What It Takes

by Richard Ben Cramer

  So came the day before announcement, Monday, June 8, and it got to be late in the day ... and Pat was in his muscle-guy sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off, still stalking Joe’s stately home, ready to go toe-to-toe on this speech, which was very important. And there were typists upstairs, waiting, and gurus present for consultations, and Joe’s parents were over, just to help out, and Val, of course, and one of Jimmy’s kids, and Joe’s kids, in and out, and Tommy Lewis, Joe’s old friend, who manned a stool in the kitchen, next to the three phones, because there were a hundred media calls and a million staff and volunteer calls and VIP arrangements—train passes and hotel rooms, Wilmington cops and state cops and Amtrak cops, the height of the podium (wrong, of course), money bigs with suggestions, food for the staff, people at the airport, people who called and said, “Is Joe there?”—and Val’s kid, who wanted to know if Mom said it was okay to go to Billy’s house, and friends who had to call (they were coming to the announcement, or they weren’t coming—who gave a shit?) ... somebody had to talk to them.

  And Joe was going to have a nap, then do it with Pat—their duel, their dance—but Joe had just got ready to lie down upstairs when the TVs showed up: three satellite trucks in the driveway for three Philadelphia live-at-fives. So Joe went out on the lawn, from camera to camera, and, between takes, yelled back into the house, for Tommy: “SPIKE! How ’bout some Cokes for the fellas! It’s hot!” So they were serving sodas to the TV crews while Joe should have been asleep—he didn’t get upstairs for an hour ... and then the phone rang and it was Tommy Bell and Charlie Roth and Larry Orr, from Scranton ... they’re in town! ... They brought three gallons of spaghetti sauce ... from Preno’s!

  “Joe’s favorite!”

  “Hey, uh, great ...” Spike said to the phone.

  “We’re comin’ out with the sauce!”

  “Oh ... yeah. Where you at?”

  “Right here.”

  “What do you mean, ‘right here’? ”

  “On the car phone. In your fuckin’ driveway!”

  So the guys from Scranton came in with the sauce. Spike put them on the side porch, and he still wanted Joe to sleep, but Joe came right down. “How’re things in Scranton, boys?”

  So they talked old times, but the boys were nervous, what with Joe going to be President ... which made Joe extra-eager to set them at ease, so they had Cokes, talked more, and Ashley came out to say good night—it was her birthday, so they all wished her happy birthday—and Beau and Hunt came out, and Joe talked about the car he’d got for Beau, for graduation. It was family, then, like it always was, so they relaxed, they really talked old times ... couple of hours. Caddell kept coming onto the porch, saying: “Excuse me, uh, Senator? ...” Ten minutes later, he’d come back: “Senator, they’re ready for you upstairs ...” He came back four or five times.

  The guys didn’t like Caddell, and they were glad to see Joe wouldn’t even look at him. “Yeah, okay,” Joe would say, “I’ll be right there ...” They could tell he was pissed at Caddell. Joe was tired, anyway. He was getting to sleep at four, up again at six—that’s what he said. But he was glad to see them—guys who knew him, from before all this—and it was dark when they left.

  Only then did Joe get down to the speech, and the fight with Pat ... but it was late, Joe was tired to his bones, his head ached—his head always hurt in those days, he was gulping Tylenol like candy, never took so many pills—and he still had to pack, get some sleep ... tomorrow was game day. So they never quite fought it through. The speech just ballooned to hold both speeches: one line of apocalypse from Caddell, then a line of sanguine hope in the goodness and strength of the nation—that was Joe.

  By the wee hours of announcement day, the speech was set to run an hour and a half—maybe twice too long, three times too long—but Joe didn’t have time to make it short. As it was, the typing would go on all night, for the press copies, the podium typescript ... and Joe figured he’d see it clearer in the morning—sure, he’d take another look in the morning—game day ... after he got the family squared away. It was understood, always, without a word said, that Joe would take care, take charge of the family, at times like this, events like this. ... If he could just get some sleep ... but Jill was upstairs, and they talked till late ... it was a big move coming, and Joe was revved up.

  And then, the minute he was dressed, they were after him about the weather. It was a gray day, with low clouds scudding fast across the sky, and the early TV said showers, surely, and Joe had to decide—did he want it indoors?

