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

by Walter Shapiro

  ******

  Howard Dean was exasperated. Meeting with his Burlington-based campaign staff in late January to plot out his travel plans, he moaned, "What's happened to the schedule? It's out of control." The last-minute invitation to appear before NARAL symbolized Dean's need for a body double. It's madness: Iowa on Sunday, Ver­mont on Monday, a three-minute speaking slot at the NARAL con­vention in Washington on Tuesday, then a pre-dawn flight to New Hampshire on Wednesday morning for a long-planned appear­ance at a retirement home in Nashua. Not even the most desperate traveling salesman, Willie Loman with his bulging sample cases, would tolerate this itinerary from hell. The candidate exuded a palpable reluctance to juggle his travel plans to accommodate NARAL. Dean can be stubborn, but this time his staff got its way.

  On the day of the speech, Dean's mood failed to improve when his direct flight from Burlington to Washington was can­celed, forcing him to make a mad dash to change planes in Philadelphia. Needless to say, the harassed doctor-turned-gover­nor-turned-presidential candidate didn't spend long hours revis­ing speech drafts and honing his rhetoric in front of a TelePrompTer. Instead, the unflappable Dean limited his prepara­tion to a few minutes in the holding room at Washington's Omni Shoreham Hotel, the site of the gala dinner honoring the thirtieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Dean followed his standard practice of jotting five key points on a stray piece of paper, punctuated by a single word to remind him of an illustrative anecdote.

  The first group visual of Campaign 2004 came as the candi­dates emerged from the holding room in the order of their speak­ing positions. Edwards, looking like he was inwardly rehearsing his rhetoric, strode out first, followed by Al Sharpton, Lieberman and Gephardt. Then came the six-foot-four Kerry with his arm draped over Dean's shoulder, maybe eight inches beneath his own shoulder, the Mutt and Jeff of the Democratic Party. As Kate Michelman, the president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, intro­duced the six Democrats, Gephardt staffers distributed to reporters a prepared text of his remarks. The Missouri congressman, who entered the House in the 1970s as an opponent of abor­tion, was the only candidate expected to make news. He would offer a sober explanation of his gradual "change of heart and mind" on the issue, as "my eyes were opened...by friends and colleagues and by strangers, women I didn't know and would never meet again, and by members of my own close family."

  But what opened the eyes of the 1,500 abortion-rights stal­warts at the Shoreham were speeches by Sharpton and Dean. The rambunctious reverend from New York, a protest candidate revel­ing in his sudden elevation to Democratic responsibility, roused the rafters with sure-fire lines like "It's time for the Christian Right to meet the right Christians." When he stepped to the microphone, Dean began by declaring, "I'm going to talk to you as a governor and a doctor." But he soon let rip with a full-throated attack on the Bush administration: "This government is so impressed with itself in promoting individual freedom, they can't wait to get into your bedroom and tell you how to behave." The audience cheered lustily as Dean thundered, "We don't want the government telling us how to practice medicine! The practice of medicine is none of the government's business!"

  Okay, Dean was preaching to the converted. But then he abruptly lowered his decibel level and changed his tone. "Let me tell you a story," he said, his voice beckoning the audience to move a little closer to the fire for a good yarn. "As many of you know, I am a doctor and an internist. One time, a young lady came into my office, who was twelve years old. She thought she might be pregnant. We did the tests, and she was pregnant. She didn't know what to do. After I talked to her for a while, I came to the conclusion that the likely father of her child was her own father." Dean paused to allow the tension to build as his rapt lis­teners contemplated the realities of life in small-town Vermont. Then as his voice filled with angry indignation, Dean delivered his devastating applause line: "You explain that to the American people who think that parental notification is a good idea." By the time Dean finished his eight-minute speech, which was interrupted by applause seventeen separate times, the shock troops of the abortion-rights movement were waving glow-in-the-dark table decorations to light his way toward the White House.

  It is almost unprecedented for a single evening during the Invisible Primary to transform a candidacy. But, make no mistake, that was exactly what happened to Dean with his almost canceled NARAL speech. Afterward, Howard Fineman, Newsweek's influ­ential political correspondent, was prompted to write, "I came away from the annual National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League dinner the other night with one conclusion: Howard Dean is going to be a player." Suddenly Dean was no longer a former governor from the land of Ben and Jerry, but a plausible rival to Kerry, Gephardt, Edwards and Lieberman. It took a day or two for Dean to grasp the implications of his Cin­derella transformation, but he eventually got it. "What those din­ners do is that they establish me as a serious candidate," Dean told me three days later during, yes, another trip to Washington. "People have never heard of me before. Then they hear about me from other people, but they don't see me. And when they see me, they realize this is a serious candidacy. Once they realize it's a serious candidacy, because they like the message, they're now free to help."

