What It Takes

by Richard Ben Cramer

  JFK was the President of eastern monied interests—which always put the shaft to the heartland farmer.

  The liberals in Washington were going to run this country commie.

  Orville Freeman, for pity’s sake, wanted to send our wheat to the Russians! (What’s the point of fighting them and feeding them at the same time?)

  Dole never missed a vote. He had the highest ratings from conservative “watchdog” groups—the antitax antidebt crusaders. He had one of the lowest ratios of support for the New Frontier. All this was in line with the views of western Kansas. But Bob, being Bob, was sure it wasn’t enough.

  In the summer of ’61, he and Phyllis went home to touch base ... and Bob announced that Phyllis and Robin would stay, for a year and a half—keep the home fires burning while Bob took care of business in Washington.

  That fall, Bob flew back and took care of JFK’s Agriculture Department. There were stories in the paper from Pecos, Texas, about a wheeler-dealer good-ol’-boy (friend of LBJ’s, matter of fact) who’d made a shady fortune storing grain for the government. This fellow’s name was Billie Sol Estes.

  Billie Sol was a man who knew a good deal—and what he had with the feds was a good deal. Say, you had a grain elevator that was sitting empty ... Estes would buy it—give you a good price—all in notes, understand, entirely on credit ... after which, trains would start rumbling in with government surplus to fill the elevator. The government fees would pay off Billie Sol’s notes, and everybody was happy—save for the fellows who used to store the grain, and a couple of spoilsport Ag Department guys who didn’t think Estes should be storing every bushel the U.S. government bought. From ’59 to ’61, Estes stored fifty million bushels of grain and collected $8 million from the Ag Department ... so taxpayers might have been unhappy, too—if they’d known.

  They might never have known if Estes hadn’t got himself in trouble with some bankers in Texas and Oklahoma who’d given him mortgages on 33,000 liquid-fertilizer tanks—when he owned, in total, only 1,800. (Billie Sol would just change the numbers on the tanks, depending on which bankers were coming by that day.)

  At the same time, Estes was buying cotton allotments from farmers in the Old Confederacy and transferring these allotments to his lands in West Texas ... which wasn’t much good, as cotton land went, but price supports were so inflated that an allotment (in effect, a license to grow cotton) was like a license to print money. Anyway, there was an Ag Department man in Texas named Marshall, and he refused to approve these cotton transfers. Marshall ended up dead on his ranch: he’d been poisoned with carbon monoxide, beat over the head, and gut-shot five times (with his own bolt-action .22 rifle). Still, taxpayers might never have known. Henry Marshall’s death was ruled a suicide. After that, Estes’s cotton assignments went through.

  But after that, the case was in the papers, too, and the smell of ink reached Bob Dole in Washington.

  Bob’s fellow freshmen thought he must be crazy: What did Dole know about Billie Sol Estes? Bob was messing with the White House—with LBJ’s friends! Dole was going to get clobbered!

  But Dole called in the Attorney General of Texas—got him into the office and started finding out about the case. (“Duck soup!”) ... A friend at the RNC put Bob in touch with Ag Department sources—holdovers from Ike’s regime who’d blow the whistle. ... There was one Ag guy, M. Battle Hales, who’d accused Estes of buying off the department. Hales was reassigned—his office was locked and he was denied access to his own files. His secretary was shipped off to a mental institution. That’s when Dole brought the matter to the floor—and to the papers. He wanted the Ag Committee to hold hearings. He wanted Hales to testify. He wanted to know where Orville Freeman had squirreled away Hales’s secretary. These were the sort of shenanigans by which the American farmer was bilked!

  In the end, Bob Dole, freshman from Kansas, was the principal sponsor of the resolution that committed Congress to an investigation.

  Bob Dole, freshman from Kansas, socked the Kennedy White House with its first taste of scandal.

  Bob Dole, freshman from Kansas, made the case for the Republican Party, and the American farmer ... in The New York Times.

  “Agh, pretty goood! Front payyge!”

