What It Takes

by Richard Ben Cramer

  Anyway, who was going to argue? The two-score national press in attendance knew even less about Gephardt than Shrum did. They were here to see if he could pull off a big-time announcement, Presidential grade. And he did. There was not one glitch to write up. The crowd was big enough, loud enough. The rhetoric—well, it was just what they’d come for. ... “God!” Peg Simpson from Hearst newspapers said to Don Foley in the press pen. “He’s good! He sounds like Ted Kennedy!”

  And who could miss the subtext of family values when Dick finished his speech, hugged his mom and kissed his lovely wife, Jane, and his two pretty daughters, then wrapped his son in a bear hug that lasted until Matt woke up to all those eyes upon him, and started in his father’s embrace, and stepped back a couple of paces ... and then Dick swooped up his youngest, Katie, and held her aloft with one arm while they waved to the crowd ... and that was the picture in The New York Times, where E.J. Dionne reported: “... the family presented a striking tableau before the crowds and television cameras this morning.”

  Of course, the national press left town the next day, when Dick flew off to points west and south to continue his announcement barrage, and Jane was left in St. Louis, calling around to friends, trying to find a ride to get Matt to his appointment at Barnes Hospital, trying to figure a way to get herself and three kids to the airport thereafter, for the flight back to Washington ... whither she arrived in the snow, late that day, and got the three kids off the plane, through the airport and into the car, and got them back home, sent them into the house, while she parked on the street, so she could shovel out the driveway.

  Ski trip was Family Time—been on Joe’s schedule for weeks: third weekend in March, northern New Hampshire, just the kids and Jill. Of course, the campaign had to coordinate, because after that weekend, Joe would do politics up there, and anyway, they’d arranged for a condo on loan from New Hampshire’s Senate Democratic Leader. But they kept it simple: just the New Hampshire Scheduler (who drove the family to the condo), and Ruth Berry, who’d signed on as the traveling aide, the body woman—Trip Director, she preferred to call the job. Whatever ... the work was the same: she had to take care of Joe, make sure he got his plane, and his rest, had a clean shirt and food in his belly, a copy of his speech, a ride to the next event, a rundown on who’d be there ... and why. Ruthie was a pro: a young woman still, but she’d served in her twenties in the Carter White House, and before, with the venerable Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson. Ruth had been with Biden only a few weeks, but already she knew Joe’s acid test: love him, love his family—in fact, take care of the family first!

  So they got to the Leader’s condo—North Conway, New Hampshire—and Ruth got the family in, she was about to disappear ... when lo, came a knock at the door and who should appear but the Leader, and Mrs. Leader, and the Neighbor, and Mrs. Neighbor ... and they had an idea: How about dinner—all together, the Bidens, the Leaders, and the Neighbors? So, Ruthie asked Jill, who said absolutely not—This is Family Time ... please pass on regrets. This Ruth did, and proceeded to disappear.

  It was only the next morning, on the way to the ski slope, when Jill was so pissed off in the van, that anyone found out that Joe had gone to dinner. In fact, Joe and the kids had gone, and Jill stayed home, or almost home, at the condo. And that was the weekend Jill found out there wasn’t going to be any Family Time, or private time, or whatever Joe called it. It didn’t matter what was on the schedule ... that’s what she figured out. Because there wasn’t any life outside this thing. They could go to dinner with their oldest friends—what did those folks want to know? How’s the campaign? ... They could go out together, just Joe and Jill, and she’d still have to think, look over her shoulder, before she touched his cheek, or kissed him. Every move, any move, was now a public event—she could face it, or she could stay home. If she went out, even to the Pathmark, there was the campaign. The checkout girls were for Joe—knew he was going to win—and Jill would have to smile and say, “Hope so ...” Where was private time? Some sun-stunned one-street gila-monster town in New Mexico ... you think they don’t get CBS News?

