What It Takes

by Richard Ben Cramer

  Ailes had devined a fact about the Veep—it came clear while Ailes interviewed Bush for a bio ad. They were talking about World War II, about the bombing run over Chichi Jima. Bush recounted how he saw flames shoot along the wing of his plane, and smoke fill his cockpit.

  “Why didn’t you bail out?” Ailes asked.

  Bush didn’t pause, didn’t think, didn’t blink. “I hadn’t completed my mission,” he said.

  That’s when Ailes knew: if you gave Bush that sense of mission ... the only way you’d stop him, after that, was to kill him.

  So Ailes was working on the Veep. “Two things voters have to know about you,” Ailes said. “You can take a punch, and you can throw a punch. ... You’re gonna have to make the hit.”

  By the time they all arrived in Maine, the Gee-Six were collegially, collectively agreed: they would make the case for attack—right now. They would come at Bush from every angle, and convince him—or wear him down. Teeter would do the numbers. Atwater would show the ammo—he’d make Bush watch those tapes. Ailes would sketch out the language, the ads. Mosbacher would assure Bush that Party surrogates would sing the song. Fuller (Fuller was in!) would make sure the White House hummed along.

  All together, they would make George Bush go after Dukakis. It was their only hope! They had to do something! ... They gathered at dinner—the night before their first sit-down with Bush at Walker’s Point—and rehearsed their roles. They would not back down! They would all insist! They’d fight all week if they had to.

  They didn’t have to fight. From his terrace, Bush gazed out at the rocks and sea and said, mildly: “Well, you guys are the experts ...”

  Sure, he’d watch the focus-group tapes.

  He didn’t mind going after Dukakis.

  He didn’t need surrogates—he’d do the attack himself.

  It was over in five minutes.

  True, they sat around most of that day ... but there was nothing more to decide. On the schedule, there were five more days of meetings in Maine ... but that would be just blather with the issues groups. The real issues were settled over one cup of coffee.

  Atwater was on a plane for D.C. the next day. Lee was triumphant ... but mystified. He never even had to speak!

  What none of the white men could quite concede was that the issue was settled before coffee was served ... before any Gee-Sixes got to the big house, to tell George Bush what he had to do.

  Bush knew what he had to do.

  Bush would do what he had to, to win.

  If that meant mano a mano with Dukakis—so much the better. There, at last, was a message that meant something to Bush: That guy shouldn’t be President!

  It all went back to the view from that big house. (Maybe it was not entirely coincidence that the course was set at Walker’s Point.) All the research, the focus groups, were just detail, to Bush—had nothing to do with the decision. One look told Bush all he had to know.

  In the view from the Point, Dukakis was obviously a little outsider (Who was he? Where’d he ever been?) ... who did not know the world, as it was to George Bush.

  Dukakis was another one-worlder, blame-America-first, UN, World Court, human-rights liberal ... who was going to give away the store!

  Dukakis was another put-on-a-sweater, turn-down-the-thermostat, fifty-five-mile-an-hour, five-thousand-pages-of-Energy-Department-regs Governor ... who’d try to thin the mixture in the great economic engine.

  Dukakis was another brainy tax-and-tinker-technocrat Democrat ... who was going to ... screw ... everything ... up!

  Dukakis was ... Jimmy Carter.

  That solved a lot of problems for George Bush.

  Bush could vow (in fact, he did, while he hosted the press that weekend) that he’d labor to define himself ... he’d show the country what he believed in ... he’d work like the devil on that vision thing. ... But he wouldn’t have to. The Bush campaign would not be—could not be—about nothing ... as long as it was about Dukakis. He shouldn’t be President!

  From the moment Dukakis appeared in the bombsight, there would be no lack of mission. Bush would protect the heritance!

  If the W-word at the Point was Winning ... if there was only one man to tend the big house ... if there was, in every good family, one in each generation who must be steward ... then there must be one to take his turn at the helm of the great ship, and steer it on, unharmed, to the shores of well-being. Bush lived his life to be that man.

