legends, like the one that said singer John Denver had been our best sniper in Vietnam, always waiting for the sun to blind his targets before pulling the trigger. But this “legend,” my unimpeachable sources in Washington told me, was “Put your hand on the Bible and bet the whole wad” true—censored out of the press only because it was, really, a sticky family matter in the era of family values. I’d heard it first in 1992 and now I was hearing it again as Kenneth W. Starr and his congressional allies were unsheathing their long knives to slit Bill Clinton’s throat.
James Carville was Hunter S. Thompson’s bastard little brother.
They had found each other during the 1992 campaign and determined for themselves that they were suffering from the same inherited disorder that made them abuse themselves (no, not that way!), foam at the mouth, mumble, cuss, stutter, and twitch. I considered, as I watched the approaching sharpened long knives, that two Carvilles, two Thompsons, two crazy people at a crucial moment like this were better than one.
What I really hoped was that Hunter, up in Woody Creek on his Colorado mountain, a lunatic dervish watching CNN twenty-four hours a day, was once again advising his bastard little brother . . . like he’d advised him in 1992 in a series of strategy memos that won Clinton the election and made his little brother famous. On the Bush strategy: “They [Bush and James Baker III] would torture the Queen of England for three days and nights to make her say that Bill Clinton raped her repeatedly, while he was a student at Oxford, and she has many crazed love letters to prove it.” On an October surprise: “They might hire Bill’s daughter to say he abused her. Like Woody Allen.” On the Clinton strategy: “Don’t deny anything, especially if they accuse you of fucking pigs. Just stand up in front of the mike and smile like a champion.” On Clinton’s vulnerability: “By the way, where was Bill Clinton on the night James Dean died? Drunk and naked on some teenage golf course in Arkansas? Ripping lust-hardened tire tracks across the 18th green? Chasing a naked young girl into the woods?” On Ross Perot: “Why did you let the goddamn little weasel into the debates in the first place? Fuck Ross Perot! He is an evil, dangerous tar baby and the willing creature of James Baker III, who wants to bury us all. Especially you and me, James.” On the nature of the enemy: “Take my word for it, James, these lying, whoring swine will stop at nothing. How many points do you think James Baker III believes it might be worth if he could strut out on the South Lawn of the White House on October 15th and display the still-bleeding head of Saddam Hussein. . . . Beware James, beware. Baker III is so mean that he makes you look like a garden snake. He would serve up the head of Barbara Bush on a platter if he thought it would win the election.” Big brotherly advice: “You’re lucky you ain’t running against me. I would have that degenerate [Clinton] locked up for his own good.”
This was the kind of spirit needed right now, I reflected—no, not locking the president up as a degenerate, but the old sixties, Notre Dame fighting spirit. Off the pigs! Win one for Abbie Hoffman! Acid into their water supplies! Tear-gas masks and shattering glass and the time to set the night on F-I-R-E! The stuff Hunter was infused with and reeked of like a sixties political wino up there in his mountainous fortress in Woody Creek, still using his phone and his fax machine, his anger and his wit, like laser-guided missiles fueled by nicotine, alcohol, various medications, and an unyielding and unbroken hope for a better America. I knew that his bastard little brother seemed to be just like him, without the nicotine and the medications, and I knew James had talked a good game, even to Hunter, whom he affectionately called “Doc”: “The Bible says everyone will eat a pound of dirt before we die,” James told Hunter. And: “Elections are about fucking your enemies, winning is about fucking your friends.” And: “You think God is mean? Shit, you ought to see my scorecard! Richard Nixon never even thought about keeping an enemies list like the one I keep.” Nice words. Good, tough talk. Perfect for the time when the long knives were flashing in darkened congressional offices lighted only by a bloodred moon. But still … talk. James, I felt, needed his big brother at his side.
