What It Takes

by Richard Ben Cramer

  Susan Estrich or Patricia O’Brien would show in the next reporter, the next camera crew ... for hours Kitty kept her place, in her living room, on one of the tatty old Danish-modern chairs (Michael would never spring for new furniture: What’s wrong with our chairs?) ... and Kitty was spectacular. She never lost her focus, or her charm, her vulnerability, her strength. The story never lost its freshness, or its intimacy. She just ... well, she shined.

  And she was calm, full of purpose.

  It was strange, how collected she seemed, at the center of so much frenzied attention. But that’s what gave her such focus. She knew she was doing something important—and it was right—because it was so important to her. This was not about Michael, or the state, or even the campaign. This was about Kitty. And in that line of reporters that stretched into the evening, there was interest, and more: there was connection, esteem, identity.

  The local evening news had twenty minutes on Kitty.

  The kitchen phone was ringing with requests for Kitty.

  The campaign was working overtime on a new national schedule for Kitty.

  When the last reporter had gone, Kitty walked back to the kitchen, exhausted, excited, satisfied. She popped open a bottle of wine—glasses for everyone. She knew she’d done a wonderful job.

  But even she didn’t know the chord she’d touched. She started to find out the next morning—6:00 A.M., she was off to Minnesota. She wanted to tell her story there, where she’d gotten treatment, where her triumph had begun. ... She was flying commercial—back of the plane—and before they’d even taken off, a man, a stranger, came to her, down the aisle. He bent over the back of the chair in front of her, and almost whispered:

  “You know, my wife had the same problem—nine years ... and till yesterday, she thought she was the only one. God bless you ...” Then he started to cry.

  Kitty was always great when she had something to do, something important, whenever people were counting on her, paying attention to her. It’s only when the music stopped—down time, delays—she’d get itchy ... and then, watch out!

  “I’m going to take a nap ... I’ve got to get some rest, the way they have this trip ... ucch, God! ... Andrew! ...”

  That was her first body man, Andy Savitz, a Georgetown lawyer, a Rhodes scholar, and a wise-guy-in-training.

  “Andrew! Is there some reason there’s no soda in this room? ... Don’t we have a list of everything to put in the room? ... Why don’t we have a list? Would it be too much trouble to have a list? I want to see the list! ... Andrew! When can we get the list? ... Just a Perrier! How can I ... really! ... Ucch! Dammit! ... Is that too much to ask?”

  Savitz, of course, did not join that campaign to make lists of snacks.

  But it drove her nuts if (it seemed to her) the staff didn’t pay attention ... or made her wait ... or did sloppy work. Would they do that to Michael? They would not! He would not stand for it! Well, why should she?

  She had a group of lady friends who’d rotate as traveling companions, paying their own way, to help with wardrobe, makeup, schedules, late-night conversation ... anything she needed. But that was no substitute for staff she could rely on.

  Why should she work without a full-time speechwriter? Wasn’t she giving speeches?

  Why was she flying commercial when Michael had his own plane? Didn’t she do as much as Michael?

  In fact, she did every bit as much as Michael—had to, with his time so short ... his days, every week, in the State House. And Kitty was the campaign’s way of saying: We Care About You. ... She was the chief surrogate, the emotional surrogate for Michael. In fact, she could say, We Care ... better than he!

  And she knew it.

  And now there was even more: she wasn’t just Mrs. Governor, Mrs. Michael ... she was Kitty. People knew about her. People wanted to hear her.

  Near the end of July, there was a First Ladies’ Forum, in Des Moines, a gathering of the Democratic spouses ... all on one stage, like some horrid pageant—but this was about brains, commitment, passion, persona. Kitty meant to own the place.

  This time the speech went through eight drafts ... nine ... and there was a speech coach, and the campaign’s adman, Dan Payne. Kitty wanted to see tapes of herself speaking her speech—they rented a hall for practice at MIT, and Marilyn Chase, Kitty’s Chief of Staff, got her husband and his professional crew to shoot the video.

  Over and over and over ... Kitty worked at this with a whip on her own back. This was about her ... what kind of First Lady she would be. This was about her issues, her style ... her substance.

