One Car Caravan - On the Road with the 2004 Democrats Before America Tunes In

by Walter Shapiro

  Running for president requires, among other essential ingredi­ents, a quart of Vermont maple syrup. As we cross the New Hampshire line en route to the annual dinner of the Cheshire County Democrats in Keene, Kate O'Connor suddenly remembers that she has forgotten to bring Dean's contribution for the silent auction. Her emergency solution: a cell phone call to her sister in nearby Rutland instructing her to pick up the emblematic Ver­mont product on her way to the dinner. An hour later, the jug of syrup, autographed by Dean, sits awaiting bids on a white paper-covered table in Keene, along with a North Carolina T-shirt signed by Edwards, a Kerry-donated Senate paperweight, a Dick Gephardt souvenir plate and a remainder-table copy of Joe Lieberman's 2000 book, In Praise of Public Life.

  It is a tribute to the democratic vibrancy of the first primary state (or a reflection of the limited social possibilities in Keene) that 250 Democrats are willing to spend Saturday night at long tables in a non-air-conditioned former Masonic hall, dining on limp spaghetti and overcooked meatballs, all for the sake of their party. Despite the steamy temperature, these stalwarts are in no hurry to hear their featured speaker. This is New Hamp­shire, where presidential contenders come and go but local pol­itics endures forever, so there are individual stand-and-wave introductions of dozens of candidates for county commissioner and state representative, hokey rituals such as the raffle for the chrysanthemums that decorate the stage, plus full-length speeches by the candidates for senator and governor. Slipping outside for a breath of fresh air during the endless preliminaries, I am introduced to Andi Johnson, the organizer of the din­ner and a member of the Keene city council. She confesses that the local party had a desperate time searching for the main speaker before settling for Dean. As she puts it, "Dean's okay, I guess. But he's been here a lot—and, well, we had hoped to do better."

  Jimmy Walker, New York City's Jazz Age mayor, claimed, "No girl was ever ruined by a book." But this middle-aged boy, as I have grown to be, certainly had his life upended by one. After reading Theodore White's The Making of the President 1960 as an adoles­cent, I began dreaming about enlisting in the privileged brother­hood of campaign reporters. To witness history being forged, to share the confidences of candidates on the cusp of the White House, to take part in the hype and hoopla of our quadrennial rite of democratic decision—that all seemed a splendid adven­ture. How noble, how naive. I was like a boy who grew up thrilling to stories about powerful locomotives and Casey Jones only to sign on with the railroads in the era of Amtrak. The job description may read the same, but it's not like it was in the age of coal-fired boilers.

  I have covered every presidential race since 1980, each time feeling more disheartened by the poll-propelled, focus-group-fixated mechanics of modern politics. My journalistic creden­tials, dangling from a chain around my neck, are in good order. But there is nothing ennobling about being in the middle of a hundred-person press pack, surrounded by technicians wielding boom mikes as lances and camera tripods as battering rams, elbowing and shoving, as I hold my tape recorder aloft in the hopes of catching the front-runner robotically utter a banality like, "I'm running because I want a better life for all Americans." The rat-a-tat of attack ads, the charges and counter-charges, the petulant press conferences, the opposition research e-mails and snarling spin doctors all reduce politics to a Hobbesian jungle.

  Name an American airport, and I have probably trudged across its tarmac, lugging a laptop computer, bedraggled and sleep deprived, stumbling past eager advancemen on my way to another press bus. From the bygone days of three TV networks when chain-smoking correspondents carried portable Olivetti typewriters and complained about their hangovers, I have seen the campaign entourages swell into electronic armies as TV cam­eras overwhelm the story they are purporting to cover and print reporters, deprived of access, are reduced to regurgitating self-serving quotes from manipulative press secretaries. But for all my cynicism about presidential politics in election years I still thrill to the innocent simplicity of the off years when it all begins. The speeches in New Hampshire living rooms, the pancake breakfasts in Iowa diners, the question-and-answer ses­sions on South Carolina lawns—and even the silent auctions and the chrysanthemum raffles. For all the blather about how candi­dates are transformed by climbing Heartbreak Hill during the presidential marathon, they are the same confident, complex and committed contenders at the start of the race as they will be in 2004 when they near the finish line. The only difference is that in these early days all the Democratic strivers are open and accessible to reporters instead of bubble-wrapped by image-sensitive handlers and cordoned off by the Secret Service. For all the deadline-driven journalistic obsession with what the candi­dates said yesterday at syncopated airport rallies and during flag-draped photo ops, the best way to gauge their personalities, their intellects, their motivations and their aspirations is to be there at the beginning when everything seems possible, even the presi­dency itself.

