What It Takes

by Richard Ben Cramer

  They were all—the Globe, Schneider, Broder, the Register, the other purveyors and publishers of triple-E big-foot punditry—serious about the business ... their business. They were brothers of the cloth, the Priesthood of the Process (from which Hart was excommunicant).

  And this, ultimately, would be very good for Dukakis. Because he, like they, had devoted his life to the proposition that government and politics could be made cleaner, more rational, more able ... by constant prosaic attention to the process: that this was the worthiest calling for a man, what they (and he) did every day—O watchdogs on the stoops of Government Halls—this (and this alone—not bold ideas, nor shining dreams, nor grand ambition) ... this would make all the difference for the Citizens of Our Republic.

  Serious was Michael’s middle name.

  “The New Hampshire primary,” the beetle-browed Dukakis scolded Hart that same day, “is more than a symbolic exercise.”

  But even the brethren of the cloth could not know how good this was for Dukakis. It was a new campaign, a new life—at least, a spark of life.

  Yes, it gave him someone to beat ... but better still: someone he could beat. Michael had ten million dollars in the bank. Hart had fifty thousand and his personal credit card. Hart had no staff. Michael had 263 paid professionals in thirty-nine offices in fourteen states. If Dukakis’s native instinct to order, his fifty-four years as master mechanic, his quarter-century as the premier organizer of Massachusetts politics, told him anything ... it was this delicious truth, which he proffered as a vow to the press:

  “I’m gonna beat him.”

  He must have said it twelve times: “Gary Hart’s perfectly welcome to run, but ... I’m gonna beat him in New Hampshire.”

  It was the first time in months—since Apology Weekend—that Dukakis said anything so bellicose ... the first time since the Biden tape, he’d admit: he meant to thump some other Democrat.

  Michael had worked out his own answer to all the urgent horse-race questions, the cinch of the campaign’s anxiety belt: What would he do if he finished out of the money in Iowa? What if his lead in New Hampshire slipped? What if it was true: no short, dark Greek could run for office south of Maryland? ... “Well,” Michael would say with a small smile, “if it doesn’t work out, I’ve gotta great job. I’m an hour from the Cape. My bride and I will be on Nantucket for the Strawberry Festival in May. ...” (Estrich hit the roof when she heard that. She was working eighteen-hour days, three thousand miles from her husband. Everyone on Chauncy Street was sacrificing a family, a career, a decent salary, at least their leisure ... fuck Michael and his flowers in May! ... “Don’t ever,” she said, “let anybody hear you say that.” Of course, he went right on saying it.

  But not after Hart came back.

  With Hart in the race, Michael Dukakis could be obviously cleaner, more moral, more rational, more disciplined: here was a foil for the Dukakis morality play. “This guy,” said Michael, “has gotta be stopped.”

  He’d never thought much of Hart. Dukakis looked at Hart’s telegenic allure as some kind of sleazy trick. Hart was flashy. Hart was cheap and easy ... politics! And then ... then: to give himself, and his campaign, and his family, over to whim ... to a girl who—well, Michael didn’t talk about this kinda thing, and if he did, it would probably be in Greek, with a coupla guys, but ... well! That lack of discipline ... fidelity ... basic human decency! ... Hart was, in every way, an affront to Michael’s uxorious eye.

  Michael got the news Hart was back in a handwritten note passed to him in a meeting, in Burlington, Vermont, at the Northeast Governors Conference. And he left the room! ... Michael left an important government meeting, wherein his fellow chief executives were discussing the future of federal superconductivity contracts ... and he scooted ... to make a call about politics!

  That day, Estrich and Corrigan were meeting him in Vermont to fly to Texas (he hadn’t allowed them to schedule a meeting in Boston—not in the State House, no!) ... and that was the day, at last, he signed off on his plan of campaign. In fact, he accepted the thing whole, with barely a glance, all the spending, all the millions—all except the part about sweeping the field in Iowa. (“Look. It was never part of the program that I hadda win Iowa.”) No ... for Michael, this campaign would begin in New Hampshire—the campaign of philotimy—against Gary Hart.