  CBS News was with them on the slopes—by prearrangement—taping a story about Joe, for West 57th Street ... a nice producer and his crew. Jill couldn’t be mad about that: they were so polite ... and it was good for Joe, wasn’t it? That was the funny thing: there was nobody to be mad at. Everybody was trying to help. It’s just ... their life was gone. The way Joe got in, the campaign just came at them: no time to think. It was pulling them. And Joe had to do everything at once. She couldn’t even stay mad at Joe—dinner with the Leader, that was just Joe. Politics was so much a part of him that she never expected him to be another way. It was like breathing for him, part of life, like family, or home. When she married him—in fact, when she met him—he was already in the Senate. It wasn’t like politics snuck up on her. She’d always helped—and not just with the public parts. She got the mail at the house. It was a point of particular pride with Jill that Joe never saw one piece of hate-mail. All the vicious anti-Catholic stuff, the threats from the sickos. She took them to the FBI, or she trashed the stuff. He never even knew. She’d always helped in the campaigns, too. But before, she’d always had the choice.

  She could go along if she wanted ... what she didn’t want, she could leave alone. Now it wouldn’t leave her alone.

  She would not be the one to tell him no. This was his dream. He would never have said no to her dream. And she would never be the wife who kept him from his destiny. That would ... destroy his soul. She would keep what she could of her life—at least, her life alone. She had her work—teaching disturbed kids at a hospital in Wilmington. And her graduate English course at Villanova. (She’d registered under her maiden name, but even so, people in her Faulkner class recognized her from TV.) She was not going to give up grad school. Joe said she had to do what she wanted. And they’d get through the campaign—a year, eighteen months at the max. Unless he won ... God, what if he won?

  That was the weekend Jill started asking what it would be like ... if they won ... the White House. Ruthie had been in the White House with the Carters. It was in the plane, flying south that Sunday—Joe was catching a nap, he had three political events to hit that night—when Jill asked Ruth Berry what would it be like. What could she do? What would she have to do?

  And Ruth started to tell her about the life: she could do ... anything she chose to do. She could help Joe in a hundred ways. Or she could work on her own issues—things that mattered to her—education, family services, better day care ...

  That’s when Joe woke up, and the only part he heard was Ruth telling Jill how she could work on those issues. And he jerked into instant fury. He was not in this goddam thing to have his family bossed around. His jaw started working and his teeth clenched in that killer grin. No one was going to tell his wife what to do!

  “Honey, don’t listen to anyone. You just do what you’re comfortable with ...”

  And to Ruth, Joe snarled through his teeth: “Goddammit! Don’t you ever tell Jill what she’s got to do.”

  Later, in the bathroom, Jill told Ruth: “When he gets like that, just ignore him. He just gets that way, sometimes.”

  There was Sasso, like a brother to him, smoothing every trip, every meeting. There was his son, John, prepping him, pushing him, for his first big speech. Pick up the paper, and there was Kitty, confiding (just between her and the Hadassah, understand) that the family wanted Michael to run. ...

  Only with family could Michael show doubt ... but there was no doubt discussed in the family now. Only in their eyes could he find the fondest, largest view of himself ... and they saw him as either a candidate, or a man who would not match their dreams.

  Even at the fringes of his tight life, at the third and fourth remove, everybody had such confidence for him. He asked their help to peer down the long track ahead, and they told him: all the lights were green. What engineer, like Dukakis—at the levers of his marvelous machine—could
stay his hand on the throttle?

  A thousand Democrats (along with a score of diddybop press, and local wise guys, national big-feet, Ken Bode’s NBC crew, and then, too, Michael’s State House brain trust, his old Greek friends, his speech coach, his family) packed a hotel ballroom in Bedford, New Hampshire, to hear his first “Presidential” address. Democrats in New Hampshire are such an oppressed breed that they have to look past their borders to see what a Democratic officeholder looks like. And Dukakis was the man they had turned to for years, to stop their Seabrook nuclear plant, to face off with their hated and hostile Gov, the Republican, John Sununu. In effect, Michael Dukakis was New Hampshire’s leading Democrat. They owed him. And that night, the Party loyalists paid him back.