  There was a line that crept into his speeches, after that weekend. It never got famous, like the catchy bluster of “Read my lips!” ... but people in the crowds would look up when he said it ... there was such an (unusual) air of conviction in Bush’s voice. ... It came at the end of his praise for Ronald Reagan, how people felt differently about the U.S.A. now ... how different was the economy, the business climate, the tax code ... Bush would praise all these supposed achievements, and then say:

  “And I’m not going to let them take it away.”

  There was the mission! (It wasn’t just “me-me-me,” after all.) There was the message of the campaign, in one line. And that line made perfect sense to Bush—once “them” became Michael Dukakis.

  After that, Bush would do ... whatever it took.

  By the time that started to show, the white men had told everybody—everybody who was in-the-know—how they got together (collegially) up in Maine, on Memorial Day, and set the course ... they convinced George Bush.

  For the book writers and other keepers of the index entries of History, there were long, loving analyses of the focus groups, the people-meters, the attitude sampling, the ad testing ... the science behind the lightning bolts that leapt from trembling white fingers. There were accounts of the fateful dinner, where the Gee-Six hammered out the crucial consensus, the attack on Dukakis ... which they carried, thence, to Walker’s Point.

  It was all that loving, knowing science that let the newsmagazine savants declare this ... (ta dumm!) ... The Year of the Handler.

  It was the handlers describing their dinner.

  Of course, Bush had to eat, too ... but there wasn’t the same level of science: just a motorcade to Mabel’s Lobster Claw ... cheers on the porch ... Mabel made her usual fuss ... got everybody seated, got the Service squared away, and came over to shoot the shit with Bush.

  “George, do you know how to potty-train a Greek boy?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Do ka-ka!”

  Bush threw his head back and laughed at the ceiling. Then he motioned her close, and asked her, in a near whisper: “What’s fourteen inches long, and hangs in front of an asshole?”

  Mabel gave him a dirty look. He must have heard that one from her own cook!

  “Oh, George, I heard that! ... Dukakis’s tie!”

  128

  Monos Mou

  MICHAEL WAS DOING JUST enough. He was beating Jesse Jackson every week, every primary: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, West Virginia ... no mistakes! Dukakis meant to sweep every race, to the last checkered flag, in California, June 7. He meant to win enough delegates to be absolute master of his convention. He wouldn’t need help from any other candidate. He wouldn’t need anybody ... no deals! So he had to keep beating Jackson.

  Michael liked to win, and this was the easiest winning he’d ever done. Every Wednesday, front pages all over the country confirmed to him everything he’d done right. Every week, new polls showed him edging higher in a head-to-head contest with that hapless Bush. Every month, new Farmer-funders pushed Michael’s bank balance higher—twenty-two million ... twenty-five million ... until, at last, he’d raised the legal limit, twenty-seven million dollars (lucre like no Democrat ever had) ... after which, Farmer began to raise “soft money” for the Party. On the road, six or seven times a day, another group of greeting pols would tell Michael how excited they were about his chances, their chances, in November ... what a marvelous machine was the Dukakis campaign. What a marvelous candidate—three days a week!

  Actually, it was more like two, or two and
a half. The closer Michael got to the nomination, the harder he clung to his real life. (The day after he won New York, when Michael knew his miracle would happen, Al Gore wanted to meet, to make peace. Michael couldn’t spare the time. He had to fly at 7:00 A.M. back to Boston, his corner office ... where his crucial meeting dwelt for a half-hour upon spring shrubbery planting at the State House.) Whenever the issues staff wanted the Governor for a briefing on foreign policy or defense, Michael would insist: that was campaign time. Sure, he’d sit for a briefing (well, he’d sit for twenty minutes, then pick up a newspaper)—but they’d have to cancel Indiana. ... But they couldn’t cancel Indiana—because Robin Toner, in The New York Times, was already questioning where the hell Dukakis was spending his days (God forbid she find out, Michael hadn’t sat for a foreign-policy briefing in the last month and a half) ... Farmer and Kristin Demong needed Michael three nights, for another million dollars (Fine! But that was campaign time) ... and the Washington office could not explain to the Party powers why their nominee had not deigned to come to the capital once in the last two months. (Said the dean of smart guys, Robert Strauss: “Doesn’t he wanta call me?”) ... And, of course, that didn’t count things like strategy sessions, message, advertising, or communications in general, which Dukakis would never discuss for more than four minutes, anyway.