  In fact, it had begun. Michael took questions all that day—and the next, and the next—about (ta dummm!) the Karacter Issue. The reporters were working on weekend thumb-suckers: whether it was right for the pack to turn up the heat again under the stinking bouillabaisse. They were diffident questions: Michael was, in a way, a victim of this same cookery ... what with his sadness, and Sasso, and ... well, anyway, this was the kind of “other-campaign reaction” that most candidates would dismiss. But no, Michael couldn’t have been nicer—or more supportive.

  “I think we’re gonna be held to the highest standard ... and we should be. People have a right to know the kinda guy ...”

  Michael had no message problem if this campaign was about the kinda guy. He had no trouble rousing himself to combat, once candidate Hart was quoted on “the Massachusetts Miracle” ... or in contemptuous derision of Michael’s “solution” for the budget deficit (better tax collection!). ... Michael had no trouble at all.

  And Estrich had less trouble, once she set the staff to scouting out every Hart comment about Dukakis ... or Massachusetts ... or any other Hart quote that would make Michael see red. She made sure each clipping found its way under Michael’s nose—so he’d have a chance to react ... which he did.

  It got so, even the diddybops noticed: “Why’ve you got him attacking Hart?”

  Estrich said: “At least he’s attacking someone.”

  Someone who was someone: by that weekend, new national polls had Hart in the lead, with thirty percent of Democrats—compared to twenty-two for Jackson, fourteen for Dukakis. In Iowa, Hart had thirty percent—nearly twice the total for any other Democrat.

  94

  Out of the Monkey Suit

  IT DIDN’T MATTER TO Gephardt who was in the lead. He wasn’t. A month and a half to the caucus, and the message wasn’t getting through. Six percent! He was better—he knew. He could feel it in the room, or the barn (he was doing farm rallies—he loved them) ... but it was too late to work forty folks at a time.

  Somehow, he had to make people listen anew—a lot of people, in a hurry. But with everybody chasing Hart, Dick couldn’t get on the network news to save his life. And the papers—well, he only wished they’d ignore him. They were vicious!

  “Could we—just once!—get one decent story from the Post-Dispatch ... so we could raise a little money?” Dick would fume at the tearsheets from St. Louis: “They don’t understand! They’re killing the campaign!”

  And the Post-Dispatch was benign compared to the Register. Iowa’s biggest paper had a bad jones for Gephardt. It wasn’t the poll, though that was a monthly knife in his heart. The editorial page slammed him regularly. (Hey, they might be in Iowa, but they were just as tough as The New York Times!) And the paper’s political big-foot, David Yepsen, was the man who had let Dick twist in the wind ... for weeks ... when he knew, of course, it wasn’t the Gephardts who had handed him the Biden tape. In fact, the Register had written Gephardt off. In that newsroom, everybody knew ... Iowans had heard his message—plenty of it—and rejected it.

  Of course, Dick couldn’t accept that. People didn’t know him! He hadn’t yet got to them. Somehow, he had to get it across that he was for them ... the ads! It would have to be the ads.

  There would be four ads. They were going to be great. (Dick believed in Shrum—Bob was a genius!) One would be a bio, introducing Dick. Then, one for farmers, one about seniors, and one about trade. Some of Dick’s fellow Reps were urging him off that trade horse—people were tired of that—and the newspapers were hammering Dick for being “protectionist ... against free trade.” But Dick was not getting off any horse. Not any more. ... There
were friends in Iowa who told him he could forget about seniors. Simon had the seniors all wrapped up. But Dick had Claude Pepper, the eighty-eight-year-old Representative from Florida—he was going to be in the ads. Pepper was Chairman of the Committee on the Aging, a hero to seniors and their organizations. In fact, Pepper was even in the bio ad, talking about Dick’s concern for health, which he developed, Pepper said, “in his young son’s struggle with cansuh ...” Jane didn’t like that reference at all. Loreen would go nuts. They’d always kept Matt’s health private. What would Matt think? Jane couldn’t even bring herself to tell him. She argued with Dick ... but the line about Matt stayed in. The ads were the next hope. Everything had to go into those ads.

