What It Takes

by Richard Ben Cramer

  Hoo hooo! Isn’t that Bar a stitch?

  And the next day, and the next, more wonn-derful reviews. And Larry Speakes said the President agreed with every word. And Lee Atwater told the networks that Republicans across the country were cheering. “The Vahz Pres’ent,” Lee growled, “hit uh gusher!”

  The Era of Good Feeling lasted ten days, until Don Gregg, the Veep’s National Security man, gave his first interview to The New York Times. Yes, he’d found out about the contra resupply back in August, Gregg acknowledged. His friend and fellow spook, Felix Rodriguez, had come to Washington specially to tell him how screwed up it was. Then the next day, UPI came out with unnamed White House sources, alleging that Bush’s office knew the contra gambit every step of the way. Ollie North kept them posted religiously.

  What did George Bush know?

  By mid-December, that was the only question anybody wanted to ask him. Now Bush had to issue his own chronology, make public a series of contacts between his staff, Ollie North, and the contras.

  “Let the chips fall where they may,” he’d said in his big AEI speech. Who could have known they’d fall on him?

  And now, every day, Fitzwater had to march into the big office, and screw some statement out of Bush. Bush would say to his desk or his pen:

  “I’ve answered that a million times.”

  Or, “That’s just not true ... I had nothing to do with that.”

  Or, “Salvador ... Felix Rodriguez is a hero down there, to the people of Salvador.”

  And Fitzwater would persist, gingerly: “So I can say, ‘Vice President Bush never met with Felix Rodriguez’ ...” And Bush would stare at his twisting pen, silent, while Marlin had to finish the quote. “... ‘except, uh, to discuss El Salvador’? ...”

  And when, at last, Bush would glance up with that blank-wall look, even Fitzwater had to wonder what the hell was behind that stare. Was there something he was unable to say? Was he culpable of knowing? Or just heartsick?

  At the moment, Bush was only waiting to see if Marlin was done. Was it over? When would this be over? ... He’d said more than he wanted already. More than he ever should have. And what did it get him? ... When Fitzwater didn’t say any more, Bush replied, tersely:

  “Okay. Say that.”

  Dole was never off TV. The election recaps rolled right into Iran-contra, and every time you flicked on the tube, or glanced at a paper, there was Dole. Dole by satellite, Dole on Koppel, Dole on Face the Nation ... Top story: “Dole says ...” “Good evening, on Capitol Hill today, the Senate Majority Leader ...” Dole, Dole, Dole. No guest was supposed to be on Brinkley’s Sunday chat-fest more than twice a year—they changed that policy for Dole. What else could they do? The guy made news.

  Dole knew what those Sunday shows needed as well as the panelists, the host, the producers. He knew he didn’t have to show up at ten, like the bookers insisted. He’d roll in at quarter-after, twenty-after, and head straight for the makeup room. He knew the girls by name, always had a greeting to settle them down, make ’em forget he was late. “Agghhh, kinda hot ... Sam must be askin’ all the questions. Hegh hegh hegh.” Someone would bring him a half-cup of coffee from the table set with brunch. Dole never hung around to eat. On the set, no matter what went out on the air, it was always jokes and gossip during commercials: just a few Washington white men, sitting around like it was lunch at Joe and Mo’s ... what the hell, they were all well known, in the know. Brinkley and Dole were neighbors in Florida, where Elizabeth owned a condo. Brinkley was a friend, or close enough. ... And Dole always brought a nugget of news he could drop into the chat, somewhere, enough to make the Monday Post print the sentence: “Dole made his proposal (charge, comment, remark) in an interview on the ABC television program This Week with David Brinkley. ...” That, and maybe one catchy sound-bite to run on CNN all day, then on the Monday Today show.

  So, on the Sunday after the diversion was announced, Dole rolled into the studio for the Brinkley show, with just time enough. “Howy’dooonn? ...” He looked terrific, tanned and healthy from his big vacation, two days for Thanksgiving at the condo in Florida. Makeup had him in and out in a minute—just powder. He looked fine. “Aghh, shoppin’ done?” The Bobster was all holiday cheer. The music was playing in his head, the overture of the Other Thing ... and, heyyy! ... here’s an issue plopped onto the ground before him like a Mexican sombrero, an invitation to the dance! A big beautiful Washington Hat Dance! No one could do it like Bob Dole. He had news to make this morning and a network to air it. ... The White House in trouble! Bush under a cloud! What did they know and ... da dum! ... He was ready to dance ... the Washington Dance of Death!

