What It Takes

by Richard Ben Cramer

  (In the end, they never did mash it through the computers. Instead, Ted Kaufman and Ridley taped colored file cards all over the walls of Joe’s study. Red for Iowa, green for New Hampshire, blue for the South, pink for the committee ... something like eight colors. The room looked like one of those op-art pieces that vibrates when you look at it. Then they spent the first hour or so with Joe on the couch saying: “Wait a minute—tell me again—what’s pink? ...” and then more hours moving cards around on the walls, swapping dates, and finally, Ridley and Kaufman stepped back and announced, with pride ... no, with triumph: “There ... that’s how we get through the next six months.” Whereupon, Biden pointed out, with some justice: “Yeah, but this thing lasts more than six months.”)

  In the end, no schedule could solve Joe’s problem. It wasn’t about time—not really. The heart of the problem was: Joe could not see his way through. How was he going to be a husband, father ... the way he meant to be? He made a rule: the kids could come along, all the kids, or any kid, or Jill and the kids ... whenever they wanted, whatever the cost. If that meant a change in the schedule, a larger plane, if it meant another thousand dollars, or five, or ten thousand ... no matter: any Biden ... on any trip. But was that father enough? What if they wanted him to come with them? What if they had a game, or a play, a debate? Christ! Beau’s graduation! ...

  How would he be a brother ... the way he meant to be? Val’s divorce, Jimmy’s bankruptcy, Frankie—Jesus! Frankie had gone through some serious personal problems in California. And now the kid was home again, going to settle down, get married, and ... boom—Joe says the word and every paper in the country would be turning over rocks on Frankie.

  And how could he be a Senator, a chairman ... the way he meant to be? He could not afford to give short shrift to the committee. There were already people in the Senate who talked him down as a lightweight. If he walked away now, they’d savage him. He had long talks with his senior staff guys, Gitenstein, Kaufman—they thought it was impossible to do everything. That’s what they all thought, last November, when the Democrats won back the Senate and Teddy Kennedy gave up the Judiciary chair. They just assumed Joe couldn’t do both—chairman and candidate ... Joe couldn’t see it either. He tried to get Kennedy to take the committee. He just about begged the sonofabitch. But no, Kennedy wanted the Labor chair, and Biden was saddled with Judiciary, the toughest, most fractious, most ... Jesus, if a Supreme Court justice dies, they get a nominee—well, that’s it: the end of the campaign. No way in hell ...

  Thing was, Joe knew there was no way—that’s why he told Jill not to worry. That’s why Ridley had the statement all drafted, carried it around in his briefcase: Why Joe Biden Is Not Going to Run. That’s why the papers were picking up hints: writing the obit for the campaign before Joe even said the word. That’s why Joe himself told reporters: “Right now, quite frankly, I don’t see the way. ...” Then he went to Florida.

  The venue was a conference of union chieftains, about half the AFL-CIO, at the Sheraton in Bal Harbour. Joe was on the program, with Hart and Gephardt. Hart was there to make amends, to tell the unions that just because he’d called their main man, Mondale, a “candidate of the special interests” ... didn’t mean he was against labor ... no. Gary Hart was a Friend of Labor! Gephardt came with the goodies: his trade bill, which promised to save U.S. jobs by opening foreign markets ... or else. After all, labor had been saying, all these years, that foreign competition was unfair, and Dick was there to let them know—he agreed!

  But it was Biden who blew the crowd away.

  “You kid yourself half the time,” he told the union nabobs. “You don’t understand what’s happening ...”

  Joey got his chin out, stuck it in their faces, like a dock boss who wants to see things shape up:

  “There has been an outright war declared on you these last eight years. This is not some minor conflict. The Chambers of Commerce of America understand what’s at stake, and they are about the business of seeing to it that your say, and your share of the economic bounty and prosperity of America are fundamentally changed.

  “If you don’t understand that, then, with all due respect, you’re in the wrong business. You’ve been coming to Florida and sitting in the sun too long. ...”

  Of course they jumped up and started to cheer. There’s nothing labor likes more than a war—and nothing labor sees more often, more readily, than a business plot against the God-given right to pull down twenty-two dollars an hour.

