What It Takes

by Richard Ben Cramer

  McGovern never did bite—not hard enough to dump Hart—but meanwhile, the Washington whispers were launched as extra ammo in the anti-Hart fusillade. Lee Hart had moved to Washington with Gary, but she was miserable and lonely (Gary was never home), and so, in the summer of ’71, she took herself and the kids back to Denver ... just when the first assault on Hart’s job was kicking up the whispers and whines. By ’72, when Hart’s strategic success had made his job so much more appealing, the whispers got so public, so many, and so juicy, that Sally Quinn, the Style Section Queen (and a friend of Mankiewicz), descended to visit upon Hart ... the profile.

  It was a neat piece of work, an article Hart would rue for years. You could tell the interview was friendly—hell, here was Sally, urging, just for starters ... show me your socks ... no, under your boots.

  Hart showed her his socks.

  Then, there was Hart, explaining how he was with women—holding doors, lighting their cigarettes ... and gosh, it was baffling, how they could call that ... you know, macho! (You could almost hear him purr.)

  From her first description of Hart’s looks (“chiseled, movie-star profile, tousled styled hair, full lips, crinkly eyes”) ... “looks,” Quinn adjudged, “with a hint of cruelty” ... to the gambit with the socks (Hart “placed one long black-booted leg on the desk”) ... to the mention of a poster of Candice Bergen (bestowing upon Hart her “sultry smile”) ... it was a flirty fifty inches, from the start ... but alas, just foreplay.

  The climax had to wait for the last breathy column, where Hart was asked about his marriage ... now that Lee was back in Denver, and Gary was alone. Quinn wrote:

  “He will only say of his marriage, ‘I have almost no personal life at all. I lead a completely political existence. If one party doesn’t share the same interests you’ve got a problem. Let’s just say I believe in reform marriage.’ ”

  From the Monday morning when he saw the paper, Hart could not believe what she’d done to him ... what he’d done to himself. He meant to be candid, charming, at ease. (At one point he was quoted: the best thing was “not just winning, but winning, and making it look easy.”) But you don’t learn ease on the job with Sally Quinn, no.

  He was horrified at the hurt he’d done to Lee ... and himself. It was so irresponsible ... clumsy ... bush league. He never would have said those things, if she hadn’t been, you know, attractive ... but even so ... damn! Lee had gone and left him here ... he barely saw his own kids. That part about no personal life—he meant it, but even so ... why did he say it?

  Well, he learned a lesson—the hard way. It didn’t matter what he saw around him, the marriages on paper, the people in the campaign, on the press plane, in the field offices, all running away from hearth and homes, living for the day (and the night!) ... you still couldn’t say it! Well, he never would again. He’d never discuss his personal life—not with reporters—hell, no!

  But then, too, never would that quote go away. It would come back with him, to Washington, when he took his seat in the Senate. It would surface in files in 1984. It was alive and swimming in the stinking bouillabaisse in ’88—oh, very much alive!

  And a strange, rotten bit of fish it seemed to this new pack, though they, too, had been young in ’72. They were in schools, or coming out to first jobs. They, too, had long hair, and tight pants over slender legs ... and if sex were money, they all would have been rich.

  But here’s what the wooers of this generation missed ... Biden, Caddell, and all the trackers of this bulge in the bell curve: the salient fact about this boom generation had nothing to do with its love-and-drug-addled idealism, when it—when they—were the hope and heritors of the world.

  By 1987, they still felt the world was theirs; the nation, the society (and everyone in it) ought, by all rights, to march to their tune. But the tune was changed, the times transformed. They’d done their own thing, they’d been the Me Generation, they’d sung “We Are the World” (and they meant it) ... but the salient fact, at this point in their lives was ... they were turning forty.

  They were worried about their gums.

  They were experts on soy formula.

  They were working seriously on their (late, or second) marriages.

  They were livid about saturated fats in the airline food. What, no fiber?

  They did not drink, they did not smoke, drugs were a sniggering memory. They worked all the time, except when they were calling home.

  And they certainly, God knows, did not mess around!

  Sex! ... It was tacky. It was dangerous. It was (sniff!) ... not serious.

  And being ... (They Are the World) ... this generation, no one else was going to get away with sex, either.

  Or drugs.

  Or ill health.

  Or fouling their air with noxious smoke.

  Or music so loud they couldn’t hear their cellular phones!

  Or driving without a seat belt, and a baby seat ... like they had ... so they could navigate the mortal dangers of the world, to get home, where there was some decent (i.e., French) springwater.

  They had become the Thank-You-For-Not (smoking, eating, drinking, fornicating ... or anything else I don’t do) Generation. In their self-referential certainties, they were:

  The Generation.

  Their mortality, their middle age, their growing and overweening fear must now become their world’s fear.

  And here was Hart—so dedicated (still!) to undermining the safe security of convention—even their conventions. Jesus, this guy just reeked of danger!

  Here was Hart—(still!) unconvinced of their God-given bulge-driven right to decide what was right for him ... or sane for the rest of the world. Well, if that wasn’t arrogance!

  Here was Hart (reform marriage, indeed!)—who everybody knew was (still!) getting laid ...