  He’d worked to get this nugget: while he was in Florida, he’d had a chat with Bob Strauss, Mr. Democrat, a real insider, another condo neighbor. Bobster told Strauss he was thinking of a Special Select Committee on Iran—like Sam Ervin’s Watergate committee. Of course, he knew the idea wouldn’t stop with Strauss, and sure enough, when he got back, here was Bob Byrd on the telephone: maybe they could, uh, coordinate ... So they agreed, they’d both propose it, Byrd on Face the Nation, Bobster on the Brinkley-fest. That would surely be news enough, but it might give Byrd equal billing. So that morning, the Bobster pulled the ace from his sleeve: he wanted a special committee to consolidate the hearings, the information ... but he wanted it now, this week! A special session of Congress! Convened by Ronald Reagan to get the facts out! The first special session since Harry Truman called Congress back from the hinterlands, thirty-eight years ago!

  It was gorgeous, a master stroke, raised the issue to a full-scale crisis ... not since 1948. ... Let the boys in the White House gnash their teeth. Bob Dole was protecting the President, making sure there weren’t ten committees holding hearings, calling for documents, witnesses, all at once. And proposing that the President start it now, while Republicans (i.e., Bob Dole) could still control the Senate, keep a hand on the committee. What was the matter with those guys in the White House—couldn’t they see? If they went along with Dole, then the action shifted to Congress, to the wrangle over the committee. It would take the heat off the President!

  And, of course, it left Bob Byrd in the dust. But how could the Democrats squawk? Dole wasn’t trying to outmaneuver anyone. “Agghh, been around too long for that.” No, he’d be glad to let the committee reflect the lineup in the new Senate, to convene next year, the Democratic majority. ... How could they oppose this? Were they trying to drag out the issue? Didn’t they say they wanted all the facts out? ... Well, let’s get going!

  The white men on the Brinkley set were trying not to grin, like cheap lawyers at a ten-car pileup: Uh, did that mean Senator Dole didn’t think all the facts were out? Didn’t he believe the White House, that North and Poindexter were the only ones who knew?

  The Bobster dropped an eyebrow and rasped: “Aghh, don’t think Ripley’d believe that.”

  Eureka! The sound-bite!

  The next day, the Post had the story of President Reagan’s first defiant reaction to the scandal of the diversion. But that didn’t lead the paper. The lead story was Dole’s call for a special session, along with a nice picture of the Senator, a big one, above the fold.

  And that was only the beginning. That day, as Dole emerged from the White House, a meeting with Don Regan, he called for appointment of a Special Prosecutor. No, it was nothing against Ed Meese. But he was awfully close to the President. Republicans, Dole said, were already “suffering damage” from the scandal. That’s what he told Don Regan. We’ve got to cut our losses! It’ll be good for the President! “He didn’t make mistakes. The people around him made mistakes.” Remember, Bob Dole was defending the President!

  Sometimes, in the dust from the Bobster’s dancing shoes, it was hard to keep track of whom he was defending.

  Nothing wrong with Meese ... but when are we getting a Special Prosecutor?

  George Shultz, a fine Secretary of State ... “But, I must say, when people say, ‘Why aren’t you
out there supporting the President?’ ... it’s rather difficult when the Secretary of State is not doing anything.”

  Bob Dole would certainly not be the one to tell the President to fire his Chief of Staff ... “But I think right now they ought to circle the wagons—either that, or let a couple of wagons go over the cliff.”

  Meanwhile, lest the White House make good its intention to move on to other business, Dole was on the front page again, this time calling for a summit with European leaders, to reassure the allies about U.S. foreign policy.

  Meanwhile, lest anyone else miss the point, Dole made a speech in New Hampshire, and pronounced the whole Iran-contra gambit “just plain stupid.”

  He left Byrd and the Democrats gasping for air. The Bobster carried the ball for both sides. As for rival candidates for the Other Thing, they could only stand by, biting their tongues. Jack Kemp’s Press Secretary made the papers one day with a warning that Dole was “too eager to make news over the corpse of a popular President.” But that weekend, when Kemp hoped to appear on Face the Nation, Lesley Stahl wanted Bob Dole instead.