I knew the two had had a nasty familial falling-out, which Hunter described in Better Than Sex:
I stood up suddenly and whacked him on the side of his head with my open hand, right on his ear. He never saw it coming. He staggered sideways and dropped to his knees as the crowd parted, trying to get away from the violence and jabbering hysterically as James scrambled around on the floor and went into a snakelike crouch, snarling and hissing at me. I tried to back away, but it was too late. He hurled himself at my knees, in the style of a crazed Sumo wrestler. I would have gone down, but there were too many people in the way. I tried to stomp him, but he slithered away and cursed me. People were yelling, and I tried to stomp him again. I felt hands grasping at me, and then I was seized from behind in a chokehold and dragged off balance. I swung wildly and hit somebody, just as James lunged at me again.
But then I reread Hunter’s description and reconsidered . . . James on the floor in a snakelike crouch, “snarling and hissing” . . . James as “a crazed Sumo wrestler” . . . James slithering away and cursing . . . James lunging. Maybe, I thought, little brother would be just fine. Crouching, snarling, hissing, slithering, cursing, sumo-wrestling the men in the dark suits with the long knives, the values-stoned posse of Christian vigilantes. Maybe he could do it without Doc’s help. Maybe James Carville was crazier even than Hunter Thompson, James breathing his own evangelical fire in defense of the Americans he loved, the guys at the diner, the women at the Kmart. I hoped “Serpent Head,” as his wife called him, had told Hunter the truth. Gaga little brother, at this particular moment, had to be meaner than God . . . meaner than Richard Nixon . . . meaner than Hunter . . . meaner than all of them combined . . . to get the first rock and roll president of the United States out of this mess.
“Meaner than a junkyard dog!” was what an aide to a candidate James Carville had defeated called him. And the Washington Post had even cartooned him as a Doberman. James was described as “a malignant John Malkovich on speed,” and “Anthony Perkins playing Fidel Castro on acid.” He was called Attila the Hun and Rasputin, but he objected to the Rasputin part, pointing out that Rasputin ended up raped, castrated, and thrown in the river. His enemies said he was as subtle as a clenched fist and accused him of kneecapping his opponents. James didn’t deny it. He called himself “Corporal Cueball” and said, “It’s hard for someone to hit you when you have your fist in their face . . . when I’m running a campaign, I always say I want the people I’m running against to catch the clap and die.”
He was fifty-three years old the year the long knives came for Bill Clinton. He was tall and muscular, favored jeans and high-tops and T-shirts. He grinned, giggled, cackled. “My mother,” James said, “used to say I was like a toaster. I popped up all the time.” He spoke a peculiar, jabbering, mumbling tongue with a coonass accent. Cal Ripken wondered what language James spoke. His wife called him “the King of Ramble” and said she thought a third of what James spoke was Ebonics.
The foreign tongue was the outer manifestation, no doubt, of a congenital inner dementia. James urinated blood sometimes during his campaigns. He refused to change his underwear in the final week of a campaign, so he
wouldn’t somehow hurt his candidate’s momentum. On election day, James curled up in the fetal position in a darkened room. He got up on the alternate side of the bed each day for good luck. He wore black mittens for better luck. James kept eleven jars of Chef Dan’s barbecue sauce on his desk for no discernible reason. He watched the Weather Channel all the time. He watched reruns of The Andy Griffith Show whenever he could. He stopped his stress headaches by cracking raw eggs on staffers’ heads. James thought Marcella Hazan, a priestess of gastronomy, was the Second Coming. James spoke to his mother every day. He had an office in the basement of a Capitol Hill row house he called “the Bat Cave,” obvious homage to Hunter’s Owl Farm. James appeared on television with a glass of Wild Turkey in his hand. James shot beer bottles and Coke cans in his backyard.
James went off on jazzy, primeval riffs, which were dangerous to the sensibilities and composure of millions of unfortunates who had corncobs up their butts. Ranting, raving, mumbling, twitching, jabbering, yammering, mesmerizing, lacerating, intimidating, humiliating … real scary. “I’m sort of a political goon,” the King of Ramble rambled. “I’m a little like a piano player in a whorehouse. Somebody out there hears something, I try to pick it up. . . . I’m weird. I’m a disconnect. Yet my whole ability to earn a living depends on my ability to connect with other people’s everyday lives. . . . I relish and like political combat. This era of everyone sitting at the table of commonality is not my moment of history. . . . When I pick a candidate, I’ve got to live in the same foxhole with him for a year. You’ve got to smell their breath a lot. . . . I’ll die before I turn into one of those guys in a tie, down at the Gucci Gulch, testifying before some congressional committee. . . . I need a villain. I stay pretty mad during the whole campaign. I’m like uranium 235, not quite stable. . . . If your guy is in trouble, throw water. If the other guy is in trouble, throw kerosene. . . . You pick up the snake, you’re going to get bit. . . . Fightin’s fightin’.”
