What It Takes

by Richard Ben Cramer

  “When it was all over, I said to Judge Bork: ‘Now, Judge Bork, do you think you got a fair hearing?’

  “He said, ‘Yes.’

  “ ‘Anything else you want to say, Judge Bork?’

  “ ‘No.’ ...”

  The fact was, Biden ran a long and serious hearing, the best discussion (and a high enactment) of the Constitution in the TV age: he could not let them take that away. And he would not let them repaint the battle as a liberal media attack on Bork. Biden made his case, and the people who watched turned away from the judge. The Senate vote reflected the shift among voters.

  In the end, the Senate voted fifty-eight to forty-two against Bork. Joe had his win. But he did not have his vindication. Nor, to tell the truth, much satisfaction.

  “Some wins are more enjoyable than others,” he said that afternoon. “This is one of the wins that’s less enjoyable. ... Because we’re talking about a man who had to sit home and watch this.”

  Biden knew how that felt.

  Sometimes, at night, he’d get home, talk to the kids and Jill, and then after dinner, he’d flip on the TV. The other night, the kids had the VCR cued up with a video. Biden hit PLAY ... and there he was, smiling, with David Frost. They’d taped his interview for Frost’s series in the summer, months before ... and there he was telling Frost about the Kinnock speech ... how he saw that tape from Britain, how Kinnock moved him—because they were talking about the same kind of life! ... God, he’d explained the thing perfectly—for national TV ... but it never made TV. Biden had dropped out before the show aired.

  Sometimes he’d tune in C-Span, PBS ... and his mind would race ahead: he knew exactly what he’d say ... what Gore, Gephardt, Dukakis would say next—then how he’d break in and ... leave those sonsabitches in the dust! ... God, he could see it. The other night, the live debate, Dukakis started in with that pablum—good jobs, good wages. Jesus! ... But Joe only watched a minute. Jill came in.

  “We’re not gonna watch that, are we?”

  “Well, I just thought I’d ...”

  “Well ... I’m going downstairs.” And she walked out.

  The hard thing for Jill was, she’d thought it was finished. Standing at that press conference, she’d thought—well, at least it’s over. But she hadn’t counted on this feeling, the emptiness: the death of a dream she didn’t know she’d had.

  Joe had his life. The Senate went on, and the hearings. He started looking forward to a chance to travel, to dig into foreign policy. And she was teaching. But it was different. They were going through the motions, like they were underwater. Life was so slow. There was no weekend schedule—jump on the plane to Iowa ... funny, she loved Iowa. He could’ve won there. They would have won ... after the hearings, when everybody was paying attention, everybody would’ve known Joe, what he did on Bork ... he was brilliant.

  God, of all the things they could’ve thrown at Joe ... his character, his honesty—that’s why she married him! ... She would have liked to get people by the neck and tell them. But there was no way. What was she going to do—scream it out in the Pathmark? She was the one who was out every day: the Pathmark, the drugstore, or Janssen’s, the little market. People were trying to be nice. They’d tell her: “I wish Joe hadn’t got out ...” And Jill would have to smile, say it was all right. Or they’d say: “There’ll be another time ...” And Jill would try to keep her voice light, when she said, “Yup. Sure will.”

  They all wanted to defend him, but there was no way. The boys wanted to hit back. Beau had been out to Arizona for the Young Democrats, and Hunter had been at the meetings in the house. They were all a part of ... of what?

  They weren’t doing anything.

  There was no Delaware schedule, either. It was like they just closed down. Days would go by, no one would say a word. Funny—it was Jill who had to talk.

  They’d talk in the bubble bath, in the big bathroom upstairs—it was huge, with old blue-gray scrollwork decorating the walls of cream tile, a cream-colored rug on the floor. This was their system: Joe would come home, maybe ten, he’d eat at the counter in the kitchen, see the kids. The kids would want to talk to Joe down there. But then he’d go up to the bathroom—their place. Jill would lie in the deep bath, Joe would pull up the vanity stool.

  “It’s hard to smile.”