  After that, The New York Times ran a page one R.W. Apple analysis that began: “Bob Dole of Kansas, the Senate majority leader who will become minority leader next year, has seen his prospects of winning the 1988 Republican Presidential nomination enhanced. ...” That signaled the rest of the nation’s press to pile on. “Mr. Dole may be the man with the most to gain,” The Wall Street Journal reported the next week. And the week after that, came the Post: “Polls and political strategists indicate that, partly because of his recent high-profile performance, he has moved within striking distance of Bush. ...”

  Striking distance! It was soft-shoe on the coffin lid! Up in New Hampshire, which is where it counted, the organ of the mad-dog right, the Manchester Union Leader, was getting tired of Republicans who failed in their duty to defend the President. So the Union Leader, as it was wont, launched a foam-flecked attack on ... George Bush! The headline: MORE MUSH FROM THE WIMP.

  Of course, Bob Dole couldn’t focus on the primaries now, not with the White House under assault, the credibility of the U.S. at stake. He had to appoint the members of the Special Select Committee, Senators of energy and intrepid judgment who would get to the bottom of this sorry affair and restore government to its proper business. Not that there was any shortage of candidates. These hearings could make a man Well Known! So, the Leader weighed probity, experience, intellect, savvy ... and from among all the eager volunteers, he selected as the ranking Republican member ... Warren Rudman, of New Hampshire.

  No politics about it! It was well known that Rudman was lined up for ’88 with his friend, the former Senator from Tennessee, Howard Baker. (Everybody knew Baker was running.) And Rudman did bring to the job a fine set of qualifications: he was well informed about foreign policy, national security. And he had experience as a prosecutor, as a former Attorney General of his great state. In fact, three of the five Senators selected by Bob Dole had been prosecutors. Dole meant to make sure all the facts came out—he wouldn’t have to say a thing.

  That’s why, in all the reams of his public comment, in November and December, about the Iran affair, there was not one mention, not one word attachable to Bob Dole’s name that pointed in any way to the Vice President, George Bush. It was the highest triumph of the Be Nice rule. He knew the wise guys were waiting for him to say something nasty—just one misstep in the Dance of Death ... and it was over.

  But why would he? Bob Dole never had just one source on something he wanted to know. The White House briefings and meetings with Regan were not his only avenue of inquiry on Iran-contra. And Dole was convinced: Bush was in the soup. All the connections were clear in Dole’s head. The whole push on the hostages, the whole deal with Iran, had to do with the kidnapped Beirut CIA station chief, William Buckley. There was word, breathed into Dole’s ear ... the White House had a videotape: Buckley under torture ... that’s when the deal was cooked up. Buckley had worked for Bush, the kind of guy Bush loved, a secret op with an air of action about him, came from a good family ... made his name in Vietnam, where one of his guys, his top men, was Felix Rodriguez. He was the link. ... And when that CIA plane went down in Nicaragua, who got called? Felix Rodriguez! And where did he report? To George Bush’s office, to that other spook who worked for him, Gregg!

  It was so obvious! And it had to come out. Maybe not now, or even soon. But it would come out, and the committee would prove: George Bush knew all about it!

  But even Dole failed to calculate the capacity for knowing-not-knowing. Even he, the most able inside player in the U.S. Congress, underestimated George Bush’s Washington art. Even while Dole danced his spectacular tarantella on the White House, the Congress, his fellow candidates ... he made one fatal error of judgment: he thought George Bush must be something like him. If Bob Dole had sat in the VP’s chair every day as the little man with the briefcase retailed the covert news of the world, or as the NSC staff in the Oval Office outlined the “initiative to Iran” ... there was no way Bob Dole would not commit an overt act of knowing. There would be not one day when Dole could maintain he was Out of the Loop. As he said, in mid-dance, to one group of admiring reporters: “Agh, m’not one to sit on the sidelines.”

  So, he said nothing about George Bush. Why should he? Reporters were telling him privately that Bush was dead. All Dole had to do now was beat Jack Kemp. Hah! And not just reporters. Big guys, insiders, the kind Dole listened to, were coming on to him. Looked like John Sears, the guy who started Reagan in 1980, was going to run Dole’s campaign! By mid-December, the Iowa poll from The Des Moines Register had Dole, for the first time, in the lead over Bush! So Dole kept dancing.