  28

  No Choice, Mike

  KITTY WORRIED THAT SHE wouldn’t measure up. It was so odd: Michael wouldn’t have been in the race if Kitty hadn’t wanted it so much. But the minute he got in, she was seized with dread: What if she hurt his chances? What if people looked at her, and found her wanting? What if her secret came out, and hurt Michael? She’d never forgive herself.

  It was always that way with Kitty: she was so sure of Michael, her anchor, her rock ... she was so sure for him. But her? She felt like a fraud.

  That’s how it was for twenty-five years, with the pills: after a while, she hated herself for taking them, for hiding them, for lying. ... But if she did something—anything good—she was also robbed of the joy: it was the pills. Without them, she was sure, she never could have done it.

  No one knew about the pills.

  Except Michael—he knew, now—but Michael never saw it that way. “Look at her!” he’d say to the crowd, whenever she went with him to an event. “You tell me—wouldn’t she make a terrific First Lady?” In his eyes, she was always ... terrific. If she flew off the handle, snapped at someone who was only trying to help ... if she fell into a mood where nothing was right, nothing worth doing ... if she barged into a meeting in the State House, in a steaming rage that could not wait (it was just the mirror of her rage at herself) ... well, that was just his Katharine. He adored her, his impetuous, tempestuous Jewish bride. In fact, her behavior fed him, his own idea of himself: it was left to him to be the steady one, the strong one, the stoic. He was fine, unperturbed—maybe, in the worst case, silent, down in his Mediterranean hunch—but his behavior was appropriate.

  Which, again, let Kitty feed her own idea of herself: she was the one on the edge, the gambler, the high-wire artist, scraping through on charm, guile, and bursts of feverish energy—wringing the last drop of drama from her scenes. She was not hiding, no: she was a woman who would not be ignored. Intensely desirous of achievement she was, determined to have recognition—but certain, all the while, that someone would see through her act, straight to the fear at her core.

  That was the fear rising now. They’d be looking at her. Surely, her secrets would be found out. She had her first major interview scheduled—the Los Angeles Times, Bob Drogin was coming to talk to her. Kitty was nuts with this thing, this interview. It seemed to others like unnatural dread.

  Drogin was just getting his feet wet—his introductory story on Dukakis. Sure, he wanted to talk to Kitty, but he also wanted Michael’s friend Paul Brountas, and the fund-raiser, Bob Farmer, and John Sasso ... many other folks.

  It’s no big deal, they tried to tell Kitty. “I know Drogin,” Patricia O’Brien, the campaign’s new Press Secretary, said. “He’s not the kind who’s going to really, you know, hammer at you.”

  But Pat didn’t know Kitty. ... No one knew.

  In the days before Drogin arrived, Kitty’s face drew tight—everything about her got tight—and her eyes got darker, deeper in their sockets, like she wasn’t sleeping well.

  “Do you want me to sit in?” Pat asked Kitty.

  Please.

  So Pat sat in, and they set the thing up for Kitty’s State House office, her own turf ... and they held it (she’s awfully busy) to twenty minutes—half an hour at most.

  And Drogin came in, asked a few questions ... it went fine. Kitty was stiff with fear, but Bob couldn’t tell—it was the first time he’d met her. And he was an awfully nice guy.

  It was only after the interview—Pat walked out to the hall with Drogin—that Bob brought up the thing he’d wanted to check out. There were rumors (you know, with the Hart thing in the air ...) that Kitty’d had an affair ... one of the troopers, one of Michael’s State Police guards—Kitty and the trooper
—it was all over town. Had Pat heard anything?

  Nothing to that, Pat assured him. ... She’d heard the talk, sure. She’d asked about it ... and Pat was certain—it was nothing. Turned out, it was just a stupid rumor. Drogin nodded, and went on his way.

  It was after that, Pat went back into the office: it was time to have a talk with Kitty. ... Pat asked:

  “Kitty, is there anything I should know—that I don’t know? Something ... anything ... you want to tell me?”

  Kitty stared up, bolt-still, like startled prey; she paused just a second ... and said: “Yes.”