  Why should he? He was winning every week!

  There were folks who suggested to Michael (well, actually, they suggested to Estrich, or to Brountas, or to Kiley, or they’d call John Sasso in exile—Michael had no time for suggestions) that he might want to change his, uh ... priorities ... now that he bade fair to become the leader of, you know, the Free World—maybe he could scale back his work on the state sludge-dumping program, maybe leave off interviewing District Court judges, let someone else chair the next few meetings of the Governor’s Statewide Anti-Crime Council.

  Out of the question!

  In Michael’s view, the campaign was going fine! His problems were in the State House. What did all those campaign wise guys know about his revenue estimates for fiscal ’89? ... He was going to have a heck of a time closing that budget gap! ... Serious problems with the Senate President, Mr. Bulger ... a thorny dispute on aid to parochial schools. When Estrich had the temerity to suggest one extra day to meet with important pols in Washington (“Governor, those guys can kill us in the press!”), Michael reminded her about that extra weekend he’d given her when she got so panicky about Wisconsin.

  To Michael, this was just the standard whine about his schedule. The wise guys told him he had to win Iowa, or else! They cried alarums when he lost South Dakota ... when he lost Michigan to Jackson ... when he wouldn’t ratchet up his schedule for New York. But he never listened! Strong, steady Michael had won it his way ... he’d been correct!

  For God’s sake, he’d won Nebraska! ... “Do you know,” he asked a tableful of wise guys, in Boston, “how long it’s been since a Democrat won Nebraska? ...” (To their shame, none of the wise guys pointed out that Dukakis had not run against a Republican.)

  West Virginia—he won every county! Michael told his cabinet: “They love me in West Virginia!” (His Chief of Staff, John DeVillars, did suggest that the opposing candidate was black, and could have got lynched in West Virginia.)

  Anyway, the point was, they could try to tell him that people were watching him, now, in California ... now that he was the nominee, he had to start filling in the blanks ... say something to begin the fall campaign with a bang ... but Michael simply shrugged them off. Steady as she goes! The basic economic message (good-jobs-at-good-wages) would win California—and everywhere else.

  They could tell him he had to expand his circle—reach out to the leaders of the Party, broaden his base ... in fact, Estrich did put Dick Moe (the senior Mondale hand, late of the Gephardt campaign) on the plane with Michael for California ... and Congressman Tony Coelho came along (what a nose for a win!) ... but that didn’t mean Michael talked to them. In fact, as his entourage grew, Dukakis talked less and less to anyone. He’d sit in the front of his big plane (a different plane—this one had a bathroom in front, for him) ... and he’d do his State House paperwork ... or he’d read a newspaper ... one night, he balanced his checkbook.

  He just had to keep marching. ... One week into June, California and New Jersey would vote, and Michael would have his delegates.

  He just had to let people see the kinda guy he was.

  He just had to keep hold of his life.

  Then, the foundation of his life crumbled.

  In Los Angeles, Kitty took her morning walk, her left foot started to drag. She couldn’t get it to move properly. Her head was throbbing. She had hot flashes, chills. ... She’d felt the symptoms before. She tried to ignore them—like the drinking: it was just the stress. It would pass. It wasn’t a problem. ... Still, she couldn’t ignore this ... God! Multiple sclerosis! ... A brain tumor! ... She wasn’t sure she wanted to know. But she was scared now. She went to a doctor, had a scan. Two disks were pressed against her spinal cord. When the L.A. neurologist sent the tests to Michael’s old friend, Nick Zervas, head of neurosurgery at Mass General, Zervas ordered Kitty home.

  She made it back on Wednesday, six days before the California vote. When Zervas scheduled surgery (he said there was risk of paralysis), Michael got the word in San Francisco. He called Jackson and canceled their evening debate. He made it back to Boston by midnight. Motorcycle cops led his car down the Storrow Drive. Michael slept on a cot by his bride ... 6:00 A.M., they wheeled Kitty to the operating theater. Kitty’s sister, Jinny, sat with Michael in the hospital room. Michael spread his State House papers on a table and looked like he was working.