  There he was with all the cameras again, on December 16, announcing Rudman’s name, and the other members of the new committee. “A Watergate-style committee” is what the papers called it. And there, in the press conference, one of the young anchormen-to-be had a question for Dole, the big question now ...

  Hasn’t this endless trauma destroyed the Republicans’ chances in 1988? Doesn’t it make the nomination ... worthless?

  Dole imperceptibly shrugged one shoulder and a little smile softened his face. He said:

  “I’ll take it.”

  7

  1947

  HE WAS KNOCKED BACK to childhood, learning to walk, eat, dress himself, write ... but without even a baby’s physical attainments: control of limbs, the strength to reach, push, grab. And without a child’s sense of wonder, without the fresh triumph of discovery. Instead, there was the knowledge of what was lost, how he used to run, pull, lift: the sense that Bob Dole was not whole anymore.

  Percy Jones Army Medical Center was Uncle Sam’s place for miracles, where amputees got new arms and legs, and new lives to go with them, a place where spinal paraplegics started moving, got up and walked again. It was opened after Pearl Harbor in a single massive building in Battle Creek, Michigan, an old-fashioned sanatorium endowed by the Kellogg cereal fortune, with a sweeping lawn and a grand central staircase in the echoing entry hall. By the time Dole checked in, Percy Jones was a small city in itself—with a population bigger than Russell, Kansas.

  But with all the Army’s assembled wizardry, there was no orthopedic shortcut for Dole. His was a solitary battle, maddeningly slow. The nurses could lift him out of traction, help him off his bed, but after that, it was up to Bob how many baby steps he could take. One day, by act of will, he might walk to the end of the hall, and his hope for a miracle would swell again. He was going to make it back, whole, good as new—back at school, he’d play for Phog Allen. ... But then, the next morning, in the whirlpool, a therapist might work for two hours, unsuccessfully, trying gently to pry two fingers apart on the claw of his right hand. Or Dole might lie in traction all day, trying, until sweat rolled down his face, to move two fingers together, on his left hand. And if he could not, the world went black, and there was Dole alone again, just his will—that was all he recognized of
himself—trapped in a hospital bed with his nemesis, this body.

  The doctors could ease the struggle sometimes: if he had pain, there was Demerol. But the narcotics knocked out his will, too, and that he could not let them take. That was all he had, and he learned to hide it, deep inside, where nothing could touch it; not the false cheer of doctors, nor even his own family’s brave smiles; not the pain from his body, nor even the evidence of his reason, his own racing brain that told him, screamed in his head, the ugly fact that he would not hear, that he could not accept: he would never be what he was.

  How could he ever let that worm bore to his center: What the hell would he do then? Play bridge all day, like the guys in the ward, with his cards held in a special rack, while someone else shuffled his turn? And after that, what would he do? Sell pencils on Main Street? Sometimes, he could actually see himself on Main Street, Russell, in a wheelchair, with a cup. That was his private vision of hell, the spur to get him up, trying again. He didn’t tell anybody about it, wouldn’t let them near that part of him that still burned bright. And he didn’t want it dulled with the dirty facts of the here and now, the needles, the hot-wax treatments that never loosened his hand, the bedpan-bedsore-nuts-and-bolts of hospital life. So, whenever they came to talk, no matter who they were, or how well intentioned, there was always a joke to hold them off, something about the weather, or a nurse, or another guy on the ward. The doctors and nurses marveled at him: that Lieutenant Dole was just wonderful, so full of good humor. They started to wheel him around to other wards. He’d cheer up the rest of the fellows.

  But what about him? Where was his cheer? It got to be frighteningly clear to Dole, the Army had no miracle for him—not at Percy Jones. After months there, he could barely walk, there was still no movement in his right arm, almost no feeling in his left hand. And there was no plan to do much about it—not that he could divine. So he got leave to go home to Russell. If he had to make his miracle himself, he’d do it. If the doctors in Michigan couldn’t straighten out his arm, he’d do it alone. So Kenny came back to Michigan and brought Bob home on the train. Bina and Doran moved once again to the children’s bedroom, in the back of the house. Once again, they rented a hospital bed and a rolling tray for the front room. Doran, Kenny, and some neighborhood fellows hooked up ropes and pulley-weights from old sash windows on the wall of the garage, behind the house, so Bob could work on his strength, every day.