  But the ads got held up—the killers were split. Now that they had to boil down the message, dream up a slogan to tie the ads together, no one could agree on a verb. Murphy, Klein, Trippi—who were trying to get Iowans to like Dick Gephardt—said they had to hammer the word “change.” People wanted a change. Carrick, and the killers back in D.C., said it had to be “fight.” That’s what this came down to—were they gonna fight? ... Murphy said “fight” wasn’t Gephardt: Dick would always split the difference. ... Someone from the staff tossed in “stand.” Maybe they could all agree: “Stand up for Gephardt ...” But that wasn’t really it (and Babbitt was already “standing up”) ... no. Carrick, Doak, and Shrum insisted it had to be “fight” ... but “Fight for Gephardt”? Iowans didn’t like to fight.

  So Dick had his yellow pad on his knee again, this time in the middle of sweating passengers and squalling babies at an O’Hare Airport gate, waiting for a flight to Des Moines. He was flying commercial—coach, at that. He’d left the road crew in Iowa: money was tight.

  “I gotta get it down to five words,” Dick explained. “That’s what it’s gotta ...” He was drawing a neat square on his legal pad, as if he somehow had to fit the words into that box. “Something people can hold on to ... five words.”

  They had to be about him, but couldn’t be exactly him ... or not just him. That was the strangest part. Dick said he knew now: voters wanted someone larger than life ... Olympian. So it couldn’t be that red-haired lawyer from St. Louis who got home from work and fell asleep on the floor of his family room with his mouth open in front of the TV. ... No, they told you to be yourself, but they didn’t want you to be like yourself. They wanted you to be like a President! They wanted you to be something huge for them.

  “I’ll tell you the weird part—is when you stop. ... I was in Louisiana. Little town ...” He named the town. “I don’t think they’d had a Presidential candidate since, uh ... Millard Fillmore.

  “So, I get there, and there’s cops and motorcycles, and a limousine the size of Ohio. There’s the Mayor, and marching bands ... and they treat me like the King of Spain.

  “I do my speech, I get back in the limo, get to the airport ... and two hours later, I’m back in O’Hare ... hauling my suitcase off the plane ... carry it half a mile ... I gotta wait in line for a lousy hot dog ...

  “All of a sudden, I’m back, I’m a ... a, uh ...” He was hunting a word. “I’m a, uh ... a shit-bum!”

  But he wasn’t going to finish as a bum. No ... he stared down at his pad, as if it must hold the answer. But there were no words in the box.

  “It’s Your Fight, Too!” came from David Doak—and Gephardt loved it. Didn’t that just say it all? You know, not only was he out there for them ... but now, they had to stand up for him ... and for themselves! ... Beautiful!

  Murphy still tried to fight against “fight,” but it was time to shoot the ads, and no other word worked. (“What do you want?” Shrum protested. “ ‘It’s your tussle, too’?”)

  Anyway, the strangest thing happened. As soon as they started hammering down the ads—refining the scripts, sending drafts back and forth—Gephardt started using the lines. ... “They work hard all day to make a good product. ... If we don’t stand up for our workers, then who are we? ... It’s your fight, too!”

  And right away, he could see it in the crowds, the way they locked on ... finally, he was talking their language! And his speeches, his rallies, started giving off heat. Voices called to him, from the crowds:

  “Give ’em hell, Dick!”

  Dick would stop in his speech and call back: “I’m like ol’ Harry Truman—I just tell ’em the truth ... and they think it’s hell.”

  His van crunched to a halt in the snow on a farm lane, and he hopped up on a wagon in the barn—mid-December, cold like a meat car on a coast-to-coast train ... cold air through the walls, cold floor, cold gray light filtering in through forty feet of loft above ... great dull cold-steel mantis-machines, stored for the winter, looming over Gephardt like monster sculptural tribute to debt and difficulty, futile fertility—thousands of tons of Iowa corn that no one could sell.

  Dick was dressed in a ballcap and a bulky (borrowed) blue jacket that advertised a seed company. He shouted through the steam of his breath:

  “Costs about two dollars eighty cents to make a-bushel-a corn!” (Dick was talking full St. Louis now. ... He pronounced it “cahrn.”) You get about a dollar and a half for it ... that’s the program now! A few months back, it was a dollar!”

  “That’s right ... tell ’em, Dick!”

  “Why shouldn’t farmers vote on the program? ... Let’s pass Harkin-Gephardt and let the farmers VOTE on what the program is! ... You want a fair PRICE for your cahrn! ...”