  Kitty Dickson started taking amphetamines—diet pills—at the age of nineteen. She thought she was fat, or thought she was going to be fat, or thought, somehow, they were going to make her better. She’d seen the bottle in her mother’s dressing room, so she walked in one day and helped herself to a pill. Next day, she was back to help herself to another. And soon she had her own prescription.

  They were easy to get in those days, ’56, when doctors were happy to share with their patients the pain-free miracles of modern chemistry. You wanted to lose weight? Here was a pill. You wanted to sleep? Here was a pill. Felt down in the mouth? Well, here ...

  And Kitty felt terrific. She was going to leave college—Penn State, she was a sophomore—to marry her beau and start a new life. Turned out she barely knew the boy, John Chaffetz ... he just wanted her so much. She knew little about herself, but she thought marriage would make her whole, somehow. It would give her the sense of self that she craved. She thought, somehow, it would make her better.

  So she married the boy in a grand ceremony. (There was nothing her dad wouldn’t do for Kitty—she was the most wonderful girl.) And, amid great flutter and attention—excitement was really her drug of choice—she set off for her new world: an Air Force base in Texas, with her handsome new husband, and a bottle of pills.

  Alas, the excitement was over soon: there was another air base, and another—Florida, California ... but it was always the same, she and John did not really share a life. He had his work, his sports on TV ... and she? Well, after 1958, she had her son—a beautiful little boy named Johnny, whom she adored—and she wanted another child, but she miscarried. And then, they tried again, but again, she miscarried ... and there was nothing much said between husband and wife anymore in Kitty and John Chaffetz’s house ... and at last, in 1960, they agreed, the marriage was over.

  So by age twenty-four, she had a divorce, and a son, and a life to make on her own. She moved back to Boston, and re-enrolled in college. She was spiritually exhausted, physically worn down by stress—not much more than a hundred pounds now ... but still, she had the pills. How could she ever have gotten through all that ... without them?

  And even after she’d met Michael, started dating, and fell so deeply in love with that steady soul ... even after she did finish college, and married again, and had her own home, her own life in every sense of the word ... even after she did have more children, two lovely daughters (and another miscarriage, and another pregnancy marred by German measles, that ended with the child’s death at birth) ... even after she’d gone back to school, again, this time for a master’s in communications ... even after she’d made a career for herself, first as an instructor in dance, then as an advocate for public parks and environmental beautification, an advocate for remembrance of the Holocaust, an advocate for the homeless in America, a rescuer of refugees overseas, the host of a television program, a leader of tours to the Middle East, the Orient ... and for most of those years, all the while, First Lady of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts ... even after she made a life, in short, that would have surfeited ten average women ... she still had the pills. How could she have done all that, without them?

  It was not till 1982, while Michael was in mid-course of his furious comeback campaign ... in fact, by curious congruence, not until her husband had met his own loss (ouster from the job which was his definition of self), and faced his mistakes, faced himself, apologized, and come back stronger than ever ... not until that moment when Michael bade fair to overcome his one great failure, did Kitty decide she had to face hers.

  She told Michael about the pills. She told him she was going away, for help, to a clinic in Minnesota.

  She told her children about her addiction, her lies, and she asked them to participate in the therapy.

  She told her sister, and brother-in-law (in fact, it was Al Peters, Jinny’s husband, a recovering alcoholic, who set her on the road to the clinic in Minnesota).

  She told one friend, her old Penn State roommate, Ann Fogy, who lived in Missouri now and who’d cover for her, who’d tell anyone who asked that Kitty was visiting her to recover from “a bout of hepatitis.”

  But she told no one else.

  And then, in mid-campaign, she got on a plane, took her last pill, and disappeared for more than a month.

  (That’s where the rumors of affairs got started: Where was Kitty? ... Was there trouble in the marriage? ... Must be trouble—she’s never with him! ... Well, of course—haven’t you heard? ... The trooper! ... Kitty and the trooper! ...)

  Michael baldly lied for his bride. She didn’t need anyone poking into her affairs. Nor did he: he was facing the most important election of his life in a couple of months. He didn’t need weeks of ugly questions about his wife, her secrets, those pills ... and how come he didn’t know?

