What It Takes

by Richard Ben Cramer

  Of course, they bring him right on stage to say hello, and he doesn’t mean to talk, so he just says what a fine man Paul McEachern is, and what a fine campaign ... which reminds Joe of an Irish joke, an old Father Ryan joke ... and after they all have a laugh, he really doesn’t want to take their time, so he just thanks them for the invitation, urges the crowd to look him over ... and he really has to go ... but McEachern gets up to speak, and Joe can’t say what a sterling and important guy Paul is and then leave at the start of his talk, so he sits back down with the family, but it’s a hell of a place to ask the kids to sit still, especially a six-year-old, so while he whispers something to Jill, he sweeps Ashley onto his lap, where she stands on his knees, facing his face, which he tries to keep smiling toward McEachern, who’s thanking supporters, a list as long as his arm ... while Ashley strips from her wrist her colored plastic bracelets, and piles them (as the TV lights flash onto Joe—CBS has to have this) ... on top of daddy’s head, on the bald part, where Joe has the transplant hairs raked across the scalp ... a yellow bracelet, then a red one, and a green one, until they cascade onto daddy’s nose, and Ashley is giggling with delight.

  And by the time Jill and the kids get to the airport, Joe is late for the next thing, a coffee-chat with a houseful of folks, so he’s urgent once he gets them into the living room and starts to talk—he’s hot tonight—but there are folks in the dining room who might not hear ... anyway, he can’t see them to make sure he’s got them ... so in mid-breath he’s asking the folks in the living room to squeeze in this way, “so we can all see ...” and then in the middle of his next riff, he sees that he’s jammed CBS into a corner—and Christ! That’s a million people!—so he adds, as aside, just to them: “I don’t mean to back you in like that. I’ll move over here ...” which means the young woman from the local radio has to stretch her arm to get her microphone closer, so Joe says, in the middle of his thing about how this people, this generation, hasn’t lost its idealism, no, not at all—“You want me to hold that, dear? Your arm’ll be killing you ...” and Joe holds her mike in front of his chest, as he singles out the hostess with his eyes, and he says, to close his message, “Bev, I know we can do better ... I am absolutely convinced ...” Yes, he’s on tonight, he’s got them, you can feel it in the room, and they can feel his conviction, or at least his need, and they’re itching to applaud him, but he’s taking questions, and the answers are twenty minutes long, because he wants them to know him: “Folks, when I started in public life, in the civil rights movement, we marched to change attitudes. ... I remember what galvanized me. ... Bull Connor and his dogs ... I’m serious. In Selma.” Joe’s voice drops to an urgent whisper. “Absolutely ... made ... my ... blood ... run ... cold. Remember? ...”

  Yes, they remember ... but Joe is an hour and a half late to his last event, in the basement of a restaurant. It’s after ten when he gets to the place, through sleet and snow, and he’s tired. There are only twenty people left, but still, he’s got to get up to full steam for them, about eleven o’clock, and when he starts to take questions ... well, he’s still talking an hour later, and people are almost forced to walk out on him. But the staff always lets him run, on his last event. There’s no way they can stand at the back and say, “Uh, Senator? Last question. We really have to go ...” Go where? For what—sleep? There are people here! ... So Joe calls his own last question, and then another, and another, and it’s after midnight when he says goodbye to the last hardy dozen, and he wants pizza with the staff, but Ruth says no—he has to sleep—a big speech at lunch tomorrow, another at dinner, and four events besides ... so she gets him to the motel and gets him squared away, but how is he supposed to just shut down? He’ll be up for hours ... Ruth will know in the morning, when she calls—the moment he says two words ... she always knows.

  “I’ll call back in fifteen minutes,” she says. She can hear the woozy fatigue in his voice. They’ll start late that morning, again. ... But just to be sure, when she checks him out of the motel, she’ll ask to see the bill: Was it a two-night, a three-night? ...

  How many of the pay-per-view movies did he have to watch before he could crash?

