What It Takes

by Richard Ben Cramer

  So it was President Bobster, still, who boarded his motorcade for a date at Chubb Insurance, out in the woods, miles from any town. It was a tanned, handsome, and confident candidate who marched through the snow, into the low brick building, straight to the cafeteria where a crowd of employees waited. The cafeteria (in fact, the whole excessive exurban brick fort) bespoke the easy money of the Reagan recovery. It was a long room, hung with corporate philodendrons, kept alive on a service contract with the Corporate Philodendron Company. Fake butcher-block tables made things homey. There were Chubb employees at the tables ... clapping, kind of.

  In streamed Dole’s entourage, and Dole’s herd, smiling and bouncy. They were riding with a winner, making the big turn. They were showing a new state what they’d seen for months, in Iowa ... yes, they still had a bit of Iowa about them: it was that frank, friendly, mannerly air that went so well with Dole’s midwest verities—like mashed potatoes with fried chicken.

  There was a thick woman in a brown pants suit leaning on one of the faux-maple tables near the aisle. One of the Dole-herd, a particularly friendly and polite writer, proffered her a grin, and said:

  “How you doin’, ma’am?”

  This flower of New Hampshire looked him full in the face, and said: “We don’t need people like you around here.”

  108

  White Men at War

  TUESDAY MORNING, AFTER THE Iowa caucus, Bush was already in New Hampshire. (No use lingering at the site of a massacre—Bush left Iowa before the vote began.) He and the white men were walled away in the newest, most futilely fancy motel in New Hampshire, the Clarion, near Nashua, a box of white cement rising eight stories tall in the middle of a deserted snow-covered bog, a half-mile distant from the nearest road, miles away from anything else. It was the hotel embodiment of the oversized and isolated Bush campaign ... more perfect as symbol, still, because inside, amid the pink marble and olde-Englishy prints, there was ... red alert!

  Bush was up before first light. Tell the truth, he hadn’t slept much. He was out at a factory gate, shaking hands in the numbing cold ... cold to make the pain creep from the feet up, from the hands in, from the back of the neck ... who cared? Bush was newly, nervily aware: he could lose! (That was pain.) He could lose New Hampshire, then Minnesota and South Dakota ... he could lose every state until South Carolina—or Super Tuesday! ... and that would be the end: the South would crumble. He would lose everything.

  The white men were abustle in the hotel hallway. They looked bad, ill-rested, unshaven, no ties ... there was, on the Hall of Power, a bad smell of stress and failure. “Ah knew it,” Atwater was claiming. “Ah kin feel the wind! Ah tol’ him it was a hunnert percent he was gonna lose, and Ah said it was fifty-fifty he was gonna run thirrrd!” ... What did it matter what Lee knew? They didn’t just run third—Dole beat them two-to-one! Bush did not win a single county in Iowa.

  Teeter looked like an actuary whose years of patient calculation had just revealed the median death age ... was his age. Overnight polls in New Hampshire showed Dole cutting Bush’s lead to eight or nine points—before the news from Iowa. God only knew what the swing would be after that humiliation. The problem was, voters couldn’t see any political difference between Bush and Dole. And Dole was trouncing them with his man-of-the-people work boots. Half the Bush vote came from people who just thought Bush was going to win. Well, Iowa would take care of that—Dole looked plenty big-league now. ... Somehow, they had to show those voters that Bush and Dole were not the same—they’d make different leaders. “We gotta show, they’re different guys!” But that meant showing who George Bush was, and they hadn’t been able to pull that off for two years. How could they start now?

  Ailes looked even worse than usual—he had pneumonia. He was fevered, full of antibiotics. But he said he could tape an “Ask George Bush”—a half-hour, statewide TV ... fill the audience with Bushies who’d lob softball questions and let the man stand up and talk. That’s what Ailes did for Nixon in ’68, when they had to show the New Nixon! ... Goddammit, it was time to show George Bush! ... Not Bush’s plane, Bush’s cars, Bush’s staff—that’s all people ever saw! ... “We gotta get rid of this VP shit!”

  “Goddam, Ah’m with ya!” Lee said.

