What It Takes

by Richard Ben Cramer

  It was actually 1958, the first time Michael saw JFK. The Senator had come back to Massachusetts, running for reelection. But that was no contest (he’d end up with seventy-eight percent of the vote). And Kennedy wasn’t interested in disguising his aim. At a meeting of the Harvard Law Graduate Democratic Club, he strode to the podium and announced (in fact, this was the full text of his speech): “My name is Jack Kennedy. I’m a candidate for President of the United States. Are there any questions?”

  It was, as Michael would ever remember, a commanding performance. Kennedy was home at Harvard, after all, and these young men, with their earnest eyes fixed on him, under their earnest crew cuts, they were the best, the brightest, they would people his New Frontier. Kennedy’s message was made for them:

  During the American Revolution, Thomas Paine said the cause of America was the world’s cause. But now the cause of all mankind was America’s cause. ... Their nation was the hope of the planet, and they, the most fortunate, the enlightened, the blessed, would bring that hope to flower in the new decade. There must be no limit to their aspiration. No problem was too big, too tough ... nothing less than a new Enlightenment was in their grasp, if they would but reach. ...

  So, you could understand if all those young men—and Michael in their van—ran to Washington in fever (or at least to Wisconsin, to set up for the primary two years thence). But fever was not Michael’s style—even at twenty-four years old, in his first year at Harvard Law. Anyway, he already had a tough campaign—his own: Michael was running for one of four seats on the Brookline Redevelopment Authority, a new-but-already-obscure board that would advise the town government in its early efforts at “urban renewal.”

  See, Michael believed in Public Service, was raised to it, in fact—he didn’t need Kennedy to wake him to that—but as for causes, new ages, America’s hand reaching for the stars ... that was a bit airy for Dukakis. Sure, he caught the excitement, and pride, as Kennedy, fair son of Massachusetts, rose in the eyes of the nation. But that didn’t change the sorry facts on the ground, in their home state, or in Brookline—Michael’s town—where JFK was born. The fact was that Brookline, like most towns around Boston, like Boston itself, like the whole benighted state, was locked in the arid and archaic politics of the early century: the well-bred Yankees (Republicans, alas) vied every four years, with mixed success, against the Democrats, who were Irish and Italian clubhouse pols, more numerous, of course, than the Yankees, but corrupt, old-fashioned ... well, in Michael’s view, they were ignorant hacks. In Brookline, with its tradition of clean government (as clean as the air, as clean as the lawns that drew the escapees from Boston in the first place), the Yankees held the upper hand. But still, the Democratic Party there was the province of old Irish muldoons, who made their living trading the town’s small machinable vote for a few jobs and favors (and maybe a spot on the state payroll for themselves).

  Therein lay Michael’s crusade.

  That’s why he ran for a spot on the redevelopment board, to get a leg up in this system—that cried out for reform! That’s why he and a few friends from Harvard—Fran Meaney, Carl Sapers, another Greek kid named Paul Sarbanes—were out on street corners, at trolley stops, every weekend, pressing upon the citizenry the importance, the seriousness, of this board and its contribution to rational planning. This was too important to leave in the hands of the same old hacks. But Michael didn’t have to say that. The big thing was to get his name around, and his qualifications: born and bred in Brookline, Swarthmore College, service in Korea, Harvard Law ... it was a résumé of obvious merit, clean as the lawns on Rangely Road. And really, one look at the guy would tell you what you had to know: he was living home, commuting to Harvard on his Vespa motorscooter (cheap, easy to park, plenty vehicle enough, thank you), and weekends, he’d jump on the scooter to campaign. He’d work a corner, standing straight up, hands on his hips, his button on his suit jacket, and an earnest look on his clean, sharp face, a look of such concentrated purpose that it seemed to pull down the front of his dark crew cut in mid-forehead, toward the line of black eyebrow, as he explained in a clipped, rational tone, the important agenda of redevelopment. What he looked like was a little Mr. Spock—without the ears—on the bridge of the Enterprise.

  But so hopeful! Times were changing, even in Brookline, even in the sleepy fifties. Prosperity brought a new wave of escapees from Boston—mostly Jews, these were, drawn like moths to the light of Brookline’s schools—and unlike those who had moved in before (the German Jews, for instance, who worried so much about fitting in), these people didn’t feel they had to act like “Yenkehs.” They were Democrats—active Democrats, who owed nothing to the Irish machine. And they were at the core of the breakthrough—the election of the first Democratic officeholder in Brookline, since ... well, probably since the Civil War. He was Sumner Kaplan, and if Michael had a political model, it was not JFK, nor any Massachusetts Irishman: it was Sumner Z. Kaplan, of the Massachusetts House of Representatives. It was Sumner’s energetic street-corner style (door-to-door, apartment-to-apartment, if possible) that Michael and his friends emulated. Sumner showed they could do it—maybe not the first time, maybe not every time ... but Sumner had broken through in 1954. Surely, times were changing now. Intelligence, reason, and decency were on the march!

  Alas, not in ’58, not for Michael. He came in fifth, in a race for four seats.

  But he’d be back. (He’d got more than four thousand votes! ... He’d done well. Sumner said he’d done well!) The next year, there was a special election for the members of the Town Meeting, that old and venerable New England institution that still survived in Yankee enclaves like Brookline (or Greenwich, Connecticut). And when the special election was called, Sumner said, “Run!” And all the boys ran. They leafleted the houses, street by street; they worked the trolley stops and corners on Beacon Street; they rounded up their friends—volunteers!—to make calls. Brookline had never seen such effort! (In fact, the Yankee tradition frowned on such effort—one didn’t run, one stood for election.) But it worked. This time, Michael won. And a few friends with him, who took seats at the Meeting ... duly empowered holders of office in Brookline, Massachusetts.

  Problem was—empowered to do what? Town Meeting was much more a sounding board than a paddle to bestir government. Michael and his Young Turks had no sway in the Meeting, the town, or even within their Party. The Democratic Party Town Committee was the machine’s committee. Those people wouldn’t even get off their duffs to mobilize the faithful for Jack Kennedy! Michael and his friends thought it was an outrage. Here was their Senator sweeping the country, and his home-state Party was still sunk in back-slapping clubhouse torpor! That’s not how Michael said it: he said the process was being ill served. But in his mind, that was the same. Same problem: ignorant hacks. And only one solution: Michael and his friends would take over. In 1960, there’d be a big turnout for Kennedy in the primary—the Presidential preference vote. But what that primary would also select were the down-ballot Party officers, Town Committees, the machinery of the machine.

  So Michael made a slate of his young, clean, intelligent friends, and they all filed for Town Committee: thirty-five seats at the table ... and Michael’s friends filed for every one. Michael made the budget and the plan: they’d each chip in five dollars for the campaign (to buy a button for each, and one newspaper ad); they’d each come up with a list of twenty-five friends (names, addresses, and phone numbers) who were voters in town. Then each candidate would get all the lists, and make sure to call every name. ... And for every candidate, with every voter, the message was the same: Vote Group Two. Straight ticket, one lever—Vote Group Two. Well, no one had ever campaigned for this committee ... only hand-picked boy-os ever ran: the job didn’t even pay. And certainly no one campaigned like these kids. They were all over town, quietly (so as not to wake Group One, the machine) talking to their friends, and their parents’ friends, and friends of their friends ... Vote Group Two. They even had a platform
, a program! It was all about the fairness of the process:

  Group Two pledged to have a Campaign Office in Brookline, where the brochures of every Democratic candidate could be displayed.

  Group Two pledged to hold an annual Garden Party, a fund-raiser, where every Democratic candidate could speak.

  Sounded fine ... but what was the big deal? Well, to see the big deal, you had to look at the thing like a third-year student at Harvard Law in 1960 ... when Process was at its peak. ... There are fashions in law, though they aren’t called fashions while they’re in vogue. No, while the hot professors still believe in a fashion, it’s called brilliant scholarship ... until those scholars are judges, and then that fashion is called law. ... Anyway, in the late fifties, there was a most influential Harvard prof named Kaplan (Benjamin—no relation to Sumner), and he taught Civil Procedure, the highlight of the first year. Kaplan contended that a lawyer, because he understood process, could do anything. Later, students were treated to lectures from Professor Al Sacks, who teamed up with Professor Henry Hart for a course on Legal Process. That was the most important course at the school, a near-universal analysis of how to make things work better. The underlying jurisprudence was debatable (and out of fashion in a few years—then it was called a fad!), but for Michael and his friends, for all the young Harvard Law men whose mission, whose burden it was to be learnedly sure, to be right in every regard (a fashion never out of vogue at Harvard Law), there was only one thing worth looking at: Process.

  Sure, Jack Kennedy was calling the young of America to greatness, but you had to look at this thing like Michael—that is, correctly: if you wanted the Party to put forward men like Sumner, like Stevenson, like John F. Kennedy ... well, then, you had to put good people at the levers of the Party. You had to reform the process to control it. You had to increase your power at the Party’s state convention, which meant increasing the size of your town’s delegation, which meant increasing the town’s vote for the Democratic candidate for Governor, which meant invigorating the Party in town, which meant taking over the Party committee. It was like a set of those wooden eggs from Russia, with one egg inside the other, forever ... until you got back to Michael and his friends, hatching their tiny ... Vote Group Two!

  Well, sure, Kennedy won the primary that day, in the spring of 1960. But the big surprise in Brookline was ... Group One never knew what hit them! The muldoons were history! Michael and his friends took thirty-four of thirty-five seats (one of their candidates had dropped out) ... and the new Chairman of the Democratic Party in Brookline was twenty-six-year-old Michael S. Dukakis.

  And the great thing about 1960, with the Kennedy youth thing in the air, was that Michael was not alone in triumph. His law school buddy Carl Sapers took over the committee in Boston’s Fifth Ward, Beacon Hill ... and there were reformers in Waltham ... stirrings in Lexington. ... So two months after their primary-day triumph, Michael and Sapers called a meeting of all the reformers, from every town, at the state convention ... and announced the formation of the Commonwealth Organization of Democrats—COD. The mission: nothing less than a takeover of every Town Committee in Massachusetts, the promotion of good, clean, qualified candidates, for every office, in every town, in every courthouse, and in the State House ... complete control of the process, statewide ... reform, everywhere!

  25

  The Tinsel and the Tree

  IT WAS THE JOY of being with Joe that you were included—not just in his politics, but in his life, and the lives of his family. You were more likely to hear from Biden what Jill said the other day about teaching ... what his mother used to say ... or a wonderfully embroidered story about a nun in Scranton ... than you were about his five-point education plan. Joe Biden shared his life—or his version of it—continuously. He confided it, displayed it, spread it profligately, even expanded it to connect with your life. He could settle for nothing less.

  This was the bane of his Schedulers’ lives. Biden could run an hour late—to his second event of the day. But if a room held one vote still hanging on the cliff edge (Joe could always tell—he’d talk right to them, till he had their eyes) ... Joe would not leave! This was the great cause of heartburn, too, for his staff, for his gurus. Joe would get a crowd of Democrats, his age, maybe older, and he’d work until he had almost every one ... but he couldn’t stop there ... he’d reach for the others, talk right to them ... until, BANGO! Joe was off on his life ... how he started in the civil rights movement ... remember? ... The marches? Remember how that felt? ... And they’re nodding in the crowd, and he’s got them, sure. ... Trouble is, Joe didn’t march. He was in high school, playing football.

  (But there was one teammate, a black guy, and one day they all went to the Charcoal Pit for french fries, and the counterman was not going to serve the black kid—so Joe walked out ... and so did the rest of the guys, they walked out ... and that was the same feeling in the marches, right? And that was the feeling Joe wanted to share, see? ... The gurus would shake their heads. “That’s not marching.” And Joe would say, “I know. Okay.” But then, a week later, another crowd ... and Joe would do it again.)

  Still, this was also the reason they were working for Biden: for the abandon with which he stretched himself (and not just by exaggeration) to touch a thousand lives in a day ... for the talent, extravagant effort, the generosity of spirit that made every event with Biden a festival of inclusion ... for the death-defying-Evel-Knievel-eighty-miles-an-hour-over-twenty-five-buses leap he would make to get the connect—if that’s what it took—before he had to land, dust himself off, bow to the crowd, and leave that room. The gurus would come back from trips with him, rolling their eyes, telling stories. ...

  One time, an Iowa room, Joe was in mid-monologue, and there was a woman at a table, facing away, who would not turn around. Joe didn’t break stride in his talk ... (“Folks, think of it! We have the chance now to make that difference. I’m absolutely convinced ...”) or his walk—he was always moving, fixing one with his eyes, then another. And he got to this woman, came up from behind ... (“So, folks, look me over. If you like what you see ...”) and gently, but decidedly, he put his hands on her. In Council Bluffs, Iowa! He got both hands onto her shoulders, while he talked to the crowd over her head, like it was her and him, through thick and thin. The woman looked like she’d swallowed her tongue.

  And the gurus would shrug, and say, in wonder: “You can’t teach that ...” Hell, they couldn’t even gauge it, it was off their charts! What was the effect in that room ... or on that woman? Who knows? Maybe she became his voter. Maybe she was offended. But one goddam thing was no longer in doubt: she heard him, she felt him. At that moment, for good or ill, she was at that here-and-now, with Joey Biden.

  They didn’t want to clip him back—you don’t fool with magic, and when Biden was on, well, that was the only word. (That room in Council Bluffs—seventy people, and they signed up more than fifty that morning.) And Joe sure as hell wasn’t trying to hold himself in check. His effort, the labor of his days and nights, was to get himself up, stoke the heat, do the next room, the next hit. With everything clawing at him—the family, the Senate, the committee, the interminable message meetings with the gurus—it was a wonder he stayed clear enough to make any sense, much less move a crowd.

  His days were a dance, which he could not slow down—if he let that energy slip from his grasp, then he couldn’t get it back for the next room, or the next ... sure, he could fly over twenty-five buses (absolutely convinced, not a doubt in his mind ...), but it had to be done at speed. So many times, in the office, in meetings, in a plane or van between events, Joe was just spinning, talking a streak, going too fast to listen. If he asked a question, he wanted the answer now. When he snapped about arrangements, Advance or staff work, it was always about delay—they were slowing him down! ... That spring, Tommy Donilon, senior guru, was trying to explain to a friend what Joe was like in a meeting. “Did you see Beverly Hills Cop II?” (Of course, it had to be movie-talk.)
“You remember the scene where Eddie Murphy goes deep undercover to buy the stolen goods? He walks into this bar, right? And the guy doesn’t know if he should do it, so Eddie’s like this ...” (Now Donilon was snapping his fingers, fast, both hands, in front of his face.)

  “Hey! I’m a bidnessman ... I got to make MOVES! ...”

  In Washington, in the life he knew, Joe had a vent for his steam—the Senate gym ... you could find him there for hours each day. Well, actually, you couldn’t find him—that was the point. No staff, no outsiders allowed. Joe’s schedule would say “staff time” at least once a day, usually twice, and what that meant was gym time. Somehow, he had to blow it off. ... But on the road, there was nowhere to vent, save public events. If he got through talking and wouldn’t leave, if he kept working harder till the whole room was sweaty, if he had them all ... and then lost them because he couldn’t stop ... well, you had to understand that these were his workouts.

  Now, at the close of his ski-trip weekend, he has to check in on a funder for Paul McEachern, the Democrat who lost to Sununu in the last New Hampshire gubernatorial election. So Joe shows up with the whole family: Jill (who’s still not happy—she and the kids have to get to the airport—but Joe said they’d just stop in) and the boys. Beau and Hunter, and little Ashley ... and a couple of staff, and the CBS crew, and three or four reporters ... and every eye in the banquet hall is on the Bidens as they file in ... late ... but what a beautiful family! Joe is lithe, balding, rich with charm: light on his feet, suddenly eye-locked with the ladies, full of good-humored candor with the men. He has a woman’s hand in one of his own, and he raises his other hand to greet her whole table, “Hi, how’re y’all doin’?” while he keeps his gaggle together, through the crowd, with asides, jokes, confiding patter. ... “Hi, uh, oh, we met at the door ...” (Aside: “I always watch for my reporter friends with their notebooks to see, uh ...”) “Can we all fit here, honey?” “Hi! How are you?” (“... see that I don’t wear out my welcome.”) “Hi! Good to see you!”