  “I know,” Joe would say. “Things’ll get better.”

  It was great the way he had his eyes fixed ahead: things he was going to do, things they could do. Sometimes, she could look ahead. That was better. “There’s a lot for you,” she’d say. “You can keep going on the child care ...”

  “Yeah, I talked to Kennedy ...”

  “It’s important, people really need ...”

  “Yeah, there’s a lot ...”

  Seldom would they talk about what was, or had been. It was sad. It was hard to understand, and accept.

  “I didn’t know ...” Jill said one night. “Do you have to be just ruthless?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “They are.”

  He didn’t have to ask who. They were Kitty and Michael Dukakis.

  “I don’t know,” he’d say. “Maybe you do.”

  It felt like drowning. That was the first thought. Joe had to strain, to fight to fill his chest with air. He was down—might as well admit that. It wasn’t just the losing, it was the helplessness, the shame.

  How could it blow up in his face like that? The answer was the depressing thing: he could not make it, and be like he was. If he wanted to have his dream, he’d have to be like someone else—some other way altogether.

  He couldn’t accept that. Probably couldn’t do it ... but anyway, what good would that make the dream?

  He heard Jill say to a friend: “It’s just about power. Joe was naïve.”

  Was that it? Yeah, he was naïve. He knew why they hit him. Sasso made no bones about that: Biden was getting the blue-collar vote. Biden’s numbers were on the move. (Joe took grim satisfaction in that.) ... But he never figured they would use the Constitutional fight of ... of the century to come after him. No, he never figured.

  Still, that didn’t explain, didn’t excuse ... the helplessness. There were things he couldn’t have known. No one can know, till they’re in it. He didn’t know what they meant when they said his whole life would tumble out in the glare. He didn’t know what the press would do—wouldn’t do ... he never understood how lazy ... that no one would go back and really do his record, make the picture whole. He didn’t understand how much they mistrusted him, ever since he’d come to the Senate—since that first term, when he pissed people off. He thought he was past that ... but you never get past. He didn’t understand how the gurus would be no help, how they’d make him look hapless to the press. He didn’t understand how the big-feet hated Caddell, or what they meant when they wrote about Biden’s “oratory”—he didn’t understand the code. God, how a guy like Johnny Apple—with a brain like that—could write that Biden was an empty vessel that Caddell poured a candidacy into ... Joe still didn’t understand how Apple could write that.

  He knew they’d come after him, somehow—or he should have known. But when they came, he had no way to fight. How could he have been so wrong about the way it would be? This was the weight Joe had to push off his chest. How could he have been wrong—about his destiny?

  If he lost his idea of that ... what was left? If he gave up what he was going toward ... where was he? Everything had to happen for a reason. That’s what destiny meant, to Joe. Why did this have to happen?

  He could not accept that it did not matter—that he did not matter. That would put him back—a speck ... he could not go back to that despair. God, he hadn’t felt that way for ten years—twelve!—since Jill ... not since Jill came, and put his life back together.

  78

  Jill

  IT WAS A couple of years after Neilia died before Joe even got himself back. Not that he was a basket case. Thirty-two years old, a Senator, rising star in the Party
... that was fine. The boys were healthy and strong, off to school, doing well. Val was living at Northstar, with Joe. Mom-Mom was around every day, and Uncles Jimmy and Frankie. Those boys had more familial care than ... well, they never lacked.

  Parents? Joe was the parent. Period. No confusion: not Val, not Jimmy, or Mom-Mom. Joe didn’t want anybody else raising his kids, thanks. He was there every night, every weekend. They had stories at bedtime, games of catch on the lawn, outings, trips, places to go: out to the Charcoal Pit for burgers, steak sandwiches ... “Beau-y, Hunt! C’mon! Let’s go!” ... drag-racing the eighteen-year-olds down the Concord Pike in Joe’s green Corvette—“Let’s see what this kid has under his hood.” The boys never saw the air out of Joe’s lungs. Not once. He would not allow that.

