What It Takes

by Richard Ben Cramer

  Al got half a standing ovation, and he started working the front of the room, tending generally out the door and south, to Florida. But he was busy about it—he couldn’t seem to get gone. He kept acting surprised and tickled to see the next person who wanted his hand. Why, gosh! It’s good to see you!

  Meanwhile, Hart was introduced, and he got a quarter of a standing O. Only half the folks were clapping at all. The rest were talking.

  “It is with a note of sadness,” Hart began, “that we must acknowledge that our Party has won only one national election since 1964. ... Will we win this time?”

  The believers, people who were listening, readied their tribal affirmative cheer.

  “The answer is no,” Hart said. “We will not win this election ... with slogans and platitudes.”

  The noise in the place dropped a notch, probably from shock: Hey! They hadn’t come to hear any downers!

  “We will inherit the Republican legacy of debt and deficit ... we are going to have to pay taxes on luxuries. We are going to have to put a ten-dollar-a-barrel tax on imported oil, to avoid losing lives unnecessarily in the Persian Gulf...

  “We must reform our military to a true national security force that can fight, if called upon, in a Third World arena ...

  “... and that is why, at the University of North Carolina, I proposed a voluntary national service, so young people, and all people, can give something back to this country.”

  They started to applaud him. Not all, to be sure. But it shut some more people up. There were actually hundreds of people trying to listen. Hart was telling them that he knew it was harder to vote for him now. ... “But I stay on because I love this country. And I believe that the Democratic Party represents the best hope for our nation.”

  With his chin out and his voice high and clear, he quoted Winston Churchill: “Never give up. Never give up. Never ... never ... never give up ...”

  The applause started again, and this time it didn’t stop, but built unaccountably—now people were standing. From the podium, Hart stared out over the hall, startled and pleased. Then he saw that the people standing were faced not toward him, but toward the corner, where the former Governor, Terry Sanford, had entered.

  Hart stood waiting while Sanford climbed to the head table and acknowledged the applause. Sanford raised his arms above his head, and the cheering swelled. Then he reached down and grabbed the right arm of Al Gore. (He was still there!) He raised Gore’s arm up with his.

  On the other side of Gore, Hart reached down and grabbed for Al’s left hand, so the three could stand with arms raised in tableau. But Gore yanked his left arm down and pulled his hand away. Hart flushed red, smiled shyly, and turned away.

  Two nights before Super Tuesday, from his hotel room, Hart returned a call from Roy Romer, his home-state Governor in Colorado. Romer told him he was going to endorse Dukakis—within twelve hours, 7:00 A.M., Monday ... the day before Super Tuesday.

  Hart’s face fell. He was stricken. He said nothing at first. Then, stiffly, “ ’Preciate the call, Roy.”

  One day before Super Tuesday—his home state! It was a personal embarrassment. The Colorado primary was almost a month away! Why now? Because Hart was still in the race? ... Romer said Dukakis wanted it now.

  Mike Stratton was already on the phone to Romer’s Chief of Staff, just to let him know: Hart still had a lot of friends in Colorado—they kick Hart now, they could break a toe. Subtlety was not Stratton’s long suit. Hart turned to Bernie the Attorney: “What do you think?”

  “It’s unfair,” Bernie said. “It’s unnecessary. It’s bullshit. What purpose does it serve?”

  There was no purpose, Hart thought. It was just ... mean. He ought to stay in—just for one more debate, just to turn to Dukakis and ask him: “What are you going to do, Mike? What are you going to do about soldiers who can’t read their manuals? Call a conference in Davenport? Start an enterprise zone? What are you going to do about the countries you’ve only read about, where the bulk of the world is living, where the battles are going to be fought? What are you going to do about Gorbachev? ...”

  But what for? Just to give back meanness for meanness? That was not Hart. ... Mean was the cautious median, the safe zone between the poles of the old ideas—the average, the well-worn path, the same old down-the-middle that Hart had fought, since the start, since RFK ... twenty years!

  And now they said Hart was hurting the Party?