  And then, she flew to Iowa, to deliver her speech. The hall at Drake University was full—press everywhere, a dozen tripods on a platform in the hall! Kitty wore red. She looked spectacular.

  And the way it worked out ... it was too perfect!

  Hattie Babbitt led off—education would be her priority: our children ...

  Then Jill Biden—education ... our children ...

  Then Kitty got up and laid into her issues: homelessness, refugees, Holocaust. She was ... well, she was different. And it wasn’t just different issues. She had done things. She had a record of concern, substance, and achievement.

  She spoke about her public identity.

  From the stage, she looked over the crowd with such a fierce and full elation ... you could see what it meant to her. Same way you could see, afterward, when she said to Andy Savitz: “You should feel really good.” Of course, she meant that’s how she felt.

  They were driving to the airport. Kitty had to fly to Traverse City, Michigan, to meet Michael at the National Governors’ Conference.

  And ... at last ... there was a plane waiting for her—her own jet!—to fly her to her connection in Detroit.

  Well, she was absolutely queenly in that plane ... and absolutely alone. Savitz was campaign staff ... and this was a trip in her role as the Governor’s wife.

  So she made her own connection to the commercial flight, in Detroit. And made it fine. She was so excited. She couldn’t wait to tell Michael how her speech had gone! In fact, she was wonderful ... until that little shuttle to Traverse City sat there ... sat there ... and sat there ...

  And Kitty blew:

  “If this plane doesn’t take off right now ... there is going to be TROUBLE,” she told the pilot. In fact, she might as well have told everybody in the plane. “I have to meet my husband ... who is running for PRESIDENT ... YOU MAY NOT KNOW WHO I AM, BUT YOU CAN TAKE IT FROM ME, THERE’S GOING TO BE TROUBLE ...”

  She was right about that. The seat behind her was occupied by a reporter, who fed the incident straight to a columnist for the Boston Herald.

  45

  Shit Happens

  THE THING JANE SAW from the stage was her kids. She got up to speak at the First Ladies’ Forum, and she saw them in the front row—Matt, Christie, Katie—all staring down at their shoes. They were so nervous. Their mom! How was she ever gonna do this? ...

  Well, she’d had help. Bob Shrum put the speech together; and she had a coach, that man who helped Babbitt after they found out poor Bruce’s head bobbed around like a dashboard doll’s when he spoke. And Jane Gephardt did practice, marching around her bedroom, giving her speech to the pillows, to the mirror—that worried woman in the mirror!

  How was she ever gonna do this?

  It wasn’t just the speech—the speech was fine. It wasn’t any one thing. It was everything. At once. She had two houses already, one in Virginia, one in St. Louis, though Loreen took care of the one in St. Louis, and now they had two apartments in Des Moines—well, actually West Des Moines, which was more like East Jesus, a half-hour from anyplace ... not to mention that Jane didn’t know Des Moines, so a trip to anyplace started with directions, or a call to the staff, who didn’t know Des Moines, so they’d drive her back and forth from the office to East Jesus on the main street of town, Grand Avenue, which was a Chinese water torture of stoplights, so that meant she was an hour from anyplace she had to go ... u
sually someplace she had to go now. West Des Moines! It was one of those things that looked better on paper.

  They were garden apartments (no gardens), one apartment for Loreen, another for Dick and Jane and the kids, except Dick wasn’t often there, so Betsy Bridge, the baby-sitter, would crash on the couch. And Frank, who was Don and Nancy Gephardt’s son—he was going to work on the campaign that summer—took the other room at Loreen’s ... which meant that when his mother came—Nancy was going to travel with Jane—she would end up on Loreen’s couch, or on the floor. And Carleen Overstreet, from Dick’s Washington staff, who drove the van out with household chattel (except the dog, Rogue, who had to be dropped off at St. Louis), stayed a while at Loreen’s, or Jane’s. Tell the truth, if you came in at night, you didn’t know whose body you’d have to step over.

