What It Takes

by Richard Ben Cramer

  LONER

  And then, too, there was “evidence”: Hart had served two terms in the Senate, yet only one Senator (that well-known flake-o, Chris Dodd) backed him in the ’84 campaign. This time, Hart was the clear front-runner and no Senator had signed on. Didn’t that show they knew he was weird? Of course, it was also true Hart hadn’t asked for endorsements. He never even used to ask those fellows to cosponsor a bill, or to help him with a vote. He thought they’d support his bill if they saw merit in it. Hell, Hart had to learn to ask for voters’ votes—and money, well, forget it. The best he could manage, most of the time, was a sentence-with-no-subject that escaped his lips as a bark: “Needjurhelp!”

  See, he didn’t mean to ask for help for him. It was for the cause: to change this country. It could not be about him or his life. That would be ... an awful presumption. That accounted, too, for the way he’d call the anchormen “Mr. Brokaw,” or “Mr. Rather,” on the air (so stiff, so weird!) ... when they were “Tom” and “Dan” to every City Councilman or Police Chief in the country. But Hart didn’t really know those news-bigs. He wouldn’t presume. Never had that easy familiarity ... not with anchormen, Senators, certainly not with the pink-jowled lunchers at Joe and Mo’s (“political observers,” to the readers of the smegma), who had no yuk-yuk stories about Hart, no pictures on their office walls of them-and-him in a grip-and-grin from last year’s thousand-dollar-a-plate All-Star Sleazebag Salute to the Chemical Industry. No, not likely. There were no County Chairmen with scrapbooks full of his handwritten thank-you notes, and few state officials who owed their elections to him. Hart didn’t want them to owe. He wanted them to think he was right. He was proud that way ... and, withal, shy.

  But “proud” and “shy” never made it as code. Somehow those words only meant what they said. They did not foster the notion of more explosive chemistry aboil within. That was the public purpose, after all, for this “analysis” marbling the Hart stories. Hart might be dangerous ... who would protect the nation if the press fell asleep at the switch?

  So sometimes, hints of menacing instability would haunt the Hart prose: what profile writers called a “streak of wildness.” Howard Fineman strummed this chord with smooth concision, when he asked in his Who-Is-Gary-Hart paragraph:

  “Is it Gary Hartpence or Gary Hart ... Is it the devout child who pleased his mother in church or the escapee who the summer after high school took off for a week in Colorado, doing 105 at the wheel of a green Dodge—and who by that August had acquired corn-yellow hair from a bottle of bleach?”

  (Jeez—Hart even changed his hair!)

  It was the danger-code that went to the heart of the issue—the rattle of chains in Hart’s psychic cellar. “A Candidate in Search of Himself,” said the large type in Newsweek. “A driven figure ... unfinished and unsettled. ...” Why the hell should a voter let this guy get near the button?

  This was the same killer doubt that Mondale managed to pin onto Hart in ’84, with the red-telephone ad. It was a simple ad—quick, wickedly effective. The screen showed a red phone, ringing and blinking (in the Oval Office, one assumed) ... while a voice-of-doom intoned off-camera:

  “The most awesome, powerful responsibility in the world lies in the hand that picks up this phone ...

  (rinng, rinnnng)

  “The idea of an unsure, unsteady, untested hand is something to really think about. This is the issue of our times ...

  (riiiinnnnngggg)

  “Vote as if your life depends on it. Because it does. ... Mondale. ...”

  God, it was beautiful! It played to the only thing voters liked about Mondale, who’d been around for so long. And it fit so well with the tap dance the press was doing on Gary’s head ... well, the combination pounded Hart right into the ground—at least in ’84.

  That’s where the big trouble came from—’84, when Hart started to win. See, Hart snuck up on the press pack. They’d been writing he was nowhere, stinko, dead flesh in the sun ... and then he finished second in Iowa. So they wrote him up as a “surprising challenger” ... “better-than-expected,” but still no threat—no way—it was Mondale and Glenn, just like they’d been writing. So then, the sonofabitch won New Hampshire ... and their editors were on the phone—what the hell is going on out there?

  It was embarrassing.

  No, what it was, it was fishy ... how could they all be wrong?

  What the hell was this guy doing that they didn’t see?

  Who is this guy? ...

  They should go to Ottawa ...

  No—no time for that now.

  There was Maine next week. (Hart won.)