  There was only one flaw in this upbeat narrative. Dean's sad-eyed story about the pregnant twelve-year-old girl was partially deceptive. Worse, Dean didn't fully comprehend how he compro­mised his credibility by editing and over-simplifying the tale. I will confess that an influential figure in another presidential campaign prompted the questioning of Dean about his NARAL narrative. But when he was asked about what Paul Harvey would call "the rest of the story," Dean said, "I don't want to talk about it. It turned out that the father wasn't the father. But I can't say too much about this because it will lead to an exposure of the girl, which is absolutely wrong."

  My desire, obviously, was not to intrude on anyone's privacy. But I was stunned by Dean's admission that the central salient detail of the anecdote dramatically brandished before NARAL to expose the folly of parental notification (that the girl was impreg­nated by her father) was incorrect. As Dean explained, "It turned out that she was improperly [sexually abused], but not by her father. Not that I knew at the time." But he did know it when he retold the tale to NARAL. I wondered, as I often do when I catch a candidate embellishing the truth, whether I was being too harsh and judgmental. This was not the equivalent of Ronald Reagan continually citing a fictional "welfare queen" driving around Chicago in her Cadillac. This was also not George W. Bush recit­ing sixteen deceitful words about African uranium in his State of the Union Address. Something awful did in fact happen to this twelve-year-old girl. For his part, Dean conceded, "I've thought about not using that story any more, though it's so powerful, because I don't want this girl exposed and that could happen."

  Self-definition is a tricky affair in presidential politics. The same autobiographical stories that attract voters can, when viewed from another perspective, repel them. It's simpler when campaigns revolve around issues. You can parse position papers and cost-out policy proposals. But the 2004 Democratic race is about personal history and character—and there is no official source like the Congressional Budget Office to rate the candi­dates based on what they consciously choose to reveal about themselves. Does it matter that Dick Gephardt is a milkman's son and John Edwards's father started as a mill worker? Should we admire John Kerry because he fought in Vietnam, or is the essence of his appeal his later anti-war fervor? Is voting for Joe Lieberman the only way to ensure the survival of the American Dream? And what of Howard Dean, who dramatically demon­strated with a single story both his Marcus Welby-as-politician appeal and his preference for powerful narrative over the literal truth?

  Every political leader is a prisoner of his own life experience. But what a presidential campaign cannot reveal is whether the illustrative tales that candidates tell the voters are the same sto­ries that will be reverberating in their minds, if and when they find themselves brooding alone in
the Oval Office. For that is the most elusive truth of all: who the candidates truly are when they are out of the view of the adoring throngs and the ever-inquisitive reporters.

  Chapter 10

  In Which the Candidates Remain Themselves

  (Despite All Efforts to Package Them into Something Else)

  Any Jewish male, with the possible exception of Philip Roth, can identify with Joe Lieberman's tone as he describes his eighty-six-year-old widowed mother, Marcia. Lieberman, of course, projects a good son's love coupled with pride at her live-alone indepen­dence: "She works hard to do almost everything. I told her she remains an inspiration in that sense." But there is also a flicker, just a flicker, of boyish Mom-do-I-have-to annoyance, especially when the topic turns to food.

  Lieberman and I are in the backseat of his van, that familiar venue for political interviews, on a glistening New Hampshire Monday morning in late April. On the floor next to Lieberman is the ultimate campaign survival kit—a brown paper bag stuffed with Passover rations that his mother pressed on him (you can hear her saying, "Take it with you, Joey, you look thin") after a holiday visit to his childhood home in Stamford, Connecticut. Reaching into this maternal brown bag, Lieberman becomes the first presidential candidate in the proud history of American democracy to ever offer me—or quite possibly any reporter—matzos, saying, "This will probably inhibit your ability to ask serious questions." And then gesturing to an unopened box of kosher-for-Passover macaroons on the seat next to him, Lieberman adds with a hint of private amusement, "We also have sweets."

  Even during a backseat interview, the senator is a gracious host. But that's Lieberman's style: so amenable, so affable and so damned elusive. It isn't that he bristles with defensiveness or even ducks questions. Rather, Lieberman blesses virtually every query with the same empty compliment, "That's interesting," and then frowns with momentary concentration as he frames his care­ful answer. With Lieberman, there is a circular quality to the reporter-candidate exchange, since every Q and A brings you right back to where you started. I have been at this game too long to believe that you can achieve anything close to intimacy with a man who is running for president. But I do nurture the conviction that enough time in the backseat of a van and enough off-the-news conversations can produce a level of insight that goes beyond the self-confident certainties of a candidate's sales pitch. Yet here I am, my mouth gummy with matzos and my lap filled with crumbs from the bread of affliction—and the always friendly Joe Lieberman is testing my faith in my reportorial wiles.

