What It Takes

by Richard Ben Cramer

  Let’s say you had a problem. And you wanted to talk to Congressman Gephardt. ... The first fact: you could talk to him; you’d get an appointment. He’d be late, he’d be rushed, but he’d get there. (“Great to see youuu,” he’d croon.) Then, what he’d do, he’d listen. That was the second fact: Gephardt listened as hard as any man in America. With Gephardt, listening was a positive and physical act. You could feel him listening. It was not like, for instance, Biden, or Dukakis, where listening was the absence of other action. (They weren’t leaving, they weren’t saying their next thing yet, so, therefore, they were still listening.) When Gephardt started to listen, his whole person went into “receive” mode. He locked his sky-blue eyes on your face, and they didn’t wiggle around between your eyes and your mouth and the guy who walked in the door behind you: they were just on you, still and absorptive, like a couple of small blotters. Then, as you talked, his head cocked a bit, maybe twenty degrees off plumb, like that dog in the old RCA ad. Matter of fact, his face bore the same expression: that keen canine commingling of concern, curiosity, interest. ... Gephardt could keep that intelligent-dog look through a six-hour meeting. If it was just you and your problem, he’d stay on “receive” until your tanks were dry ... until you were weak from being listened to.

  Then, he might talk, at the end—it usually was the end, because ... he agreed! Or he thought your idea was a good one. “Yup, very good ... right,” he’d say. “Well ... we’ll do it.”

  Or sometimes, he might explain that he agreed, but this other guy had a problem, and then he’d explain the other guy’s problem. But usually he’d have a plan to get the other guy half of what he wanted, to solve his problem, and that way, you’d get what you wanted, or some of what you wanted ... if Dick could pull it off ... anyway, he was for you.

  And sometimes, if it was a planned disagreement, like a caucus, or a conference on a bill where the Senate and House could not agree, or some other forum of organized bitterness, Gephardt would go onto “receive” for a whole day ... and when everybody was exhausted, and sour, and stinking from flop-sweat, and the whole ship was on fire from the cannonades on either side, there was Gephardt, fresh and bright, not a single strawberry-blond hair out of step with its brethren, his jacket unrumpled on the chair-back behind him, his shirt crisp, dry, and dazzling white, who would suddenly take his chin off his fist, break his RCA-dog face into a smile of empathy for all, and he’d say: “Lemme see if I can make a suggestion. ... Bob, Marty, isn’t this where we can agree, for a start? ...” And then he’d lay down some narrow gangplank of common ground, where everyone, from any deck, could get off the burning ship before it sank. And it was beautiful the way he could do it, because everybody would leave with something to tell the voters. He would draw for them their bottom lines—what they really needed, to get away with their skins ... because he did understand, and the way he did that was, he listened.

  Of course, it also helped that he didn’t care what came out. Well, to be fair, it wasn’t that he didn’t care: if that were true, he wouldn’t have sat there for the last eight hours, watching all those sperm bulls paw the ground. But he didn’t care that much if the top tax bracket ended up at twenty-five percent, or twenty-eight, or thirty. He didn’t walk into that room with his jaw out, and the certain, God-given truth in his breast that the cutoff for aid under Subsection 328-A had to be $14,300 a year (and not a penny less, goddammit). No. What he cared about was doing something, and that something he did was to make a bill, and the bill had to get out of committee, and get to the floor, where it could get a vote, and if it passed (and passed the Senate, God willing), and went to the President’s desk, and he signed it, well ... then the system had worked. That was the goal. Right?

  Well, that was his goal. Gephardt thought his job was to make the system work on the problems. (Kind of radical, but there it was.) Anyone could see, there were problems, right? Biggest budget deficit in history ... biggest trade deficit in history, and getting worse ... factories closing, the jobs ending up in Japan or Taiwan ... farmers drowning in debt, selling out, shutting down ... kids dropping out of school—they couldn’t even read ... what kind of country was this going to be?

  What did people need—a pail of water in the face? The system was not working on the problems!

  What’s worse, Gephardt could not get it done in the House, couldn’t make the system work there—not really. Not that there was anybody better at the game.

