What It Takes

by Richard Ben Cramer

Dole just kept flying. What else could he do?

  In the last weeks, he hit four or five states a day—mostly through the Midwest and South ... where he’d rasp out his message that the name of his candidate wasn’t Nixon-Ford, it was Jerry Ford! ... Carter could talk about trust, but Jerry Ford had earned it!

  Dole was getting sick, his voice was almost gone. Elizabeth would call the Schedulers to tell them Bob had to rest—they were killing him. Then Bob would call and add a stop to the day after next ... they were so close, just a little more push ... they could make it—Carter could still go sour! ... Carter’s margins were melting away in Texas, Illinois, Ohio, Florida, Oklahoma—Dole got the tracking polls every day. Jerry Ford was, at last, loosed from the White House, and he thumped and stumped around the country, showing the grandeur of his office (thousands came out, just to see Air Force One) and the Everyman values to which he still clung (every Ford rally featured the Michigan fight song). There was a half-hour TV show in all the major markets, with Ford answering questions from that penetrating interviewer, Joe Garagiola ... and lots of negative ads, feeding the public doubts about Carter.

  And in the last week, the final Gallup Poll showed ... Ford and Dole edging into the lead! ... It wasn’t really a lead—just one point—easily within the margin of error. But that statistical nuance was beside the point. They had come from thirty-three points behind! ... On the last weekend, Ford called to say: “You’re doing a great job. I know you must be exhausted—but keep it up. We’re going to make it, Bob!” ... They had climbed back to even—against all odds. And they were moving—Dole could feel it:

  “I smell VICTORYYYY! ...”

  They lost by two percent ... by fifty-seven electoral votes ... by the barest handful of votes in Ohio and Hawaii. Those two states would have turned it around: if 9,244 votes had changed (one one-hundredth of one percent of the votes cast nationally, or one vote in every ten thousand), it would have thrown those two states to Ford and Dole ... and completed the miracle comeback.

  Dole had so many ways to measure how close they came—and how far they’d come: the farm vote held solid for Ford ... Dole won all of his assigned states—the West, the heartland (save for Missouri—he was sure the Democrats stole that in the cities!) ... Dole did not want to give up—they could demand recounts in the tightest states. ... But Ford ruled that out, day after the vote.

  By that time, Dole was in bed—fevered and weak. He only got up to host his party. He was giving a party for reporters who’d traveled with him. ... That’s when Barbara Walters asked the question—like a knife in his ribs:

  Didn’t Dole think, Ms. Walters asked, he was the one who lost the White House for poor Jerry Ford?

  That sent Dole back to his bed. How could she say that?

  He did his job! ... Did it well!

  He showed he could play in the big leagues—the biggest!

  He showed himself, anyway.

  It was a couple of days later, when Dole got back to the office, Taggart asked: “Well, think you’ll run for national office again?”

  “Not for four years,” Dole said.

  Actually, he started just weeks after the vote—Dole did a speech in South Dakota, then a stop in Illinois, and then ... he was flyin’ around. He made sure to bring up the VP race himself.

  “Well,” he’d say, “they told me to go for the jugular—so I did. ... It was mine.”

  He knew he would run again—in four years, eight, or ... as long as it took. Next time, he wouldn’t do dirty work for anyone else. It would be his campaign ... so he knew, it would start in Russell.

  86

  Vision Music

  ON MAIN STREET, AS Dole was about to begin his announcement speech, a man in the crowd keeled over from the cold. Dole stopped, bent, stared down at the pavement with a look of concern ... murmured something about a doctor ... but he was live on the morning shows, so after a few minutes he had to go on.

  In fact, there were eight people who collapsed that Monday morning, from cold, or excitement, or by happenstance. Frostbite? Heart attack? ... No one knew. The hospital wouldn’t distract attention from the show, so no information was released on the patients or their conditions.

  The point was, Bob looked wonderful up there. And no one could miss how real was this frozen street scene, compared to Bush’s high-gloss Hyatt ... and the cameras here had a beautiful shot from the riser in the center of Main Street—but they blocked the view for local folks, who had to come around the riser to the foot of the stage so they could see, and so Bob could see their signs ... and that meant people in the near folding seats, like Bob’s sisters, Gloria and Norma Jean, had signs in front of them ... and when the signs blocked the cameras, the techies had to shift in a hurry ... so Anita, Kenny’s wife, got clonked in the head with a camera, or a tripod leg, as Bob got toward the end of his speech, as he improvised that terrific close ... where he’s sitting in the sun on his Capitol balcony, thinking: Could he be, should he be President?

  “And I thought to myself, ‘I could make a difference.’

  “And I thought, ‘I will make a difference!’ ... ‘I can make a difference!’ ... ‘I have made a difference!’ ...”

  That was the bottom line with Dole, and probably why he looked so happy as he ended his speech and the music kicked up again, and he grinned out over the crowd, swinging his fist, bouncing to the beat ... and then he climbed down to the street, to the people in the front row, people in wheelchairs.

  (Advance had wanted to move those folks—make an aisle in front of the stage, but Kenny warned them: “You’re makin’ a big mistake. Bob Dole. ... That’s what it’s all about.”)

  Kenny had to scoot to a storefront, where station KAKE had a makeshift studio—a panel discussion on Bob Dole, featuring Kenny, Bub Dawson, and Bob’s old coach, George Baxter. The three men were wired with earplugs to hear the anchor-humans in Wichita.

  “Kenny, what is it that’s so special about your brother?”

  Kenny started to answer ... but he had his head cocked at an angle, like he couldn’t figure how to speak to this voice in his ear. The cameraman was silently, frantically, motioning at Kenny to sit up straight ... sit still ... stop mumbling!

  Kenny said, after it was over, “Might as well had a corncob in my butt as that plug in my ear.”

  Gloria, Norma Jean, Gladys, and the rest crowded into Dawson Drug, waiting for Bob. Gloria was fretful. There’d been such a rush to get out of her house, she hadn’t time to pack a bag for Bob—no goodies! And when Bob got off stage in the rush, everyone was pushing, she couldn’t even grab his arm to tell him. ... And, then, Bob never came back to the drugstore.

  In the end, Gloria had to go to one of the cool, crisp strangers with the microphones in their sleeves to ask if she could go into the alley where they’d parked Bob’s car. “I’m his sister,” she said. “I just want to hug him.” The stranger’s sunglasses looked her up and down.

  “I always hug him ...”

  They finally let her into the alley, and she caught Bob getting into the car. She just had time for a quick hug. “Got any goodies?” Bob said.

  “No, Bob. I ... there wasn’t time.”

  “Oh-kayy. Gotta gooo ...” He was into the car. He had to get to Iowa, to make his speech again.

  Gloria couldn’t go to Iowa. That was not for her. The press would go, Bill Brock, the Big Guys. ... Gloria stayed in Russell.

  She was exhausted. Bob’s announcement just about finished the family. When she got back to her house, she got her makeup off, got out of her dress, collapsed into a chair, and it looked like she didn’t have the strength to draw breath. The grandkids had the house jazzed up with bunting and posters—but in the middle of it all, Gloria only looked grayer. She was barefoot, in her robe. She had that sick blood-pressure feeling, her kidney was giving her trouble.

  Kenny came over, and Aunt Mildred Nye. They were sitting at the table, Mildred was scanning the paper for more Kenny Dole quotes. “Here it is!” she
cried. “The ‘sacks of concrete’ ... why, Kenny, you’re nothin’ but a bullshitter!”

  Kenny was spluttering. “When are you leavin’? We’ve got things to do here! Don’t you have a long way back? ...”

  In her armchair, Gloria was musing: she really could do a White House cookbook, all the recipes, if Bob, well ... she was the one who knew how he liked everything—like she told that reporter, the liver and onions, told him just how to make it ... it wasn’t hers anymore. Bob wasn’t theirs anymore. That’s what she told the reporter. “He belongs to all of you now.”

  But Bob looked happy. Didn’t he?

  Oh, yes, Bob had Dave Owen call Anita, and Dave said Bob was pleased.

  “That’s good,” Gloria said.

  In Russell, in the exhaustion, there was no way to tell ... but, yes, Bob was happy. He was, well, he was so pumped up, they got to Great Bend, to the airport—big plane, Presidential Airways!—and they loaded up the press, the Big Guys, and finally the Bobster, who came up the front stairs and ducked his head into the cabin, where he heard the music, the theme from Star Wars, with the trumpets and those echo-spacey laser-whooshes ... Gaaggh! It was fantastic!

  “Heyy! We got vision!” Dole said. “We even got vision mu-sic!”

  87

  What Else?

  BY THAT FALL, IT was painfully clear, Dukakis had no vision for Iowa—or anywhere else. He’d lost the thread, the excitement that used to lend his prosy words their urgency. He’d been saying the same thing too long.

  He’d still talk about his Massachusetts Miracle, but his sentences would start: “I don’t have to tell you, I hope ...” He’d still talk up new uses for farm crops, but—this was so obvious, it was hard to believe he should still have to say it:

  “We’ve got more productive capacity than we know what to do with! [Shrug] ... I think we ought to be getting on with this, folks.”

  Yes, he did. It seemed to him like a lifetime, he’d been saying this stuff ... and nothing was happening! And he had not a clue as to how he could make something happen. These Iowans were kind, polite, serious, deserving ... he never ceased to tell them how grateful he was for their attention, their reception of him—terrific ... but he had no idea what they liked, or disliked, or why.

  He thought they still mistrusted him.

  He thought they looked at him funny.

  Of course, no one said anything.

  But he did look like a foreigner. He talked fast. He had an accent. Or they thought he had an accent. Or he thought they thought he ... well, you know. He thought they didn’t like him. What it was ... he didn’t like him—because he didn’t know what he was doing out there!

  What was it for? Why did he get into this thing? Because Sasso and Kitty told him he should. Sasso was gone. Kitty, he never saw—not from one end of the week to the other. She was taut with stress and wear. He wasn’t doing any good for her, not like this, not in this—he was ... well, he didn’t like what he had to do, the way this thing crowded and stole from his life ... work a day in the State House, and then, four-thirty, five o’clock, not home—no trolley, no dinner, no Kitty, no—straight to New Hampshire, or to the airport, a jet, a flight to some funder ... a wise guy waiting at the airport, with a car, in which he’d pick at Michael about Presidential Vision, or National Perspective—“Governor, these people don’t wanna hear Massachusetts, ya know? ...”

  Well, actually, he didn’t know—he didn’t know what they wanted. They talked about vision, message, national outlook ... he’d say: Give me the lines. They’d write him long, eager memos, how he had to develop a Presidential voice. He’d say, Gimme the speech—I’ll take a look. ... That’s all he wanted—to see what they meant—something he could read. What the hell was Media Strategy? Gimme the scripts. I’ll tell you what I think.

  He could tell in a minute if it fit him.

  Most of it didn’t.

  Most of it was junk.

  “Nope ... nope. It’s not me,” he’d say. “What else?”

  That meant he wanted to see some more lines.

  “Guys, c’mon! What’re we doin’ here? I don’t talk like that. That’s not me.”

  Bang ... bang ... back in the briefcase: he could knock down a new speech and three ad scripts in a quarter of an hour on his jet. He’d put them away with neat X’s drawn through whole pages. Then he’d take out his State House papers, spread them on the table in front of his seat, and bury himself in something real—the new draft of his health-care bill—lest someone else essay a pep talk, tell him, again, he had to engage.

  He shouldn’t have to tell them he was engaged seven days a week ... doing the plan, back and forth across the country, like a yo-yo ... ninety-nine Iowa counties, for God’s sake! He hadn’t had a day off, home with his bride, to walk in Brookline, cook a soup, write a letter to Kara at school ... he hadn’t taken a day off in what—six weeks? It was ridiculous! No wonder he was ... well, Michael wasn’t the kinda guy to wear down—no, steady, strong ... or lonely—nope, he wasn’t the kinda guy who even knew what that meant—that wasn’t him, no, no, sadness, no ... that wasn’t ...

  “Look, Governor, I’m Mediterranean, so I can say this ...”

  This was Mike Del Giudice, a New Yorker, a graduate of Cuomo’s Capitol, a friend of Sasso’s, a big help with Wall Street money, and the latest to take a shot at Mike in a backseat on a ride to another event.

