Somehow (maybe when the Minicams staked out his office) ... Owen got the feeling he was being nudged off the back of the sleigh. ... Bill Brock bestirred himself to call and suggest: “Dave, I think we’ve got a problem. I think this is just unfortunate, but, ahmm ... maybe you need to cease doing anything for the campaign.”
At that point, Owen had to talk to Dole ... but he could never get through. True to form, Elizabeth called instead. But Elizabeth just asked about Dave’s family, and told him this would all work out—the cool Christian sympathy of the hospital hallway.
That’s when Owen got the message: he stopped trying to call Dole ... and he scheduled a press conference to announce he was leaving the campaign.
Dole was busy, arranging for the Office of Government Ethics to give him a clean bill of health—Elizabeth, too—and preemptively announce that. (“There is no indication,” said the deputy director, “that the Doles did anything improper.”) Of course, the Ethics office couldn’t say the same for Owen—not without a proper investigation!—wouldn’t say a thing for Owen.
Nor would Dole.
On the afternoon of Owen’s auto-da-fé, Dole did conduct a quick interview with Angelia Herrin of the Wichita Eagle-Beacon. Angelia told Dole of Owen’s announcement—he was stepping down from the campaign until these questions were resolved.
“WHAT?” Dole barked. “No! No! ... I want it resolved. I want it final. His role has ended!”
There was silence in the car. They were riding through northern Iowa, in the half-light of a scarlet sunset. Angelia asked, gingerly:
“How do you feel?”
Dole stared at the angry red horizon ... then he wheeled from the window. “How would you feel?”
He’d asked Elizabeth, the minute she got into that deal with Owen. “What’re we paying him for?” Owen was making a career out of the Doles! Doing deals! Guy’s become a millionaire! Dole never wanted that. ... And too cute: you look in that trust, it’s not IBM stock—you pick up a rock, you see worms underneath.
“How would anyone feel? Nobody has the right ...”
When they got to Dole’s next stop, there were thirty more reporters who wanted to know: Would Owen’s departure put an end to Dole’s problem?
“I don’t have any problem,” Dole snapped.
“Maybe Dave Owen’s got a problem. I don’t.”
Dole was correct about that.
From that day, Dave Owen would face three and a half years of investigation from the Office of Ethics, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the FBI (in service of a U.S. Attorney in Missouri), a committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Federal Election Commission, the Kansas Public Disclosure Commission, and the Kansas Attorney General. Owen’s legal fees would eat up several hundred thousand dollars, his business opportunities would shrivel, he’d be shunned by former friends, his daughters would be scorned, his wife wouldn’t know if she should believe him, she would have to take a job as a secretary, Owen would spend his time playing golf—so he wouldn’t stay in bed all day. He owned a gun, and he surprised himself by thinking of suicide. ... In the end, he would plead guilty to one Class C misdemeanor in the state election law—the moral equivalent of parking in front of a hydrant.
In the end, he would never hear another word from Bob Dole.
Dole was correct about his situation, too.
From the day that Bob Dole cut off Dave Owen, Dole would no longer have a problem. He handed out twenty years of tax returns ... and nobody cared. The story of his money all but disappeared. In fact, from the moment Dave Owen was kicked off the sleigh, Dole was immediately and richly applauded. The big-feet, the smart guys, and everyone they talked to, approved.
Finally!
Finally, they said, Dole had learned to act ... like a President.
100
President Dick
ALL OF GEPHARDT’S KILLERS flew out to Des Moines before the big Register debate, January 15. They were primed and ready for a good twitchy wrangle on the message, the strategy, the electoral imperatives in the last Democratic face-off before the caucus.
Of course, Dick had been through thirty debates ... but this was the big one for Iowa—three weeks before the vote. This could be the ball game. Not to mention, it was national TV, and the country would be watching for its first look at Hart-risen. ... How should they handle Hart? What if Hart came at Dick?
They gathered in the party room at Loreen’s apartment building. They had most of two days blocked out on Dick’s schedule. They wanted to mount a mock debate; they’d videotape, critique the tapes. They wanted to rehearse his answers. The other candidates knew Gephardt was surging: there were bound to be attacks on his trade bill, his farm bill ... his campaign, his character! ... They had to have a game plan!
But Dick already had a game plan. They might have been thinking about the message, but Gephardt had been doing it—eight times a day. He was on that weird white tractor beam that brushed away everything in his path. He was saying what he meant to say, more clearly than he ever had. What did he need them for?
“Okay, what about the deficit figure?” Doak began. (The trade deficit had diminished—bad news for Gephardt’s campaign.) “What’re we gonna say?”
But before Shrummy or another maestro could start, Dick said: “Look, it’s not numbers. It’s people. It’s American jobs. It’s American workers and their families ... that’s all I haveta say.”
“Uh, okay ... well, what’re we gonna say if Duke says your ag bill will raise food prices?”
Dick said, calmly: “Mike ... you know how much you pay for a boxa Wheaties? Buck and a half? Two bucks? ... You know how much goes to the farmer for that wheat? A penny and a half? Two cents? Four cents? ... If that price goes up two cents, you think that’s gonna hurt the American public? But that two cents makes all the difference to the family farmers of America. Why shouldn’t their labor earn them a living?”