  And Vermont! (Hart won.)

  And, Christ—then SUPER TUESDAY! How were they supposed to do profiles now?

  Well, Chrissake! Pull the clips! We must have some goddam clips on the man!

  And ... there it was. The Washington Post, bless its bureaucratic workaday soul, had sent a man to Ottawa, months before: George Lardner—good man—and, thank God, Lardner had the poop. True, most of the story was that New Ideas drone, and Hart’s Senate record, and other shit no one would read ... but here, in the fifty-ninth graf... yeah, down here ... was something:

  Hart changed his name. Hmm!

  And looka this—his office bio sheet listed him born in 1937, but the birth certificate said ’36.

  By this time, Hart’s press pack had grown from a half-dozen to a hundred and fifty. They were hauling this gaggle around on two planes, and everyone had to ask Hart about the name thing ... the age thing ...

  Hart said: It’s no big deal—it’s not what this campaign is about.

  Then he went on TV and they had to ask about the age thing.

  “It’s no big deal—it’s whatever the records say.”

  The name thing:

  “It was not a secret—my family had talked about this for quite some time ...”

  But then someone called Hart’s sister, Nancy, and she said: The name change was Gary’s idea.

  (What’s this guy trying to hide?)

  And someone else wrote that the age thing had to do with Hart’s mother (who was wacky, anyway—everybody knew that—her and that church ...), so everybody had to ask Hart about his mom: C’mon, what’s the deal with your mother, really?

  Hart reacted badly to this. He was racing around from airport to airport—two, three Super Tuesday states in a day, dead on his feet, voice about shot, and these people wanted to know, was he breast-fed?

  Well, he wasn’t going to talk about his mother—hell, no! Not even when his staff begged him. He wasn’t going to talk anymore about his mother’s church, or his name, or his signature, or any of it!

  And that tore it with the press pack. What was wrong with this guy—didn’t he believe in the public’s right to know? Then, every story had at least a tip of the cap to name, age, momma ... Hart’s “identity problem,” as it came to be codified. And although there were no new facts to report, these same desiccated Grape-Nuts—name, age, momma—were served up at breakfast tables across the nation. And Hart was officially a weirdo, a mystery man.

  See, this solved the problem for the press: that’s why they didn’t know about Hart ... because he was a man of many faces, a guy who did not know ... no! ... who was hiding—see?—his own identity ... or, no! ... a man who was ... (drum roll) inventing his persona out of whole cloth! He was a fiction—a devilish clever bit of alchemy ... illusion—see?

  Who is Gary Hart ... anyway?

  The networks sang it in chorus the week before Super Tuesday. Hart still won six of the nine states (all the big ones), but the networks reported that Mondale “triumphed” by winning Georgia.

  Meanwhile, Mondale came up with the red-telephone ad, and ... well, the rest is history.

  Hart still made it a fight—just what the pack wanted, after all—he fought on all the way to California (which he won) ... but he could never shake the donkey’s tail of doubt they’d pinned on him. Alas, that tail only grew.

  Hart cou
ld not get through his head what the ethic of the pack was. He kept getting it confused with “freedom of the press,” which he’d talked about for years ... in the words of his idol, Thomas Jefferson, who insisted that a free press was the greatest bulwark of liberty that any society had yet devised. Hart believed it. And so, each name-age-momma episode could only increase his sense of injustice—no, betrayal: Is this the rotten harvest for which the saintly Jefferson toiled?

  Well, he figured they’d drop it—they’d have to—after a while. It had to get boring, after a while ... but he never could understand the investment the press had in Hart-as-weirdo ... how much it explained, how he threatened them.

  Later in the ’84 campaign, when Hart was more accustomed to the herd of press, he tried to relax with them ... maybe even have some fun. But a pack can handle only the most hammy humor. Any irony is lost in repetition—from the pool report to the press bus, to the full herd in the press plane, to the editors back at the office, who want to know: What the hell did he mean by that? ... So Hart found, to his dismay, he couldn’t relax. He couldn’t say anything fun.

  Here’s how he found out: they were rafting, Hart and his son, John—with just a small pool of press to keep an eye on the candidate. And Hart was having a ball. The water, the sky, the rush of the raft—it was so elemental, so real, after weeks of endless talk, tactics, thinking his way through. Out there, on the river, there wasn’t time to think—just react—and they hit some great white water, too. Hart felt alive that day, and pleased, as the guide told him they’d just skidded through type-four rapids. They should count themselves lucky they hadn’t hit type five ...

