What It Takes

by Richard Ben Cramer

  Nobody knew how he had to do his letters. Thousands of letters—he dictated every one, every word. Then Judy Harbaugh would bring them in and hold them on the desk while Dole signed with his left hand ... until he told her, one day: “I’ll do it.”

  He lifted his right fist onto a corner of a letter, and held the paper himself. It was awkward. But he wouldn’t let her help anymore. “There’s so many things I can’t do,” he told her. “I’ve got to try something every day, just to see if I can.”

  He didn’t expect anything to come easy.

  He sure wasn’t going to sit still in the House. He had a chance now, and he took it: Kansas’s senior Senator, Frank Carlson, announced that he’d retire in 1968 ... same day, Dole announced he was running for Senate.

  He’d have a primary against a man who’d already run statewide and won—the former Governor, Bill Avery, a friend of Dole’s (they’d served together in Congress) and a big name.

  It would be tough.

  Well, you had to be tough!

  Actually, it could have been tougher: Dole might have had to face Garner Shriver, another Congressman who’d run a dozen times—never lost—in Sedgwick County, Wichita. Garner owned that part of the state.

  But Garner dithered, then backed away. Nobody could figure ... what did Dole say to Shriver to push him out of the race?

  “No, he never talked to me,” Shriver recalled. “Uh ... you see, he had this war record. Well, I did, too ... but I didn’t have this, uh ...”

  Shriver cocked his arm at his side: “... that was, uh, very visible.”

  In the end, it wasn’t even Bob’s arm. Had more to do with stomach. Garner had watched Dole in Congress.

  “I don’t think I had the desire he had. ... I just didn’t have all that push.”

  People said Bob campaigned for that Senate seat like his life depended on it. Avery was well known (he’d won the governorship in ’64 despite Goldwater’s loss of Kansas by eighty thousand votes) ... and Dole’s name was new to most voters. Bob had to get around and make himself known—in a hurry!

  He had a driver now, Bill Frazier, and they must have done a hundred thousand miles around Kansas. Frazier was a three-hundred-pounder, a trencherman, a smoker and drinker ... but just the kind of guy Dole tended to rely on—big, ugly, and humble. He’d drop out of school every time Dole had a campaign. Probably never did finish school.

  Anyway, it was always Dole and Frazier—they’d hit every wide place in the road. Dole only knew one way to campaign. He’d glad-hand his way up Main Street, on his way to a coffee-klatsch ... if it was a big town, he’d start with coffee at some supporter’s home, just to work up steam for the big event, at a rented hall. If it was a large hall, he might hook up with his quartet of girl singers, the Bob-o-Links ... or his bevy of booster ladies, the Dolls for Dole—with their pineapple juice ... or maybe he’d send brother Kenny ahead with the old “Roll with Dole” wagon. ... Anyway, by the time Bob hit that hall, he’d be rolling—cracking jokes, telling stories, making up his speech on the spot ... by the end, he’d be flying, barking out names, greetings, grabbing hands, chuckling for photos, moving through the crowd like a big steam engine. ... Then he’d sink, in silence again, into the shotgun seat next to Frazier, and a hundred miles might go by before either one said a word.

  Still, he talked to Frazier more than anyone—who else did he have to talk to? ... Phyllis would come along for the big events, but they weren’t her happiest evenings. You’d see her near Bob (not too near), with an edgy smile ... unless she saw someone she knew—then she’d light up. But there weren’t many she knew. (It always made her feel inadequate: she couldn’t remember all the names, and a microphone—oh, God!—petrified her.) She’d never tried to be Bob’s partner in politics. How could she start now? ... She told him she didn’t like that “Dolls for Dole” routine anymore—made her think of Valley of the Dolls. ... Of course, Bob kept the gals. He wasn’t much for advice.

  Dole knew the Senate was the big league, so he hired a consultant, a guy named Roy Pfautch. Dole listened to him for about two weeks, then tuned him out. Never fired him, of course. He’d just stop listening ... joke about the guy, behind his back.

  Dole still talked to Huck Boyd; Huck was always there for Bob. But despite his national connections, Huck was a man of western Kansas—northwest Kansas, to be precise—and never had as much drag with the eastern Kansas nabobs, the old guard: Alf Landon, Oscar Stauffer, or Harry Darby, the Kansas City boss. That was Dole’s problem. His district covered half the state, but the wrong half, the empty west. Nobody knew Dole in the cities—Wichita, Topeka ... Kansas City! What could he do in Kansas City?