They ran through three or four more questions—just the toughest, the ones they’d been stewing over in Washington. And every time, Dick would answer—boom—it was over. After twenty minutes, Shrum said: “I move that we end debate-prep ... unless Dick’s got any questions ...”
They looked to Gephardt.
“Yeah,” he said, and his eyes fell upon Trippi. “Joe—find out: How much is the wheat in a boxa Wheaties?”
Trippi was exultant. “Tonight,” he announced, before the debate, “you’re going to see a President of the United States.”
President Dick!
“He’s unbelievable. We didn’t even prep. He’s absolutely calm, absolutely certain. It’s scary ... he’s Mr. President!”
Trippi had a highly developed theory on what a President was—though, alas, he’d never been able to make one. He started working Iowa for Kennedy in ’80 ... but Kennedy couldn’t knock off Jimmy Carter. In ’84, Trippi was in Iowa as the deputy maestro for Walter Mondale, who swept the state ... though, again, Mondale fell short in the end.
That’s why Gephardt had his eye on Joe—Trippi knew Iowa ... Gephardt had to have Iowa. He started calling Trippi back in ’86—August ’86, the day Joe’s daughter was born. Trippi was a half-hour out of the delivery room when the phone rang:
“Joe? This is Dick Gephardt ... I just heard about the blessed event, and, uh, I just want you to know, I think it’s great!”
Christmas that year, Gephardt tracked down Trippi at his in-laws. Dick was trying to decide whether to dump Murphy in favor of Carrick. Trippi told him: “Dick, you may have a problem ... I just want you to know, Murphy has told twenty people that he has your personal assurance ...”
Within days, Gephardt had dumped Murphy. That’s when Trippi thought Dick might be a President.
“See,” Trippi said, “he might have had to make that decision. That’s what I mean, being ready to be President ... it’s too important for personal loyalties.
“That kind of decision—like cutting off a Pat Caddell ... Joe Biden will not have a problem ma
king that kind of decision anymore.
“That’s what we demand in a President.”
But Trippi did not go to work for Gephardt—not right away. He went to Denver, to work for Gary Hart.
“That was a man,” Trippi said, “who was ready to be President. He showed straight determination ... even after the bomb hit. That day when he had the press conference in New Hampshire—a hundred fifty banshees in that room, just trying ... to take ... him ... down.
“It wasn’t once he was asked about adultery. They must’ve asked eight different ways. Joe Biden would’ve fallen apart. Anybody would have. But Hart stood there like a rock. He would not leave until there wasn’t anything left to ask. He took every bit of shit they could throw, and he handled it. He did ... whatever it took.
“That’s a President.”
So why wasn’t Trippi busy prepping Hart for the big Register debate?
“No, that’s what I mean,” Trippi said. “There’s this horrible logic to the process. The next day, when Hart decided to go home, when he decided he couldn’t put his family through it, or the women who were gonna be named, or whoever ... when he put anything else before this ... then he wasn’t ready to be President.”
101
Time’s Up!
HART DIDN’T DO DEBATE prep. He didn’t have briefing books. (Who’d write them?) He had no Washington smart guys to act out parts in a practice. He had no opposition research—he didn’t want any. It wasn’t the polls—he was still on top of the national polls. (His was the only name voters recognized among the Democrats.) Even Hart didn’t quite believe those polls. It was just ... he was so sure he was miles ahead of those poor saps:
Gephardt—he’s for American workers and farmers. Who’s against them?
Or Simon—“We caaarrrre!” Who cares? What are you going to DO?
That’s why this debate, January 15, was Hart’s great chance: he knew what he wanted to do. He was preparing his own fiscal ’90 federal budget—a blueprint for taxes and spending, so people could see what he would do. Hart had printed a campaign booklet, his sole piece of literature—ninety-four pages, cheap paper, solid type. (Hart was fond of saying, as he waved this chunky volume at his crowds: “My brochure is not three or four glossy folds, like other people’s; it’s printed in one color, black-and-white; there are no pictures of my family here, or of our dog, MacArthur.”)
This debate would offer his one chance to wave those positions at all the voters of Iowa ... and the nation: this was coast-to-coast TV, all the big-feet were in Des Moines for the night; the networks had bought out whole floors of hotels, there were satellite trucks from thirty cities—the plaza in front of the Civic Center was hidden by satellite trucks, side-by-side, nose-to-tail, like buffalo on the prairie, before the white hunter showed up with his gun.
Free media, the Priests of the Process called it. For Hart, it was manna.
He wasn’t even supposed to be in Iowa ... probably wouldn’t have competed, without this debate to lure him. The Iowa caucus rewarded organization—Hart had none. What’s more, this wasn’t like a primary—the flick of a finger in some booth, behind a curtain, in privacy, anonymity. ... No, each caucus voter had to show up (and stay for hours) on a Monday night ... to publicly name his candidate of choice ... and then defend his vote to his neighbors.