  Oh, Hart said, I’d love that.

  A reporter asked: You would?

  And Hart arched his eyebrows, and said: “Oh, yeah. I love danger.”

  Well, that was all the press needed. The bells went off. Weird-alert! “Wait—lemme get this,” they kept saying to each other back in the press plane. “Those are his words, right? ‘I ... love ... danger.’ ”

  Right.

  There it was: the streak of wildness ... the telephone ad confirmed ... unsettled ... unsteady ... a loose cannon! Would this guy roll the dice with the lives of our children, the future of the planet?

  What got lost were the eyebrows, the lilt in the voice, the hint of self-mocking smile ... all absent by the time the quote hit the papers. That, and the fact Hart would never have said it ... would never have tried to be confidential, even in jest ... if the pool reporter, the one who asked, “You would?” ... were not a woman, and a good-looking woman, at that: Patricia O’Brien, from the Knight-Ridder chain.

  Not that this fact would have helped Hart with the pack—not one bit. Because another thing they knew, or thought they knew ... oh, come on—everybody knew ... this guy was getting laid.

  What did they actually know?

  Well, what they mostly knew was that everybody said they knew. They’d make jokes about it—at the supper table with their friends, you know—it was well known by people in the know ... even though nobody wrote it.

  That was half the problem, right there: no one could write it. Funny—isn’t it?—how everybody knew for years, and yet no one had ever been able to write ... anything. But anyway, this well-known “fact” dwelt enormously, malodorously, in the sealed and self-referential world of the pack—a spoiled fish in the bouillabaisse, a great steaming gob of a character flaw!—and no one could lift the lid!

  It was maddening.

  You’d have to be blind not to see it, really ...

  There was the way Hart was with women—good-looking women—so courtly, so charming, he almost purred to them (when they all knew, he was really cool and aloof). The women talked to each other about it. The playful eyebrows, the way he looked at them like they shared a secret ... you’d have to get up awfully early to sneak that shit past a modern American woman ... yes! And the female members of the pack were up extra-extra early.

  And, of course, even wannabe-big-feet had the poop on Hart’s separations from Lee ... two times ... and then they got back together, just in time for the next campaign!

  And, then, too, all the Washington bigs knew Woodward—Bob Woodward, the Post’s investigative Ajax—and Hart had lived at Woodward’s house during one of those separations. Except he didn’t really live there ... that’s what Bob said, you know: Hart was just using his place as a mail drop—hadda be shacked up somewhere, right?—until Woodward got uncomfortable and asked Gary to leave. I mean ... come on!

  And—here’s the kicker ... Hart was friends with Warren Beatty! He’d go out to visit ... in Hollywood! Do you think—come on, now—for even one minute ... Warren Beatty is not getting laid?

  Did you hear what happened with Hart and Pat O’Brien?

  Yes, they’d heard ...

  Pat had left the business and was working for Michael Dukakis this time around, but there were still people in the Hart pack who knew about the time Pat had an interview in Hart’s hotel room. It was ’84, and Hart was in the whirlwind, and everybody wanted the candidate. It was late at night—and Hart came to the door in a bathrobe. A short one! And she knew he had nothing else on. A good-looking woman, Pat said, can always spot a man on the make. But she was so stunned, in this case, that she actually sat down and asked a question. And only when he answered, and she had a chance to gather her wits, did she say he was making her uncomfortable—with the bathrobe, and all—and she asked him to put on clothes. And Hart ... he got huffy, like it was her dirty mind.

  Well!

  You could hear two or three of these stories for the price of a dinner. The staff, the Advance men, the local people who helped his campaign: they had stories about these ... these ... women, who would flounce up during Hart’s speech, or just at the end of an event somewhere, and announce that Gary wanted them to come along on the plane ... of course, no one could write that.

  But couldn’t you just die? ...

  It was so obvious. And so contemptuous ... of them!

  That’s what really got to the pack.

  It wasn’t that they were friends of Lee Hart, who, after all, was the only one with standing in this case ... when you got down to it. No one could suggest that Hart didn’t do his job, or neglected to learn about the Middle East or something, because he was busy chasing skirt.

  But for Chrissake, the man was running for President!

  So what?

  So, it said something about his character—didn’t it?—his fidelity to his vows.