  That’s partly why it took so long. He could not let down, could not turn away. What took years to win was absence of mind—when he wasn’t working, or focused on the boys—to wake, stretch, look outside, and think: It’s a nice day.

  Not: A nice day—we would have been doing this, if ...

  Not: A nice day—can I dream up something for the boys to do outside? ...

  Not: A nice day—I oughta get home early, give Val a chance to get out ...

  “It’s a nice day.”

  That was the elusive prize. How do you work at feeling normal?

  How could he spend a day without thought for the hole in his life, when everything was set up to compensate for that hole? The commute back and forth to Washington ... the car phone in that huge Cadillac that Jimmy insisted on ... weekends home ... Aunt Val at home ... that home!

  He started looking for a house. Too many memories at Northstar.

  He tried to go out, tentatively ... it was hard. In Washington, he felt ... well, he had to get home. In Delaware, it was almost too close. Everybody knew, or thought they knew. Not to mention, all those eager ... well, Mrs. Johnson thought her daughter would make a perfect match for a Senator ...

  He saw Jill’s picture in the airport—one of those photos selected by committee, this one mounted by the Department of Parks. She was blond, young, smiling ... she was gorgeous. Brother Frankie knew someone who knew her—Jill Jacobs. Frankie got the number for Joe.

  When he called, he wanted Jill to go out that night. She had other plans. “Well, can you break them?” Joe said he had to leave town the next day.

  So, she broke her date. God knows why. She didn’t know much about him. She knew the name, of course, and about his wife. She’d voted for him in ’72 (thank heavens). In fact, she was at the Hotel du Pont that election night—but that wasn’t for Joe. That was a date: Jill’s interest was in dinner.

  Funny thing was, by the time Joe called, she’d almost resolved to quit dating. She’d married young, it didn’t last, and after that, when she went back to college, well ... she was a senior, but twenty-four years old. She was out in the world, student teaching, and the guys at school were only boys. Anyway, most guys were awful. In 1975, if they bought you dinner, they figured they bought ... you know, the whole thing.

  That was the first way Joe was special. For a start, he showed up in a suit. She hadn’t gone out with a guy in a suit for—probably since high school. And then, when he brought her home that night, he took her to the door and ... shook her hand.

  She told her mom on the phone: “My God, I think I finally met a gentleman.”

  That, and the other part: he didn’t quit. He wasn’t one of those guys who said, “I’ll call you ... maybe we’ll get together next weekend.” No, he was on the phone, the next day, and the next. He wanted to talk to her.

  They didn’t talk about the past—his or hers. With Joe, it was now ... or better yet, times to come. He always had something he wanted to do, something they could do together. Second date, he drove her out to a street called Montchan Drive, pulled up at a huge old house.

  “This is the place I’m gonna buy,” Joe said. “C’mon! You gotta see it!” Of course, it was midnight, pitch-dark, and Joe couldn’t find a light that worked, the place was surrounded by mud, and ... Jill sat in the car. But Joe was so excited.

  Then he called and told her he didn’t think they should date anyone else ... after two dates! Then he wanted to bring the boys. Then he wanted to take her out with the family, the brothers, Val, his folks ... that’s where Jill held back. She didn’t want to get involved with the family, to feel she was under inspection. Only later she figured out: Joe didn’t want an inspection. It wasn’t any special trip for her to meet the family. The family was how “we Bidens” lived.

  By that time, of course, Joe’s head was racing. He was starting to see how it could be ... in the new house, with Jill, the boys. The boys loved her. Half the time, she was over there for dinner, in the kitchen, easy in the life. ... And the boys wanted to be married. That’s how “we Bidens” thought about it. Beau or Hunt would say to his dad: “Are we gonna get married again?”

  And Joe was so attentive. Every day he called her. Every night. If he got home at ten, he’d run over to her apartment, just to say hello. And he was so interesting—though, God knows, she didn’t care much about politics. Joe didn’t mind. He got enough of that in Washington.