  “Governor, whatever we have in our emotions is all over our goddam face ... and you’ve got to get over this thing with John. Because you’re hurting yourself, and you’re hurting the campaign. A lot of people are investing a lot of time, and money, and energy, and everybody’s going down the tubes together ...

  “So, if you want this thing, do it. If you don’t want it, get out. It’s as simple as that. You can’t just drag on. John’s behind you.”

  Michael didn’t argue, or shake his head.

  “It hurts,” he said. “John was, well, I don’t have to tell you ... it hurts like hell.”

  The campaign staff did everything to set the engine puffing down the track again—or at least make it look that way.

  On the day that Sasso resigned, Susan Estrich and Farmer’s enforcer, a woman named Kristin Demong, arranged to hold back the checks from the night before, September 29, the million-dollar funder. That way they could announce that the Duke’s megamoney wasn’t disturbed by the shame of the tapes—no. Steady as she goes! October was another million-dollar month!

  That ingenuous Hill & Barlow lawyer, Dan Taylor, proved his acumen even after his internal snooping was called off. He found a flaw in the federal campaign law that limited spending in Iowa. He discovered that a simple fund-raising tag (two seconds on the end of a TV ad) would allow the campaign to charge the ad to fund-raising expense—not to the Iowa campaign. Through that tiny loophole, the Dukakis campaign now drove a truck.

  They went on the air with a bio ad—the kinda guy Michael was. They followed with a beautiful spot wherein a tarnished, dented silver bowl was hammered and buffed back to glowing grace while an announcer ticked off the facts of the Massachusetts economic revival. The minute the ads went up, Michael’s numbers started climbing—he was back in the hunt—and with the loophole, which only Dukakis had the money to use, he could have put on a lot more ads.

  Problem was, he didn’t like any ads. He must have x’d-out twenty-five scripts. ... Meanwhile, the Iowa troops complained bitterly about the new ads—it was a shame to have those ads on the air—they didn’t say anything! ... It was Michael, of course, who didn’t want to say anything.

  Well, that wasn’t strictly true. It was just ... whatever they gave him didn’t seem to be the kinda thing he ought to say. It was all so ... political, sour, so negative! Michael was still trying to prove what a positive guy he was. He didn’t want to talk about problems. He didn’t want to talk about Reagan and Bush. He surely would not say one word about the other Democrats!

  What did that leave?

  Good-jobs-at-g
ood-wages ... the thinnest gruel.

  Estrich was aware of this problem—issues, message, communication ... these were her specialties. Plus, she was smart as hell. Even Dukakis once remarked she was the kinda gal who probably got better grades in law school than he did! ... Of course, that was on the way to saying, she didn’t know practical politics like he did. Nope ... he’d just have to show her—she’d just have to learn ... he knew what he was doing!

  So he showed her, in a thousand ways ... he hadn’t brought her in there to tell him how campaigns were run.

  “I’ve been doing this for twenty-five years!”

  Actually, he seldom brought her into his presence—or into his thoughts—in any way. When he came back to Boston, he’d head for the State House—state business! ... He didn’t want to be interrupted with calls from the campaign, speeches to read, strategy, message ... no! “We said three days, my friend.”

  Thursdays, he’d host a handful of campaign staff (which he was careful to balance with a half-dozen government types) to go through his schedule. He’d sit them down at his State House conference table—that’s where he was at his worst. His every action at the head of that table was intended to show them he was—still, in real life—the Governor of the Commonwealth. He’d snap down the agenda, dismissing any discussion—they were taking time from things that mattered. Then, too, the campaign ops, and all political concerns, had to wait while he took any call that came in about state roads, the pension bill, a sludge program, the Governor’s Anti-Crime Council. ... There were people from the campaign who wouldn’t even go to the State House. “Why should I?” said the pollster, Tubby Harrison. “I’m just a prop.”

  And Estrich, who would stay on, after that meeting, for her private sit-down with the Governor—a half-hour, her only scheduled session with Dukakis, week to week—found herself an unwilling prop in a private drama: his determination to prove he could do without John Sasso, his demonstration of his own correctness, all the more splendid in its, in his, isolation.