  “Yeaahhhh!”

  “Give ’em hell, Dick!”

  They were slapping their big gloves together, stomping their feet.

  At the back of the barn, Ethel Klein was clapping, too, squealing to be heard over the cheers: “He’s never done this before! It’s all him! It’s all him!”

  And Gephardt was so pumped up, he was screaming:

  “Lemme tell you something! I’m a Democrat that cares about the American worker and the American farmer ... AND I’M NOT GONNA LEAVE ’EM BEHIND! ...”

  Fight was the word—he’d show them a fight!

  They loaded him in the van, and Ethel got his eyes: “I am so proud of you ...”

  But Dick didn’t need that. His voice raspy from strain, he demanded of Brad: “What’s next?” He could hardly sit still.

  Problem was, there was Brad, and Ethel, Debra Johns, sometimes Trippi, or Murphy—Dick, and a driver, of course—and they still only needed one van. There wasn’t enough press for two. The big-feet weren’t going to screw around with a candidate at six percent. ... So there wasn’t any way to tell the world: Gephardt was fighting back.

  Every morning, at Loreen’s apartment, or a motel in some corner of the state, Dick would rip through the Register ... in vain. They just wouldn’t get it! At a press conference that December, David Yepsen asked Gephardt (rather, told him): “You sound horrible. You look tired. Do you really think you’re getting any votes here?”

  Then came Chickengate. It wasn’t much of a story. God knows who fed it to the Register. It was about some vote in Congress—a procedural vote on a poultry bill—and Dick had voted no (couldn’t even remember what the vote was; it was chickenshit). But the Register was going to prove with this vote that Gephardt was really against the farmers.

  Well, the story never caught on ... no one could understand it. But it did wonders for Dick. Because, finally, he realized: they didn’t like him. He wasn’t going to make a friend of Yepsen. He wasn’t going to get a good story from the Register. It wasn’t that he hadn’t got to them yet, hadn’t worked hard enough to get to know them. They didn’t want to be got to—didn’t want to know him.

  Can you beat that!

  It occurred to Gephardt that the message wasn’t getting through because they didn’t want it to get through! ... It made him angry.

  And that anger fed back into the ads, into the final scripts, and the shoot. They filmed about ten days before Christmas, and Dick poured his outrage and resolve into those ads. It wasn’t just the words, it was him and the c
amera—he could just do that: show that camera exactly what he meant. And what he meant to show was a steely indignation ... at the unfairness.

  Of course, the words were about unfairness to the workers, the farmers, the seniors ... to voters.

  But the anger was his.

  “You got any Contac or anything?” he croaked in the dark, aboard his puddle-jumper, heading east—his last stop in Iowa before Christmas. “I think I’m gettin’ a cold. ... At least it’s the end. Be home tomorrow night.”

  They had him scheduled the next day in New Hampshire—one last effort before decency required that he look like he was relaxing. One of the Iowa crew asked what he was going to do in New Hampshire. Gephardt shrugged.

  “I don’t know ... walk around.”

  He shook his head. Now that he was saying what he meant to say, it just didn’t make any sense to be doing ... well, half of what they asked him to do.

  Brad said: “Did you talk to Jane yet about that USA Today?”

  Gephardt slumped five degrees in his seat. “Not yet.”

  USA Today wanted to shoot a family picture at his home—the day after Christmas. Dick hadn’t had the guts to tell Jane.

  Brad said: “So you’ll talk to her?”

  “Yeah ...”

  Brad started laughing. “When?”

  “Okay, I will ...”

  “Yeah, and, uh, we want a media hit in New Hampshire tomorrow ... so they want you to shop.”

  The look on Gephardt’s face was as close to disgust as he could manage. “What am I gonna shop for?” he said. “A seed hat?”

  “I think they want you to shop, uh, for Jane ...”

  Gephardt wasn’t paying attention. He liked that seed-company jacket—first time he’d been warm in a week. “It was lined, inside, like a sweatshirt. I wanna wear it ... I got to get out of this monkey suit. You know, when I go home tomorrow, I’m not gonna wear a suit. Blue jeans ... I HATE suits. When I was in Congress, I never wore my jacket. Got into a meeting, and right away, just threw it in a corner.”