  He’d have to put it together by himself—go around the old guard. Outflank ’em, outwork ’em. He scheduled big events in all three cities—fund-raisers, hundred dollars a plate—and he went major-league. He hired a famous singer—well, pretty famous—Marilyn Maye, to sing Bob’s theme song, “Step to the Rear (and Let a Winner Lead the Way).” She had it in her contract, she had to be introduced as “Marvelous Marilyn May.” Bob did that ... but after Topeka, she announced she couldn’t be bothered to go on. Bob had to hire a big band—in a hurry. He lost money on Kansas City.

  The problem wasn’t really Kansas City. That was Wyandotte County—mostly black, not a factor in a GOP primary. The problem was in neighboring Johnson County, the most Republican county in eastern Kansas ... a political jungle—twenty-five separate municipalities, each with its Mayor and City Council, and all well-to-do suburbs, foreign turf to Dole. Those people spent more time in Chicago, or New York, than they ever did in Russell, Kansas.

  Dole found a way: he found a guy—Dave Owen. Owen was a comer, running for State Senator. He had that county wired. By the time he’d put together his organization and held a big party at a hotel to show it off, nobody would even file against him. So Owen turned his organization over to Dole—whole hog. ... Why?

  “I don’t know, I met him ...” Owen said. “He had hero written all over him. He overcame his injuries. He never said a word about it. ... I liked his style. There was something macho about him. He was kick-ass-and-take-names. Bob Dole stood for that.”

  So he did.

  Dole’s friend Bill Avery had lost the governorship, after one term, because he’d imposed a new income tax. The Democrats killed him, in ’66, with that tax issue.

  And so in the summer of 1968, when polls showed Dole flagging (“Gagh! What’re we gonna do?”) ... he took a page from the Democrats’ book:

  Avery had the state studded with his trademark signs, verticals:

  A

  V

  E

  R

  Y

  ... down the sides of a thousand telephone poles. So, every time Dole’s workers found one of those poles, they tacked a horizontal sign on the bottom:

  TAXES

  By the day of the primary vote in August, it wasn’t even close: Dole beat Avery two-to-one. Dole was going to the U.S. Senate.

  55

  1970

  BUSH KNEW HE WAS headed for the Senate. That’s where he belonged, like his dad. He had no doubt. He could have held that House seat forever, like a birthright: that new district, Houston’s Seventh, had been birthed for him. After one term (in fact, by the filing deadline—after thirteen months on the job), he was unopposed!

  And he was a certified star: there were forty new Republicans elected to that Congress, in the rebound after the Goldwater debacle. Bush was chosen as president of the freshman class. For the first time in decades, a GOP freshman got a seat on Ways and Means. (Pres Bush had called on old friends for his son.) From the start, everybody knew about this bright, handsome young Republican ... from Houston—a chink (at last!) in the solid South. George Bush was the Party’s bold breeze of the future.

  He was invited to address GOP luncheons, and breakfasts of bigwigs. He’d talk about the revival of the two-party system—change on the southern wind! What a hopeful vision! He wore that excit
ement like a suitcoat thrown over one shoulder, as he strode down the hallways with a greeting and a grin—he was having such a good time.

  It wasn’t legislating that ran his motor: he wasn’t one of those annoying first-termers who think they’ve got to make floor speeches and pepper the House with bills. The only bills he pushed were aid for birth control (always an interest of Pres’s—maybe unfinished business for the old man) and a short-lived proposal on Congressional ethics. (This pup published his tax returns!) ... Most of his work he did in committee, as a quiet, respectful student of the chairman, Wilbur Mills. (Mills loved him: after the kid filed that birth-control bill, Mills always called him Rubbers.) ... When the bells rang, Bush would hustle to the floor, check in ... but most days—just speeches, or conference reports—he could leave with his new friend, the Mississippi Democrat, Sonny Montgomery, for a do-or-die dollar-a-game paddleball match in the House gym.