  The funny part was how normal it seemed to Joe. He’d always loped with a smile on this raggedy precipice of excess. Of course, he would explain, afterward, that he knew all along how it would come out. He had the whole thing gamed out ... see?

  Well, mostly, it was hard to see. It felt to the others, who were with him on the edge, like they were making it up right now ... that’s why they were jumpy. But Joe wasn’t uncomfortable at all. Tell the truth, he liked it when there was no more time to think—High Noon on Main Street, Joey and the other guy in the sun ... when you had to just do, or shut up and walk. That was Joe’s time—game day ... BANGO!

  Sometimes, in the Senate, Joe would push away his briefing books and walk into a hearing with just one question—something Mom-Mom asked him on the phone twenty minutes before. And there were all those times Joe would hunch at the head table, writing notes for his speech, while they were introducing him. He courted that showdown in the sun—it made his motor run.

  That’s why they had to charter a plane to Iowa, that day in March ... right now ... a jet. Joe had to get to Des Moines! The UAW was holding its state convention, three days in the ballroom of the beautiful Best Western Starlite Village. Of course, Joe knew about the convention ... knew also that the union’s head of politics, Chuck Gifford, was just about working for Gephardt (Gephardt just about moved into Gifford’s house, didn’t he?) ... and some of the members were already leaning to Gephardt (Why not? That’s what Dick’s trade bill was for—for the auto workers who’d been whining about the import cars) ... and Joe knew, too, that Gephardt was scheduled for the keynote address. ...

  But then Joe got a call—his guys in Iowa, they were frenzied! The convention was a Gephardt jamboree! Chuck Gifford and his wife were greasing the skids—the whole damn UAW was sliding into Gephardt’s lap!

  So Joe had to go. Had to turn it around!

  But wait—was he invited?

  Even better! He’d storm the place, crash the party!

  So he called a couple of his UAW guys from the Delaware council, got them to come along (“No, today ... yeah, now!”) ... no way the Iowa men could freeze out their own union brothers, right? And then, just to be sure, Joe called up Owen Bieber, the National High-Cheese-Maximum-Muckety-Muck-Auto-Worker-Wallah, himself. Joe wanted Bieber to tell that asshole Gifford to back off—what the hell was he trying to pull? Bieber said he’d look into the thing ... and Joe rode off to the airport.

  Well, by the time they came steaming into the Starlite room—Joe, the Delaware union men, and Ridley, puffing and jiggling and talking a mile a minute from adrenaline and coffee in the plane—Gifford had got a call from Bieber, see ... so he said: Of course Joe Biden can come. He can speak! I will personally introduce him ... right after these three union men, who, of course, were scheduled to speak, and who would rumble on for more than two hours ... while Joe steamed and fretted and bounced his knee, while he shifted on a chair and tried to look like he was listening. And just when Gifford judged there was no one in that room who wanted to hear another word ... when it was obvious it was time to head for the bar ... he stood up and, coolly, introduced Joe Biden.

  But Gifford and his guys didn’t know about Joey on game day ... how could they know? The guys in that room had never seen him until he walked in—just another Senator, running for President ... until Joe started to tell them about his life. In fact, he started with the UAW and his life—because it meant something to him—that was the first union to break away and support him in ’72. He never forgot that—never. ... And he introduced the two fellows who’d come with him from Delaware, left their families and homes, on awfully short notice, to be with him tonight—and that meant something to Joe, too ... as it did to the union men and women in the hall.

  And then he told them why he was there, tonight ... about the outright
war that Reagan and his pals had declared upon the working man, and the way the nation slept while its factories slumped and its jobs went overseas ... and he asked if they wanted America to be something more than the biggest McDonald’s outlet in the world. ... Well, he did ... and now ... was the time.

  And the room got quiet, though it was late and there’d been too much talk. Joe was into the speech now, where he knew just how the words should dance on the ear.

  “For a decade, ladies and gentlemen, the cry of the Reagan years has been: ‘Got mine! Go get yours!’ ...” Joe’s voice was harsh with flat and wheedling greed, as his gaze shifted, almost accusing, to another table. “ ‘What’s in it for me?’ ...” And they saw, he didn’t have any notes, he didn’t have to read this, or stop to think it out. He was just talking to them.