Those who knew both Thompson and Carville were amazed by how influenced James was by the gonzo-political doctrines Dr. Thompson had formulated, which James had not read until recently. “I gotta catch myself from lapsing into slang and cusswords. . . . I have a weakness for bourbon whiskey, scotch whiskey, gin, red wine, and beer. . . . Do you think I never bounced a check or made a forward remark to a subordinate? Or inhaled? . . . What we need in this campaign is more McDonald’s thinking,” James said. “For the raw practice of political art, George Wallace was something to behold. . . . All the V-chip does is let parents program their TV so their kids can’t watch certain programs. Shit, I may not want my child to watch Jerry Falwell on TV. Well, now I can V-chip him right out. . . . If you want to see the whiningest, complainingest bunch of do-good weenies, look at the liberals. My message is: Quit complaining, get off your butts, and organize. Get out your checkbook. Write letters to the editor. Do the things Republicans do. . . . Republicans are the party of big money and sex rumors, that’s all they’re good at. . . . I wonder if there’s any Republican in the United States that’s actually read the Constitution.” James’s definition of “the enemy” sounded like a listing of his big brother’s lifelong political targets: “Republicans, the media, the opposition, the sharpies, the quote sluts [independent analysts], the ole thirty-second hit guys [experts].”
How sad, I thought. James and Hunter seemed more than brothers; they seemed like physical and ideological twins. And now, as the long knives approached, they weren’t next to each other, where they belonged. One was on his Owl Farm; the other was in his Bat Cave. They weren’t sharing their Wild Turkey; they were tilting their gallon jugs in different places, shooting up different backyards. And all because of a family dispute in a Little Rock dump. Two tough guys who, at a triumphant moment—Bill Clinton’s election—didn’t know how to stop fighting and so turned their lifelong fury on each other.
While Hunter was the ideologue, spewing his fax tracts off the mountain, James was the grunt, trying to gouge out eyes. “I only represent Democrats, not crooks, not racists,” James said. That was mumbled Ebonic Cajun rationalization for gouging out eyes, busting kneecaps, slitting throats . . . but only for the good guys: Democrats, not crooks, not racists.
Observe James meeting with a pollster. “He was glowering and scowling,” the pollster said. “He stands up and walks around and then on top of the furniture and then he starts screaming as he paces up and down and I think—Oh my God, I am in the presence of a lunatic! I think he needs immediate hospitalization.”
Observe James meeting a possible candidate/client. The candidate asks him about his staff. James says, “There was once a sheriff in a small Texas town that was having a riot. So the sheriff calls in the Texas Rangers. And the train rolls up to the station, where the sheriff is anxiously waiting. And out walks one Texas Ranger leading his horse. And the sheriff says, ‘Look, we got a hell of a riot going on! Where are the rest of you?’ And the ranger says, ‘Lookee here, Sheriff. One riot, one ranger.’ ” And James says to the candidate/client, “I ain’t got no staff.”
Observe James in 1983, a part of Gary Hart’s campaign. Hart drops out of the race due to Donna Rice. “I was heading back to my motel in Maryland. I was standing on a curb on Massachusetts Avenue in the middle of a rainstorm. My garment bag broke, and everything I owned spilled into the street. I had six dollars in my wallet. That was everything I had in the world. I felt like a stone-ass loser. I sat down on the curb and cried.”