  “Outdoors,” he said with a grin: he’d go with the luck of the Irish on this. (Biden weather—like Election Day ’72, a brilliant day, crisp and shining, a day like a jewel. One hint of rain and Joe would have lost ... but no, weather was nothing, with destiny fueling the wind.) So he said: “Don’t even think about rain.”

  Then it started to rain.

  So they went round and round—indoors, outdoors—and Joe had to make the call again: Outdoors! ... And, sure enough, the rain stopped, and the wind was fresh. By that time, limos were in the driveway, Advance were in the foyer, along with Rasky, who was stooped with the weight of two hundred press, wet and waiting in the wind at the station ... and Joe was going to get the family together, but Caddell called him, called them all, to gather downstairs: there was something they had to hear.

  “Not now, Pat.”

  “No! Joe! You’ve got to hear this.”

  So the Bidens stood in announcement clothes, while Pat, as the majordomo, flicked on the stereo and cranked it up to TEN, till it felt like the speakers were slapping them in the face.

  Do you hear the people sing

  Lost in the valley of the night?

  “LISTEN TO THIS NOW ...” Pat yelled through the music. This was important ... the finale to Les Misérables ... and this was HOW THE CAMPAIGN HAD TO BE!

  It is the music of a people

  Who are climbing to the light ...

  “Yeah, that’s great, Pat ...”

  Then, it was only minutes till three stretch limos rolled to a stop at the station and Joe leapt out of the last car, onto the sidewalk, about to call to Mom-Mom, to tell her where she had to go, and Jill and the kids ... some family had to go straight to the stage, some inside to a holding room ... Joe knew the drill, he’d take charge. He had his arms up to point, direct ... but then he saw: the sidewalk was aboil with Advance—one to each Biden. They took Mom-Mom away, and Joe, Sr. ... Jimmy, Frankie, Val, the kids, and Jill ... and in a moment, Joe was alone, with the words frozen in his mouth ... he just stared ... alone ... with the strangest, saddest look of resignation ... until his arms dropped to his sides, and he felt a hand on his elbow. A voice said, “This way, Senator.” And they led him off to announce that he meant to be President.

  He’d run into town, Saturdays, join his friends at their pizza dive—Pala’s (“The World’s Worst Pizza”)—and they’d be sitting there, talking trash, on their eighth pitcher of beer. Joe would have Cokes, but that didn’t matter. He could bullshit just as surely, just as loud as they. The difference was, now that he was back—in ’68—a lawyer, he wouldn’t hang around: he’d only stay an hour, unless they were talking up some scheme.

  Joe’d say: “C’mon, let’s do it.”

  “What ... now?”

  “Yeah. C’mon. Let’s do it.”

  Joe was going to make a fortune, see—he didn’t have time to sit around.

  One day he called his dentist-pal, Marty Londergan: “You gotta come down here. I got an idea and it’s gonna make millions.”

  “Come down where?”

  “Newark.”

  “What’s the idea?”

  “Day care.”

  “What? ...” In ’68, Marty didn’t know what day care was.

  “Listen. There’s graduate students here. They’re married. They work. They go to school. And there’s no day care! They don’t have any place to take the kids! I got the place all picked out. C’mon. Get down here.”
<
br />   “Joe, wait a minute.”

  “Come on! We’ll get the girls in to run it. We can open ’em up all over the state. Marty, this is big.”

  “Did you talk to Neilia?”

  “She’ll love it.”

  In Newark, Joe dragged Marty to a big corner rowhouse, just off campus. “Look at the house!” Joe said. “It’s perfect.” In Joe’s mind, it was already fixed up, filled with playing kids.

  “I don’t know, Joe ...”

  But you couldn’t tell him no. He was on his way to the courthouse to find out who owned the building ... a man who had a restaurant in Elkton, Maryland.

  “C’mon, we’re going to see him ... It’ll work. Put on a suit. Come on, we’re going back home. Put on a suit.”

  They drove back to Wilmington, and Marty dressed. Joe reappeared in his lawyer pinstripes. He had the briefcase. They drove to Elkton, straight to the restaurant. Joe asked for the owner, then introduced himself. “And this is Dr. Londergan ...” Marty wasn’t even out of dental school. Then Joe started to talk fast.