  This was another thing Atwater said he always knew ... all that motorcade shit’s jussa pain inna ass! ... He tol’ ’em, said Lee, back in, uh, September: We gotta git close to the GROUN’ in this thing. ... Tol’ that asshole Fuller that Sununu was complainin’ ’bout the motorcades, uh, blockin’ the traffic, an’, uh, pissin’ people off!

  That’s what Lee always said, always. People couldn’t feel the man! Didn’t know him! ... That’s why they were losing!

  Then George Bush came back to the hotel, called a meeting. He didn’t want to hear more talk about losing. He didn’t want to hear about Iowa, what happened, or who did it. That was over—gone. “There’s no sense looking back. It’s nobody’s fault. We either go on, win in New Hampshire—or I go back to Kennebunk, and go fishing.”

  Captain Bush, the one-minute manager.

  Of course, that didn’t amount to a plan.

  But Governor Sununu was with Bush ... he said they didn’t need a plan—not a new one: they were going to win.

  That’s how Sununu was. First thing he wanted to show you: he was in control. Second thing: he was smarter than you.

  Of course, it was Sununu’s organization they were doubting—what Sununu called the best organization in the history of New Hampshire. And it was Sununu’s plan: for the last year in New Hampshire, George Bush had gone where Sununu took him ... what Sununu called his “see-me-touch-me-feel-me” campaign. The Governor was proudest of last New Year’s Eve in Concord, where people come out, with their children in tow, to stroll Main Street ... before they go get loaded at their parties. Sununu’s boys took over a clothing store and set George and Barbara Bush in there with borrowed furniture—instant living room. They had three thousand people lined up in the cold, waiting for hot chocolate and a handshake with the Veep.

  Sununu was sure: that would not be forgotten. Nor would that big picnic at Congressman Judd Gregg’s, the Fourth of July parade in Bristol, the community fair on the green in New London. ... “You’ve invested a lot of time and effort,” Sununu said. “The only thing we’ve got to do is show George Bush is the same guy they met and wanted to support before. Just get him out on the street!”

  Okay, the street ... when?

  Now—today! Every day!

  The bible called for Bush to leave for Washington—lunch with Reagan. Then a day in New Orleans at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference ...

  Scrap it.

  Scrap the bible?

  They had to have their lunch with Reagan. (Maybe get TV in there!) ... Reagan’s approval stood at eighty percent with New Hampshire Republicans. This wasn’t Iowa—they loved the Gipper!

  So, okay, lunch—get him down there, picture with Reagan—then back for see-me-touch-me ...

  And “Ask George Bush” ...

  Yeah ... Ask Bush.

  And we gotta hit Dole.

  We gotta show they’re not the same.

  The Straddle Ad!

  That was an Ailes script—an attack on Dole that said the Bobster always tried to fudge where he stood. The ad suggested Dole was going to raise taxes ... no matter what he said.

  Bush didn’t want the ad—too tough. He’d rejected the script: no Straddle Ad.

  You got to say something about the sonofabitch!

  He can’t pull off that “I’m One of You” stuff in New Hampshire.

  But you gotta say something ...

  That was the problem—Bush had to say something—about Dole, about himself, about the country ... something! People had to hear, had to feel, that Bush believed he was the man for this job, that he wanted it enough to come out of the bubble.

  Let’s get out there!

  Where?

  Everywhere. Anyplace there’s more than five people.<
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  And no motorcade bullshit!

  Just stop.

  Service isn’t gonna like it.

  Fuck the Service!

  So that was the new plan. After seven years of careful building, after twenty million dollars spent, after all the briefings, coaching, debate books, the cautious positioning, luxuriant staffing, the hundreds of speeches, the thousands of events, hundreds of thousands of miles, after seven years of detail ... it came down to one state, where Bush would hit the streets, and do ... everything—at once.

  So he did. He went out and hit the high school in Hopkinton, an insurance office in Keene ... and in the middle, he stopped ... at a mall, then a grocery store, where he saw people across the street, behind a rope ... he ran to shake their hands.

  And he said ... well—Dole was in the state with a tough speech on the Soviets, so Bush had to show he was tough on Soviets—he was supposed to talk about himself, after all ...