Observe James in 1984, managing Lloyd Dogett’s campaign for the senate in Texas. James is living in his car. Dogett not only loses; he suffers the biggest defeat ever sustained in Texas by a Democrat. James holes up in a dumpy apartment in Austin. “I’d cry a lot. I was scared I was a failure. I was 40 years old. I didn’t have any money. I didn’t have any health insurance. My life insurance policy was worth $2,500 cash value and I had to get the money to keep the Visa people from coming to lynch me. Did you ever look at a telephone and hope it rings? Believe me, I’ve stared at a phone for weeks, months, just kind of staring at it. I thought, I got to get out of this business. I can’t win.”
He decided in that dump of an Austin apartment that he loved what he did too much. He decided he wasn’t going to lose again. It was do or die. No more sobs on the curbs. No more living out of his car. No more waiting for the phone to ring. No more Mr. Nice Guy. Go for the jugular! Get the dirt! Run the negative ads! Slice and dice! Trash and bash!
Campaigning against Bill Scranton II in Pennsylvania, he ran ads showing Scranton in a Nehru jacket and talking about transcendental meditation. Even though James enjoys a nice fat joint on occasion, he leaked details about Scranton’s pot smoking to the press. Scranton lost; Carville won. Campaigning against former Rhodes scholar and Heisman Trophy winner Pete Dawkins in New Jersey: “I needed to cut Dawkins off at the knees. If he ever established credibility, we’d be in for a rough fight.” James ran ads saying Dawkins was a carpetbagger, ending with the line “Come on, Pete, be real.” Dawkins lost; Carville won. Campaigning against former Reagan attorney general Dick Thornburg in Pennsylvania, he personally attacked Thornburg: “The idea of Dick Thornburg coming back to Pennsylvania and saying ‘Send me to the corridors of power because I know Washington’ is like running on a pro-leprosy ticket against Jesus.” Thornburg lost; Carville won.
By now, James had also taken to spooking his opposition candidates personally by using his physical presence, showing up in the back as they held a press conference, smiling his evil smile. “We spent too much time waiting and ducking James Carville,” a Thornburg aide said. Thornburg’s campaign manager said, “What Carville is best at is not doing something, but making you believe he’s going to do something. It’s mind psych. We spent a lot of energy trying to anticipate something that ultimately never happened.”
James was on the road to stardom by then, though he was also picking up a reputation as the Democratic Lee Atwater, the Reagan and George Bush puppet master who was the founding father
of negative, personally destructive, scorched-earth campaigning. A national political analyst said, “Carville is what a lot of Democrats have been looking for. Somebody who not only matches fire with fire but isn’t afraid to use a blowtorch.” Occasionally, the blowtorch misfired. In a Democratic primary against Governor Ann Richards of Texas, James, who inhaled often, ran ads accusing her of drug abuse. Richards won; Carville lost.
It didn’t matter. As the 1992 election approached, Bob Kerrey, Tom Harkin, and Bill Clinton all wanted him to handle them. He was a winner now, a wunderkind, a killer, a star. “This is one of the few businesses where it’s actually of some benefit for people to think you’re half a quart low,” James said. “Sometimes clients as well as opponents.” His newfound young partner, Paul Begala, told prospective clients, “We all know that James isn’t playing with a full deck. But I’m the only one who knows which cards are missing.”
He picked Bill Clinton because he liked him personally, liked his ideas, liked Hillary, and thought he could get him elected president. “You know, you pay for my head, but I throw in my heart for free,” James told Bill Clinton. He did the opposition research he believed in so much, not just on George Bush but also on Bill Clinton, so he could defend him. He issued orders that he wanted as little as possible in writing. He worked twenty-four hours a day, a demonic figure in jeans and T-shirt, always telling his staff, “Run! Don’t walk!”
On the morning Bill and Hillary did their 60 Minutes interview about Gennifer Flowers, James woke up at dawn “wrenched and drenched” and sobbing. After the interview, he hugged Bill Clinton and was crying again. Those who saw the extraordinary bond between the two men pointed to what they called James’s “Kmart life.” Inside his head, some felt, James Carville lived in a Kmart from somewhere out of his childhood. And as Jack Kennedy was the candidate from Camelot, Bill Clinton was the candidate from Kmart.
American Rhapsody Page 36