  It was like camping—without the woods. Without the privacy. And with lots more stuff. The staff had to rent beds, and mattresses, and dressers, and couches, and chairs, and TVs. Jane and the kids brought some of their own clothes when they flew out, each with a suitcase or two. And Loreen brought her own car, packed to the gills—pots and pans (they had to cook!) ... and an ironing board. And then the van showed up with a solid load—kids do not live by clothes alone. And Jane had to go to a discount store for plates, forks and knives, pillows and sheets, and towels ... and more sheets, when it came clear the couches were going to be beds, and more sheets, which she tacked up in lieu of curtains. And that didn’t count the groceries ... or the foodstuffs, as it turned out, since one of the campaign staff had a card to shop at a warehouse outlet, one of those deals for union men where you could buy food cheap but only in bulk—giant cans of this or that—or sometimes you could find regular-size, but you had to buy a dozen, or a case ... so Jane would tote a twelve-pack of family-size Jif ... along with a Brobdingnagian jar of jelly. All they needed was a truckload of Wonder Bread.

  It was a great idea ... move the family to Iowa for the summer. Dick said they’d be together. It’d be good for Matt, for the girls. It’d be greeaaat! And it always made the papers, every profile: Gephardt is so serious about Iowa that he has moved his wife and children ... and his seventy-nine-year-old mother. ... It was one of those things that looked better in the paper.

  Like the schedule—the ninety-nine-county schedule. It was easy to say: “I’ve been to every county in this great state ...” Except you’d be dead by the time you could say it. You’d take off in the van from some county courthouse and drive through a thousand square miles of corn before you got to the third county over, which was the next place you could yell Fire! ... and more than two people would come. Of course, the staff in Des Moines (Gephardt had a big staff—that showed he was serious about Iowa) was only working from maps. What the hell ... Monona County, Buena Vista County—same, uh ... quadrant of the state! You put your thumb on one, you can touch the other with your pinky—look!

  And Dick would do it. That was never at issue. In fact, that’s what he’d talk about, when he got to Monona County: how this was his second trip to Monona County ... that’s how serious he was about Iowa. In fact, he’d tell them, he’d been to sixty-seven counties ... and he was going to hit all ninety-nine. It was like the sign at McDonald’s, where they change the number in front of the “billions.” (Burgers must be good, right?) But sometimes, that seemed like all he did: he’d go around, and say how much he’d gone around.

  Unless he had to go around some other state (forty-seven states in the past fourteen months!), or the place where they had to go around was just too dinky and distant, even for Dick ... then Jane would have to go around. Jane and Nancy would pile the kids in the back of the van and drive—forever ... while the kids whooped it up in the back and Jane tried to buy quiet with candy. Nancy drove. She was an Iowa girl, she knew the roads. They’d do a hundred miles to a coffee shop in some little town, and Jane would shell out another fortune in quarters for the game machines for the kids ... while she talked to six people at one table about how they’d gone around. (“You know, we’ve been in seventy-one counties!”) And then they’d pile back in the van—maybe make a pit stop, where Jane would buy more candy, pump herself a new tank of gas—and another county would rumble by, or two or three, till they got to another coffee shop, another video game, another tableful of Iowans.

  Jane figured the staff didn’t know what to do with all these willing Gephardts. She’d spend a half day on the way to ... three people! She’d tell them that, when she got back—even if it was ten at night, she’d stop by the office. The young staffers were still there, of course. That’s one of the things the Gephardt people talked about, when they worked—was how long the Gephardt people worked. Yessir, that midnight oil! ... And they were always nice to her: “Jane, did you get to eat?” They’d offer some pizza they had ordered in.

  No, she had to run. She was still a half-hour from East Jesus. The kids had to get to bed. She had ... well, what did she have? If Dick got in that night, she could talk about her day: the drive to Ringgold County ... she saw that nice Jim Whatsisname—Remle’s friend, with the beard ... and then Page County, and Cass, on the way back. And she stopped at the office.

  Oh, what’s goin’ on?

  “Nothing—same ...” Jane would say. “They were all in front, eating pizza ... d’you have any quarters?”

  She’d given the kids all her quarters. Darn! She needed quarters for the washing machine in the hall.