  It wasn’t the Gettysburg Address, after all, but a good speech, yes ... a call to let the road to renewal begin, there, in New Hampshire. Michael was nervous, careful at first. His son, John (a professional actor), had plastered sticky tape on the podium to remind Michael: Keep those hands down! At first, Dukakis was thinking his way through ... hands still ... slow here ... let your voice fall ... but as he got untracked, more confident, his hands started slicing and dividing the air over the podium ... and he sounded like he meant what he said. He even slowed down and looked up when he got to a zinger ... and they stopped him with applause! He looked so startled, first time it happened—like he wondered what it was he said. But it happened again, with the next line, and the next—twenty-four times!

  And when he got to the part about Pan and Euterpe, their voyages to this land, their hard work (in New Hampshire!), their dreams, their success in the New World ... well, it was a real connection with that crowd. Then Michael introduced Euterpe Dukakis, and at eighty-three years old, queenly and calm, she rose to acknowledge the cheers. And some stood to applaud now ... and, therewith, Michael passed his test: a standing ovation from New Hampshire Democrats, “activists” in the first primary state. And when he finished, there were a thousand people standing, as Michael, with a small, pained smile, held a hand up, as if to still them ... but they did not stop. They were grinning and clapping, even after he sat down. And Michael’s smile had grown wide. ...

  And so, two days later, a Sunday, while the press was asleep (the Boston press knew Michael never worked on Sunday, his family day), Michael and Sasso flew down to New York and met with Jimmy Carter. And Michael asked his questions: Could he win in the South? Could he do the job? ... Carter said yes, and yes.

  Then Michael and Sasso caught a train (Michael loved trains—and no reporter would look for anyone on a train), and traveled to Albany, where he and Mario Cuomo—these two Democrats, Governors, each at the peak of his form; Mediterraneans, sons of immigrants, products of the American dream, both acutely conscious, proud, and grateful of how far they’d come—sat down in Cuomo’s grand and Sunday-silent capitol to talk about the top job in the United States.

  Cuomo was in a sport shirt. Michael was in his suit, small, neat, cautious; he propped his right elbow on the arm of his chair, then brought his other hand across his chest to hold his right forearm. Then his legs crossed, left over right, so his whole body was canted into a corner of his armchair. His every move revealed more chair and less Dukakis. But his thick eyebrows were lively, raised in self-conscious enjoyment of the moment. His mouth twisted into a little smile. Michael had a sense of occasion. And this—him and Cuomo, this Sunday, this ... was rich.

  He knew Cuomo understood his doubts about governing and running at the same time.

  “That’s your advantage, Mike ...” Cuomo said. “You’ve got what the country needs. You know what I mean. ... You govern. We govern ...”

  And Michael nodded. He did know. All the big-foot punditry, all the op-ed magma, was hardening on the conviction that “hands-on management” was what the nation lacked, under Reagan.

  Cuomo pressed on: “When people want to know what you’ll do, you stack nine budgets on the table. There. That’s your answer.”

  Nine balanced budgets, a record of success ... Michael did understand. So, three nights thence, in Washington, when he spoke at the Children’s Defense Fund banquet, he did not confine himself to an airy encomium on the American family. No, he talked about his record: thousands of welfare mothers who found jobs with ET ... a model teenage pregnancy program in Holyoke, Massachusetts ... a bill to force delinquent fathers to pay child support. “Idealism that works,” Michael called it. And again, they saluted him with cheers.

  It was that night, nearly midnight, in a hallway of the Capital Hilton, on his way to sleep before a flight, the next morning, to Louisiana and another speech, Michael said to Sasso:

  “You know, we said we were going to announce this thing mid-March ...” Michael’s voice was casual. “You thought about how we’d actually do it?”

  Sasso stopped in the hallway. “Yeah, I’ve thought. But if you’re closing in, I better start thinking harder ...”

  So Sasso flew back, the next morning, Thursday, March 12, to Boston. Michael went on to Baton Rouge alone. By the time Dukakis got back to Boston, John had been closeted in his office for a full day and a half. He had the curtains closed, the outer door locked. No one inside or outside the State House could know he was there. And now he had a plan. ...