  It was the life, itself, that Bush found bracing: all the doing, new friends—he was in such demand! There wasn’t ten minutes to sit around: he had committee, he had a lunch, a meeting at Interior! ... He’d grab his coat and bolt for his office door, calling over his shoulder to Aleene Smith (she’d come with him from Houston): “Allie! See what Mr. Holburn needs, will you—he’s on the phone!” ... He’d run through the anteroom, with that lock of hair falling onto his forehead, and the ladies of his office clucking, through their smiles: “Mr. Bush! Tuck in your shirttail!”

  (In Houston—it was Houston every other weekend, no matter the effort required—the office ladies adored George Bush. Sometimes, if things got slow, Bush would exit his inner office in a flying ballet leap—just to make les gals giggle. Late one day, a little woman came by. She was a mousy sort, no makeup, poor dress—probably a hard-luck case. She wanted to see Mr. Bush. But the ladies had no time to tell him before he flew into the office in a twisting tour jeté. ... Then he saw the woman. He froze ... on the ball of one foot, with his arms outstretched ... and blushed crimson to the roots of his hair.)

  No wonder they loved him—and talked about the way he was: how a man like that could be so nice. He’d pick up the phone himself if it rang more than twice, and he’d listen to some voter’s tale of woe. (“No,” he’d say to the phone. “No, that doesn’t sound right, at all. We’ll look into it, right away. ... No! Thank you for calling!”) Same with the mail: answers by return post. Aleene would cram his battered briefcase every night—might be thirty or forty letters typed up. He’d sign every one, add a couple of lines in his lefty scrawl. The Capitol postman told Aleene that Bush got more mail than anyone else in the Longworth Building. (That’s because he sent more. One Houston lady wrote him a letter. So, he wrote her back. So, she wrote to thank him for his response. So, he wrote her back, thanking her for her thank-you note. Finally, she sent him a letter that said: “You remind me of my aunt, Mrs. Ponder. She just won’t stay written to.”)

  This wasn’t exactly politics with Bush—more like life. The day his moving van arrived in Washington, it was a terrible snow: George sent Bar off to Sears, through the storm, to buy sheets so the movers could stay the night—he insisted! ... Don Rhodes was a volunteer on his campaign in Houston. Rhodes had a hearing problem, and people thought he was strange, maybe slow-witted. (He wasn’t.) Bush not only took him along for the Washington staff, he moved Don into his house. ... Visitors from his district (in fact, visitors from all over Texas; Bush had run statewide before he ever had a district)—George might have asked them to sleep over, too, if he’d had room. As it was, he had to hold himself to fussing over them in the office, posing for pictures, leading tours of the Capitol, making sure they got to see everything in Washington, and ... wasn’t it great how it worked out? Bush inherited a couple of staff ladies from the Texas Democrat who used to represent his part of Houston, so, of course, they knew the crowd in LBJ’s White House. They’d call up and get special tours: not just the state rooms, but the Family Quarters (that picture of George Hamilton on Lynda Bird’s night table!)—well, you put that together with a ride on Bush’s boat (George just had to show them how the city looked from the Potomac), and Bar’s picnic, with the pâté, wine, and salad, and ... no wonder he was unopposed!

  In fact, that was one reason he could make that vote—’68, the open-housing bill—Bush knew he would face no opponent in November. Still, there’d be a howl of protest. Sonny Montgomery told him, in the gym: “Your district ain’t gonna like this.” Bush didn’t need analysis from Sonny. For God’s sake, some of Bush’s voters wouldn’t ride in a car that a Negro had sat in—wouldn’t play the same golf course. ... Bush agonized for weeks.

  What stuck in his mind was Vietnam, his trip, those soldiers—black soldiers—in the jungle, in the uniform of their country ... how could he let them come back to a nation where they couldn’t live where they chose? He could not. He couldn’t let politics change the way he was.

  So he voted for the bill. He meant to take the heat.

  But this wasn’t heat. This was ... ugly. First the calls—les gals had to hear them:

  “You tell Bush we don’ need no Connecticut Nigra-lovers ...”

  “Are you half nigger-blood, too? ...”

  Then the letters—thousands of letters. Don Rhodes was up all night trying to get out answers. But how could Bush answer?

  “It’s Communist says who I can sell my house to ...”

  “I know niggers are running the government ...”

  The threats menaced his staff and his family. One letter mentioned his children by name. After a week, Bush looked like he’d aged ten years. His face sagged. There was no excitement in his words or walk. He went back to Houston, and ... that was worse. The office felt like the Alamo. The ladies tried to cheer him:

  “They’re just kooks,” Sarah Gee said.