  “God,” Jinny said, “this came at the worst time ... just before California.”

  Michael looked up. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Without her, I don’t want to do anything.”

  Nick Zervas called Michael with updates every hour or so. They were taking bone from Kitty’s hip, they were cutting open her neck, they were replacing her disks with the extra bone ... it looked okay, Nick said. After each call, Michael would go back to work. Kitty was on that table more than four hours.

  He should have known. He blamed himself. He told her to see a doctor! He should have made her slow down. ... Staff from the State House came to Michael for instructions on the press. There was a crowd downstairs. The hospital switchboard was overwhelmed, calls from Washington, flowers arriving ... Michael didn’t want to hear about that. ... Finally, Zervas came back, said it looked fine. “As soon as she can wiggle her fingers and toes, we’ll be all set.” Zervas had scans and X-rays to show ... Michael might want to talk to the press. “No,” Michael said. “You talk. It’s not my place.” He just wanted to see his bride.

  In Intensive Care, she asked for a raspberry Popsicle. Michael was beaming. The nurses went running to the dieticians, who went running to find her Popsicle. “I feel like a Mack truck hit me,” Kitty said. Zervas asked: Could she wiggle her toes? Kitty wiggled. Her eyes were shining. Michael thought she looked like a queen. “I need an ice cream and a massage,” she said. “Well, we can do the former—I think ...” said Michael. He looked twenty years younger. His voice had snap. “The other [his eyebrows danced] ... that’ll have to wait.” The dieticians were still in a lather for Kitty’s raspberry Popsicle. Jinny told them: “You know, she’d take grape.”

  They just couldn’t do enough at the hospital. They were wonderful. Kitty had a big room with a view of the Charles River. Michael had to leave for a fund-raiser. But the staff was around, the Secret Service. Kitty got her friends on the phone, collect, from Intensive Care. (If they were on their phones, operators broke in and told them to get off the line—Kitty Dukakis wanted to talk to them!) Flowers came in and out by the stretcher-load. Kitty’s room looked like a Mafia funeral. Jesse Jackson sent a ficus tree as tall as Michael. Thousands of letters, cards, telegrams. Press and citizens crowded the lobbies. Patients from other floors hobbled by, ju
st to get a glimpse of Kitty. Kitty’s dad flew back from California. He rushed in and saw his daughter, amid the flowers ... she looked wonderful! “How’re you feeling,” Harry said. Kitty said: “Turn on the television. Dad. They’ve been talking about me all day.”

  “You know, Kitty,” said Harry, who’d lived his life on stage—no mean showman was Harry Dickson—“you have a real talent for making a career out of catastrophe.”

  Jinny found it so strange what was happening to her sister. Not just now, in the hospital—but through the whole campaign. The spotlight, attention, tension—Jinny could see her changing. Kitty was so ... queenly, more and more, every day ... like their mother! That attitude ... a-lady-does-not-go-out-without-gloves bearing ... Jinny never thought she’d see it from Kitty! Kitty was always the softie, the emotional case: she’d burst into tears at the thought of unhappiness—for anyone. She still had that impulse to help. That weekend, she was supposed to speak at the high school graduation of the Vietnamese refugee whom she’d rescued from a camp in Thailand. He was graduating with a full four-year scholarship to Brandeis. Kitty was so proud. She couldn’t look at a picture of him without crying. ... In her hospital room, she read to Jinny the speech she’d planned for the graduation ... and they both cried. That’s how it always was, with them. ... But the way Kitty arranged now, to have a staff person do the speech for her ... the way she told him exactly how she wanted it done, exactly what she wanted in the press, what she didn’t want—the way her staff buzzed around, told her how her last speech was so great, the way they talked about her interviews, TV shows, messages from leaders all over the country, scheduling sessions, a new Press Secretary—the way her sister handled it, that was ... a new Kitty.

  Jinny didn’t know the half.

  A few days into her recovery at Mass General, Kitty summoned Susan Estrich to the hospital. She wanted to talk about her staff. So Estrich schlepped across the river, to present herself.