  “I don’t know whether your history teaches you,” said Bush to the high school students at Hopkinton, “back into the early days of the Korean War and that kind of thing ... but there was an old tough guy named Yakov Malik at the United Nations ... and I was the UN Ambassador then—uh, I started dealing with the Soviets about then, 1971, 1972 ...”

  Somehow, the story about Yakov Malik never did come out.

  Dole was promising to solve the deficit with a freeze of federal spending—so Bush said he could freeze federal spending: “A flexible freeze ... that would give uh, flexibility, but would keep that overall level, so ...”

  But that wasn’t about him, at all.

  He tried to sum up why he was the man New Hampshire voters would turn to ...

  “I’m one of you.”

  What?

  “The reason is ...” Bush said, “because I am. I was born in Massachusetts, grew up in Connecticut, live across the way—uh, have a house across the way—in Maine ... and I understand New Hampshire.”

  Three Greyhound busloads of press could not believe it: the poor desperate bastard was lifting Dole’s slogan! Wimp-o-rama! ... Bush did not get it—thought it was about geography!

  They were yelling at him from risers and ropelines:

  WHADDABOUT TEXAS?

  “I’m one of them, too.”

  Y’BORN IN MASSACHUSETTS!

  Bush shrugged. “Can’t vote in Massachusetts. Born there. I’m one of them, too.”

  This was a game Bush could not win. He tried to explain:

  “It was s’posed to be funny. ... Maybe nobody got it.”

  Next stop, it was worse:

  WHYD’YA SAY YOU’RE FROM TEXAS?

  “Look,” Bush said. “I’ll drop the slogan.”

  Testy, testy!

  Well, goddam right! “They nitpick every word I say!” ... While he was out there, trying so hard to keep a life’s work from sliding down the tubes ... trying to spread himself everywhere around that state till he almost pulled himself apart ... trying to show he was coming back ... trying to show the fighter he was ... but loyal ... but determined ... but friendly ... trying, in one week, to be for them everything he thought they wanted—to do everything!

  Almost everything ...

  No. Everything.

  While Bush was trying to be one of them, Ailes was on the phone to his wife, in New York. Ailes’s fever was a hundred and two. He had a towel over his head to trap the steam from a vaporizer. He was gray. His voice was a nasty croak. But he’d have to be dead—at least unconscious—before he’d stop trying to hit Dole.

  “You go in, tonight,” he said. “Make the Straddle Ad.”

  Norma Ailes was a TV producer.

  “Do we have authorization?”

  “They don’t air it, I’ll eat it. We’re gonna need it.” He dictated the ad: “Dole straddled on the INF ... straddled on the oil import fee. Bush led the fight for INF. He’s against an oil import fee. ... Then we say, ‘Bush won’t raise taxes, period.’ Put the period on there. ‘Dole won’t promise—you know what that means.’ ...”

  Norma Ailes wanted to know: “What do we use for visuals?”

  “Use what you find.”

  It didn’t have to be pretty.

  “Just go make it.”

  The tape arrived by messenger, Wednesday, before noon.

  Wednesday, before noon, Peggy Noonan was in her car, on the way home to her house in the woods of Virginia. Peggy had left the daily grind at the White House. She meant to stay home, write her book, raise her little boy. That’s why she was hustling now—home to her son. She’d left her mother with the boy.

  She had the radio on—news from New Hampshire ... and she heard Bush’s voice, tinny in the speakers:

  “I’m one of you ...”

  Oh, God, that was awful! The poor man had nothing to say!

  She liked Bush. She didn’t know him well, but he’d asked her to do a couple of speeches ... the first time, he only had an hour or two before the Steedham thing. Steedham was the sailor whom the TWA hijackers killed and threw off the plane, onto the tarmac in Beirut. His body was coming home, to an Air Force base—just after 6:00 P.M.—it would be live on every news show in the country. Bush was going to represent the White House. He worried for Steedham’s parents: they’d have to stand there, watching their son’s body come off the plane, with the newsies poking telephotos at their faces. He had to say something of comfort ... so he called Peggy.