  Well, the sonofabitch was prima facie crazy!

  So they all took their shots. In the trade, it’s called “profile season,” but it’s actually akin to the first day of duck hunting. The candidate flies over on his way to announcement, and there’s hot steel hurtling skyward from every marsh in the land. Every major paper in the United States, every big TV news outlet, radio guys, foreign press, news magazines, journals of opinion and polemic (even book writers!) ... are bound (as guardians of the process) to opine on what this day, this week, this season means in the lives of candidate and country.

  This is their chance to lean back and spend some time summing up how this guy is ... in other words, what’s wrong with him. And in ’88, when everybody knew this whole election would boil down to Character ... well, this was the wannabe-bigs’ big chance!

  Back in Denver, Sue Casey, the Scheduler, essayed at the meeting a radical suggestion: Why not let Gary talk to several at once? They all asked the same questions ... and everyone around that table knew how Hart would get, if it went on for days, for weeks ... on name-age-momma. “We could have him do, like, five in one swoop,” Casey said with a smile of hope against hope. “And then, if they had special questions or something, after, you could put ’em in the car, five minutes, and ...”

  But Sweeney, the press guy, looked at her like she’d drooled on her shirt. Was she nuts? ... Did she think The Wall Street Journal was gonna share with the Chicago Tribune? Get real! ... Anyway, Sweeney already had talked to Hart, to explain that it wasn’t personal. They weren’t just ganging up on him. It was the system, after all. And Hart had sighed and said he’d do a certain amount—as much as he could. So the upshot was, Sweeney had just about promised these guys ... not everyone, of course, just the top fifteen, maybe twenty. Well, call it two dozen.

  So Hart was loaded up with interviews: at least one, usually more, every day. And in the product of this season, you could just about trace his jawline as it set, just about see his lips getting white. In the early profiles, you could tell he was all right—not that he liked the stories, much, no ... they mostly took the line that Hart had improved. He was more at peace with himself, or with his past
... the same kind of stories you see on the sports page when a star comes back from drug rehab. But that story line let the writer deal with current facts—Hart was doing everything right, his ideas were hot, he was winning everywhere—and still set the Grape-Nuts to rattling in the bowl.

  It was later in the season, just before announcement, that matters got ugly. Hart had heard the questions too many times. “Come on, now,” he’d say, at the first rattle of Grape-Nuts. He’d smile, like maybe he could jolly them past it. But, of course, he could not. Perhaps, he’d suggest, with patience too obvious, they were seeking mystery where there was none—or answers that didn’t matter. “I don’t think people are interested in that.” Then he’d start lecturing the big-feet on what voters wanted to know. It wasn’t name-age-momma, that was for sure. Hart himself had tried to put these matters to rest with an article, an autobiography, “One Man’s Luck,” five thousand words about Ottawa, his parents, church ... and you know what? ... No one wanted to print it! He finally placed the piece in The Boston Globe, but it was a struggle ... because it just did not matter!

  “You are the only ones who ask me about it.” Hart didn’t have to add: you shallow-minded nincompoops! Of course, the stories had him shifting in his chair, frosty, grim, beleaguered ... uncomfortable with himself.

  The apotheosis, the end of the line, came with E.J. Dionne. ... Of course, it wasn’t just one interview with E.J.—he was The New York Times! And Dionne did not mean to content himself with thirty inches off the front page on the day of announcement. He was planning a full-dress magazine piece, the cover of the Sunday Times Magazine. Sweeney thought E.J. was the one who might connect the dots—to prove Hart was not flaky. His ideas, his candidacy, his very being, had a long and intelligible history.

  The white boys thought it was a splendid idea: E.J. was the smartest of the new generation, and if The New York Times said Gary wasn’t weird, the whole pack might settle down. So Casey put E.J. on the schedule in Iowa, and on the schedule in New Hampshire, and in Denver ... and wherever else he wanted. Meanwhile, the magazine’s photographer got hold of Sweeney, to set up the shoot for the cover. The guy was a major-league New York portraitist, the kind who was looking to make that one magic moment—you know, by making the subject jump up and down to get loose, or by blowing a Harpo Marx horn at him, just to change the mood ... whatever it took. This guy was an artist. Problem was, that one magic moment took time, so the photographer wanted Hart to pose for three hours.

  Well, Sweeney wouldn’t even ask Hart about that ... the guy had to understand, this wasn’t exactly, you know ... Gary’s thing. So Sweeney hondled and wheedled, and finally, the fellow said he’d settle for an hour.

  So Sweeney went to ask Hart for a half-hour. “I know that’s a long time,” Kevin said. He was talking fast, trying to get a nod before Hart knew what hit him. “But it’s a big cover, a big piece of paper. You know, it’s for E.J.’s profile ...” (Even Gary acknowledged that E.J.’s profile had to be good.)

  “I’m not going to pose,” Hart said.

  “I know, I know,” Sweeney said quickly, “but it’s only going to be twenty minutes.”

  “I don’t care. I’m not going to pose.”

  Sweeney was panicky. He tried to keep at his joke, keep it light. “I know, but it’s only gonna be fifteen minutes ...”

  Hart was staring at him now, with that look. “I don’t think you’re listening,” Hart said with precision. His voice did not rise a jot. “I’m not going to pose. I’m not going to pose. I’m not going to pose.” Then he paused to see if that had sunk in. “I have got to run for President on my own terms. If I don’t, I won’t be a good President. I probably won’t even be President.”

  There was silence. Sweeney had nothing to say. Hart tried to ease the sting: “Look. I’m not going to hide from the press—those people want to come in here, right now, take pictures of me and you talking ... that’s fine. Any event, in the meetings ... that’s fine.

  “But I am not going to look at a camera and smile for more than thirty seconds. Because ... I ... feel ... cheap.”

  So that took care of the portrait, but not the profile, no. E.J. kept reporting, right through the announcement and beyond—his profile wouldn’t appear till May. Meanwhile, he spent four hours with Hart in two separate interviews, nipping, yipping at the heels of his story, herding it toward the corral. Hart went through Ottawa with him, Bethany Nazarene College, and Yale, the Kennedy years, the McGovern campaign, the U.S. Senate, the run for the White House in ’84 ... he even talked about his kids, his marriage! And though it was hard for Hart to judge, he could tell that E.J. got it—mostly. The way he nodded, the questions that followed. ... It seemed—at last—that Hart had made his life, somehow, transparent to a ranking big-foot. Still, there was something, something more ... E.J. had to know.

  So they met once again at a Formica table in a hotel cafeteria, in New Hampshire, early morning: a breakfast interview, and E.J. showed up with his baggage, fifteen years of Hart profiles in folders, which he stacked on the table, next to his paper place mat. E.J. was unsettled, uneasy that morning. He seemed to be yipping and dancing more than ever around his questions. He’d start to ask, then pause to brush a lock of hair off his brow, and knock his files of profiles into avalanche, and then try to gather himself, to ask, to try, or—well, whatever it was—again.

  Finally, it was Hart who leaned across the table and stopped him: “E.J., what is it? What are you looking for?”

  “Well, I don’t know, I mean ...” E.J. said, feinting at his forelock. “I mean, I wanted to know, from you ...”

  Hart fixed him with a parent’s stare, a look of dwindling patience.

  “Okay,” E.J. said. “Why do you think ... that we think ... you’re weird?”

  Well, that was the end of Hart’s profile season. He decreed, after that breakfast: no more. Sweeney was sputtering and fretting in the van—it was just the system ... but Hart was clear: no more.

  Of course, that didn’t do much to relieve the sour steam in the stockpot. Hart was going to announce next week. Their profiles had to run this Sunday—next Sunday, max! And Hart wasn’t doing interviews! Wasn’t enough that the guy was weird: now he was hiding from them!

  So Sweeney was out there spreading salve, trying to explain that Hart was tied up: focused on announcement, you know ... which was true in its way, because Hart had got it into his head that he was going to announce like Van Buren, or Zach Taylor. He was going to have a few people up to his house, his cabin on a slope of the Rockies, and from his wooden front porch, he’d declare his intention to change this country.

  They wanted roots? Well, let them see the real bedrock of his life, his old homesteader’s cabin on the stagecoach road through the mountains to Denver. Let them stand with their cameras on the land Gary loved, on the old trail that he’d walk with his dogs, showing visitors where the stage used to run ... where the Indians could overlook the road from those rocks ... where the creek wound, rushing, down the slope, past his homestead. They wanted to see his life? Let them see something real ... not the dime-store version they kept plugging into their stories.

  “Gary, there’s going to be hundreds of people. TV, radio, writers, photographers—everybody’s got to come.”

  “Why do they all have to come?”

  Well, they all had to come because they all had to come. That was the system, what announcement was about. The white boys wanted a nice, clean, faceless square in downtown Denver, with balloons and cheering crowds—you know, the regular stuff ... but Gary insisted on something better.

  “Well, it can’t be the cabin. Where the hell would you put ’em?”

  “They could set up their cameras right in front of the house.”

  “Yeah, but how about cars? Their trucks. Satellite trucks!”

  Gary talked it over at home, and Lee wasn’t happy ... but it was Andrea who ruled it out. She was living at home; she didn’t want that horde trampling over the place. />
  So Gary gave up on the house.

  They settled on a park near Gary’s house—Red Rocks Park—and Gary would have his mountain backdrop, they wouldn’t have to build a crowd. They’d bus in the press, give them time to set up, then Gary would come, with the family ... might not be bad! They could do a downtown rally after ... but announcement, the tape that would run forever, would show the mountains, clean, strong, and bold ... and set the theme of Hart’s True Patriotism: “I am running for President ... because I love my country.”

  Hart wrote his speech himself—eight minutes, no chaff. He spoke without notes, without a TelePrompTer. He thought if he could not say, without reading, why he was running—well, why should anybody listen? He said his campaign would likely make mistakes, but he would campaign on the issues that mattered. He would never talk down to the voters. He would never hold them cheap with appeals to passion. He would try to define the national interest, and rely on the voters’ judgment to set this country on a better course. “Ideas have power,” Hart said. “Ideas are what governing is all about.”