What It Takes

by Richard Ben Cramer

  Or his face on TV. ... He met a man named Greg Harney, a producer for public TV, who had helped to create The Advocates, a weekly PBS issues forum about disputes in the news. The show was set up like a courtroom, with an audience, and a panel of experts “testifying” from the liberal and conservative sides. In 1972, Harney was hunting a new moderator to introduce the topic and the experts, to keep the discussion on track ... and he recruited Dukakis.

  Well, it was a political godsend—weekly, prime-time identification with the issues that mattered most. There was Michael, earnest, intense (power of brain—like a young Rod Serling) ... keeping company with Senators, Secretaries of the Cabinet, professors, and political thinkers ... and he never had to lake a position. He was somehow above positions—the embodiment of fair-minded reason.

  Just as he was, when Watergate took over the Globe’s front page, a well-known public-interest Raider ... the personification of good government.

  Just as he was, heading into 1974, the best-organized Democrat in the state of Massachusetts.

  Dukakis was organized before he knew what he was organizing for. When Michael hosted his first meetings on Perry Street, back in 1972, he still had in mind to run again for Attorney General. He was sure the incumbent, Quinn, was going to make the jump to the Governor’s campaign. But Quinn refused to tip his hand. He’d announce his plans when he was good and ready ... very confident was Quinn—he had the boys on Beacon Hill lined up behind him. So Fran Meaney devised a plan to force Quinn to make the jump.

  Michael would start making noise—about the Governor’s race! Quinn would have to jump in, lest Michael get a head start. Then Michael could drop down and gracefully accede to run for AG ... very clever.

  Except Quinn wouldn’t jump. Michael’s out there, talking Governor ... his toe, and then, his whole foot in the water ... and still Quinn wouldn’t jump!

  But a funny thing happened—other people jumped. Reformers, do-goods—they wanted to help. (They even sent money.) They loved it!

  And nobody laughed. The Globe called Dukakis a serious candidate. The neighborhood groups, who loved him for fighting the roads ... the East Boston people, who hated the Port Authority ... the consumer types who recalled Dukakis’s no-fault bill... and, of course, antimachine insurgents all over the state—they all said it was time they had an alternative.

  Michael Dukakis should be Governor!

  And that’s what everybody thought, in those meetings in his living room—especially the guy at the front of the room.

  MIKE DUKAKIS SHOULD BE GOVERNOR. ... That was actually the slogan—a bit peremptory, perhaps ... but Michael thought no one could disagree. Actually, it was meant to be part of a larger ad campaign—tied in with his issues:

  The Port Authority should work for the people ... Mike Dukakis Should Be Governor ...

  People should have decent housing ... Mike Dukakis Should Be Governor.

  Like that ... but it ended up, there was no money for the ads. Michael’s campaign never had that kind of money. (Smart money was all with Quinn, who finally did declare for Governor, after Michael.) Michael couldn’t even vet the checks overnight, to send back the dirty ones. His Campaign Manager, Joe Grandmaison, insisted: if those donations didn’t get to the bank today, Michael’s own checks would bounce all over the state.

  Grandmaison was Michael’s first professional Campaign Manager. He’d made his name, in 1972, as McGovern’s (and Gary Hart’s) man in New Hampshire. Of course, Michael wasn’t for McGovern. (He was a Muskie man!) ... But he signed up Grandmaison in ’73, and reluctantly agreed to a salary of twenty thousand a year.

  That’s about all Michael spent. Through a bitter two-year primary campaign, Dukakis’s media expenses were only twenty-four thousand—statewide. And through all but a month of that long march, Quinn was ahead in the polls, confident he’d take Michael to the cleaners in the September primary. Quinn had the big pols, a big name, money ... and the logic of one immutable fact: he was an Irishman.

  But he was also the perfect foil for a Michael Dukakis morality play: old-guard Irish, slap-on-the-back, job-for-a-friend ... politics as ever it was in Massachusetts. Quinn could feel no new wind.