  But what could they say about Gary and Lee’s vows? Not a thing. Neither Gary nor Lee would discuss them.

  Well, for God’s sake, it showed something about his judgment. The man had to know he was living in a fishbowl.

  But what could they show? That he came to the door in a bathrobe? That he called Warren Beatty a friend? That there were these ... these ... tomatoes! ... on his plane?

  No, they’d have to do better. It was awful ... knowing ... day after day, for months, with the stinking fish in the pot ... and Hart climbing in the polls. ... What it was, was weird.

  They couldn’t ask Hart! Well, they could ask. But that and a quarter would buy them coffee, so they could rev up and tell each other more stories. They could talk it over with their wise-guy friends—even Hart’s own wise guys, the professional staff he’d assembled in Denver. Oh, the pros all knew the way the steam was blowing from this stockpot—sure ... and they meant to keep their own index entries in the books, too. So they’d say: “Yeah, I asked about that ... I didn’t wanna get involved if he was gonna, you know ... (Hey, don’t use my name, huh?) ...”

  “Well, what’d he say?”

  “Who?”

  “Gary! What’d he say, when you asked?”

  “He didn’t say, I mean ... you know, it wasn’t him, personally, I talked to about it.”

  “Oh.”

  It was worse and worse—the steam on the stovetop—as April arrived, and Hart’s announcement was imminent ... and profile season was i
n full swing ... and no one could spill the soup!

  This particular odor actually went back to ’72, the McGovern days, which was the first time Hart got famous in a hurry. The irony was, George McGovern was attracted to Hart for Gary’s churchly, almost geeky goodness, his mannerly midwestern respect, his serious and stubborn application to the job at hand. (McGovern, son of a minister, was the man who’d built the South Dakota Democratic Party on three-by-five cards.) But by the time the press discovered Hart—descried his strategic genius, strangely enough, just after McGovern started winning—that was not the Gary Hart they introduced to the public.

  No, their Gary bore almost no relation to the quiet, brainy Denver lawyer who prowled the campaign’s ratty offices in a cheap suit and too-wide tie. Their Gary Hart wore jeans and cowboy boots, he was young, long-haired, flip, quirky ... friend to movie stars, scourge of the old Party bosses ... leader of the-young-and-the-restless (that bulge in the bell curve again), who, in those days, were so richly celebrated as the flower and the hope of a tired world. Their Gary was ... in a word, sexy.

  But that was okay. In fact, it was terrific: it fit with the story line, the ethic of the day. Remember, Time mag was doing Day-Glo covers, and “Make Love, Not War” still meant something—while there was a war. The political revolution that Hart was engineering followed on the bare heels of the sexual revolution—in fact, it seemed like one big mudpie. These McGovern kids were taking over the Party ... in fringed jackets and miniskirts! The young were taking over the Earth ... it was only Nixonites and like protofascists who had not the grace, or the God-given instinct, to bow toward this bright new light. And Hart? ... Well, Gary was a Style Section darling, a political rock star. Even Teddy White, who by that time had seen too many campaigns, was stirred to note in his Making of the President 1972, young Gary Hart’s “skin-fitting pants over slim cowboy thighs.” (Yowlll!)

  White also noted that Hart “drew the eye” of all the women in the campaign, though he was careful to add that Gary was too busy for romantic adventures. (Of course, White also called those women the “yearning maidens of the McGovern camp,” so he can’t have done much research there.) Alas, there were others of the older generation who were nowhere near so careful and kind—others who wanted Gary Hart’s job. Even before McGovern started winning—surprise!—the old pros descended and counseled McGovern that he could no longer trust his affairs to Hart and those other kids. (Sure, it’s worked surprisingly well, but come on, now, George ... get serious!) Ted Van Dyk, an old Humphrey man, made a run, and later teamed up with his pal Frank Mankiewicz, an old Bobby Kennedy Press Secretary; and after McGovern won the nomination, they were joined in the dump-Hart effort by Larry O’Brien (ex-JFK, ex-LBJ) and his cronies from the Democratic mainstream. In each case, you could call it a political battle—or maybe a generational war—but it got personal in a hurry. Along the way, McGovern was informed that the office was a shambles! There was no control! No organization! (For God’s sake, there weren’t even meetings to attend!) And Hart—well, how could he restore order, when (they whispered) he’d been to bed with half the staff?