  Dick knew he was losing ground—to be precise, he wasn’t gaining fast enough. And now, with Dukakis hitting his stride, and Biden’s numbers finally inching up, and Simon starting to campaign full-time, Dick could feel it slipping. Just after Hart dropped out, the polls gave Gephardt twenty-four percent, called him the new front-runner. That was bullshit; but then, when the next poll knocked him down to eighteen, and then fifteen, everybody started asking: What’s wrong with Gephardt?

  That summer in Iowa, there were a thousand wise guys and wise-guys-in-training, doing business for seven Democratic candidates. And six-sevenths of these would be glad to explain exactly what was wrong with that blond-fascist-phony-protectionist-flip-flop Gephardt. Just buy them a beer! So all the writers in the Hotel Savery bar had these gorgeous wise-guy quotes, with which to write what was wrong with Gephardt ... and they did. Then the editorial writers piled on: Gephardt was going to start a trade war with Japan! ... And the next poll showed Dick’s numbers down ... again.

  Whad I tellya? ... Guy’s a stiff!

  Gephardt didn’t need polls to tell him he hadn’t got the system down. He’d go around the state, talking about how he’d gone around, and he’d see the same people. Nothing wrong with those people. He loved those people! But, uh, what about their friends? ... What about those people he’d been calling in Cedar Rapids? Called them every two weeks—since last year. ... Well, they still weren’t quite, you know, ready to commit. (One of the kids in the office said he saw one at a Dukakis event.) What about the UAW? Chuck and Carol Gifford, they were like new cousins. (Just the other night, Dick was over, brought Jane and the kids, and the kids played around Chuck’s garage, and Jane helped Carol straighten the kitchen, and Dick and Chuck had a great talk about the new patio Chuck built behind the house.) But what about their union members? How many were leaning to Biden?

  Dick had a guy named Bill Fleming running Iowa—nice guy, clean, dedicated, well mannered, smooth with the press. He could talk just like a government report about his “concerns” ... “impacting the agenda.” But Dick didn’t want to read memos on modalities ... the Iowa staff couldn’t even give him a hard count.

  Gephardt knew this much about the system: what you needed was a list, thousands of names of actual people who actually said they would go to their caucuses and stand up for Gephardt. That’s all that mattered. In the office, they called these people Number Ones. (That meant Dick was Number One with them.)

  So every time Gephardt would get back to Iowa, he’d ask for the hard count. “How ’bout our Number Ones?”<
br />
  “Uh, I think they were, uhm, gettin’ ’em together today. Today and tomorrow ... this week.”

  “I thought we were going to have them last week.”

  “We haven’t got, uh, hard numbers yet, from the First District.”

  If Dick pressed the point, he could get the whole story about why they didn’t have the numbers together, how Bill locked up Saturday night and Paula didn’t have keys Sunday morning, and the phones were screwed up Sunday night, and the van broke down, and they had to send Glenn ... but what was the point?

  Mostly he’d get the briefer version, the standard slogan ever since Dick saw a bumper sticker out in his fifty-seventh Iowa county ... and he couldn’t stop cackling about it.

  “Yeah,” he’d say, and he’d laugh, every time: “Shit Happens.”

  He was trying to keep a good attitude. You start pressing, six months before the first votes, you’re finished. People can smell fear. And he wasn’t supposed to worry about mechanics—the hard count, the phone banks, the schedule, people who just hung around the office. That was Carrick’s department, or Fleming’s ... they were the pros. Dick was just the candidate.

  Anyway, he didn’t know what more he could do. He was working flat-out just to hit the new counties, make the speeches, the visits, and the money calls, just to stick to the schedule, the plan. ... Problem was, he didn’t really have a plan—not since Hart got out.

  The whole Gephardt plan was to sneak up on Hart, run as the Democrat who was not Gary Hart. (That’s one reason Gephardt fastened onto the issue of trade—he knew he could use it to pick a fight with Hart.) If Dick could nick Hart in Iowa, he’d get ink. Even a strong second, and Dick would get the big Iowa bounce—the press has to have a contest. And if it went head-to-head, Dick and Hart ... well, Dick was made to order for Super Tuesday. He was more conservative than Hart, more Reagan-Democrat, more tough-talk-on-the-Soviets ... more mainstream, more border-state ... more electable.