What It Takes

by Richard Ben Cramer

  Gephardt was talking about Congress in past tense.

  “You know, I saw it on TV, the other night. Got in late, and I turned on the TV, and they had the House ... I saw it, like a citizen. The budget resolution. I mean, for hours ...” (He started waving his arms in a parody of an earnest solon.) “Mister SPEAKER! ... Heh heh hackhackhack.”

  The new Gephardt was molting before their eyes. And the road crew didn’t know what to make of it. He was good, loose, but ... maybe the guy was getting sick.

  “So, uh, Dick ...”

  Gephardt announced he was giving up ties!

  “I HATE ties. Always worried to death I’m gonna get something on it.”

  Brad pointed out it was his tie, not Dick’s.

  “Well, I’m giving it back.”

  “It’s up to you, boss,” Brad said. He looked worried, prim, in his own gray suit.

  “That’s what I’ll do,” Gephardt said. “I’ll shop for a tie for you. You’re the suit. Brad is the suit! Hackhackhack ...”

  Brad said: “I always feel I have to be dressed ... to meet the President.”

  There were three beats of silence in the plane. Brad was serious.

  President Dick said: “Yeah, but the President’s wearin’ a seed jacket hackhackhackheeheee ... I’m gonna, too. I’m gonna do it. This is it ...”

  Brad said: “Uh, so you’ll shop?”

  “Yeah, okay ... I’ll shop.”

  Which he did, the next day, at the Mall of New Hampshire. He did exactly what they told him: walked into a store, straight to the sweater (the Advance man had it all picked out), held it up while he smiled for the camera, took it to the register, and bought it for Jane.

  Which was great, except the Advance man forgot to check—the sweater was made in China ... which didn’t really bother Dick ... but it made for a snide little wire story (Mr. America First!) ... which The Des Moines Register ran the next day.

  95

  Who Would Have Thought?

  IT WAS SO MUCH NICER to be with Michael, once he’d settled his stomach, once he’d started to try again. It was like something loosed in him. Even the air in the plane felt ... well, it wasn’t light—it was somehow more solid. It was sensible, purposeful ... but an enjoyment: like the feeling you might have after one of Michael’s meals. This was his favorite meal:

  “Soup, salad ... and a hearty piece of bread.”

  Michael had taken a day off. He felt so much better after he got a day off, after he got with his staff and demanded one day in fourteen, just to stay home, take a walk, cook ... he cooked a soup, his chowder. The way he did it was, he’d cook enough so he could eat, then he’d put up leftovers in the freezer. Clam chowder, Bermuda fish chowder ... he could freeze four containers after a feast of turkey soup—after he used the turkey. “I make turkey tetrazzini,” he said.

  And he’d demanded more time with Kitty. “I told Nick, what we gotta do is give her a separate schedule. But we could kinda connect in the evenings, and then, during the day, go our separate ways.” Michael shrugged his mystification: Why should he have to tell his staff simple stuff like that?

  How was Kitty?

  “Just ... terrific. We’re having so much fun together.”

  Maybe everyone in the family did feel better when Michael felt better ... or maybe he was the sort of husband and father who makes everyone put on a sweater when he’s cold. Anyway, he was certain, they were flourishing. “Two weeks ago, Kara put together seven hundred people at Brown ...” (her university, in Providence, Rhode Island). “Here was my baby, looking around, moving like a seasoned Advance man. I was so proud of her. Kara might have a future in politics yet. She’s got the talent. John, almost certainly. Andrea, no.”

  Andrea, his twenty-two-year-old, who’d been working in the Des Moines office since June, since her graduation from Princeton, was sitting across the airplane table. It wasn’t clear if she’d heard this judgment upon her ... though she wouldn’t have disagreed. She’d always been the nonpolitical one who suffered for her father through the public slights, attacks in the press ... he’d been campaigning ever since she was alive. Anyway, she hadn’t spoken till he brought up her name. The day was wet and raw, on the ground—above, in that prop plane, bucking the stratus clouds, it was wild. Andrea looked pale, and tight around her dark eyes—Kitty’s eyes.