  “See, here’s how it works ...” Joe was painting pictures in the air. Even Marty got excited. And when the flow would pause, or a sentence would finish, there’d be the grin, those beautiful Biden teeth. In no time, Joe got this leveraged deal sketched out. Of course, cash payments wouldn’t start right away ... but everybody would do well. What could go wrong?

  “That’s a pretty good deal, sounds like ...” the owner finally said. “Why don’t you have your lawyer draw up the papers, and my wife and I’ll look ’em over ...”

  Joe opened his briefcase and started whipping out papers. Marty went bug-eyed.

  “It just so happens,” Joe said gravely, “that I have the whole business drawn up, here.” He presented the owner with a multipage document. Joe had typed in the terms while Marty got dressed. Marty didn’t know whether to laugh or leave for the men’s room. The owner sat back in his chair like you could have knocked him over. He said: “Well ...”

  Joe said he’d leave the papers. He was already on to the next step. “Place needs to be fixed up,” Joe said in the car. “Get some paint.”

  “But ...”

  “Place needs a coat of paint,” Joe said.

  Marty went back to Newark with his paint and rollers. Joe was busy. He was thinking of the second branch. Marty worked in the house three days, twelve hours a day, and he had the downstairs painted. He was ready to head for the second floor when Joe walked in.

  “Stop.”

  Marty looked down from the ladder. “What do you mean, stop?”

  “Stop. Deal’s off.”

  “Joe, what do you mean?”

  “It’s off. Fell through. I don’t know. But listen. Get that paint in the car. I got an idea ...”

  Thing was, the get-rich-quick schemes never did make him rich. Something fell through, or Joe changed his mind. ... If they worked, Joe had the money spent six ways before it hit his hand. The sonofabitch could do a deal. Thing was, he couldn’t not do a deal.

  Anyway, politics, houses ... he never stopped moving up. One year after he won for County Council, the state redistricted and took away half his term. (They were going to make him run again, in ’72—in a GOP district!) ... Joe told his friends, forget the goddam County Council! He was going for the U.S. Senate ... against Cale Boggs.

  “Boggs! Shit, Joe! You haven’t got a snowball’s chance ...”

  “You just watch.”

  That was the same time he fixed up a couple of houses in Newark, sold them, actually got some cash for a down payment on Northstar, his first real house ... a place for him and Neilia. It was actually out of his Council district—major political headache—but he had to have it. It was beautiful, graceful—perfect. That portico!

  See, it was modeled on the White House.

  39

  Excessive Consultitis

  WHAT ATE AT JOE—the trouble in his soul—was he’d gotten exactly where he’d been going ... for the last two decades, bearing down on this moment ... but it didn’t look like it had in his dreams. He said to the gurus: “I can’t feel the tingle.”

  That announcement—he’d heard his call to the crusade, over and over in his head through the years ... but it always sounded better, simpler, than the crap he delivered six times that June. He’d seen in his head how he’d build an organization—but it wasn’t like this chickenshit outfit, no. He’d just got Iowa fixed, and New Hampshire fell completely to hell—had to send Ridley up to shitcan the state director and put in someone new. That first quarter, he raised more money than anyone else ... but he needed more money, more and more. He had a solid two days of money-hunting now—the Hollywood Women’s Political Action Caucus and a half-dozen other groups, all over California—when he should be preparing for the first debate.

  Christ! That debate ... how many times had Biden prelived The Debate—his debate? A thousand times? ... There they’d be, Joe and his opponent, alone in the glare—High Noon, Main Street—and the other guy looked older, like Nixon ... or Cale Boggs ... and Joey would demolish him, seize the stage, with charm and wit. Joe knew exactly ... how it was going to be.

  But that didn’t look anything like this debate, this turkey shoot set for July 1, seven Democrats lined up on stage in Houston for the Bill Buckley show—all answering the same questions, all struggling, squirming, to get off a good line, to say something ... to somehow climb out of this unbecoming pack. Still, it was important, the nation’s first look at the Democrats on TV. This could be the moment. He had to be ready. That’s why he demanded two days, after California, strictly for debate-prep. He’d hole up in Chicago, get a decent suite, run some meetings, clear his head, get an idea ... then fly into Houston the night before—he’d have a day to relax, to look and feel his best.