  “Ladies and gentlemen ... something is wrong.”

  And he told them what he thought was wrong, and how they were going to fix it—not by a fifteen-point program diddled through Congress, and signed at a Rose Garden media-op by a President smiling for the cameras ... no! It rested with them ... in this room. It was about waking up the whole damn country!

  “Folks ...” Joe said, and he stopped. He stopped for a full two beats. “Let’s not kid each other. You have the same problem I have. You walk into your meetings, and your folks look at you and say, ‘What the hell do you know?’ ...”

  Now they’re nodding, there’s knowing laughter from the well of the hall.

  “So you have the same problem—leadership—that faces us in government. ... But I believe (I am absolutely convinced of this) that our citizens and our workers offer untapped resources ... the country is not as afraid as we are. The people are willing to take chances; they’re willing to take their shots. They’re not looking to be coddled. They’re looking to have a chance to fight.

  “And, folks, this vision is not just some pipe dream. ... It is nothing less than the legacy of our generation. ... When I was seventeen years old ...”

  And Joe was off on his life again. The amazing thing was, no one moved, made a sound ... Joe talked for an hour and twenty minutes, and nobody left that room. And when he got to the end, the heroes and the dreamers ... and the quote: “He will lift you up on eagles’ wings ...” and he finished, there was silence for a moment, two beats, three beats—ten seconds of hush—and they started to clap, and Joe could see people looking over at Gifford and the state nabobs ... everybody knew, see, what Chuck wanted. But some stood up, they were cheering, and then there were maybe fifty men and women on their feet, and then the others, table by table—you could almost see them say to themselves, “Aw, fuck Gifford!”—they stood up, too, and the whole crowd was on its feet, cheering ... and when it ended, there must have been seventy-five who lined up to shake Joe’s hand.

  Of course, Joe was pumped up, too, and his friends, the union men from Delaware, had found folks they knew, and they told him about the hospitality suites, upstairs in the beautiful Best Western, where the real talk went down. So Joe went upstairs to meet those folks, and they were stunned when he walked in—amazed he’d take the time. But he wanted so much for them to know him—they felt that—and Christ, he stayed till after eleven.

  And it was after midnight, when his rented jet was in the air again, that Joe even started to wind down. And everyone in the plane said he’d done a hell of a job. Maybe he’d even turn Gifford around! Or his wife! Who knows? It was off the scale. One goddam thing was sure, though. There were Biden people in that union now.

  Ridley was next to him and he asked Joe:

  “How do you do that?”

  Joe shrugged, and told Tim how he talked to one table, and then another, and when he had them, he moved on. ...

  But that was technique, and not what Ridley meant.

  In fact, Joe didn’t know exactly how it happened, or what the connect was. What always occurred to him ... what he felt when it happened in a room ... was a tingle of fear. He hoped to God that what they understood was what he was trying to say, because he could feel their need coming back at him, and their willingness to be led—he just had to pray they got it right! If they didn’t ... well, God only knew what someone could do with them. ... That’s what always scared Joe: If I can do this to these folks, what happens if someone comes along who can really SING?

  But Joe didn’t say that to Ridley. What he told was what he saw—when he knew he had the room. There was a couple, husband and wife, way in the back, in the dark, and Joe was working on them when he got to the end, the dream and the dreamers (“Just because our heroes were murdered ...”)—and Joe saw the guy’s arm go around his wife’s shoulders ... and he knew then.

  Then, too, Joe said he’d known how it would be, all along.

  The most frightening thing was, he didn’t know why it disappeared ... the magic. He knew he felt bad—that’s all he knew—and he looked scared. It was the morning after the big ski trip, and Joe had a hell of a day on his plate, even before it got so screwed up.