  Stratton was dialing again, stabbing the phone with his thick fighter’s fingers, making the keypad clack ... the sound of toes breaking. He got the Chief of Staff to Tim Wirth, Hart’s successor in the Senate. “Well, I thought Tim ought to have some warning ...” (Translation: Wake up! You let Romer get on board with Dukakis, and Wirth will be hanging out there all alone!) Stratton was making sure this would be a long night for the Governor.

  It was going to be a long night for Hart, too. ... It would be different if there were some way to turn it around. Hart couldn’t see the steps. ... He’d thought of a major speech, but not if TV wouldn’t cover. He could ask to go on Nightline, but why should they do it? He could concentrate on one state—say, Connecticut, where he won 121 out of 122 townships last time ... but no, he knew, people voted nationally. That’s why Al Gore’s southern strategy was wrong: they were all in the same media tangle. Hart could try to find a major figure, someone to say: “Come on! Give the guy a chance!” But who? Safire came as close as he could—really stuck his neck out ... nothing happened. Iacocca? Cronkite? ... Hart made his head hurt, trying to think of the way.

  They looked at him now, and they just saw his ... unelectability. Bernie the Attorney called it “the Tinkerbell problem.” They didn’t believe Hart could fly. And if they didn’t believe ... well, then, Hart could not fly.

  Hart couldn’t allow himself even that thin cushion of metaphor. The papers printed the candidates’ schedules—but not his. He couldn’t get on TV anymore—even in the wrap-ups. “Someone in New York has decided,” Hart said. “I just don’t matter anymore.”

  The night before Super Tuesday, Hart was in the bar of the airport Hilton, near El Paso. Clunky columns sheathed with mirrors held up an eight-foot ceiling that made the whole place feel sweaty and close. The bit of air between the tables and ceiling was pink with tremulous neon light, spiked with weird hanging lamps of postindustrial chrome, and loud with lite-rock guitars. The chairs were undersized, wheeled, bulbous pink pods. The waitress was oversized in a see-through blouse and a short skirt that squeezed the flesh of her legs. Hart and a writer were the only customers.

  He drank tequila, up, with lime and salt. He was near the peak of the White Lightning Curve, ready to talk about awful truths.

  This was the truth:

  He would have to get out. His dream was over. He would not be President. He never wanted to say it, to let go of that... he’d given his life to that. “But I don’t want another round of editorials and op-ed pieces, day after Super Tuesday, saying I’m obsessed, I’m ridiculous, I’m pathetic. ...”

  Could they hurt him anymore?

  Yes, they hurt. And in the end, they could kill his ideas.

  Between his two ’88 campaigns, he’d shopped a book proposal around—no takers. ... Then a woman from the New York Times Syndicate called to talk to Hart about a column. She was sure it would be a big winner. He sketched out thirty-six columns ... but then he heard nothing. She finally called to say, all reactions were negative. There was no place for Hart’s column. ... Finally, there was an agent in New Jersey who worked hard to put him on the lecture circuit. ... “And when I finally did go out to speak, no less a publication than the L.A. Times editorialized: ‘Sit down, Gary. You have nothing to say. You have no place in public life in this country.’

  “They can take my platform away, altogether. ...

  “I’m in a struggle to the death over who I am. And I feel my opponent is the press, who cannot allow me to define myself—they have a stake in this. They’re all on
record, and they can’t bear to see me reemerge as a serious person in this country, because they went so far out and said such terrible things. They can’t allow me to succeed.”

  The writer asked about Hart’s own argument: that he was the only reform candidate, that sooner or later, when it narrowed down, they would have to pay attention.

  “You don’t understand,” Hart said. “I’m making these things up as I go along. I got up in front of the cameras after I got one percent in Iowa, and I had no idea what I was going to say. Out came this notion that I was the only reform candidate—happened to be true. It’s the muse. The muse was with me that night.

  “But ... I don’t know how it can happen.

  “Do you know, Mike Stratton came out here to tell me that all my friends want me to get out now? That’s the message. ...” Hart was staring at the rime on his tequila glass.

  Said his companion: “What’s the point of being the stubbornest man in the world if you have to start listening to your friends?”

  “Really?” he said. “The stubbornest?” He looked more cheerful. “Well ... I’m going upstairs.” His eyebrows leapt once, with the joke. “Big day, tomorrow.”