  In the half-house, on Perry Street, Saturday morning, Michael was at the front door, getting the morning paper. Kitty was behind him, down the narrow hallway that led to the kitchen. Michael did not turn to look at her, or even raise his head. He was hunched, his eyes on the headlines, as he said, “Well, I guess we’re gonna do it.”

  And it took a moment, even for Kitty ... and then she got it, and ran to hug him. She was so excited! So proud! God, she had to tell someone, just the girls—she’d call the girls! ... But, no, Michael was on the phone, the wall phone in the kitchen, next to his chair at the dowdy Formica faux-wood table. “John ...” she heard, but she knew it wasn’t their son. Kitty could always tell when it was Sasso on the other end. “Can you come over to the house?”

  Sasso was there in a hurry, and Michael walked him back to the kitchen table—it was always that table. When John sat down. Michael said, without preamble: “I’m gonna do it ... I think we can do it.” Michael’s voice carried no heat. It was almost clinical. “It’s gonna be tough ...”

  “Yeah. It’s a brutal business.” Sasso’s face kept faith with the solemn words, but his heart was singing.

  John already had the schedule in his head. In a matter of hours, on Friday, he’d got Marty Kaplan in California to write a speech ... which he whipped out now. “I’ve got a draft of something here that I think is consistent ...”

  And that was the speech Michael would give Monday, a message to the people of Massachusetts, announcing his intention to announce his candidacy. He’d tell a joint session of the legislature (arranged by Sasso on three hours’ notice):

  “I love my family, I love this Commonwealth and its people, and I love my country.

  “I have the energy to run this marathon; the strength to run this country; the experience to manage our government; and the values to lead our people.”

  That day, Michael did sound certain.

  “With your help, and with your prayers, a son of Greek immigrants, named Mike Dukakis, can be the next President of the United States.”

  There could be no doubt for him now.

  Save for the morning after, when Michael picked up the paper: Duke for President was just about the whole front page. But Michael was most surprised to see one picture in that paper, a photograph of him that Monday, that great day, at 7:00 A.M., taking out his garbage on Perry Street.

  What the hell? ... They must have staked out his house!

  The white boys warned Gary: there were people, press, going to stake out his house, try to tail him, spy on him wherever he went. “NBC has a stakeout ...” That was the most common rumor. Sometimes they said CBS, The Washington Post, Newsweek ...

  It didn’t matter to Hart who it was. “I expect that
,” he’d say, and that was the end. He wouldn’t discuss it. He’d get that look on his face, and go silent. He’d told them all before: that was not going to be a problem.

  Actually, it was all the same problem, what the big-feet called the Character Issue. They said the whole election—at least Hart’s bid for nomination—would boil down to one question: Who is this guy?

  “People want to know who you are,” the white boys told Gary.

  “They know who I am.” (And he thought to himself: they’ve had fifteen years to know who I am ...)

  “No, there’s a perception, you know ... they don’t know, really ... where you’re coming from.”

  So the white boys went at this ... problem, as white boys are paid to do, head-on, with breathtaking literalness:

  Hey! Let’s show where he comes from!

  That’s why they get the big bucks.

  So, they told Gary he had to go to Ottawa, Kansas. They told Gary he had to give people an idea of his roots, that he wasn’t just sprung, full-blown, in suit and tie, on Meet the Press some Sunday, while the nation rubbed sleep from its eyes and waited for football to start.

  “People want to know about your values, Family Values!”

  “People don’t want to know any such thing. It’s only the press that’s asking ... nobody else ever asks me about those things.”

  “Don’t take it so personally. It’s not you. It’s just the way they are. It’s just the system.”

  “It’s morbid curiosity,” Hart complained. “It isn’t natural.”

  “Look, Gary, just go for a day ...”

  “No.”

  “Gary, it’s just ...”

  “No.”

  “They’re voters.”

  “What?”

  “They’re voters in Ottawa, too. You don’t have to talk about your family ...” This was from Hal Haddon. Hal was brilliant, a Denver trial attorney of ferocious reputation. And he knew Hart cold—ran his first race for Senate, back in ’74. “Talk to them as voters. You can tell them why you’re a Democrat, and not a Republican, like all of them.”