  This opening-gun phase of the presidential contest—the time when the candidates are honing their stump speeches, concoct­ing their messages, assembling their staffs, courting party activists and wooing fund-raisers—has become known as the Invisible Primary. The phrase was invented by journalist Arthur T. Hadley in his 1976 book called (surprise) The Invisible Pri­mary. Hadley formally defined it as "that period of political time between the election of one President and the start of the first state primary to determine the next political candidates." Of course, the presidential campaign unfolded at the leisurely pace of a Trollope novel during Hadley's era, when nomination fights were rarely decided until the California primary in June and underdog contenders still dreamed of dramatic upsets on the floor of the convention. These days, thanks to the fast-forward frenzy of modern politics, the Invisible Primary is best under­stood as that period of preliminary presidential positioning that occurs before the first TV spots are aired and typical primary vot­ers tune in. But make no mistake, this isn't Grapefruit League baseball when the regulars are preoccupied with their condition­ing and timing rather than the outcome. In presidential politics, every pitch matters, even if the only people watching are the managers, the scouts and the eager denizens of the press box.

  Built into the American ethos is a steadfast belief that there are objective statistical measurements for everything, from the life potential of a gawky seventeen-year-old (SAT scores) to the chance that you will impulsively buy a refrigerator on the way home from work (Index of Consumer Confidence). But what makes the Invisible Primary so intriguing is that it takes place in an alternative universe where no one has learned to count. "This is a period when no one can keep score," says Harrison Hickman, the pollster for Edwards. "The political process is a spectator sport, but there is no Scoreboard. Yes, there are two empirical measures: the polls and fund-raising. But you have two great Texas examples—John Connally in 1980 and Phil Gramm in 1996—where money didn't matter. And the third empirical mea­sure, which is hard to tally, is the opinion of those at the center of the process."

  Political reporters, along with the candidates and the consul­tants they chronicle, are dedicated students of recent history with a brightest-kid-in-the-class eagerness to find parallels to prior campaigns. But this time around, these tribal memories of the 1976 Iowa caucuses or 1988 Super Tuesday primaries serve to obscure the Big Story. The rarely acknowledged truth is that the 2004 Democratic race is radically different from any earlier con­test—and that presidential politics has entered a post-modern phase as dissimilar from the 1992 Clinton crusade or even the 2000 Al Gore campaign as John Kennedy's TV camera charisma was from Adlai Stevenson's cerebral eloquence.

  What makes 2004 so distinctive? It isn't just the sheer number of candidates, even though the field is as cluttered as the list of potential co-respondents in Tony Soprano's divorce. After all, back in 1976 (the year of Fred Harris, Milton Shapp and Frank Church), there were enough Democrats running to restage Cheaper by the Dozen. Nor is it war with Iraq or the lingering sor­rows and f
ears from September 11. Rather, the twenty-first-century difference arises from the interplay of four factors: (1) a ludicrously front-loaded and truncated primary calendar, (2) inflationary political costs that belie the flatline Consumer Price Index, (3) the universally accepted belief that politics is a four-season sport and the only way to win is to wage the permanent campaign and (4) the rise of influential Internet political tip sheets (most notably, ABC's "The Note" and the CBS "Washing­ton Wrap") that spread hyperactive judgments of the campaigns and the candidates. Nobody planned it this way, but the inadver­tent result is the creation of a warp-speed political culture that undermines deliberation by the candidates, the press and, ulti­mately, the primary voters. To update Woody Allen, a presiden­tial candidate is like a shark. Either he relentlessly moves forward, earlier than ever before, or his dreams of the White House die.