Hart’s was a candidacy that presented a voter with problems. And while there were thousands of Iowa voters (and maybe millions in the nation) who could resolve, or ignore, those problems for themselves ... it was quite another matter to have to explain. Could you tell your neighbors (say, your wife’s friends from church) that you really didn’t give a damn if Gary cheated on Lee?
Hart was aware of this problem. He could read a poll as well as any pol, and “negatives” of forty-some percent were not negligible. Somehow, he had to make a vote for Hart simpler. He had to put the questions to rest. He had to give his supporters something to say, something clear, direct, of overriding moment. It would help, of course, if they could talk about his issues. But no one was writing about Hart’s issues. They wrote about Hart—psycho-investigations.
Richard Cohen, the columnist for The Washington Post, wrote about Hart’s apology for his “mistake” with Donna Rice ... the very word revealed Hart’s character, or lack. “By characterizing the Donna Rice episode as a ‘mistake,’ Hart shows that we have learned more about him than he has about himself. He persists in his Presidential race as if behavioral patterns were slips of the tongue or blunders made at the end of a long and tiring day. They are nothing of the sort. What he calls ‘a mistake’ is representative of who Gary Hart is. His real mistake is not realizing that.”
Ellen Goodman, the columnist for The Boston Globe, examined the “talisman” and “key” to Hart’s campaign—Lee Hart. “Why does she do it? Why does she shake hands every day with people who are often uncomfortable in her presence, people who shared her public humiliation, who see mental images of Donna Rice on her husband’s lap when she comes into a New Hampshire hall? What makes Lee run?”
The Leader of the Pack, David Broder, weighed in with a stunning reexamination of Hart’s campaign debt. “The problem is,” Broder wrote, “that as long as voters have known Hart, and for years before that, he has exhibited a pattern of ‘walking away.’ He left behind in Kansas the family’s name and church affiliation. He left divinity school for law school. He left his marriage twice and twice returned. He left the Senate to seek the Presidency. And he left the Presidential campaign, only to return to it again.”
Broder noted with a sniff that Hart talked “constantly” about issues. “But he answers only rarely and reluctantly the questions that go to his consistency and his character.
“He leaves it to the voters to judge whether all that is past—or whether he is, once again, just walking away from himself.”
When Hart came to Iowa, he didn’t know about Broder’s psycho-insight. The column hadn’t appeared. But, clearly, copies were available to subscriber papers. Hart had a crucial meeting with editors and reporters for The Des Moines Register—he had to put to rest as many questions as he could ... and one woman at the table kept asking:
“Aren’t you just walking away?”
Hart didn’t know what she was talking about.
Well, uh ... your marriage—for one thing?
Wait a minute! Gary and Lee had problems, but they stuck it out—twenty-nine years! Ronald Reagan walked away. That’s called divorce.
Yeah, well ... Hart could not deny that he walked away from his campaign, in May.
And Hart, without awareness of Broder’s epiphany, had not the information—or the bad grace—to suggest that he didn’t “walk away.” Broder’s newspaper hounded him away!
Hart did discuss what the Register called his “personal failings.” Broder’s certainties notwithstanding, Hart invited all the character questions they could muster. He called himself an adulterer (and said he wouldn’t be the first in the White House). He said that in May, “I let myself down, I let my family down, I let my supporters down.” He admitted that he hadn’t been able to pay all his ’84 debts (but pleaded for fairness—at least acknowledgment that his problem was not unique).
At that point, Lee Hart joined the rumble in Gary’s defense—reminded the Register pooh-bahs that Gary had run McGovern’s campaign and two Senate campaigns without one dollar of debt; she talked about all the work Gary did to whittle that ’84 debt from four million to one; she talked about the nights he’d spent away from home, to raise money, how the family hated that, but they understood, duty came first ... how everyone in the family understood, now, that they’d let themselves in for a cudgeling—but that did not matter, compared to the nation’s future; she told them about the letter from the parents who were going to buy a crib, but sent the money to Gary instead ... then, Lee started to cry. And Gary was thinking, as Lee spoke—how could they say he always “walked away” ... when the easiest thing in the world would have been, simply, to w
alk away? But he could not—he thought of his kids, their faith ... and Gary started to cry.
The next day, of course, there was a front-page picture of Hart in tears ... as he talked about “his failings” ... and it went so perfectly with the Broder column. ... In sum, Hart had answered questions for an hour and a half, and it didn’t make anything simpler.
There was a rule for this debate—no more than six cars in the motorcade that brought each candidate to the hall. That was five cars more than Hart required. He got the biggest dressing room. (Rooms were awarded in order of standing in the Iowa Poll.) But Hart had no use for the extra space. Lee and Sue Casey sat in the dressing room. Hart and Billy Shore made for the stage.
Hart brought a copy of his campaign booklet. He had it rolled into a cylinder, which he carried in his right hand like a sceptre of office. At last, his rivals would have to face him on the issues ... they would have to discuss the future of the nation, and the planet ... while the voters watched. And Hart, at last, would have a chance to show why he was still ahead where it mattered, though his campaign was without money, media, pollsters, staff ...
What It Takes Page 119