  In his first year, his fellow Missourian, Richard Boiling, a senior statesman of the House, wangled Gephardt a seat on the Ways and Means Committee, a hell of an assignment for a freshman—happened once in a blue moon. Gephardt did not waste the chance. By his second term he was a leader on health-care costs—he fought President Carter’s proposals to a standstill, and offered instead a massive substitute that he worked out with a brainy new-right Republican named David Stockman.

  By his third term, he was a leader of the young House Democrats who wanted to grab hold of the system, shake it up, make big things happen. The Democrats had lost the White House in ’80, they’d lost the Senate. The House was where the action was on the Democratic agenda, and these young fellows wanted seats at the table—they wanted to shuck off the old-guard leaders ... and take over. But Gephardt wouldn’t coup the system. He wasn’t going to pick a bloody fight with Tip O’Neill. Instead, he took jobs from Tip: he got a seat on the Budget Committee (with Ways and Means, the tandem gave him a say on every cent the government raised or spent). Tip made him Chairman of House Task Forces, a designated hitter whenever a hot issue hit the House. From that point, Gephardt was the bright young man to see on all the big stuff—money stuff. That’s why Senator Bradley came to Gephardt with his big-league proposal for tax reform. That became the Bradley-Gephardt bill, the major tax bill of the session.

  By his fourth term (after six years, just a stretch and a yawn in a normal House career), Gephardt was turning back talk of Gephardt for Speaker. He became a part of the leadership, Chairman of the Democratic Caucus, fourth in line in the majority. And he was doing more: Senator Tom Harkin came to him with his radical farm bill (which became the Harkin-Gephardt bill, the major point of discussion on Democratic ag policy). Gephardt introduced his own trade bill (which came to be known as the Gephardt Amendment, the lightning rod for discussion on the nation’s trade deficit). Gephardt had a bill on everything. But it wasn’t enough.

  What he wanted to do was to get everybody together... get them into one room, and say:

  “Okay, guys. What do you want to do about this?

  “Okay ... good. Let’s get it done.”

  But you couldn’t get it done that way in the House. There were 435 members, who didn’t pay attention to anyone. They didn’t pay attention to their Party leaders. What the hell did they need their Party for? All they needed was their half-dozen big contributors, a guy to make their TV ads, and ... they were bulletproof. You couldn’t get them together to do ... anything. Anyway, after ’81, with Reagan and that bastard Stockman running the show, the only thing a Democrat could do was damage control, try to save a program here or there ... something besides the Pentagon. ...

  There was no way to set an agenda, and make the system work. Not for Gephardt ... unless he did it from one special chair ... and that was in the Oval Office.

  So he set out to run for President. Sure, it’d be hard to make the jump from the House (hadn’t been done in this century). But there had to be a system, right? He’d learn the system, and he’d get out there early, work longer and harder than anyone. ... So Gephardt set out to learn what it took. He asked around, and when people told him, he listened. Here is what they said:

  They told him he’d have to raise a hell of a lot of money, maybe five million to start, just to get him through Iowa and New Hampshire, just to the first primaries. Gephardt hadn’t raised five million dollars in his whole career. So he said, “Yup, okay, I hear you ... five million, good. We’ll do it.” And he got himself a Finance Chair
man, who started giving Dick names to call. There were hundreds of names—fat cats and do-goods—none of whom knew Dick from a hole in the ground. And Gephardt made those calls—called them cold, if he had to—and then called some names he heard from other people, and called back the ones he missed, and made visits with anyone who said yes, and called back anyone who said maybe ... until his finance guy, a St. Louis banker named Lee Kling, who was the Party Finance Chairman under Jimmy Carter, finally figured out: “You got to fight not to give Dick too many calls. ... He’ll make as many as you want.”

  They told him he’d have to jump-start a national organization. With Gephardt, it had always been just him. He was the organization. But not this time, not in this league. The wise men gave him lectures: he’d have to be just the candidate. He couldn’t think anymore about his own schedule, his own ads, his own speeches: he’d have to sign on professionals for those. He’d have to sign on gurus, and a pollster, a Campaign Manager. He’d have to start a PAC. So Dick took some of the money he’d pried out of folks with his fingernails, and set up a PAC, a political action committee, and he got a smart guy to run it, Steve Murphy, who was a thoroughbred political hit man, and Murphy daubed Gephardt’s money onto dozens of deserving Democrats, who were running deserving local races, in deserving states such as Iowa ... and things went fine. Dick even bought a few friends. And so pleased was he with the progress that he talked to Murphy about becoming the Campaign Manager ... or, to be precise, Murphy talked ... and Dick agreed! And then he started looking for a polling firm, and he got a hot outfit from New York, Kennan Research, which would cost another fortune, but provided not only a young killer pollster, Ed Reilly, but offered the services of Ned Kennan himself, who talked like a Viennese shrink, except much louder, whose part in the drama it was to sit Dick down (along with his wife, Jane, and his mother, Loreen, who flew in from St. Louis for this), and to scream at him: “DEY VILL ATTACK YOU! DEY VILL TRY TO KILL YOU! DE PEHRSONL LIFE DE FEMMLY LIFE VILL BE RUINNN! YOU VANT DIS?” ... which performance Dick greeted with his eager-dog stare, and an occasional murmured: “Okay ... yup, I can handle that. Fine. It’ll be fine.”

  Above all, they told him, he’d have to win Iowa. That was the old Carter ’76 scenario ... guy sneaks up out of nowhere in Iowa, by working every chicken dinner and corn boil in the state ... and once he wins the caucus—he’s a star ... got momentum ... the polls shoot up, the money rolls in ... it’s a lock. So Dick thought: Hey, perfect! Door-to-door! And he went to Iowa, to present himself, as he had on so many St. Louis stoops. He started in 1984, and after Mondale went down the tubes, Dick started working Iowa in earnest: made a dozen trips into the state in ’85. He went to Des Moines in the center of the state, and Sioux City in the west, and Waterloo, Cedar Rapids, Davenport in the east, until someone asked why he was spending all his time in such big cities, and then he went to places you never heard of. For the PAC, he hired a couple of big names who’d worked Iowa for Carter and Hart. By ’86, any Democrat who was running for Sheriff or better got more than a check in the mail from Dick’s PAC. They got Dick, who’d show up at their twenty-five-dollar fund-raiser, happy to make a few remarks, to help out.

  And there he’d tell the faithful—whoever showed up—how fortunate they were to have this fine candidate ... for the sake of their Party, their state, this whole country ... because, ladies and gentlemen, this country has problems. And then he’d set out explaining the problems (“I see an America beginning to decline ...”) and how the system could be brought to bear on the problems. And he’d work through it patiently, lucidly, explaining his bills and how they would address the nation’s ills ... until his wise guys told him that explaining wasn’t enough. He had to move the voters, inspire them, scare them ... something. So, Dick would show up in Iowa and decry the problems, with heat, with passion (or maybe strain) constricting his throat ... and he’d chop the air and whack on the podium (“It’s not morning, Mr. Reagan ... It’s MIDNIGHT IN AMERICA! ...”) and then he’d explain the problems ... until his wise guys started whining that his whole speech was, you know, a downer. So then, back in Iowa, Gephardt would decry the problems, chop the air, and smack the podium, then explain the problems, how the system could be brought to bear ... and then, when the audience was totally becalmed, he’d tack on this strange and churchly breeze: “Now wait ... lemme tell you how good it’s gonna be, when we solve these problems. This country is gonna be soooo great! ...” And he’d go on like that for maybe two or three minutes. The close had to be upbeat, see, so he got this long quote to use, some blather about “I see America ... not in the blah blah light of a setting sun but in the blah blah blah of a rising sun ...” It was a Carl Sandburg quote, supposed to be inspiring ... except, for months, Dick went around, introducing it as a Steinbeck quote (“I think John Steinbeck said it best, when he wrote ...”) or maybe it was the other way around. Maybe it was a Steinbeck quote. Didn’t matter: no one cared who said it. It was like the rest of the speech: paint-by-numbers ... he was doing everything they told him. It’s just that he wasn’t doing anything.

  Which, of course, started to eat at the wise guys he’d hired. Gephardt was only months from his announcement, he’d been running in and out of Iowa like a drug courier for two years ... and the polls there put him at one percent! (By late ’86, Gary Hart was at fifty percent.) So they decided what wise guys always decide: they had a problem, and the problem was ... the candidate. The hot pollster, Reilly, ran a series of focus groups. That was the latest wheeze in the pollster game. You got a group of voters in a room, showed them things, and then, while they talked, you taped them and watched them through a one-way mirror. It was supposed to tell you attitudes ... to unlock their wallets, or their votes. So Reilly showed these Iowans tapes of Mondale, Ferraro, Reagan, Hart ... and Gephardt. And what the people said was ... he looks too good. Too smooth: this guy’s just rattling off answers ... like it’s rehearsed. So the wise guys came back to Gephardt and they said: too smooth ... too lucid. What people want to see is passion, commitment, they want a window into your soul. “You’ve got it, Dick ... your life is this commitment ... what you’ve got to do now is ... just, you know, let it out!”

  “Okay, good. Very good. I hear you. Let it out ... okay, very helpful.”

  Let what out?

  “You’ve got to have a message,” Don Foley said. Foley was Dick’s press guy—went back with him all the way to St. Louis, to the first campaign for Congress. Just about the only guy left in Dick’s office who knew anything about Gephardt ... last year. “And it’s got to come from you,” Foley said. “So, Dick, what you have to do, is take a weekend, or a week, and don’t go to Iowa. Go off somewhere, by yourself, with Jane, and just write down what you really want to do, just write why you think you ought to be President.” So Dick said he understood, but it took months before he could get away, and when he did, it was only a weekend, but still ... he sat down and he thought to himself why he really wanted to be President. But it was obvious. There were problems ... and the system ... and he wrote that down, and brought it back, but it ended up like a laundry list, like the roster of bills at the start of any Congress.

  Meanwhile, the chief of Gephardt’s wise men, Richard Moe, another graduate of Mondale U, told Dick that his campaign wasn’t big league: here they were, heading for announcement, and the message wasn’t getting through. Gephardt for President needed a Campaign Manager with national experience ... no, Steve Murphy was a fine, good man ... but Moe knew that true professional killers are quiet, heady guys in suits, who leave no fingerprints. Only two fellows who could run this thing, Moe said, were that guy in Boston, John Sasso ... or a fellow from Teddy Kennedy’s staff, a murmurous South Carolinian named Bill Carrick. “Okay. Got it,” said Gephardt. But Sasso was otherwise engaged, so Dick started talking to Carrick. Talked for months ... well, Carrick talked, and he sketched out the way a campaign should go: most important, there would be discipline, focus ... while the manager ran things, and the cand
idate would be ... just the candidate. Dick agreed! And when Carrick finally said yes, just at the New Year, 1987—only two months to announcement, time to get moving—Dick dropped Murphy like a sweaty gym suit (put him in another job, director of the Democratic Caucus, after Foley reminded Dick that he had to do something for Murphy), and named his new manager, Bill Carrick.

  And Carrick got in, looked the thing over, and discovered there was no message. ... Who’s doing message? ... And Carrick said, there’s only one guy to do message: guy’s a genius—Bob Shrum. They’d worked together for Teddy Kennedy—Shrummy and Bill, pals, you see ... so Carrick told Dick he had to get Shrum. So Dick called Shrum, and called him, and called him back, and finally invited him to dinner ... out to the house to dinner. So they made a date, and Jane cooked, and everything was ready, out in the woods in Virginia, where Dick and Jane had their lovely, airy house ... except that day, Shrum was meeting about Cuomo. Had an appointment with Mario’s son, Andrew—supposed to talk for an hour or so. But Shrummy and Andrew got to talking and the time ... well, it just went! ... and it got to be awfully late. And there were Dick and Jane, in the woods in Virginia, and no Shrum, and the dinner was drying out in the oven by the time Shrum finished talking up Cuomo ... and that was in Washington, forty-five minutes, at least, from Dick’s house, and Shrum would have to find someone to drive him (Shrum’s a genius and does not have to drive himself—he once took a cab in Washington ... to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania), so Shrum had to go back to his office and get a colleague to drive him out to Dick’s, and by the time they got there, even Shrum thought Dick might be, well, a little pissed off ... but no.