  It wasn't long ago that would-be presidents dedicated the odd-numbered year before an election to wrestling with their ambi­tions and mapping out the route to the nomination. As chronicled by Teddy White, the initial planning session for JFK's 1960 campaign took place at Hyannisport in late October 1959. Bill Clinton, according to David Maraniss in First in His Class, spent June and July 1991 quizzing "scores of friends about whether he should run for president." That same year, New York Governor Mario Cuomo, the fabled Hamlet of the Hudson, dithered until the December 20 filing date for the first primary before deciding, with a plane waiting to whisk him from Albany to Concord, New Hampshire, that this was one campaign that would never get off the ground.

  Cuomo's protracted inner agonies now seem as quaint as Dear Abby columns on the dangers of teenage petting. Today's candi­dates no longer have the luxury of leisurely indecision, despite retired General Wesley Clark's year-long dithering on the side­lines. Where once presidential politics was a hand-tooled indus­try, now, due to changes in the calendar, it's a frenzied assembly line. Beginning with the 1996 Republican race, the major cau­cuses and primaries were compressed into an adrenaline-pump­ing six-week period in February and March. (This irrational new system ended up nominating septuagenarian Bob Dole. Go fig­ure.) Leave it to the Democrats to take a bad system and make it worse. This time around, the Democrats decided to quicken the pace in 2004 by advancing the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary to January, knowing that many other states would jump their nomination contests to early February. The result is a slam-bang schedule with all the subtlety of a Saturday night during Fleet Week. No longer can underdog candidates like Gary Hart in 1984 follow the strategy of winning the New Hamp­shire primary and then using the newsmagazine cover burst of publicity to replenish their finances. Presidential politics these days is a merciless all-cash business with no pity for a candidate who does not have money in reserve to blanket California with thirty-second spots. As a result, any serious White House aspi­rant has to begin early in order to meet his daunting sales quota of raising at least $15-$20 million by the end of 2003. With a maximum contribution limit of $2,000, it requires wooing tens of thousands of individual donors, one checkbook at a time.

  That's why, with the eager Dean in the forefront, the real Demo­cratic race began earlier than ever before—right in the middle of the 2002 congressional elections. By fall 2002, five Democrats (six, if you count the flamboyantly self-promoting Al Sharpton) were actively preparing their campaigns. Even late entrants like the doggedly determined Bob Graham and left-wing gadfly Congress­man Dennis Kucinich had fluttered past the starting gate by spring 2003. The candidates, at least the more self-aware among them, understood the personal consequences of their fast-off-the-mark decisions to run. As Joe Lieberman confided to a private luncheon of New York fund-raisers in March 2003, "I've made this decision not casually. This is a decision to live a life that is not a normal life for at least a year, hopefully two years. And as somebody said, 'If you get really lucky and get elected, you'll live an abnormal life for the rest of your life.'"

  The Democratic contenders undoubtedly felt at times discour­aged by George W. Bush's poll ratings and daunted by the Repub­lican fund-raising machine, but rarely in modern history have opposition-party candidates been less awed by the intellect or the erudition of the incumbent president. Where a humbled Harry Truman declared on ascending to the presidency, "I felt like the moon, the stars and all the planets had fallen on me," the 2004 Democrats worried far more about surviving the campaign than actually governing from the White House.

  An emblematic example of this hell-I-can-do-that mentality came from Buddy Menn, Graham's chief of staff, who described a spring 2001 conversation with the Florida senator. The two men were in the bedroom of Graham's Capitol Hill townhouse as the senator was packing for a trip home. Menn casually mentioned that at this moment they might have been chatting in Dick Cheney's guarded compound at the Naval Observatory if Al Gore had selected Graham as his 2000 running mate and thereby car­ried Florida. That prompted Graham, who had never breathed a word of his presidential ambitions, to muse aloud, "You know, Buddy, at this point in my career, you learn that the person at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue puts his pants on the same as you and I." Graham's one-leg-at-a-time imagery may have been hackneyed, but the sentiment was real. Despite the terrorist threat and the chilling international climate, every serious Demo­cratic hopeful—from Edwards, the first-term senator, to veteran legislators like Dick Gephardt and Kerry—was animated by the certainty that he was far better prepared to wield globe-girdling Power than that shallow and callow man in the White House.

