What It Takes

by Richard Ben Cramer

  Dole couldn’t feel it—that rush of certainty, when it all comes together—and he thought there had to be something more. There had to be some way to lock people on, something to say, something about him ... something he had to do. It couldn’t happen like this—sitting in a hotel and Bush’s numbers melting away. Didn’t happen like this—how could it? ... Unless Bush was going to sit on his hands—play dead all week. Why would he?

  What was he doing?

  110

  Doing Damage

  GEORGE BUSH WAS HAVING a snowball fight with the press in a parking lot outside the Clarion. He spotted a guy trying to unstick his car—he ran over, offered to help. (The man refused.) Bush ran the other way to shake another voter’s hand, pat his dog. Everywhere Bush ran, the Service ran. Sununu puffed behind. The press tried to run along, but the Service kept them away ... and there really wasn’t anything to ask.

  Bush had the air of a kid trapped inside on a rainy day. He walked through the snow, with Doro and her husband, Bill LeBlond, to some horrid housing project—condos, or townhouses—the nearest evidence of civilization (or at least Reagan-era lending policies). Bush was hunting voters, but the condo-stalag was new and unpeopled. So, with son-in-law Bill, who was a budding builder in Maine, he earnestly talked construction.

  Bush wondered what Dole and the others were doing in the snow. He was pretty sure Dole wasn’t taking the afternoon to walk with his daughter. Dole always struck Bush as a lonely man—didn’t have the same, well ... blessings as the Bush clan. Or values: “family” and “values” were words in near equation to Bush. He couldn’t figure how it was for Dole. ... That look he’d seen on Dole’s face when Dole came at him, in the Senate, waving that Wittgraf press release ... “My wife!” ... Dole was upset, sure—but it wasn’t like he wanted explanation. Didn’t want to talk—you do that in private ... decent guys do. Bush called it “that stunt Dole pulled”—like it was bad taste ... bad form! ... Dole was acting like a bully.

  Friday night, Bush went over a new speech with Peggy Noonan. The speech attacked Dole ... the language made Bush edgy, so he fiddled with it, made it ungainly—but he made it something he could say.

  “I don’t want to say he’s a bad guy,” he told Peggy. Bush’s voice held no protest—more like explanation—he was searching: not a bad man ... just not the right man.

  That night, Junior called again about the ad:

  “Yeah, I was watching TV,” Bush said. “A lot of the others are more negative. I mean, if you put it in context ...”

  Saturday morning, before Bush left for the north of the state, Atwater and Ailes were in urgent conference in the hotel hallway. (Ailes had come out from under editing “Ask George Bush.”)... “Look,” Ailes said. “I can tell him he needs this ad. But me supporting it, just sounds like I made the damn thing ...”

  “Goddam, Ah ’gree with you!” Atwater said. “We gotta, uh, kick ’em in the nuts!”

  They went together into the VP suite. This time Teeter said they were behind—maybe five points ...

  “Shit,” Bush said to the floor. “I thought ...”

  “There’s been slippage,” Teeter said. “There’s enough undecideds to go either way, but if you look at ...”

  “Mr. Vahz Pres’ent, you may not wanna hear this from me, but Ah can’t go out of this room without ...”

  “Look,” Sununu said, “if it’s a problem of being negative ...”

  Bush was slumped in a chair. The problem was how it was going to look. “The press is gonna say we’re desperate. Have we checked those facts?”

  Ailes was going to wade in again: the ad was no more than a statement that ...

  But ... that’s when they got the word. Actually, Ailes never caught the word—from Bush.

  Bush was saying, “... this is your business, not mine ...”

  As Ailes would recall: “Atwater just ran out of that room like a scalded goddam dog.”

  Ailes and Sununu caught up with Lee in the hallway.

  “Can we get it on?”

  Traffic departments at the TV stations were closed for the weekend. By Monday, of course, it would be too late.

  “I got a friend at one station in Boston,” Ailes said. “Twenty years I know the guy ...”

  “Lemme see,” Sununu said, “what I can do with Channel Nine.” That was the only station in New Hampshire. Sununu wore his accustomed smirk of control. “I think I may be able to help.”