  After that, it was Biden’s crowd, though he talked for another forty minutes: he wouldn’t leave the podium until he knew he had the connect. And he got it. They loved how Joey made them feel.

  Of course, he felt it, too. Joe’s committee press guy, Pete Smith, was along in Bal Harbour, and he was with Biden when reporters cornered Joe at the elevators.

  Sure enough, someone asked about the candidate-and-chairman thing, and BANGO—it was all over. Joe said: “I think I can do ’em both.”

  Then someone asked about Cuomo, and Biden snapped that he didn’t worry about Cuomo. Then, he seemed to think that might sound cocky, so he explained: “I think only one of us is going to run—and it’s probably going to be me.”

  So was he in?

  Was that an announcement?

  When would he announce?

  “I plan on running ...” Biden said.

  “I want to be President ...”

  As to announcement: “Well, it depends ...” Joe was making this up on the spot. “It depends how things are going ... after June.” (And he thought to himself, “... after Beau’s graduation.”)

  In the Sheraton hallway, Pete Smith gave Biden a grin ... meant to be congratulations ... a moment of shared relief, at a return in the road, taken at speed.

  “Well, I guess that’s that,” Pete said.

  But Joe wasn’t sharing any relief. He was all steel: “Well, I’ve done my part,” Biden said. “Let’s see now if the staff can do its part.”

  Staff?

  That’s what Ridley said, when Joe got back to Wilmington, and Ridley came up for another talk. Joe still had a score of gurus, and demigurus, but no one was signed on, no one was coming in every day. All they really had were the same few guys: Ridley, Gitenstein, Kaufman—and they were stretched to the limit.

  “Joe, it’s sort of a good-news-bad-news,” Ridley told him. Joe looked over from the driver’s seat. They were riding around in the Bronco again. “You know, the good news is, you’re running. The bad news is, your first team’s already burned out.”

  Back from Bal Harbour, Sasso was in a stew. These guys were good. There was no way Michael could stand up and do a labor crowd like that. ... Chrissake, the man could not utter the word “President.” That February, Dukakis was on the road, two weeks out of four, but he still could not get the word out. He’d say: “And if I run for national office ...”

  That was not going to feed the bulldog. That’s what Sasso found out in Florida. Hart was better than Sasso had ever seen him—funny, relaxed, like a man who knows he belongs on the national stage. Gephardt was about five times better than he was a month before ... and that trade bill was red meat for labor. Biden was amazing—he had the speech, had it down. Michael was still getting ready to make his first national speech—the New Hampshire speech—but he wasn’t ready.

  That’s how Michael ended up in the office of the speech coach, Frances LaShoto. Fran was a professor at Emerson College, and she’d seen them all; she was Jack Kennedy’s coach. She had a studio upstairs on Newbury Street, not too far from the State House. Michael did not want to go. But he went.

  It was supposed to be an easy hour, tucked into a normal day: 11:00 A.M.—Michael would be back at his desk for his brown-bag lunch. Ira Jackson dashed across Newbury Street for some croissants and French coffee, to keep everybody going. Ira was along with his speech text—and Sasso, and his deputy, John DeVillars. DeVillars would take over the First Secretary’s job if Michael decided to run and Sasso mov
ed over to the campaign. It’d be good for DeVillars to see this, a chance to see the man work ...

  But DeVillars left within minutes, after Fran started ripping into Michael. Even Sasso had to leave the room a couple of times. It was too close to the bone, too private: like watching your friend fight with his wife.

  “You think you work hard at your job, don’t you?” she was saying to Michael, in the middle of the speech. He’d just got to the stuff about his parents.

  “I work as hard at my job,” Michael said, “as any public servant in America.”

  “So how come you don’t sweat?”

  “Whaddya mean, I don’t sweat?”

  “I don’t see any pain,” Fran said. “I don’t see any pain in your face. I don’t see any clutching in your gut. I don’t see that you’re working. All you’re doing is going through the motions.”

  Doubt and annoyance clouded Michael’s face. He was just here to learn to keep his hands still, look at the audience ... you know, get some tips! He was just trying to read the goddam speech!