  Michael himself couldn’t understand—how could he not have known? He blamed himself—he should have seen. His wife! His bride! The light of his life! He’d always been there for her ... tried to help ... he’d paid attention. He’d scheduled time to pay attention! ... How could he not have seen—for twenty years?

  But when Kitty returned, that August, when she came back to him (she looked, well, just terrific!) without the pills—yes, she’d beaten those pills ... she also had the answer for Michael: there was no way he could have known. She was taking pills before he ever met her ... her behavior never changed ... and pills are easy to hide. Hell, the way she’d sneaked those pills, Sherlock Holmes couldn’t have found them!

  And that was the answer she had ready for the day when she finally would, finally could ... tell the world. She had to tell the truth, now, yes ...

  And sure enough, when she did tell all, that was the question everybody asked—how could he not have known?

  Oh, she always knew what they were doing—trying to pin Michael for inattention, insensitivity ... trying to beat up on Michael, for her lie.

  But she wouldn’t let them—not for an instant.

  He couldn’t have known ...

  I was using when he met me ...

  Pills are just too easy to hide ...

  She’d shut them down, in half a minute ... with a smile.

  But no one asked, or no one got a real answer (save for a shrug, and a flip “addicts lie”) to the more interesting question:

  Okay, it was her lie ...

  Okay, he couldn’t have figured ...

  Okay, it started before, but ... why, in a twenty-year “partnership,” could she never let him see her failure, or her fear?

  It was just the bare facts she told to Patricia O’Brien, but that was enough.

  We’ve got a problem, Pat thought. She saw what they were doing to Hart, the way the whole pack was now Karacter Kops. She’d been on the job for less than two weeks ... this was her first big—God, this had to be handled right!

  “This is very big,” she said quietly.

  And Kitty looked better, right away: “It is?”

  Pat said, of course ... it had to come out. She wanted it to come out right, for Kitty’s sake.

  Kitty was a new woman, lighter, younger, excited again. She was so relieved ... she’d told someone ... who paid attention, who thought it was important.

  She’d told Sasso, see, told him right away when Michael decided to get into the race. She’d gone to John and she told him about the pills, the treatment, her anguish ...

  And nothing
happened.

  “Lemme think about that,” John said.

  And nothing happened!

  Of course, that was annoying to Kitty—confusing and hurtful ...

  Truth be told, Sasso had worked with Michael for more than five years now ... and he wasn’t going to get into Kitty-business. Not willingly, anyway. That was Michael’s affair. Somewhere, Sasso had to draw the line ... more and more, the line fell just this side of Kitty.

  He wasn’t confused about the politics, no: it had to come out, and they’d have to put it out. Sasso managed Geraldine Ferraro’s campaign for the Vice Presidency: he knew what a spouse’s woes could do to a candidate. But this wasn’t going to hurt Michael—not if they brought it out themselves. And Dukakis hadn’t even announced yet. He could still barely say out loud that he wanted to be President. He needed an emotional crisis right now like a hole in the head.

  So, when Pat O’Brien came marching to John with the stuff about Kitty, when Pat said it had to come out, had to be handled right, it had to be planned, this had to be thought through ... Sasso said, with a shrug:

  “I don’t know if Mike’ll go for it ...”

  That meant John didn’t know when, or whether, he’d talk to Michael about it.

  So Kitty brought it up with Michael ... who didn’t see why it had to come out. His health, sure, a clear issue. People had to know. But his wife’s health? ... Did anyone—did the public—have a right to poke into his bride’s life?

  Where would this kind of thing stop?

  So it ended up, again, at the kitchen table on Perry Street. The four of them gathered on a Sunday morning. Pat and Kitty were pushing to have the thing out ... but Kitty wouldn’t push hard—this was Michael’s campaign ...

  And John’s. But Sasso was quiet that day, sitting back—let the others thrash this out. He was adviser to Michael—that’s all.

  So it was Pat who carried the mail. She wanted this to be handled right, for Kitty ... and for herself. Pat had just left the newspaper trade, and was prickly about her integrity. She was not going to get into a position where she had to cover up for anyone, on anything.