  It would be a big day ... but not for him. In twenty races, Hart would gather, total, three percent. His best state would be Texas, with five percent—but no wins in any district, no delegates anywhere. And three days thereafter, at a calm press conference in Denver, Hart would get out ... and let go his life ... with no commotion, an absence of noise—with the sad and final quiet of a man in deep water who ceases to kick.

  18

  The Alamo

  DICK KNEW IT WASN’T going to work—even while the polls were still good ... in fact, they were on the rise after his win in South Dakota, and the numbers said he had a chance everywhere ... at least in Texas, Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma, Arkansas, even Louisiana. It was Gephardt and Dukakis, with Gore trailing badly ... and Jackson was solid, though the polls would miss many of his voters. The killers were no twitchier than usual. Money was an awful strain, a constant disappointment: those southern bigs who said they’d be there if Dick won Iowa ... well, where were they? ... But neither was that different than usual. The press was actually better: the big-feet and pundits had Gephardt in the mix—somewhere along the line, he stopped having to prove he was a serious candidate (everybody knew Gephardt would be a major player on Super Tuesday! Newsweek made him the “smart-money favorite”) ... and camera crews were waiting at the airports.

  Still, he knew, it was somehow wrong—the feeling. That was the first to go: the feeling, inside ... that he could make a big, thumping difference. Happened the very first day.

  He left South Dakota and went to Waco, Texas—the district of his House buddy, Marvin Leath. And Marvin, God bless him, had a crowd that would have filled a ballpark! It was great ... they came for Marvin—didn’t know a thing about Dick ... but a hell of a crowd, and Dick felt fine.

  But then he got back on his little jet, and the next stop was Florida ... so he flew, and flew ... and he flew, and ... four hours in the air! And it dawned on Gephardt, the way it never did with schedules and maps: he had twelve days till Super Tuesday ... and twenty states would vote that day!

  And he was four hours in the air, to get to his second event ...

  And the next day, he’d do four stops in Florida, and he would be on the plane seven hours ...

  It dawned on Gephardt, he could spend twelve days on Florida alone ... and not even scratch the place! It dawned on Gephardt: he could not cover the ground. He could show up in this media market, or that media market, make a hell of a speech. ... But what about the other seventy-five markets?

  And that was the first pillar of his life to slide out from under him—maybe the most unsettling, because it had to do with him ... and when that history-denting difference went out of his own days and nights, when that strength left him ... well, what he felt was helpless.

  After that, it was like one of those crash scenes, where you see the kid on his bicycle ... it’s all in slow-motion ... but so is your foot on its way to the brake ... and the wheel when you yank it... and the car tipping over ... and the tree, the ditch ...

  You can see the whole damn thing going wrong—and there is ... nothing you can do!

  He wasn’t stupid. He knew he’d have to win it on TV.

  But this wasn’t like Super Tuesday four years before, when Gary Hart, winner of the Iowa bump, was also winner of New Hampshire ... he was cleaning Fritz Mondale’s clock ... that was the story. Hart had network news every night. (And that meant he had a dozen volunteers in D.C., just ripping open envelopes to get to the checks.) ... But with Gephardt’s pitiful Iowa bump, he couldn’t get more than ten seconds on the news—usually a ten-second clip in a roundup, meant to show how this whole campaign sucked wind.

  So the only chance was his own paid TV—the magic bullets! But that took money ... which he didn’t have. This wasn’t a matter of an extra ten thousand. He’d wheedled and begged almost a million for Super Tuesday, but that just spread him around seven states so thin ... you might see a Gephardt ad once a night. His killers had decided they couldn’t afford the bio ad. They had to cut the Hyundai magic to thirty seconds ... which basically left just a smile and a threat. They taped an endorsement from Marvin Leath, which they ran all over Texas (even though nine-tenths of Texas had no idea who the hell Leath was). They taped an endorsement from Claude Pepper, but they only had the money to run it in South Florida (where Michael Dukakis’s marriage to a Jewess had already sewn up the senior sunbirds in their condos).