  That was her reputation in the White House. She was the designated “sensitive”—ever since she did that speech for Reagan after the Challenger blew up. As for Bush’s reputation ... well, Noonan couldn’t understand why he was so much demeaned, why the Reaganauts didn’t trust him. He was a Goldwater man! ... And such a sweetie: so interested in her ... charming—handsome! She was struck by his maleness, the way he threw his legs out from the edge of his chair—big legs—an athlete. ... Why did people think he was a wimp?

  “I’m one of you ...”

  God, he sounded like a wimp!

  She got home and asked her mother, in the kitchen: “Mom, could you take care of the baby for a week if I’m away?”

  Then she called Fuller’s office.

  Fuller was “in a meeting.”

  “Well, tell Craig if he wants me, I’ll be there.”

  An hour later, word came back: Fuller’s assistant, Diane Terpeluk, said that Craig said ... 2:00 P.M.

  “Really? What are we doing?”

  “They’re all getting on Air Force Two, going to New Hampshire.”

  She saw Bush on the plane for a moment, when she walked into the Staff Cabin. “Oh,” he said, “come to pick us up off the mat, huh?”

  That was the calmest thing anybody said. The purposeful quiet of Air Force Two was gone. Atwater couldn’t even say hello. He was scratching his head, like he did when he was nervous. “Ah kin see this slippin’ away! Ah got bones for this! Ah got skin that kin feel everything ...” Teeter was edgy, earnest. He wanted a sit-down right away. “Look, we gotta show who this guy is—they’re not the same, Dole and him. Different lives. Be totally different leaders.”

  Peggy set to work on a new stump speech.

  That night, she sat down at dinner in the Clarion with Teeter and the VP. They sat in the restaurant—in the main room, with regular people. That threw the place into a tizzy. The Secret Service was around Bush like angry bees. No waiter would approach.

  She showed Bush the new speech. He read it with his head back.

  “Oh,” he said. “The me-me-me stuff.”

  Peggy said, “You know, it’s the person we’re electing here. It’s who you are ... that’s the difference.”

  Bush said the difference was: “I know the other guys—they shouldn’t be President.”

  He said: “Well ... would you like a drink?” His voice held a boy’s eagerness.

  Teeter broke in, right away: “No, I think I’ll just have a Coke.”

  Bush turned to Peggy. She was on a diet, wasn’t supposed to have anything. She was
going to say no ... but she could see he’d be crushed.

  “How about you, Peggy?”

  “Well, I’d like to ...”

  “Good!” said Bush. “Then I’ll have one, too.”

  He got a martini, and he drank that sucker down.

  “Well,” he said. “Would you like another?”

  Even Teeter caught the drift now—he got a drink. Peggy got another glass of wine. Bush got another martini. But he stopped at two.

  And the next day, Thursday, Bush went out into the cold again. This time, it wasn’t just chat at a grocery store: he showed up in a parka and a ballcap. He drove an eighteen-wheeler (with two Secret Service agents hanging off the side mirrors) around the lot at Cuzzin Richie’s Truck Stop. He parked his backside on a greasy vinyl seat and had him some breakfast. He pulled out his wallet and paid for his own. Then he moved on to a lumberyard, drove a forklift ...

  This time, he said a budget freeze was a “cop-out”—in fact, the worst kind ... a Congressional cop-out! Bush’s voice held something new: conviction ... and contempt.

  “Congress isn’t the real world,” he said. “They don’t decide. It’s all one long Continuing Resolution. They pass the bills that make the constituencies happy: pig farmers get Baby Pig Development Grants. Districts that wish they had a river get a bridge! ...

  “Bob Dole, my opponent, says the answer here is a freeze. ... A freeze will freeze in all those studies of pigs and mating habits of butterflies!”

  It was the first time Bush had taken Dole on, by name.

  And he did something else for the first time, too:

  He got to an old people’s home, late in the day—too late for network news—and he started to talk ... about his mother.

  “You know, she calls me. She says, ‘I don’t like the things they’re saying about you, George.’ ” His hand grasped air to his heart. “So ... it’s a mother, to her little boy, still.”

  And that led him to ... himself—not his jobs, all the things he’d been—but the way he felt about himself: