Love & War

by James Carville

  I thought the recount was a good thing. I thought it actually resembled democracy in action, at least in the early days.

  “I happen to think that all of this is pretty good . . . The American people have produced a very close election. You can’t blame them. With close elections come recounts, come challenges, come all these things. That’s the necessity of it,” I said that morning on Meet the Press. “They’re proceeding under Florida law . . . We’ll never get a perfect count, but we can sure get a better count. And at the end of the day, if Governor Bush is elected president, as I said the other night on television, I believe I’ll be the drum major in his inaugural parade if he wants me to. But there’s no reason that we can’t proceed under the existing statutes to get as accurate a count as we possibly can. I can’t believe that anybody would object to that.”

  Mary didn’t like that a bit. She kept howling like some GOP banshee about the recount somehow undermining democracy and how you can’t “just keep counting and counting and counting until you get the result that you want.” Which is exactly the opposite of what the Bush people were doing—trying not to count all the votes so that they could get the result they wanted.

  It only grew worse in our house after that. The more tense things got in Florida, the more tense they got at home. I knew she was talking with a lot of the Bush people, including the ones running the show down in Florida. They were talking more than Mary and I were talking by then, that’s for sure.

  I got angrier and angrier as the process went on. If there had ever been an actual recount and Bush would have won, fine. I could have lived with it. But the way the Bush people and the Republicans in Florida used the judicial system to secure the election, it set my blood boiling.

  What got to me the most was this bullshit narrative that began to develop, thanks to the Bush people (my wife included) pushing it and the press adopting it. The narrative held that the Supreme Court had stepped in and did what it had to do in Bush v. Gore, but that it didn’t really matter because Bush was going to win anyway. The truth of it was that if there would have been a statewide recount, Gore would’ve won easily. And the Florida Supreme Court was going to rule for a statewide recount until the Supreme Court decided it would rather decide the election.

  I was in San Francisco when I got the word that the court had handed the election to Bush. I remember seething about it. I didn’t want to see anybody or talk to anybody. I couldn’t get over it. I’m not sure I ever really got over it. Even now, I’ll never say we “lost” the election, because we didn’t.

  That election year actually turned out decently for the Democrats. We picked up four seats in the Senate. Gore won the popular election by half a million votes, and let’s all be honest, he also won Florida. Or rather, would have won Florida if we’d have counted the votes like a true representative democracy.

  The recount soured everything. It was a weird time in the country, and certainly a difficult time in our marriage. The worst part was that when it finally ended we couldn’t just lick our wounds and move on, the way we always had in the past. I was still infuriated by the whole situation. And not only had my side just had an election victory pulled out from under it, I had a suspicion that I also was about to lose my wife to a new job in the White House for a president I sincerely didn’t believe should be president.

  MARY

  SO WHEN LIZ CHENEY called and said, “My father wants to talk to you,” I presumed it was an all-call to work on the transition from hell, so called because everyone knew it would be nothing but miserable. It was going to be a marathon at sprint speed—two-and-a-half months of work smooshed into an unfathomably few short weeks.

  Usually a newly elected administration has from the day after their November election victory until Inauguration Day in January to get its act together. Actually, the official transition process starts way earlier, immediately following the official nomination by each party’s respective national convention, when candidates for president and their senior staffs begin receiving daily briefings with info and intelligence accessible only to the president and his senior officeholders.

  In a civil and mature world (which is neither mandatory nor automatic in national politics), an informal transition starts even earlier, as soon as the candidates mathematically secure the delegates necessary for their respective nominations. That’s when incumbent administrations—if civil and mature—reach out to the unofficial candidates and their respective staffs to congratulate them and start an informal conversation, facilitating the later official one. It’s the right thing to do for the country and for the candidates, one of whom, immediately following their two-year, nonstop, mind-numbing and exhausting-to-the-bone election campaign, will be walking into a man-eating buzz saw.

  Digression for political newbies: you would be shocked at how little of the basic transition mechanics of a functioning democracy from one Leader of the Free World to another are taught in our very, very expensive public education system—or maybe you wouldn’t be. Anyway, deprived students, above are the basics—and everything you need to know—despite the political media and punditocracy’s endless attempts every four years to make the process unintelligible (yes, yes, guilty as charged, not proud of it) and more fraught with drama so the ratings (surprise!) climb as the whole not-so-confounding process unfolds.

  Meanwhile, it turns out there is something worse than a transition hell that’s smooshed into a few short weeks. And that is transitioning from an administration with a civility and maturity level lower than Animal House’s, a comparison that is actually a compliment to the outgoing Clinton administration.

  You think I’m being a partisan exaggerator? Well, would you call this mature and civil? Once into the White House, we found all the W’s had been stripped from our computer keyboards and our desks were full of molding garbage, uneaten fast food and/or porno—and those were only the cute stunts. The vice president’s offices were the worst because, as it turns out, Al Gore is not what you’d call graceful in defeat. Instead, he lived up to his reputation as a real loser.

  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

  As thrilled as I was to be presumably on Cheney’s short list for transition assignments, I had to take stock of the situation. Okay, I’ve got a new baby, I told myself. And I hadn’t experienced anything other than chronic fatigue for a long time. (FYI: a woman in her midforties does not “bounce back” right away after having a baby. My kids are leaving for college and I am still waiting for the bounce to happen.) Plus, I had a couple of years left on my CNN contract, a job that was lucrative and fit in well with all my overparenting tendencies. And then there was James. I had just lived through a couple of months with a rabid husband whose frothing didn’t stop with the election’s termination.

  At the same time, I was mindful of the wretched years my campaign colleagues had just been through and figured it was my duty to make a volunteer contribution to the transition, to join my buddies in hell not for the first time. And, at the very least, I wanted to see the Cheneys and congratulate them in person.

  Slightly nervous, but pumped up with victory adrenalin and joy in my heart for the Cheney family, I popped over to their town house in Virginia.

  My first verification that this was truly transition hell was the fact that it appeared the Cheneys’ town house was the transition. The vice president–elect, supported only by his immediate family and one landline—an ancient princess phone in their kitchen—was command central.

  He and Lynne were sitting together in their family room very calmly.

  I’m not sure what I expected, but his greeting was a surprise too.

  “We want you to come into the White House.”

  I’m not often speechless, but this left me breathless. I hope I said thank you, but all I remember wheezing out was something along the lines of “I have two babies at home. I have a family. A new house and an old husband.”

 
Not your optimal White House staff profile, let alone one befitting the well-known Cheney high standard.

  Lynne conveyed their rationale. She laid out the new administration’s sentiment. “We want people who have families; we have to always think of family. We need people in government who understand what a family is and how policies impact them.”

  Presumably my breathing resumed, but I must have looked confused. She went on to explain what that had to do with me. “We need your perspective, Mary. We need the perspective of a mother,” or words to that effect.

  “And we need your skills,” the vice president–elect chimed in.

  This is a truncated version of a longer, more coherent meeting, but suffice to say, I was left trying to recall the last time my mind had been so totally blown—and began having flashbacks to high school experiments with altered states. Waking up from my daze, I realized—wait—I am a full-fledged adult now. With adult responsibilities. Many of them. How many directions could a person be pulled?

  Nor had I any cravings for a White House job. The White House Power Job scene never held much allure for me. It is one around-the-clock, superserious, supercautious, by-the-books place. I am more cut out for seat-of-the-pants operations, high-adrenaline places with lots of all-nighters, like campaigns.

  On the other hand, I wanted desperately to work with Dick Cheney. My admiration for him was immeasurably vast and deep. In a world with no shortage of butt kissers, backstabbers and dimwits, he was a man of impeccable integrity and incomparable depth.

  Among other things, he had been a congressional leader, the youngest White House chief of staff in history as well as secretary of defense during the Gulf War. And while I can’t remember working with him in those years, I did know what it was like to be in his vicinity, a place of Zen-like calm and timeless, principled wisdom and purpose.

  He is a leader among men. I don’t know how else to say it.

  The only thing that could draw me to the White House was the chance to work for him. But it did vaguely occur to me that my years of disparate experiences, which seemed willy-nilly as they were unfolding (my father would always ask me, “When are you going to get a real job?”), might be uniquely useful to this administration.

  On the other hand, I had no further career ambitions, loved my later-in-life unexpected motherhood and marriage, and I was just too old to be poverty-stricken by government wages again. While I was mentally ticking through the long list of reasons a White House job was simply not possible, the single-minded political me was becoming breathless with anticipation at the prospect.

  And I knew right away what (low-pay, high-stress, husband-infuriating) job I wanted: to facilitate the integration of the vice president’s office with the West Wing. George W. Bush had made it clear his central reason for choosing Cheney was because he was a seasoned, mature politician who didn’t have his own agenda, and who could handle a big, important portfolio of issues. W wasn’t setting up a political heir. He was looking to govern with a solid policy partner.

  Integrating and “synergizing” the Office of the Vice President and the West Wing for maximum output and impact was an obviously logical but impossibly elusive undertaking. In all the previous White Houses I had interacted with, or watched over decades in Washington, those two power centers usually ended up detached to the point of being adversarial. It happened with Reagan and Bush. It happened with Bush and Quayle. It definitely happened with Clinton and Gore. Each started out connected at the hip with grand visions of brotherhood and good government, but, between the inevitable competing personal ambitions and policy agendas, the environment disintegrates into a miasma of counterproductivity.

  It happens in ways big and small. Petty policy disagreements and minor acts of selfish personal positioning evolve into internecine political death matches. Longtime colleagues and foxhole buddies morph into the Capulets and the Montagues. The typical dynamic is a slow trickle of distrust following the first midterms that swells into a tsunami of paranoia and double-dealing by the second term walk-up to the next presidential election.

  What I’m saying is that very quickly, for a host of different reasons, all well chronicled by White House gossips, the vice president’s office can quickly become a no-man’s-land.

  George W. Bush had lived through it with his father on both the vice presidential and presidential sides and knew the waste and pitfalls. If anyone could force White House–wide synergy, it would be that man I’d seen bend reality to his will with his force-of-nature resolve. But for the offices to be truly integrated, we were going to have to make changes, both obvious and subtle.

  Solving this kind of problem is totally in my preferred wheelhouse. What could it take? Six months, max?

  I already knew that my lifesaver in this out-of-the-blue disruption of our whole family life would be Geneva Watkins, my Nee Nee, the incredible, loving, patient, wonderful caregiver who was devoted to both of my babies and to James and me. Even before Matty was born, we had found her through a nanny agency—but she was more than that. She was a master at mothering and teaching me how to do it. She knew a baby was going to cry and stopped it just by entering the room. She was magic. She was love. And she was my ticket to making this all work. Without Nee Nee, I am 100 percent certain I would never have even considered the White House job, dream spot or not.

  Okay then. How do I break the news to James?

  Most wives or spouses can say, “Oh, what an incredible opportunity! We have a big decision here—we will have to work together and come up with a solution and isn’t it wonderful that we can!” My spousal option included that much, but then I would have to tack on something along the lines of “Taking the job will separate us for months, force more parenting responsibility on you, cut my income by 90 percent and preclude my active intervention between you and my critters you so loathe.” Hmmm. Not much there to work with, so I figured I would conclude with a sweetener, “But, but, but . . . it will be only six months. What do you think, sweetheart?”

  Sweet? Ha!

  For one thing, we still weren’t speaking since the searing recount experience. And, unlike me, he suspected I’d get a call and had preemptively, clearly and loudly made known his feelings about any possibility of any job other than the ones I already had. And they weren’t positive feelings.

  So why ask his opinion?

  I don’t remember how, or even if, we talked about it. But after that, I sure remember that we didn’t speak again, in any substantial way, until Memorial Day 2001.

  JAMES

  THE RECOUNT AND ALL the bitter feelings that came with it made it that much tougher to accept Mary’s talking about working in the Bush White House. Plus, it happened so quickly. Bush v. Gore got decided on December 12. By then, the Bush people already were moving fast to put everything in place.

  So it’s not like we had a bunch of time to talk about the job and really consider what it would mean for our family. Not that she was very interested in my advice, anyway. We were still hardly on speaking terms after the election.

  We spent part of the Christmas holiday that year out at our farm in Virginia. It felt good to get out of Washington after the intensity of the past six weeks, but even the fresh air and the scenery of the Shenandoah Valley didn’t do much to lift the tension.

  I remember it as one of the harder times in our marriage. We had an awfully nice life before the election. We were spending a lot of time with our two young kids. We’d have these long weekends together out at the farm. Mary and I had carved out careers in public speaking and on television, and we were making a good living.

  I didn’t need anything different in my life. And I sure didn’t need my wife working eighteen hours a day and taking a huge pay cut to do it. There were real costs involved for our family. Besides, I didn’t really like these people who were going to be running the country, even though I knew she was close with the Bush crowd. I rememb
er feeling just generally pissed off at the world in those days, and I didn’t do much to hide it.

  Mary kept saying it would last only a year at most. She promised she wouldn’t stay longer than that. She also promised that she’d make it home for dinner most nights and be around as much as possible for the girls. Promises, promises. I didn’t buy that shit for a moment. I knew what life was like in there. I didn’t think the Bush White House would be much different than any other in that regard.

  It’s a grueling existence. I’d been through it myself and seen my friends endure it. You’re up one day, down the next. They pay attention to you one day; they don’t pay attention the next. You’re in this meeting. You’re not in that meeting. Blah, blah, blah. Also, I knew there wasn’t any such thing as a normal workday in the White House. Maybe twelve-hour days, if you’re lucky and the world isn’t on fire. But you can bank on a lot of fourteen- and eighteen-hour days. And you can bank on not seeing much of your family. I knew all that.

  One of the things that you learn in a marriage is that if your spouse wants to do something you’ve just got to get with the program. Mary really wanted to do this. She wasn’t asking my permission. So I eventually just accepted it, even though I never pretended to like it. I got more accepting of it as the months went on, but I still missed our life the way it had been before.

  MARY

  MATTY WAS FIVE AND Emerson was two when I started my big, beautiful, exciting, White House dream job for two of the most honorable men and effective leaders I had ever known.