  Michael was stumping the state, promising to rid the State House of the “cancer” of patronage. He released five years of his tax returns, which proclaimed his frugal cleanliness. He promised an administration so rational, so efficient, that state voters could finally escape the cycle of deficits, followed by tax hikes, followed by deficits. ...

  No new taxes!

  How could Quinn answer that?

  Well, for months, he didn’t even try. Even after the race drew even—near Labor Day—Quinn refused to debate Dukakis. Quinn thought if he could hold the Irish ... and Italians (his wife was Italian) ... well, how could he lose?

  But Dukakis was winning the Italians from the shore towns, promising to stop the Port Authority from eating away at their neighborhoods.

  How could Quinn answer that? His old buddy, Ed King, was the head of the Port Authority.

  Then Dukakis went at Quinn’s record as AG, implying there was something shady about the way he administered federal law enforcement grants.

  And at last (just as new polls showed Dukakis ahead for the first time), Quinn went nuclear. One week before the primary, he put ads on TV, accusing Dukakis of favoring abortion. And then he dropped leaflets in Boston, accusing Dukakis of backing busing. (Hey, he voted for the Racial Imbalance Law!)

  What he did was play into Michael’s hands.

  Michael got free TV time to denounce Quinn’s last-minute smears ... dirty tricks! (Nixon, though departed, was still on the mind.)

  “This,” Michael intoned, “is the kinda hack politics that has been hurting the state for forty years.”

  No one could do righteous indignation like Dukakis.

  Quinn withdrew the ads, but it was too late. He had allowed the campaign to become a referendum on political morality. He had revealed himself as exemplar of the politics that Michael was born to displace.

  The Sunday before the vote, President Ford pardoned Richard Nixon. Voters in Massachusetts were disgusted—an obvious deal!

  Monday, the Globe withheld comment on most candidates, but singled out Dukakis as worthy of support. (Michael was not like a candidate, by that time. He was nothing less than the new wind itself.)

  Tuesday, Dukakis beat Quinn in a landslide, by more than a hundred thousand votes.

  After that, he could have just shut up and won. The Globe’s first poll of the general election showed Michael ahead by eighteen percent.

  And the Democratic Party was uniting as never before. By grace of God, Michael was blessed with a Lieutenant Governor nominee who was Irish—an O’Neill! ... In fact. Tommy O’Neill was the eldest son of Tip O’Neill, Majority Leader of the U.S. House and the best-loved star in the old-guard cosmos. That meant Tip and Tommy would whip up the hoary machine, even as Michael cried reform.

  You couldn’t dream it up any better.

  Withal, even for the liberal Frank Sargent, this was a lousy year to be an incumbent Republican. It wasn’t just Watergate—or the pardon!—though that was bad enough. ... Before he vacated the White House, Richard Nixon had punished Massachusetts (the only state to vote for McGovern) by closing five military bases. The end of the war in Vietnam stripped the state of megamillions in defense contracts. The Arab oil embargo had stuck the voters in gas lines, raised heating bills by fifty percent, caused a horrific recession that drove unemployment toward ten percent.

  People were hurting, and they were pissed off.

  But, of course, Michael wouldn’t shut up.

  He thought he knew—he was sure he knew—the cause of the inflation, unemployment, the terrible business climate: it was not Arab oil, not Nixon, not the plunging dollar—no. It was ... inefficiency in the State House!

  “It is,” Michael told the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, “the utter failure of state government to manage itself effe
ctively and responsibly.”

  Of course, he was trying to stick it to Sargent, but really ... what was the point?

  The point was, Sargent was not Michael Dukakis.

  Michael promised that he—being him—could wring $100 million out of state budgets and thereby make good his vow, “No new taxes.”

  Sargent said that was preposterous. What was Michael going to cut? (Here was Sargent, the Republican, talking compassion for the hard-pressed poor. And Michael running like a Yankee Republican.) Dukakis insisted, he wouldn’t have to cut anything (he wasn’t going to lose the liberals—they thought he was one of them). No! Better management! Efficiency! Ekonomia! A hundred million was less than three percent of the budget. No one could tell Michael he wasn’t smart enough to find three percent.

  In the last month, it came clear to all the knowing men of the State House that the next Governor was going to have to find a lot more than a hundred million—just to tread water. With a recession, people out of work, welfare and social service expenses were shooting through the roof. Tax collections were falling. The state was bleeding red ink.

  Sargent couldn’t admit that. He’d have to concede that he’d failed to manage. And Michael would not admit it: he’d have to go back on his boast that he could manage away the problem. No new taxes!

  The Globe asked him, point blank:

  No taxes? Are you serious?

  Serious was Michael’s middle name.

  Lead-pipe guarantee?

  Absolutely. He’d close the deficit in the first six months!

  Michael could smell triumph now. He was galloping toward it—on his high horse. In a letter to the Governor, he offered to meet Sargent personally to work out details for the final debates. “... But not at the State House, and not on the public’s time.”

  When Sargent misreported a $40,000 loan from his wife to his campaign, Michael said that reminded him of Watergate. (At the same time, he was denouncing Sargent for running a “scurrilous” campaign.)

  Michael was so sure he bestrode the highest, purest moral axis ... well Sargent was prima facie sleazy—just for contesting the election! And so sure was Michael that reason and decency were on the march, he actually agreed to take a $10,000 loan—personally—to fund the last week of his campaign.

  When Grandmaison got to Michael’s room in the 57 Hotel, on election night, that was the first question Michael asked:

  “Did you pay back the loan?”

  “Yeah.”

  Then, Michael asked:

  “How’m I doing?”

  “You won.”

  Then, Michael Dukakis grabbed Tommy O’Neill in a hug, and in each other’s arms, they jumped up and down on the bed.

  72

  Betrayed

  THE AWFUL THING ABOUT it was—Michael was so happy! He’d just about got to the point where he knew this Presidential campaign was doable ... as he meant to do it. He’d just about got to deciding ... he liked it. It was different—the excitement, the way people looked at him, the way he felt, talking to them—it was ... just terrific.

  Michael was even prepared to concede (this was the true measure of his comfort) there were parts he didn’t understand. The way to communicate what he meant to do, the kinda guy he was—he hadn’t got there yet, didn’t have the lines. But he would! ... Or, at least, he’d try. What he’d lost was the fear of the strangeness and size—this wasn’t going to swallow him whole.

  He didn’t have to give up his life!

  Not all of it ... some things. (He’d lost his cucumbers ... very upset about his cucumbers. He should’ve known, the way his Katharine was, she’d never water them!) But not the big things—he could govern. He could stay on top of state business—three days a week! And here was the delicious secret:

  He’d come back to the State House, and he saw—like a grown man who goes to see the house where he grew up ... it was so small! One day that September, he said to his finance chief, Frank Keefe: “You know, my friend, this is a big, wonderful country we live in. You oughta go out and see it.”

  A big, wonderful world. ... He had a splendid chat with a man named Lenihan—Deputy Prime Minister of the Republic of Ireland. Lenihan actually came to see him. Michael had actually been to Dublin. They had plenty to discuss! It was most cordial! Most agreeable. ... This foreign policy stuff—this was not from Mars. He could do this!

  And then ... then! Came to visit Oscar Arias.

  The President of Costa Rica ... winner of the Nobel Peace Prize ... came to Michael’s office, and they talked—very well, indeed. They agreed that Reagan’s contra war was bankrupt, immoral, illegal. ... Michael and Oscar Arias agreed on the Arias Peace Plan!

  And the best part—in the middle, Kitty called. His bride! ... Jean Hines, Michael’s secretary, put Kitty right through.

  “I’m sitting here with President Arias ...”

  She could hear the pride and pleasure in Michael’s voice.

  “Katharine? What do you want me to tell President Arias?”

  “Oh, God, Michael! I don’t know! Tell him we all have great hopes for his peace plan ...”

  Michael turned from the phone, and relayed this message in perfectly precise Spanish.

  Why wouldn’t he be happy?

  He was taking the measure of a new world, and it fit him!

  He was taking the measure of this huge new campaign ... and he was of size.

  How did he know? The way he always knew: his organization was covering the ground. Michael was, first, an organizer. That was the root talent that had hauled him into the State House. And now ...

  His organization dwarfed his opponents’. Hart was gone. Biden was gone. Jesse Jackson had no pros on the ground. The rest were lightning-seekers: they had to hope for a big win, then try to catch fire. Fire was not Michael’s style.

  “Nope ... it’s a marathon, my friend.”

  The difference, of course, was money ... and Michael was having another sterling quarter—another $4 million quarter! In fact, at the end of September, he was scheduled for a million-dollar evening in Boston. One event: one million dollars.

  It was a dinner—with musical entertainment: the plan was for Michael to come on stage ... and play his trumpet! Michael hadn’t touched a trumpet for years, but such was his comfort now, he agreed. And, being Michael, he went to work—he practiced.

  Friends would call the house, talk to Kitty:

  How’s Michael?

  “Oh, God. Don’t ask! He’s upstairs, playing his trumpet.”

  In the State House, they asked him: “How’s the trumpet going?”

  “The lip?” Michael would answer, with a shrug. “The million-dollar lip?” Of course, by the big day, he was ready. He would play trumpet, correctly.

  That was the day ... Sasso came to the State House, four o’clock. He told Michael: he was the one who sent out the tapes about Biden.

  Michael just stared, fiercely ... then he sagged in his chair. He shook his head slowly. His voice came from far away.

  “Why?” he said. “John ... why?”

  Michael told no one. He had his million-dollar dinner. Steady as she goes ... he went into his hunch. He went to his funder. He played the trumpet, correctly. A group of schoolkids sang a song, on stage. Michael was supposed to watch. He watched.

  “Michael! Smile! ...”

  That was Kitty, next to him.

  “Smile!” she whispered. “They’ll think you’re not enjoying it.”

  Michael winced a sick little smile.

  “Mi-chael!”

  He muttered darkly: “Come on, babe.”

  She knew the tone: get-off-my-back. There were people around ... they’d talk at home.

  How could John not tell him?

  Michael had told the press, the day before: that tape had nothing to do with him—nothing! If anybody in his campaign was involved, he’d be furious! He wouldn’t stand for it!

  How could John let him go out there—in ignorance?

  How co
uld John betray him?

  The funder seemed to last forever. Then they had a driver. Michael sat silent. Kitty worried. Something was terribly wrong. (On the way to the dinner, Michael had forgotten his trumpet—so unlike him!) In the backseat, she lit a cigarette. Michael didn’t say a word.

  “Okay,” she said, after he closed the door on Perry Street. “What’s wrong?”

  “Sit down.”

  “Michael!”

  “You better sit down. ... I found out today it was John who made those tapes.”

  “Oh, God.”

  Michael was standing slumped in the middle of the floor. She went to him, hugged him. But he did not give himself to her touch. He was beyond comfort.

  She heard him on the kitchen phone: he called Paul Brountas. Paul was one of Michael’s oldest friends, a Greek, a law school pal, now a corporate consigliere, a successful man. Michael had made him chairman of the campaign ... but Paul didn’t have to do much. As chairman, he’d been mostly what he ever was—Michael’s friend.

  Now, Michael told him, he needed Paul’s help. They talked about John. Paul thought John should go. Paul had never trusted Michael giving himself over to John ... it was an old story. Michael said they’d have to see what happened.

  But what could happen?

  Michael would have to make an announcement.

  Tomorrow.

  Early.

  He would have to announce ... he had not known what was going on in his own campaign. How could he have known? John was the one he trusted. The one ...

  He would have to announce, admit ... well, he had to talk to John. He dialed John’s number at home. Maybe John would not have to go ... a leave of absence ... an exile ... a penance. ... Michael had to think. He didn’t want to act from emotion, but there was so much hurt.

  That’s not what John heard on the phone. He heard Michael’s voice, and he knew: Mike was going to be ... correct.