  In fact, Sununu knew he could get the ad on Channel Nine. One month before, the station had asked for an interview with the Vice President. Sununu brought Bush down from Maine on a Sunday. They taped the interview, and another segment for that night’s news. Then they hung around for another hour while the Veep posed for pictures with every staffer at the station. He posed with their children. In Washington, he wrote personal notes for every photo.

  Now, that ... was see-me-touch-me-feel-me.

  The Straddle Ad would go on the air that same afternoon.

  On the long ride over the mountains to Wolfeboro, Peggy Noonan sat next to Bush in the limo. Teeter faced Bush on a jump seat. Bush was silent. Peggy read the papers—the stories about Haig backing Dole. She got to a quote, something Haig said to Dole (someone overheard them on stage, after all) ... “Well,” Haig had said, “I did as much damage as I could.”

  “Mr. Vice President,” Peggy said. “Have you seen this?”

  Bush looked at the quote. Then he looked at Teeter, at Peggy, then he stared out the window.

  “That’s sick,” he said.

  Doing damage ... to his life, his reputation. Didn’t that just show?

  Lee Atwater was, at that moment, buying eighteen-hundred points of air-time for the Straddle Ad. That meant hundreds of thousands of dollars. More important, it meant the average New Hampshireman with a TV would see Bob Dole made a two-faced liar eighteen times over the next sixty hours.

  That was different ... that was just a comparative ad.

  Anyway, after the smoke cleared, Sununu said the ad wasn’t really crucial—just one more positive statement of Bush’s tax principles. Sununu said that often. Sununu was a guy who showed judgment, Bush thought. The Veep mentioned, amid the family, that Sununu would make a good Chief of Staff. Meanwhile, Sununu was increasingly in evidence at Bush, Inc. By the spring, he would become a Campaign Cochairman, a de facto seventh on the Gee-Six.

  By that time, Bush, too, would decide that New Hampshire turned, in the end, because of all the friends he’d made. All those contacts Sununu talked about. See-me-feely ... whatever that was. Bush said: “We didn’t win because of that ad.”

  That was the only fight he ever had with Ailes. It got pretty hot: “Let’s don’t rewrite history,” Ailes said.

  “I didn’t win because of that ad.”

  Ailes had to drop it. “Well,” he said, “let’s just say it didn’t hurt.”

  111

  Sandbagged

  THAT WEEKEND, DOLE FELT it slipping away. Before he ever saw the Straddle Ad ... before network numbers showed his curve topping out and Bush on the way up again ... even with Wirthlin still telling him, “You’re going to win—three or four points, at least ... maybe big—ten or better.”

  “No, I’m not,” Dole said. “I’m going to lose by five or six.” What Dole felt was the heat slipping from his own events. What disappeared was that feeling of history pushing with him. He could still go out and say (as he did) that momentum was his: five days ago, Bush had led in New Hampshire by twenty points—now Bush’s lead was nothing ... but the reason for that momentum was back in Iowa—there was nothing new bringing voters to Dole.

  What Dole saw on TV were pictures of Bush—Bush touring with Ted Williams, Bush throwing snowballs, Bush at McDonald’s ... on a forklift ... driving a plow. The guy was showing he wasn’t going to curl up and die. There was news tape of busloads of college volunteers for Bush, arriving in state, met by Atwater. Each kid got a map and a kit and an area to cover. They were organized—t
wenty colleges! (Dole was lucky to have people who’d been to college.) The Bush operation put out tens of thousands of fliers and made twenty thousand calls, reminding voters to watch “Ask George Bush.” It was an obvious phony, a “town meeting” of Ailes-town ... but by the time the Bushies had thumped the tub so hard, the TV ran snips of the thing like it was news!

  Dole did his events—schools, old-age homes, town halls—remembering to say, at almost every stop, that Bob Dole was not going to raise taxes. He’d look for revenue—anyone facing a deficit had to look everywhere he could—but Dole would not raise the rates in the new income-tax law. The crowds applauded—good crowds—hundreds of people in a little town! But, as Dole muttered in the car, he was “dipping the ocean with a spoon.” At that moment, Bush might be reaching a hundred thousand viewers with the message that Dole could not wait to get at their wallets.