  “Dad, it’s the Maytag repairman.” (Now, it was clear, she’d been waiting to correct the errors in his new stump speech.) “You always say the Maytag salesman. It’s supposed to be the Maytag repairman.”

  Michael’s head immediately bent to her. Eyes down, his face softened to an uncharacteristic expression—absolute attention. “And I say salesman?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “And precinct captains.”

  “What do I say?” His eyes looked up at hers submissively from his half-bowed head, like a communicant at the altar.

  “You always say chairmen. But it’s captains—women, too. You should say captains.”

  “Okay.”

  He’d fought off fifteen drafts of that new speech for two months, but clearly: he’d try his best to say the lines exactly as suggested by his nonpolitical daughter.

  The new speech was meant to be inspirational, Kennedyesque—that was the new vision. “Twenty-eight years ago, another son of Massachusetts ...” Michael called this reheated soup “The Next Frontier.”

  Underneath, it was his same cautious program—good-jobs-at-good-wages ... to be achieved by means of “a strong, vibrant public-private partnership.” These words meant something to Dukakis, but to his listeners they remained opaque.

  The difference the crowd could sense was Dukakis’s own confidence, and his obvious attempt to show them how he felt. He had two new TV ads (from a new adman, Ken Swope, a friend of Kiley’s) that showed his outrage at the U.S.-backed contra war in Nicaragua and, at home, the plight of the homeless. They were striking ads, grainy black-and-white photos of destruction and deprivation, backed by creepy music and Michael’s voice, squibs from his speeches: it was time to stop the killing—start the war on poverty and injustice. ... But the best by-product of the ads was, Dukakis had to take on the Reagan ethic in his speech. He had to perform his anger.

  It wasn’t easy.

  “Folks, I don’t comprehend what’s been going on in this country for the last seven years ...”

  That was as close as he’d come to taking on the Gipper by name. But, clearly, Michael was reaching for the common tongue.

  “... They gave it a name—supply-side economics. It was wacko economics!”

  This key word he pronounced with such precision, it sounded like the syllables had never before escaped his lips. He called to mind that boy in Brookline who practiced new words in front of the mirror.

  “Whack—oh ...”

  Well, it was a start.

  The confidence, of course, had its root in organization. The Dukakis campaign was growing—Michael was going to field-organize his way to the White House. But at the same time, the way Dukakis worked, part of his old staff spent its days ferrying new staff all over the state ... so the Governor could interview each new hire.

  Today, in Council Bluffs, it was a kid named David Behar—a New Yorker who’d recently spent time in California and landed somehow in the middle of the nation to apply for a dweeb job organizing for Dukakis. Michael bearded the boy in a small room that fairly vibrated with poor Behar’s anxiety.

  Dukakis asked a couple of quick questions, didn’t wait for answers. “Didja? Whadja do out there? Oh, yeah. Whadja thinka that?”

  Behar hadn’t yet got to the point where he could form a coherent sentence. But Dukakis didn’t have much time. He cut him off:

  “Look, David, three things I say to everybody who comes aboard on this campaign. One, is your personal standards. Your personal conduct and ethics and standing—very important to us. Very important. People are looking very closely at us. And at you. And that goes for everything. Your own morality, conduct, ethics .
.. I don’t have to tell you more than that.

  “Second, I’m not kidding when I talk about a positive campaign. I mean it. We’re running for the Presidency. We’re not running against anybody. I don’t want it. It doesn’t help us. It doesn’t achieve anything. That goes for Hart, too.”

  Behar tried to speak. Michael didn’t stop.

  “If he wants to run, he’s welcome to it.”

  “But it’s ...”

  “Look. The way to beat Gary Hart is to beat Gary Hart. So, in the meantime ...”

  “But ... I just want to give back to people what they’re giving me ... which is ... it’s just ridiculous!”

  Michael held up a palm. “I know. But hold it back. I don’t do it. I don’t want it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And third is memo. There’ve been more campaigns sunk by people who feel they’ve gotta write a memo ... so when you put anything on paper, just assume it’s gonna be on the front page the next day. If it can’t be—don’t write it. Okay?”

  Behar was nodding, eyes down.

