What It Takes

by Richard Ben Cramer

  That was the day, he started in the west of the state, Council Bluffs ... with Richard Gere. There were seven hundred people in a mall at 9:00 A.M. Young girls were screaming—sounded like a jet engine. The music on the P. A. made the tiles of the mall rattle. And Gere was eloquent—Gere was perfect!

  He said he heard about Dukakis when Michael refused to send the Massachusetts National Guard to Central America. “I thought, ‘Now there’s a ballsy move’ ...

  “I have a confession to make. From the time I was twenty-two to the time I was thirty-six, I didn’t vote. But Mike and I met ...”

  Gere looked at Michael with something like apology on his face. “... in December, in L.A. It was about eleven o’clock.”

  “Three A.M., East Coast time,” said Dukakis.

  “I was tired,” Gere said. “Michael had been campaigning all day. He had a bad cold. But we sat down and we talked. And this man talked to me from the heart ... person to person. And I really felt good about him in my heart.”

  The girls screamed for Gere, and for the man of his heart, Dukakis.

  That was the day Michael finished in Des Moines with a neighborhood walk, a canvass, door-to-door. On the press bus, the trip director, Jack Weeks, promised “old-fashioned local politics.”

  Sure.

  There were 150 people waiting outside—plus thirty camera crews. People stampeded Michael’s bus. Advance men were trying to hold them back with ropes. (Michael still insisted, no Secret Service. He said he didn’t want a buffer between him and the voters. All it meant was, the campaign supplied its own muscle.)

  Dukakis was engulfed by the iron ring—cameras, boom mikes over his head, in his face. His Advance guys were shouting: “Move toward the house. GOVERNOR ... TO THE HOUSE. THE HOUSE! ...” Michael couldn’t see the house. He couldn’t see anything.

  But he knew, that day, he could win.

  The next morning, at the Savery, there was a breakfast for his precinct captains. The ballroom looked like a piece of a national convention. The crowd was studded with waving signs, cameras, and blinding lights. The Boston TVs were doing stand-ups while the crowd was yelling ... and on the stage, for once, Michael dropped his speech and started to talk.

  He talked about his first trip to Iowa, a year before, his first visit to a farm, in Osceola—the Barretts. And on the same trip, his discovery of Gus and Tom’s Pizza and Steakhouse—his Greeks. ... He talked about the people he’d met since, the farmers who had to take city jobs, and meat-packers who had to take cuts in pay. ...

  He talked about a woman in Sioux City who had a seven-year-old son, and no health insurance. Her son had had pneumonia, thirteen times. “I asked her, ‘What do you do when he gets sick?’ She said, ‘I hope and pray, and when he gets really bad, I take him to St. Luke’s. But, Governor, now I have a bill at St. Luke’s—this long! ... I’m embarrassed to go there.’ ”

  At last, Michael was trying to say what health insurance meant. He didn’t talk about his pending bill in Massachusetts, or statistics on the national problem. This campaign had done something for him, after all.

  “One more thing I want to say. ... This is a very close race. I know it. And you know it. And in a race like this, five people in a precinct can make the difference between a good result and a great result. ... And it’s up to you.

  “Let me tell you something, folks. Those other campaigns, they’re worried about you. They know ... how good you are.”

  His captains stopped him with cheers.

  “... One more thing: I’d like to introduce someone who has been the love of my life, and my partner, for twenty-five years. In fact, Kitty and I will celebrate our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary on June 20th ...”

  Another round of cheers.

  “... which just happens ... to be the end of the primary season. ... And wouldn’t it be a terrific twenty-fifth anniversary present ... if I could take her away to our favorite place ...” (That is, schnorring off Tiky and Viv, in Fort Lauderdale.)

  “... and I could lean across the table, and say ...”

  Michael paused while his eyebrows danced.

  “... ‘Baby ... you’re gonna be the next First Lady of America!’ ”

  The ballroom erupted. People were screaming and hopping around. And why not? After a year in Iowa—the day before the caucus—Michael had started to tell them, honestly ... why he was running.

  Kitty came on stage. He put his arm around her. They looked so happy there, while the people cheered. ... Kitty turned in his embrace, and she looked out on the crowd with a glorious smile. ...

  At the side of the ballroom, the Advance men noted: that was wrong—she should have her arm around him, that puts him a half-step forward ...

  “What’s she doin’ in fronta him?”

  “He’s gonna have to quit with that arm.”

  Someone was going to have to tell Michael.

  105

  Juice

  THE NETWORKS WERE WIRED into Des Moines with millions in equipment, hundreds of people from each ... Dan Rather prowled the Savery with his new CBS consultant, Tom Donilon ... cables as thick as anchor chain snaked up the fire stairs in all the big hotels ... but no network wanted to bore the nation with a nightful of the Iowa caucus, so the killers kept an eye on Happy Days, waiting for a trail of numbers across the bottom of the screen.

  It was maddeningly slow.

  In the Gephardt family suite, Reilly couldn’t wait—he was on the phone with friends from the networks. Trippi had a cigar, unlit. His wife, Katie, watched their tiny daughter, who was toddling on the tan shag carpet. There were two bedrooms and a center parlor in the suite at the beautiful Best Western. In the center room, there was a bar with trays of food, untouched. A long couch (nubby polyester to match the shag) faced three TVs—one for each network—and that’s where the killers gathered. Doak and Shrum were in and out (poor Shrummy was a ball of nerves), Murphy was fretting and pacing, Paul Begala, the speechwriter, watched the TVs.

  “Here it is—HERE!” They’d call out when the numbers rolled—twenty percent of precincts, then thirty-three ... Dole was way ahead in the GOP (and, God! Robertson second—Bush wiped out!) ... but the Democrats were not clear-cut. Dick was holding over thirty percent, a wavering three- or four-point lead over Simon; Dukakis was third with twenty-two percent. On the walkie-talkie, a staffer at Democratic Central said hard numbers put Gephardt at thirty-three percent ... but still, no call from the network gods of election.

  Just before eight, CBS came out—called it for Gephardt. There were whoops ... but the other networks held off. Did they know something? ... Trippi’s cigar remained unlit. Murphy was frozen: if they declared victory and then, somehow, lost their lead, they could turn a near tie into disaster. Reilly dove for a bedroom, punched at the phone—“When’re you guys gonna call it? Come on! ...”

  The family filtered in. Not Dick, of course, he was doing TV ... but Jane and the girls went into one bedroom, and Matt took the other, watched TV in the dark. Nancy Gephardt and her son, Frank, stayed in the center room, with Loreen, her friends the Halls from Third Baptist Church, and her brother, Dick’s Uncle Bob, and his wife, Kay. They hung back at the bar, tried to see the TVs ... but without Dick, this wasn’t their room, and the TVs somehow belonged to the killers, who turned their backs, and traded rat-a-tat spin.

  “Okay, spin doctors,” Trippi was saying, “I think we oughta say this makes it a three-man top tier ... kill Gore in the South—it’ll be too late for him.”

  “We gotta say this weakens the Duke ...”

  “Wait ...”

  There was silence. ABC had called it for Dick ... and there he was, on the screen, with Peter Jennings asking if he could pull it off in other states ... “the politics of grievance—what makes you think it will work, anywhere else?”

  “Well, Peter ...”

  Loreen Gephardt meant to see her boy, and even his face on the screen emboldened her to take the couch, so she settled in with Mrs. Hall, and th
e killers had to part, so she could see.

  Jennings was boring in on the flip-flops.

  “Well, Peter ... I’ve been in public life fifteen years now, and I’d rather change and be right, than be rigid and wrong ...”

  Loreen was in pink fuzzy cashmere, and she snuggled against Mrs. Hall. Her hand absently reached for Mrs. Hall’s jacket and she fingered the wool, as if she had to touch something, to know ... it was real, all her hopes, all the effort—God did have a plan. Loreen tugged gently on Mrs. Hall’s jacket. She turned her shoulders so she could look straight into her friend’s eyes, as she whispered: “He looks like a President.”

  Uncle Bob Cassell had a bag he was fingering, and now he pulled out his portrait of Dick, just like the ones he used to paint when Dick was twelve years old ... but now Dick had the Capitol dome and an American flag floating behind him, against an azure sky.

  “Oh, Bob, it’s a wonderful picture,” Loreen said.

  “Gee, that’s great!” said Jane. She was distracted, trying to be nice. “I’ve gotta find a place to put it ... in the White House!” It sounded strange. She’d never thought of living in the White House.

  There was a Newsweek reporter in the suite, who had to come over now to get the poop on the picture. Loreen introduced her brother: “You know, people always said Dick looks a lot like Bob.” And Bob drew himself up, beaming, to look like a President, too.

  Debra Johns kept other reporters at bay, in the hall: “Debra! Where’d he eat dinner? ... Debra! What’d he have for dinner?”

  And now, Dick’s voice was in the hallway, too. He was taping out there—Good Morning America. A few friends from the suite went out to watch. But Loreen stayed behind—she had the Lord’s work to do.

  “Bob, it’s such a lovely picture, I think you should present it to him on stage.”

  Bob was diffident. The picture wasn’t quite finished. “I really can’t make it a big deal ... I’ll just give it to him upstairs, in the room.”

  No, Loreen insisted, and she bent to pull the bag back over the portrait.

  “Well...” Bob was accustomed to his sister’s will. “I’m just going to sort of present it, then. That’s all.”

  And, finally, their Dick was in the room, and he was pumped up, he was huge ... and pink under his makeup. But he had the victory speech to do—an important speech, the same one he would give in New Hampshire the following day—and he had to freshen up. He brushed by into the bedroom—not even a hug for Jane. She and the kids were milling at a mirror, last-minute makeup and hair. No time for talk. Nancy was firing stage directions at Frank and Loreen and the Halls. Brad, the body man, was standing at the door of the bedroom, yelling, “Now, let’s talk about what we’re gonna do here! ...”

  There was no time to be a family. They had to learn how to look like a family.

  Downstairs in the beautiful Starlite Ballroom, the crowd was whoop-it-up happy, and a bar band lashed the air with electric guitars. It was a long, low room—and packed. The Des Moines staff couldn’t recognize half the country folk who’d poured in. They must have driven for hours. In the end, it was the farmers who put Dick over the top—he won sixty of Iowa’s ninety-nine counties.

  Against the long back wall, there were platforms studded with tripods, cameras trained on the podium like a firing squad, and mounds of gear in heaps at the feet of surly crews. It was hot, it was late. They were supposed to go live in Kansas City ... and Cincinnati ... Atlanta, Houston, Chicago, Boston ... and St. Louis! Every two-bit station with a satellite truck had its anchor-wanker there, and a big chunk of the budget tied up in (ta dummm) ... Decision ’88! But they weren’t asking these Iowans about their decision. They weren’t going to get on the air with some stupid voter ... no. They needed juice.

  And, at last, here it came, in the person of Dick Gephardt, and his wife, and children, his mother, her friends and family ... who busted into the hall along a little cattle run that Advance roped off, and straight onto stage, in front of twenty-two American flags ... and the halogens snapped on, and the crowd sent up a fevered yowl that drowned the bar band’s “Theme from Rocky.”

  Jane hit her mark on stage—behind Dick, and to his right. The kids were on the other side, in a rising diagonal row—Katie, Chrissie, and tall Matt closest to the crowd. Loreen stood directly behind Dick, with a view of his pink Presidential neck, and the rest of the family off on the flanks, with Congressman Tony Coelho (always a nose for a winner, Tony had). And it was quiet—Dick was talking.

  “... We will fight the Establishment! ... We will pry open foreign markets! ... It’s time to tell the forces of greed: ENOUGH is ENOUGH! ...

  “In our America, land is a place to raise cahrn and soybeans, wheat, and most importantly, a place to raise our kids AGAIN ... we will save the family farm in America, because ...”

  The crowd was onto this song now, and they joined in as chorus:

  “NUFF is ENUFF!”

  Loreen was jolted back to the here and now by the noise of the crowd, and she woke with a pleasant shiver of joy from a reverie on her boy’s neck, and she looked over the crowd, into the lights, with a smile of blessing and vindication, at the faces in front, staring up at her boy, who was pink as her fuzzy cashmere, and wailing:

  “... they’ve done nothing but paid their taxes, fought our WARS, raised our KIDS ... we don’t need to give them a FAVOR ... WE OWE THEM ...”

  And the crowd yelled:

  “NUFF izza NUFF!”

  Dick was yelling, too: “We will WIN in New Hampshire ... We will WIN in NOVEMBER ...”

  Gep-HARDT

  Gep-HARDT ...

  “And when we WIN, we’re gonna TAKE BACK THE WHITE HOUSE and GIVE IT BACK to th’AMERICAN PEOPLE AGAIN ...”