  “They aren’t thinking ...”

  “Everybody else is for you ...”

  Bush just sat at his desk, staring at the wall. Sarah saw the look of the bereaved. She didn’t even know why she said it—it just came out:

  “Oh, George ... I’m sorry.”

  Bob Mosbacher called, said the money men were up in arms. “You want me to try to get ’em together, talk to them?”

  Bush’s voice was weary:

  “No, I gotta do it myself.”

  So, he did: he got twenty-five big givers into a room. Bush had the air of a man who’d been beat up. “I know we agree on so much,” he told them. He didn’t ask them to support his vote—just to keep in mind the other votes. It was almost pleading! “If you can’t support me anymore ... well, I hope I can still have your friendship.”

  He did feel he was beaten—not this time, no, it was too late to lose reelection ... but what about next time? What about the Senate? All the great doings, the big plans ahead? ... In fact, his loss went deeper than elections: it had to do with the choices he’d made for twenty years—in Texas—his feeling that he could speak for Texas. Was he wrong? ... God! What if it was all wrong?

  He wrote to a friend:

  “I never dreamed the reaction would be so violent. Seething hatred—the epithets—the real chickenshit stuff in spades—to our [office] girls: ‘You must be a nigger or a Chinaman’—and on and on—and the country club crowd disowning me and denouncing me. ...

  “Tonight [I was on] this plane and this older lady came up to me. She said, ‘I’m a conservative Democrat from this district, but I’m proud, and will always vote for you now’—and her accent was Texan (not Connecticut) and suddenly somehow I felt that maybe it would all be OK—and I started to cry—with the poor lady embarrassed to death—I couldn’t say a word to her.”

  He would always remember the moment when he knew ... that night—a town meeting. The crowd booed him and muttered his name with a menacing hiss as he was introduced.

  So he told them, he knew what they thought. He told them, he knew some people called him lib-rull. But it wasn’t conservative or liberal—this vote. It was just ... fairness. He told them a
bout Vietnam—those soldiers—how could he let them come back? ... How could you slam a door in a guy’s face, just ’cause he’s a Negro, or speaks with an accent? ...

  There was no more to say. He was going to sit down, in the silence. He turned to thank the moderator, and behind him he heard applause, a scattered few, and then, when he turned, more clapping, everybody was clapping ... and then some stood, in front, and more behind. They were clapping—for him—because he did what he thought was right, and he’d said so. He didn’t think they agreed—still—but they gave him a standing ovation.

  God! He could have kissed them all!

  That’s how he knew, he was going to the Senate—not a doubt. This time, 1970, he would beat old Yarborough fair and square—he knew it—Texas was changing!

  That’s what Bush kept saying: Yarborough was out of touch! The state had passed him by. People didn’t want that New Deal, promise-’em-the-moon kind of government, that kind of Senator—no. They wanted a modern conservative. They wanted George Bush!

  This time, he’d have his ducks in a row. He’d been around, he had friends everywhere. This time, he’d have a professional Campaign Manager—Marvin Collins, great guy! He was signed on already. He’d have a big budget—two million, for starters. And a Bush-friend, John Tower, had taken over the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee—he’d send along whatever he could. And the President would help! President Nixon was on a roll: he was targeting races all over the country. Nixon said Texas was number one, and he asked Bush to run—personally! Even LBJ might help. Bush went to see him. The old man certainly wouldn’t lift a finger to help Yarborough. Neither would John Connally. They all hated Ralph! ... This time, Bush wouldn’t have to scrape for issues—he’d had his eye on Yarborough for six years. He had the old snake-oil salesman locked in the cross hairs.

  Bush had such big plans for 1970: ads all over the state, and not just in cities, but on every dustland radio station—Spanish, too! Bush didn’t see why this race, his race, should not mark the realignment of Texas. Why shouldn’t the GOP grab its share of the Mexicans? And Negroes—my God, he ought to get some Negro votes! (Election night, 1968, though he had no contest, he’d grabbed for the tally sheets: he wanted to see those colored precincts. Wouldn’t you know it? Jeez!... After all that—two-thirds wouldn’t even cross over for him—with no Democrat against him!) ... But that wouldn’t matter—that would be gravy—once he started hammering away at the old guard, the liberal, the tired voice of the past, Yarborough.