  He had a big speech at the Nashua Country Club, where all the city’s movers and shakers gathered for their monthly Rotary luncheon. Joe was going to preview his arms control speech. Then there was another address on Constitutional issues at a law school that night ... and in between, he was supposed to announce his New Hampshire campaign committee, and Valerie, his sister, his Campaign Manager, was supposed to fly up for that ... but it was getting on to lunchtime and where was Val? ... Meanwhile, CBS still had him miked for West 57th Street, and Paul Taylor, the new big-foot for The Washington Post, had come to listen to the speeches, maybe talk with Joe, and Boston TV was choppering in for the country club speech at noon ... and Marianne Baker, his personal keeper in the Senate office, tracked him down in Nashua to tell him there might be a cloture vote on contra aid—Joe might have to fly back, they’d have to charter a plane ... so they were trying to find Larry Tribe, Harvard’s reigning Constitutional scholar, to fill in for Joe at the law school speech—if it came to that, if the vote was late—but no one could find Tribe to get a commitment ... and Joe had to go on at the Rotary, now, and do the press conference on the committee, after ... and where the hell was Val? ... Did anyone get Tribe?

  And Joe was off. You could feel it the minute he got to the podium. His voice was flat, his face was drawn, and the TV lights only made him paler, thinner, less substantial ...

  “But I do congratulate you for coming out to hear me speak ... because I am one of the most important men in America ...”

  No! BZZZZT! Wrong!

  It was an old joke with Joe, but today it didn’t sound self-effacing, ironic.

  He tried to tell another joke, a long story wherein he’s mistaken for the baseball commissioner, Ueberroth ... but he never got through it.

  “Uhnnn ...” Joe said, and he stopped, like he couldn’t think. “Something I ate ...”

  His face was flushing as he stopped to draw breath, he looked confused, out of place. He was turning an awful color in the lights—almost purple.

  “... is, uh, really giving me difficulty, and uh, I mean that sincerely ...”

  He had to get out of there. The pain in his head! Like boiling water up the back of his head. Like it would blow off the top of his skull. He was nauseated. He couldn’t focus on the words of his speech.

  “Could I go downstairs? ... And come back? ...”

  There was a bathroom downstairs. He didn’t say more, he just walked out.

  In the press gaggle, there were a couple of jokes about Rotary food—chicken surprise, heh heh. ... A Rotary member went to the mike and told racist jokes about his travels in India and Africa. The TV guys flicked their lights off, looked at their watches. ... Joe’s staff was trying to cook the schedule. If Joe took fifteen minutes here, he wouldn’t get to the press conference till two—he’d have to cut right out to Washington: How many seats in the plane? Would Val go back? Any seats for press? ... Paul Taylor was holding court in the country club lounge. Some editor-lady had called f
rom New York—wanted him to do a book—inside the campaign ... you know, with the Post. The Post is a player ... Taylor thought it would be interesting: this was the time of his coming of age, along with his generation, accepting the responsibilities of the big time, just as he, Paul, was inheriting the mantle of leadership from David Broder ...

  And Joe was dying. At least he felt like he was. In the bathroom downstairs, the pain had hold of him and he couldn’t think. He had to think ... what was this? He couldn’t remember pain like this. Nauseous pain. He should puke. He tried to puke, down on his knees, grunting and heaving. He couldn’t breathe. He’d call out—for what—a doctor? Val? Where was Val? He hadn’t air. He had to have air. He threw open the window—basement window, ground outside, and snow ... and he laid his head onto the snow, tried to breathe. It was cold. The air ... didn’t help. Was there anything like this? He couldn’t remember pain like this. Sweet Jesus God—he had to think—was this what it felt like when you had a heart attack? ...

  He didn’t know how long he was there. He was alone ... how much time? He had to get back up there—there were people, his speech ... the cameras. How would he look? He smoothed his tie ... holy shit! He had a mike on—CBS!—those noises, puking, groaning! Holy shit! He had to pull himself together. This could not come apart!

  And he did it. He washed his face. He came out and went up the stairs at a trot. He strode back into the dining room, straight to the mike. He apologized, said it wasn’t their food. He started reading his speech.