  ******

  How quickly it all changes from a quiet waltz in the corner with the gramophone playing to the blaring bedlam of a Rolling Stones concert. On a Wednesday morning in late February 2003—just five months after my visit to New Hampshire with Lonely Guy Howard Dean—I was standing in a full-fledged campaign press room set up in an elementary school in St. Louis. As several dozen reporters banged out their stories heralding Gephardt's just completed formal launch of his candidacy, I realized that I was getting my first glimpse of what the campaign will eventually become. Once the Gephardt announcement tour was over, the oversized press entourage vanished like Brigadoon—and the for­mer House Democratic leader, like his rivals, went back to travel­ing light. But, for the moment, the temporary scene in St. Louis seemed so familiar, so reminiscent of other years and candidates. The occasional bursts of chatter were comforting in their pre­dictability. A TV producer, worried about phone connections, announced triumphantly, "Josh has got a land line." A nervous local reporter confided to a colleague from the Missouri press corps, "I hope I'm on the list for a Gephardt interview." A national correspondent, tapping out the lengthy list of the other candidates, called out for help, "Is Howard Dean still the governor of Vermont?" (No.) Gephardt pollster Ed Reilly asked, in words so commonplace for those of us in the bubble, "What time does the filing end?" (Soon.)

  Then, in a reenactment of that enduring campaign cliche, it was time for the traveling press to cram into press vans for the drive to the airport in the middle of, yes, a ten-vehicle motorcade led by a police car with lights flashing. Free for the moment from deadline pressures, the mood was jaunty as we acclimated our­selves to a rambling life stripped of such pesky annoyances as red lights and airport security. This was the first leg of a cam­paign (or "Camp Pain" as it is sometimes called) reunion tour. Once aboard the American Airlines jet to Des Moines—the first press charter of the 2004 political season—I found myself sharing a row with Susan Milligan from the Boston Globe, a fellow wayfarer during the last months of the 1992 Clinton campaign. A few rows back, Alexandra Pelosi (the former NBC producer who transformed her handheld camera footage from the 2000 Bush campaign into the charming HBO movie Journeys with George) whooped with glee when the flight attendant offered her the same unvarying campaign lunch that she mocked in her film: a cellophane-wrapped ham sandwich.

  Down the aisle came Dick Gephardt, his coat off and his smile on, to share a few minutes of easy banter with the reporters in each
row. Even though it had been twenty-six years since he entered Congress and fifteen since his last bid for the Democratic nomination, the sixty-two-year-old Gephardt still had the look of a freckle-faced kid perched on a stool at the neighborhood soda fountain. He was warbling about the wonders of a St. Louis spe­cialty, the frozen concoctions of Ted Drewes. "Heavy cream, honey and eggs," said this milkman's son now running for presi­dent. "It's the best frozen custard in the world. On a hot sum­mer's night, there might be a hundred people lined up outside the store." This summer night's reverie was interrupted by the voice of the pilot over the intercom: "We're delighted to have aboard with us today the future president of the United States, Congressman Dick Gephardt." After a moment's hesitation, the candidate broke into an aw-shucks grin and, for one shining moment in the skies above Iowa, he was indeed the emperor of ice cream.

  ******

  Etched in my memory are images of so many other campaign flights. A gallant John Glenn—accompanied by a new country music mother-and-daughter duo called the Judds—playing out the string during the sad-eyed days of the 1984 primaries. A nearly comatose Bob Dole sitting motionless in an aisle seat the morning after he blew his lead in the 1988 New Hampshire pri­mary. Most of all, I recall the sleep-deprived and adrenaline-fueled ecstasy of the Clinton plane in the final hours of the 1992 campaign—the blur of takeoffs, landings and exuberant airport rallies—as candidate, spouse, staff and scribblers all sensed the impending victory.