  What could Dick do? ... Spend twelve hours a day in a motel in Atlanta, working the phones for money? Not likely. His schedule averaged out between one and two thousand miles a day. Anyway, it didn’t seem to matter who he called, how often—or what was said. The commitments only lasted until he hung up. So he scheduled another fund-raiser in St. Louis, and another in Springfield, Missouri ... raised another quarter-million ... but that just burned one day out of twelve in the one state he shouldn’t have had to visit at all.

  That was the day he said, on the plane, with a bitter tone that startled his crew: “If they’d told me I’d have to raise ten million ... I wouldn’t have run!”

  There was a new edge of darkness to his humor, like when he visited Texarkana and did the expected photo op, standing with one foot in Texas, one in Arkansas, and said, through too thin a smile, to Trippi: “Is this our idea of covering two states?”

  There was an unwonted snappishness to his answers on his tax votes, abortion, the MX missile ... he’d get the flip-flop questions everywhere he went now ... that’s how he knew Gore’s ads were on the air.

  It seemed like Gore had a new persona every month: first was Herald-of-the-High-Tech-Future ... that bombed. Then he tried the hawkish Voice-of-the-Sunbelt ... apparently didn’t play in the polls. Anyway, by Super Tuesday, Al was Defender-of-the-Working-Man! And that meant Gore was head-to-head with Gephardt for the same votes. So Al borrowed his way to a two-million-dollar budget ... and used the bulk of that to dump on Gephardt’s head.

  And Gore was only the thunder to Dukakis’s lightning bolts. The Duke’s people made a killer ad. They hired an acrobat, gave him a strawberry-red wig, and put him in a suit. And then they filmed him, physically flipping and flopping all over a studio ... while a narrator read out a half-dozen back-and-forth Gephardt votes. Gorgeous! ... So the Duke had another three million dollars to spend, dumping on Gephardt’s head.

  What did Dick have? ... Well, in the end, he scraped up $80,000 to run some pitiful ten-second kamikaze ads on Dukakis. Forget about answering the charges against Dick Gephardt! All he could say was, the Duke’s campaign was the one that smeared Joe Biden ... and a Dukakis op was accused of trying to infiltrate Paul Simon’s campaign ... and now Dukakis was trying to smear Dick Gephardt ... so don’t believe him. It was ugly ... and futile.

  No one who hadn’t lived through Iowa would understand what those charges me
ant ... and in ten seconds? Forget it! ... Anyway, the ad would only run once a night.

  When Reilly saw it, he knew Dukakis would never forget, or forgive ... no one was allowed to suggest that Michael Dukakis had somehow strayed from his moral axis. Reilly called the plane and got Trippi—Joe had to talk to Dick. If Gephardt ever thought of Vice President, on a ticket with the Duke ... that ad could never run.

  So, Trippi asked, gently as he could—no one likes to be the first to mention the V-word. It was dark in the plane, unaccountably cold, and Joe was mumbling around the subject. He said the ad was rough ... something had to be done, but ... there were some, uhhh ...

  Dick broke in: “You have a better idea?”

  Joe shook his head.

  “Then, don’t you think we ought to run it?”

  Trippi gathered himself. “Uh ... Reilly knows Dukakis, and I know Dukakis. I mean, Dick ... he’ll hate you. There’s a good chance he’ll hate you personally, and that means ... you just won’t have ...”

  Gephardt cut him off. “That’s okay. He’s not gonna be my Vice President, either.”

  So it was go ... but this was no magic bullet—not with $80,000 ... more like a BB, against cannon.

  In Texas, the weekend before Super Tuesday, Dick got an hour of downtime, another motel ... he flipped on the TV, got the news. But the news came between newscasts: one hour of TV, five ads from Gore and Dukakis, five shots to his belly.

  The Duke’s acrobat ad ...

  Gore’s charge that Dick tried to cut Social Security (a lie) ...

  A Duke ad slamming Dick for accepting money from PACs ...

  Over and over, and over, in Texas ... where Gephardt’s oil import fee ought to take off ... where his farm bill could make a difference ... but who knew anything about his bills? He’d come into Texas with a lead! Still could make a run of it in Texas! He knew he could! ... But how was he going to hold any votes with five ads against him in one hour!