  By that weekend, even Rudman’s people were bitching: their plan had been ignored—they were sold out! Where was Dole’s tax ad? Rudman himself came at Dole to complain about Brock. “Even a half-baked Senate campaign can turn an ad around in two days!” Dole just said: “What can I do now?” ... In fact, he had an attack ad on Bush—the Footprints Ad: boots crunching through snow while a narrator ran through Bush’s résumé ... the last shot showing the snow—undisturbed. (Bush never left any footprints, despite all those Important Jobs.) The ad was ready before the week began, but Rudman said it was too negative. (They were winning! Bob had to Be Nice!) ... Now it was too late. Dole hadn’t bought airtime.

  There was one chance to send a message, statewide: a televised debate at St. Anselm College. Dole spent most of ninety minutes trying to Be Nice ... and angling for a chance to answer Bush on taxes. But all of a sudden, from Dole’s other side, Pete du Pont pulled out a copy of the standard New Hampshire no-tax pledge—and poked it at Dole.

  “Sign it,” du Pont said.

  Dole wasn’t going to sign anything—couldn’t hold it down to sign it, couldn’t read it without his glasses! (If Dole were the kind to sign whatever they handed him, he could have saved himself a huge headache on the INF treaty—he could have signed on, like Bush, before he’d even seen the thing.)

  But now he was squinting at this paper, on stage, on TV—with du Pont and everyone else staring at him ... what was he supposed to do? This kind of stunt was fine for du Pont. But if Dole got to be President, he was going to have to close a gap of $200 billion a year.

  Dole let the paper drop from his gaze. “Give it to George,” he said. “I’d have to read it first.”

  Good line. Got a laugh. And Dole lost his chance to make his point on taxes.

  Dole would replay that scene in his head for years afterward. Sometimes he’d lie awake at night, thinking what he could have said. Maybe he should have signed the damn thing.

  It was certainly bad politics to refuse—his supporters said it killed his chances in New Hampshire. They said it was the only time in ’88 that anyone lost on a matter of public policy.

  He did lose, decisively. By Tuesday, it wasn’t close, though Dole kept hoping it wasn’t true—maybe the feeling in his belly was wrong, things had changed, or ... maybe his Big Guys were right! There were Wirthlin’s numbers in the paper, again: Dole was going to win!

  By Tuesday, it came clear with a sickening lurch that the big mistake was saying—ever—Dole was going to win. If Dole could have set his goal for the week to cutting into Bush’s lead, he might have looked terrific. But it wasn’t Dole who said—aloud—he was going to win. That’s what he had Big Guys for. That’s what people told Dole to do: find some guys and turn the campaign over. Well, he did that! ... What’d it get him?

  They’d sat there all weekend and done nothing ... while Bush killed him! Seemed like every ten minutes on TV: Bob Dole was gonna raise your taxes! Bob Dole wouldn’t back Reagan on the INF! Bob Dole would raise the price of heating oil ... for God’s sake, in the middle of winter! Bush might as well have said that Dole liked to bury children in ice! ... Bush and Ailes ... killed him ... while Dole and his Big Guys sat in their hotel.

  Dole did his events that Tuesday morning—enough to get on TV ... then it was lunch, and back to the hotel for a meeting with the savants. Bill Brock was there, along with the Political Director he’d hired (another twelve grand a month), Bernie Windon. There were a couple of true Dole-folk who shrank into the woodwork, as they did whenever high Klingons were present. Rudman’s smart guys were in and out, with news from local polling places. Wirthlin was there, of course, as was Dole’s old pollster, Tully Plesser—both calling friends at the networks for news of the exit polls. David Keene, Dole’s right-winger consultant, flew up from D.C. He was drafting a statement (“We’ve come a long way ... proud of our volunteers ...”) for Dole to use if the news was true—if he had fallen short.

  Keene detested Brock and disrespected Windon—not just as ideological sellouts, but incompetents, wastrels, and failures. Rudman’s people were furious at Wirthlin, contemptuous of the Dole command that pissed away this chance in New Hampshire. The true and humble Dole-folk reviled all Klingons and regarded the New Hampshire ops with secret but satisfying sneers of comeuppance—those were the know-it-alls who tried to tell Bob Dole what to do! ... That evening, CNN reported “a high official in the Dole campaign said this election was kicked away by people who didn’t know what they were doing.” The source might have been any man in that room. (The sad fact—Riker breathed the word amid the faithful: the “high official” was Dole.)