  “Exactly!” Fran spat. “You’re not working. You’re not hurting. I want to see you get to the marrow of your bones, and you’re not even getting into your gut. You’re just getting through it with your head, aren’t you, Michael?”

  So Michael went at it again, and she came at him again.

  “You think you’re so smart, don’t you, Michael?”

  “No, I ...”

  “Yes, you do. Smart Michael. Perfect Michael! Don’t have to show anybody how you feel, do you?”

  It seemed like it went on forever, like a war. No one ate croissants. Ira was jittery ... and satisfied. He was the one who lined up Fran LaShoto. And she was right: this had to come from Michael’s gut. That’s what he’d been trying to say. Sasso looked like a mother with a sick child. There was no point worrying about the field if he was going to lose Michael—it could happen, too. Sasso knew Michael was the kind of guy who could walk to the brink, look over the cliff, then say, No. (“Nope ... it’s just not me.” Sasso could almost hear him say it.)

  But Michael didn’t say it. He took the blows, he tried to do the work. He didn’t know quite how ... but he stayed. He wanted this New Hampshire speech to be something special. More than any of them knew: this was his test, for himself. And he was in this to listen, that’s what he always said—to get his feet wet. He wasn’t going to turn around at the first puddle. No, he was tougher than that.

  They sent Gary Hart to a speech coach once. He didn’t have any choice. It was ’83, and his contributors insisted. Hart was in no position to lift his leg to contributors.

  What happened was, these guys would send money to his campaign ... then he’d come to their town, and they’d watch him speak—he was terrible—it was like sitting through a chemistry lecture: no attempt to lift the crowd. Of course, that’s the way Hart liked it: appeals to emotion made him feel cheap. But they couldn’t see it, the money guys, so they’d call Billy Shore. “You gotta get him to a coach ...” They didn’t have to add “or else.”

  So Hart walks into this place in New York, with his jaw already working and his mouth a grim white line. And the coach takes one look, and figures: I got it. This guy’s got to loosen up!

  Good eye! That’s like looking at a cocked howitzer and deciding there’s some tension in that gun. When Hart has to do something that Hart does not want to do, he immediately decides it is unworthy. And then (if he still can’t get out of it) he goes rigid: like he’s wearing some new du Pont polymer (five times stronger than steel).

  The coach says, “First, we’re going to go out to the hallway ...”

  And Hart’s mandibles open an inch, so he can enunciate: “Why are we going to the hallway?”

  “I want you to wad up this paper, and play catch with me.”

  “I am not going to wad up paper, and play catch ...”

  “It’s just an exercise ...”

  “... with anybody.”

  “Well, look ...”

  “No.”

  “It’s a way to ...”

  “No.”

  “Senator, if you can’t do this, there’s no way I can help you ...”

  “That’s correct,” Hart said, and with his first smile of the day, he walked out of the office.

  Turned out, people found all sorts of drama in his words, once he made his move in Iowa and won in New Hampshire. ... And this time, ’88, he was running with the wind: this time, he didn’t have to show anybody he could win. No one was asking anymore if he could win.

  This time, he wasn’t going to sand any sharp corners off his positions: Tax the rich! ... Yeah, let’s show ’em what we’re gonna do. We’ll put out a full budget! ... It drove his Campaign Manager, Bill Dixon, crazy. But Hart loved it. He’d stick it in their faces. This time, the staff would line up a speech before some Jewish group, and Hart would talk for an hour ... about supply management in agriculture (addressing the concerns of all those Jewish farmers). But it worked. People left the room, saying, “This guy is serious.” When you look like a winner, everything you do is a winner. When you’re taking strong positions, it gives the look of a man who is strong. Most important, it undergirds the assumption that something can be done. That is the essence of optimism. All winning campaigns communicate optimism.

  So this time, his staff had to show him a reason—policy or high politics, some way this would move the country toward his ideas—or they couldn’t get Hart to do ... anything.

  “Look, it’s one day ...” they’d say around the big table in Denver—the schedule meeting: that’s where the rubber hit the road. “He’s just got to show up at the statehouse—one day. Just so he can say he’s been there, he’s talked to those people ...”