  “Good to have ya aboard.” Michael stuck out a hand, and departed.

  Why wouldn’t he be pleased? Just a few days until Christmas, and then the home stretch ... at last! If Michael could finish well in Iowa—above Hart, clearly—it would give his people in New Hampshire all the confidence they required. No one had an outfit like Michael’s. Not Paul Simon, his closest rival ... and Gephardt, Babbitt, Jackson—they were too far behind. Michael had taken their measure.

  In fact—this was the swelling secret in his breast—Michael had decided he could win Iowa. He didn’t have to attack, flail around, making promises, mouthing themes ... no! The basic economic message ... was going to win Iowa. He’d been correct, all along!

  Of course, he wouldn’t say that aloud—the winning part—that was for family. Back on his plane, bouncing toward Waterloo, there was a writer who’d wormed his way aboard. He was asking questions. Michael grudgingly conceded, things were going well, he was more comfortable, sure. But that didn’t mean anything had changed—he’d been doing this kinda thing for twenty-five years!

  “Long campaigns are nothing new for me. I was holding meetings—forty people in my living room, 1972—two years before that election. It’s a building process. You’ve got to keep moving ahead—slowly, surely—not getting distracted by anything ...”

  Then, Michael addressed himself with solid equanimity to a club sandwich.

  Actually, it was two chunky quarters, half of a club sandwich—which was all Michael removed from an enormous tray of club sandwiches that rose volcanically on the table between him and his daughter. With the oversized, purposeful hands of a surgeon, Michael lifted Saran Wrap from one half of the tray, and extracted his meal. Then, he stopped. Andrea was not eating. Over the sandwich mountain, Michael fixed her with a father’s look—Pan’s look, from the head of the table. But he didn’t scold. Andrea was fighting the blustery bump of the clouds.

  “I talked to your mother ...”

  Andrea just looked sick.

  “You weren’t along, of course, for our honeymoon ...” Michael smiled at his joke. “... but, you know, I’ve got to go to Puerto Rico. I think we’ve got a good chance to get the delegates there. So I was talking to the Governor. Lovely guy, Rafael Hernandez ...” Michael pronounced the name with precision and relish.

  “So he said, whenever I come, he’d love to have us stay at the residence there, La Fortaleza ... fabulous place ...” Michael’s hands rose and sketched a great cliff, as his words described the old Spanish fortress above. “So I called your mother ...

  “I said: ‘Twenty-four years ago, I took you to stay in the Hotel Atlantico ...’ ”

  (It was kind of a fleabag.)

  “... ‘Now, how would you like to go back and stay in the palace, La Fortaleza?’ ...”

  Michael had the air of a kid who shows his girlfriend how he can lift the back of a car.

  “She said she thought she could use that.”

  His smile was broad now, as he sat back.

  “Who would’ve ever thought?”

  96

  1978

  BY CHRISTMAS 1977, ALL the papers thought Dukakis was a safe bet for a second term. He still had enemies aplenty on Beacon Hill, and in the banks, insurance companies, high-tech companies, business groups and welfare groups, state employees and ... sometimes, even his friends didn’t like Michael. But even enemies thought they’d have him, lecturing from the corner office, for another term. Moreover, Michael thought he was a sure thing. People were bound to see all the good he’d done, all the hacks he’d chased, the mess he’d hosed away from the State House. Sure, he’d ruffled feathers. But anyone who knew anything would have to see—he was right.

  That year, two hundred thousand more people had jobs than in ’75. Unemployment was down to six percent. There were four hundred new businesses—some in the old mill towns that were dying when Dukakis took over. The flow of red ink was stanched. The Commonwealth had a budget surplus. State aid to local schools was up, two to three hundred percent. All this, Michael Dukakis could claim—and rightly—he had done.

  Anyway, he didn’t have a popular opponent. There were two Democrats against him. Barbara Ackermann was a liberal Mayor of Cambridge who’d never run statewide. She went after Dukakis just to show him he couldn’t beat up on the poor—and get off scot-free. The other opponent, Eddie King, was a former Boston College football star (then a Baltimore Colt) who was running because he was pissed off at Michael and the neighborhood do-goods who did him out of his cushy job at the Port Authority. Eddie hadn’t ever run for anything. Nice fella, in a glad-hand way—not much of a speaker, not a thinker. Dukakis viewed him with unalloyed contempt.