  Dole was sitting on the luggage bench at the foot of his bed while this gaggle of helpers discussed his prospects. That meant he had his back to half of them. That was okay. They tell you, you’ve got to hand the campaign over ... till you lose—then it’s your fault.

  He thought it was his fault—he could have signed that paper from du Pont. He could have insisted they make the ad about taxes. He could have ordered them to run the ad about Bush. They tell you, people don’t like that kind of ad—maybe they don’t. But they watch it. Bush knew that—his people did. Dole thought it would have been different if he’d had an Atwater, someone to carry the attack. Dole couldn’t get Brock to answer Atwater—Brock thought it was beneath him. Dole said, “I’ll do it myself.” Then everybody’s wringing their hands: Oh, no! Senator’s got to Be Nice! He was nice. No one answered Atwater.

  But nobody’s got to be nice when they’re kickin’ you in the face! A President’s got to be tough. People didn’t know Dole was tough. People knew what they saw on TV—they thought Bob Dole was a liar. Bush made him a liar. All the while, they told Bob Dole he was winning—so he sat on his hands and took it.

  “Look,” Keene was saying, “we get through Super Tuesday if we target right, we got four million for media, if you target that, we get back to the Midwest with a spending edge, and then ...”

  Brock said: “We’ve got eight hundred thousand.”

  Dole looked up, his eyes on the wall opposite. He didn’t speak. He looked like he’d frozen.

  “Eight hundred thousand for Super Tuesday?” Keene was humphing—he wanted it clear whose doing this was. “Well, if I were you, I’d start cannibalizing everything I could get my hands on. We gotta have at least ...”

  Brock said, “Eight hundred thousand for the campaign,”

  “Total?”

  “There’s four million budget!”

  “Things have changed.”

  Dole knew things changed last fall, when he handed it over ... changed at L Street—had to rent another floor of that building, glass walls. You walked in, there were glass walls, two or three layers, you could look through, past the valets and flunkies, to Bill Brock. Cars waiting downstairs—limos, drivers, guys standing around ... staff, consultants. Clink said it cost a hundred thousand a day just to keep the doors open. Hands off! ... Dole was hands off—and they spent his money.

  He turned it over and they cut his throat!

  He would never do that again.

  When would he ev
er have the chance again?

  It was over. The Big Guys were talking about the South, Super Tuesday, Illinois. But Dole knew it was over. The way Bush was organized down South, Dole’s only chance was to win New Hampshire, to win everything on the way to Super Tuesday. Dole didn’t speak again in that meeting. Didn’t talk to Brock that afternoon.

  That night, George Bush won New Hampshire by nine points. Dole spent the night trying to be gracious: he hit his marks, he made his statement, he thanked his volunteers and supporters, he vowed to go on. He smiled ruefully and told the cameras: he’d made up a lot of ground in a week—he never expected things to be easy.

  At the end of the night, the very end ... he was on live remote with NBC ... and who was next to Brokaw—beaming like the cohost of the big election special? George Bush! ... But Dole didn’t know that. He had no monitor ... no one warned him. He was sandbagged.

  Brokaw said to Bush: Any message for Dole?

  “Naw, just wish him well,” Bush said. “And meet him in the South.”

  Then, Brokaw and Bush, both smiling, turned toward the monitors—to see Dole ... but he couldn’t see them. He was sitting in a hotel room, looking at a camera lens. The talk in his earpiece sounded like the chatter before any interview:

  Senator, can we get a mike check? ...

  Senator, can you hear Tom? ...

  And then Brokaw’s voice:

  Senator? Any message for the Vice President?

  It was Dole’s face on the air—but he didn’t know that. ... The camera caught the dark flash in Dole’s eyes, as he said:

  “Yeah. Stop lying about my record.”

  Dole said later, he deserved one chance to tell the truth.

  Elizabeth said later, Bob was so tired ... he was not himself.

  Of course, the wise-guy community said right away, Dole was a hatchet man. New Hampshire proved, the voters saw, Dole could never learn to Be Nice.