  No, he’d take care of the politics, and Jill ... well, he could see her taking care of them, the way she was with the boys—with everybody. She could talk with anyone. Not that she believed everyone. No, she believed what she believed. She had backbone. She was private—Joe liked that, her cool way of hiding the girl inside, and old hurts ... he could see that. She had that way of looking at you, to make sure you meant what she thought was so funny ... and then that quick shy smile, half-doubting—she could sniff out bullshit. She’d tell him, too—especially when it was his bullshit—she’d tell him straight. Very soft of manner was Jill, but smart: she knew who she liked.

  She could do it ... he could see it ... and when that started, well, he could see things falling into place. If he could put that back together, if he knew they’d have their home, their family ... then he could reach outward again. It wasn’t just the schedule—he could travel, he could speak. It was more like the center was in place ... so he could lift his eyes. That’s how Joe talked about it—his words:

  “What Jill did ... she was the one who let me dream again.”

  79

  One of the Great Sins

  LEE HAD ALWAYS SAID, she wanted their life back ... but this was not their life. There was a hole at the center: What was Gary going to do? That’s what so much of their life had been about. The simplest things, and the biggest—like where they lived—had always fallen into place around Gary’s plans. Even day-to-day doings—the schedule, a calendar ... Lee might go a week now and never write a thing on her calendar. If she did, it didn’t make any difference—she never looked at the darned thing anymore.

  It was drastic, overnight; the future was a blank sheet. And not just her personal future, next week. They’d always shared a larger public future, for their kids, for the country. On that Gary and Lee had stood, unalterably, together. They’d given up so much for that—but now she was conscious of how much that had given them.

  Public purpose ... it was never really for her. Over and over, Lee had tried to explain: she wanted Gary to be President—not for her, personally—but just because he’d be great. She never wanted to be in the White House. But people couldn’t seem to credit her with that. If they didn’t think she was a doormat ... well, she must be so greedily ambitious that she’d let Gary trample her as long as he hauled her into the White House.

  She’d tried to explain ... but what was the point now? Her friend Sally Henkel told her she ought to write something, or go on TV—Oprah!—to show she was not a conniver or a victim. But to Lee that seemed like looking back. She always said (and not just her—Gary always said) you only look back to learn, to make yourself better. Otherwise, it’s just morbid—too debilitating. You have to get on with your life, unless you want to curl up in a ball and die. She had to see this as a new
challenge. She had to look ahead—which was hard enough, with all the ... information.

  It wasn’t that she asked. People called her! ... Just a few weeks after Gary got out, a friend of Lee’s (such a good friend) called to make sure she knew the whole dismal poop on the Post’s “other woman.” This friend not only had the woman’s name, just for starters, but what she was like, what she looked like, what she felt about Gary, even what she’d said when the Post grilled her. (This friend was sure: a team of three Post reporters had gone at this woman for six hours!)

  And it wasn’t till months later, Lee found out that most of this information was wrong. She should have known: Lee had seen one of those reporters in New Hampshire—while he was supposedly grilling the “other woman” in D.C. But how could Lee know what to believe?

  Another friend called to say Gary’s car was seen outside this other woman’s house, for months—from January to the campaign’s end, in May ... while Lee knew, John had driven his dad’s car back to Colorado in December of ’86. ... Of course, when Lee tracked down a charge and confronted somebody with the facts, they’d start backpedaling: that wasn’t what they really said ... or they must have meant ’86 ... or they must have meant a different car. ... What was the point?

  She didn’t even ask Gary about a lot of this stuff—he didn’t want to talk about it. And some things just weren’t worth bringing up. They were unimportant, compared to the big things in life. And with Gary, you just didn’t keep going over things. “You get it out of your system,” he’d say, “because at some point it’s got to stop.”

  Lee believed you shouldn’t put a person on the spot. This wasn’t just for Gary’s sake—it was her way with her children and friends, too. “You don’t want to push people into positions where they have to lie,” she’d say, “or just stop talking. There are times when you can be put into a position where you have to lie—just to protect yourself. That’s the way to teach people to lie.”