  Then came the snowstorm: February ’78. Snow fell for three days. High tide and screaming winds flooded the Massachusetts coast. People were stranded. Everything shut down. The power failed. Jimmy Carter declared Massachusetts a federal disaster zone ... and, through it all, Michael Dukakis managed the problem. People who were with him during those three days said he was never so great—so even-tempered, happy, masterful. He shut the roads, he mustered the National Guard. He just about lived on TV, three days and nights, in a turtleneck, under a crewneck sweater ... he was calming, resourceful, good-humored ... informing the citizens of the latest snow news, the actions of government, the availability of help. He pulled his state through. He managed the problem.

  After that, he was up fifty points in the polls.

  Then Dukakis set out to manage his reelection. He eschewed a professional Campaign Manager (they cost a fortune!) and gave his friend Dick Geisser that title. Geisser had never run a campaign—but that was all right ... Michael would take care of this. There were people in his administration who might have helped (some with political smarts did manage to sneak into jobs). But Michael prohibited that. “You guys run the government,” he said. “Let me worry about the campaign.”

  But why should he worry? ... He interviewed consultants—two sharp young guys, Dan Payne and John Marttila, showed him flowcharts, talked about in-house polling, computer-targeting, direct mail. (What did he need with that?) ... Michael decided on his own ad budget—zero. (What’d he spend last time—twenty-five thousand? This time, he was Governor! Why should he toss money around?)

  And who was there to make him worry? ... Allan Sidd was gone, the brothers Sapers, Fran Meaney ... who was talking to Michael? His erstwhile liberal allies were thumping the tub for Ackermann—they were still pissed off at Michael for cutting back on welfare. (He refused another three-percent hike for the poor that year—then he announced his surplus.) The sachems of the State House were in cabal against him, stoking up the hoary machine to help a man who’d play ball, Eddie King.

  Meanwhile, King was running a smart campaign. He didn’t know politics. But he knew he didn’t know politics. He had a sharp young pollster, a killer named Ed Reilly ... and when Reilly told King the five hot-button issues, K
ing listened. They were:

  A cut in taxes—now.

  The death penalty.

  An end to state funding for abortion.

  Mandatory sentences for drug pushers.

  A return to the twenty-one-year-old drinking age.

  Whatever he was asked, King would give one of those answers—the one closest to the topic, usually ... it really didn’t matter to Eddie.

  Michael couldn’t believe King would get anywhere with that sorta know-nothing irrationality. King was craven! People hadda see through that kinda crap! ... Still, by the summer, Dukakis said he sensed anger from the voters. It puzzled him.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t work. He drove all over the state, thousands of miles, all day, all night, doggedly retailing his record. He’d campaign at the beaches till his neck and nose were burnt from sun, his hands swollen and scratched from women’s rings, Band-Aids all over, feet hammered and throbbing from the sand in his wing tips ... and maybe he saw a thousand people that day. Meanwhile, on the tube, King was talking up his tax cut to four hundred thousand viewers. By August, Michael figured out, he should be on the tube ... but he was out of money (he never raised much), and he wouldn’t talk about going into debt.

  He was still ahead. King was a moron. People had to see that ... and no one was telling Michael any different.

  There was one debate—statewide TV—Michael could have turned it around. Ackermann hammered at Dukakis from the left; King did his five points (whatever they asked), hammering from the right, but Michael ...

  What the hell was wrong with Michael?

  He looked dead! ... He wouldn’t answer back!

  He kept trying to correct their errors—like a robot! He never spoke up for himself ... much less, threw anything back at them. His staff, his friends, Kitty—no one could figure it out. ...

  It happened, actually, before the debate, before the red lights on the cameras flashed on. They were on stage, doing microphone checks, and one of the reporters who was going to ask questions, a TV guy named Tony Pepper, just to be a wise ass, instead of saying, “Testing, one, two, three” ... he said: “My name is Mike Dukakis, and I promised no new ...”