  “I don’t know ...” Sue Casey, the Scheduler, would say. She was the one who’d have to run it past Hart.

  “Casey, those people can kill us. He’s got to talk to them. He doesn’t have to agree with them. He’s just got to show up.”

  So Casey would take the block schedule into Hart’s law office, where he held court in Denver, and she’d try to scoot it past him:

  “Absolutely not.”

  “They think you have to just ...”

  “No.”

  “What if it’s just ...”

  “No.”

  The awful thing was the look he’d give her—it was scorn, and hurt. And Casey loved Hart ... she did understand him. She knew he meant to create his own campaign events. And she knew why. Casey was one of the women who engineered the win in New Hampshire, in ’84. She knew the concentric circles, all the theories—she believed. ... And here was Hart, staring at her with that look on his face: Don’t tell me YOU’RE gonna be an asshole, too!

  When Hart would give that look ... it was over. You couldn’t stay in his face. You couldn’t bear to be one of them in his mind. It was the same look he’d flash at the guys—Dixon, Hal Haddon, John Emerson—who tried to talk to him about women, about the way things appeared, how Hart had to watch himself. ... These guys were supposed to be friends. They were supposed to know him! And he’d told them—told them all—that was not going to be a problem.

  So they backed off, never brought it up anymore ... you couldn’t push Hart. And he wasn’t stupid. If you could show him why something made sense ... well, he’d do it. Might not like it. Might go stiff in the middle of it ... but he’d do it. That was how he was about the big stuff, anyway, like the date of announcement. ...

  Hart didn’t want to declare his candidacy early. He didn’t see the advantage to inviting that kind of scrutiny now. ... “I don’t understand why ...”

  But they convinced him: Dixon, Haddon, Emerson, Paul Tully ... hell, no one was more of a political pro than Tully. He’d been in the business twenty years—with the sole aim of electing a progressive Democrat. Tully had no ax to grind. He wasn’t trying to change Gary Hart—didn’t want to mess with the man, at all. And Tully was convinced: it was just good politics. It would highlight t
he hollowness of Cuomo’s posture (still on the mountaintop, waiting for God to speak to him) and Senator Sam Nunn’s calculation (could he make it? could he make it? could he make it?). Anyway, you get out there early, flatten the grass, none of the little guys can sneak up. Tully had argued the same strategy for Mondale four years before—and Mondale ended up the nominee. ...

  So they convinced him—they’d schedule announcement for April ... and with a sigh, Hart acceded. It was good politics. It would flatten the landscape. It’s just that Hart knew: the only man with his head above the grass would be ... Gary Hart. For Tully, Haddon, Emerson, Dixon, it would straighten the road: it was the start of their campaign. But Hart knew: it was the end of life, as he chose to live it.

  They all said, the gurus and political hit men: an early announcement, earlier than anyone ... and Dick agreed!

  Of course, before that, he had to hit the statehouses, the courthouses, the activists—give them a chance to feel they were in on the ground floor. And Dick agreed! He was hitting doors as fast as he could. Big doors, little doors ... he didn’t just hit the big union meeting at Bal Harbour, like the other candidates. Dick hit the Machinists’ Midwest Regional Leadership Conference. He showed up when the chieftains of the bricklayer locals gathered in Washington. He must have made a half-dozen personal calls to Chuck Gifford, the head of the United Auto Workers in Iowa. Another half-dozen to Mrs. Gifford ... you couldn’t give him too many calls.

  That’s the way he always did it ... since ’76, every campaign for Congress: “How many doors did we hit today?” That’s all Dick wanted to know. Of course, it wasn’t Dick alone: Jane could work one side of a block, or Jane and Loreen ... and there was Dick’s cousin, Joe Kochanski, who’d bring a van with the helium tanks, balloons for the kids ... and Dick’s campaign coordinator, the large and hyperactive Joyce Aboussie, who’d organize the thing, run the phones and volunteers. Even Joyce, who’d made a career helping Dick, had to wonder about him sometimes—Saturday night, when she and Jane would finish, they’d wait hours for Dick to quit. He’d get that weird focus, and he wasn’t going to stop for something stupid like dinner.