  But he hadn’t even got to California—still in the air—when the bells went off in Washington. Red alert! Lewis Powell had announced his retirement from the Supreme Court. The news was waiting when Biden landed: his nightmare was upon him. A Reagan nominee to the High Court, confirmation hearings in his committee ... could take weeks, maybe months, maybe a floor fight to manage thereafter. Joe knew instantly: his plans for the year—hell, all his plans—were history, smoke! His campaign—well, his first thought was, he’d have to quit. How could he campaign? He couldn’t quit the chairmanship, run away from his first fight—not if he ever meant to hold up his head again in Washington.

  He got the office on the phone.

  “I know who they want ...” This was Gitenstein on the other end. He’d just talked to a right-winger friend in Ed Meese’s Justice Department.

  Joe knew, too ... but he said nothing, as Mark said:

  “Bork.”

  That was nightmare on nightmare. For the last few years, Lewis Powell had provided the swing vote that forestalled Ronald Reagan’s “social agenda.” Powell was the fifth vote for the right to abortion, the fifth vote for affirmative action. Gitenstein could tick off a half-dozen cases—each of them five-to-four on the Rehnquist court. If Bork got the seat, every one of those cases would turn ... Bork had no respect for the decisions that made those policies law.

  What was worse, Bork was unassailable on credentials, as a scholar, a thinker on the law. He was, in fact, the most revered conservative jurist in the country. Worse still, Biden had said as much, just after he got the Judiciary chair, in the fall of 1986. He’d told Larry Eichel, of The Philadelphia Inquirer: “Say the administration sends up Bork, and, after our investigation, he looks a lot like another Scalia. ... I’d have to vote for him.”

  Now Rasky was on the phone. He wanted to know what they should say about the Inquirer quote.

  “That was different,” Biden protested. There was a plaintive note in his voice. All he was trying to say to Eichel was, he wasn’t going to carry water for every liberal group in town.

  “I’d have to vote for him,” he’d told Eichel. “... And if the groups tear me apart, well, that’s the medicine I’ll
have to take.”

  All he meant was, he was going to do it his way. All he meant was, he wasn’t going to be their goddam Ted Kennedy! But he couldn’t say that. Why the hell had he said anything?

  What could he say now?

  He wanted conference calls—legal scholars: Phil Kurland from University of Chicago (a good conservative, he’d have the poop on Bork), Larry Tribe from Harvard, Walter Dellinger from Duke, Ken Bass, an old friend from Wilmington. Joe would have to know what he was talking about. The press was going to kill him. Anything he said was going to look like politics.

  “Put the gurus on the phone,” Joe said. There were three or four in the office. They all wanted to talk. Biden cut them off, with one instruction:

  “You guys just shut up. No statements.”

  “Joe! What are you going to say?”

  Biden didn’t answer. He was going to his hotel. He had to think. He didn’t want advice. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I know what I’m doing.”

  Which, they knew, was bullshit ... but he’d hung up the phone.

  The only thing he could do was try to steer them off Bork. Joe had to make them see: they’d get a fight that could split the country. It wasn’t just abortion ... but Jesus, that was bad enough. The women’s groups would go berserk. Biden couldn’t afford that fight ... he didn’t have the kosher national Democratic pro-choice position—couldn’t support public funding for abortions, for instance. What he mostly did on the issue was duck. He was a Catholic. He never wanted a vote on abortion.

  What he wanted to know from Dellinger was all about the “advise” half of “advise and consent.” Joe had to know if the White House ever ran consultations with the Senate ... before a nomination. He wanted examples, precedents. Dellinger had them. “I’m gonna call Howard Baker,” Joe said. “I’m gonna ask for a meeting.”

  Baker was the new White House Chief of Staff—came in after Reagan and Regan got their asses in a sling with Iran-contra. Joe knew Howard Baker from the Senate. They could talk. The question was: Would Baker talk to Reagan? In fact, Howard Baker was under attack from the Reagan true believers the minute he walked into the White House. They saw him as the evil “capitulationist” who kept leading poor Ronnie into “deals” with Congress, “deals” with the Russians ... deals with everybody! ... And they weren’t going to let it happen this time. Bork was their ticket to extend the “revolution” into American law in perpetuity. They’d go to the wall for Bob Bork. And Howard Baker, who had the Iran-contra hearings in progress, Ed Meese sinking in the Wedtech scandal, arms talks with the Soviets, Kuwaiti tankers sporting U.S. flags ... not to mention Ronnie doing his thing and Nancy doing God knows what ... didn’t have much stomach for a new fight.