  Gep-HARDT-Gep-HARDT-Gep-HARDT-Gep-HARDT-Gep ...

  “I thank you for your help on this cold and snowy night, and I ask for your help ... to change America and give it back its soul.”

  With that, the band issued a few bars of Neil Diamond’s “Coming to America,” and the crowd noise swelled higher in a rhythmic scream ... Gep-HARDT-Gep-HARDT ... as Dick gathered himself, and roared out the only line outside his text, the simple thought closest to his heart:

  “WE’RE GONNA WIN THIS THING!”

  And the band sped the song into full cry, as the crowd screamed GepHARDTGepHARDTGEP-HARDT ... except with two or three thousand people screaming off the beat, only the strongest consonants came through, so the noise was just a frantic bark:

  GARP-GARP-GARPT-GARPT-GARPT-GARPT ...

  And there was no script anymore, so Dick turned and hugged his mother, and he missed Jane, but he found his kids, and he bent way down for Katie and hugged her hard and quick, and then Chrissie, hard and quick, and then Dick stood and looked straight into Matt’s eyes, and threw open his arms and advanced on Matt, who grasped him tentatively, and was going to step back, but Dick grabbed him harder, and Matt forgot the crowd and disappeared into his father’s embrace, and Dick laid his head on Matt’s shoulder, and they held like that, neither one would let go. And when they did, they were both fighting tears, but Dick was being pulled to the podium—some business ...

  It was Bob, who took the sack off the portrait, and Dick’s eyes popped open a few millimeters at the shock of azure ... and ... Hey! That’s him! He gave Bob a big thumbs-up ... and he started to wander the stage again—Tony Coelho, a hug, Nancy Gephardt, Frank ... and the band was thumping hell-for-leather, but the crowd couldn’t keep barking like that, and the halogens were clicking off, as Dick listed from hug to hug ... and it could have been over—Dick had his back turned—but Loreen understood, maybe better than her son, just what this was about.

  She took the painting and strode to the podium, she faced it away from her, and with her fingers grasping the sides of the frame, she mounted upon the podium the Portrait of Dick Regnant. She disappeared behind this icon ... even Dick alive in his hugs disappeared ... and the halogens clicked back to full glare, and the crowd looked up a
t Dick, and the Dome, and the Flag ...

  GARPT-GEHPT-GARPT-GEHPT-GARPT-GARP...

  106

  We Won the Bronze

  DUKAKIS HAD HIS OWN “victory” party—it looked fine on TV. He announced to his crowd:

  “Tonight ... we won the bronze!”

  Like there were three guys standing on a victory platform.

  That was a brilliant piece of spin, the brainstorm of Estrich’s husband, Marty Kaplan. (In fact, Kaplan’s coup saved Michael’s bacon. Once the Duke’s people started mounting this “bronze” conceit, the triple-E pundits fell into line. Though Dukakis was soundly beaten by Gephardt and Simon, John Chancellor told NBC’s millions of voters: “Well, third place, so far from home, is no disgrace.”)

  Anyway, the problem was, Dukakis liked this “bronze” business so much—he believed it. At least, he said he did. Didn’t matter that Michael worked a year to eke out twenty percent of the vote. No one could tell Michael he was going to have to do (or say) anything more.

  Estrich was in Des Moines for the caucus, and she explained, as calmly as she could: “If we survive tonight, we survive by the skin of our teeth. You’re never going to make it if you don’t get out there and throw some punches.”

  But it wasn’t just Susan—and it wasn’t all calm.

  Bob Farmer, king of the money men, came to Des Moines to have it out with Michael. Farmer was killing himself. His finance committeemen were killing themselves. They had raised more than $10 million! ... Could he go back and promise that Dukakis would never again settle for third place? ... Well, could he?

  Paul Brountas, mild-mannered friend, went ballistic in Des Moines. Since Sasso left, Brountas saw himself as Michael’s friend ... and strategist. That didn’t mean Michael listened. But it meant Paul saw his duty, and did it. ... Why couldn’t Michael see? This was an unacceptable performance! ... Brountas had watched his friend Ed Muskie slide down the tubes, with a flush and a gurgle, in ’72—that campaign fell to pieces in a matter of days! ... Michael had to get into the game! Michael had to stop being so damned stubborn!