  Maybe I am unused to a presidential candidate with Lieber­man's medium-cool temperament. He's neither pompous nor sop­orific; his wry-with-corned beef sense of humor prevents him from being equated with uber-hawk Scoop Jackson, the 1976 presidential contender often described as so boring he could douse the fire during a fireside chat. At the start of our conversa­tion, I mention to Lieberman that I noticed a hidden religious motif to his Easter Sunday appearance on Face the Nation, since he shared the broadcast with a fellow Jew, Bush foreign-policy adviser Richard Perle. Lieberman immediately cracks, "John Edwards is going to do Yom Kippur." But what if Edwards, like John Kerry, discovers he has Jewish ancestors? With a chuckle, Lieberman says, "He seems to be sticking with what we know about him."

  For all his Good Humor Man persona, Lieberman, more than any Democrat running, embodies the locker-room sports cliché "Don't get too high or too low. Just take it one game at a time." Interviewing aides and family members about Lieberman's mood on that fateful mid-December day when Al Gore pulled out of the race, I was struck by similar tales of the senator's well-modulated calm. As his son Matt put it succinctly, "There was no 'Yippie!'"

  I repeat Matt's comment to Lieberman, not to glean fresh anec­dotes about Gore's withdrawal but to get a better fix on his per­sonality. "Temperament," Lieberman responds, "it's interesting. That day I felt a combination of excitement and seriousness because this was it. I was now faced with this awesome responsi­bility. So I wasn't jumping up and down. Part of it may have to do with my respect for Al Gore."

  Okay, I suggest, maybe that's an atypical example. Lieberman, munching one of Mom's apples, is still mulling the earlier ques­tion. "There is no question that I have a more even personality," he concedes. "But I can get high." Somehow, I sense, this is not a coded reference to drug-addled youthful escapades. "I get angry about things. I get happy about things," Lieberman defiantly insists in his soft, slightly quavering voice. "I'm having a great time. It's very demanding, but I'm enjoying it and I do feel a sense of mission and purpose."

  At that moment, inflamed with mission and purpose, Lieber­man arrives at the high school in Derry, where he will be speak­ing to a current-events class. As the van pulls to a stop, Lieberman offers a final thought: "Here I am with the opportunity to run for president and to try to make a difference on a scale that I honestly never imagined that I would get a chance do. It's great." Unlike Tony the Tiger who always roared, "It's Gr-r-r-eat!" as he hawked Kellogg's Frosted Flakes, Lieberman pronounces the word "great" without a hint of inflection.

  ******

  All of us—ordinary voters and out-of-the-ordinary political reporters alike—cannot resist reducing presidents and pretenders to cartoonish caricatures. Ronald Reagan was a dim-bulb actor reading a presidential script; George Bush (good ol' 41) quested after the presidency simply because it was the missing line on his resume; Bill Clinton, governed by his libido, squandered his enormous talents to his outsize appetites; and George W. Bush wanted to be president both to avenge and transcend his father. Granted, there is an element of truth to these crude portraits, but they also obscure far more than they explain. Both in cocktail-party chatter and daily political coverage, we brandish these facile interpretations with all the subtlety of a pre-schooler trying to jam a round peg into a square hole. Just hit the point harder, we reflexively think, and maybe it'll fit.

  I understand the allure of such armchair psychiatry, even if most analytic interpretations come closer to fraud than Freud. The powers that we bequeath to a twenty-first-century president are inherently frightening, whether it is the ability to obliterate Saddam Hussein's regime with minimal congressional oversight or the authority to imprison Americans as "enemy combatants" without a public trial. For all the hype and hoopla of a presiden­tial campaign, the choices that voters make are fraught with unimaginable consequences—and they know it.

  Who in their right mind feels comfortable basing this decision solely on gauzy thirty-second commercials and poll-tested speeches that obedient candidates read off the TelePrompTer? Who can derive lasting insight from newspaper charts dutifully listing the candidates' health-care plans? Rightfully suspicious of media manipulation and yet supinely dependent on television and the press for information, voters are desperate to cut through the phoniness of a presidential campaign in search of larger truths about the character of the candidates. Any glimmer of authenticity—a sepia-toned childhood photograph, a brief tele­vised glimpse of a frowning spouse, a flippant remark during a debate—becomes incorporated in an overarching theory, becomes a building block of air castles filled with psychological speculation about the candidates. Even the smallest details can be fraught with symbolic significance. Howard Dean's buttoned-down Brooks Brothers shirts. The brief flap over whether Edwards was chewing gum onstage during the NARAL conven­tion or whether, as his aides insisted, it was a breath mint. Or the bigger brouhaha prompted by John Kerry's too-effete-to-eat request for Swiss cheese, rather than the authentic Cheez Whiz, on his Philly cheese steak sandwich.

  With our psychological bent, those of us in the press vans can be described as forever Jung. So much campaign coverage involves listening (to variations of the same speech) and watch­ing (the smiles, the laughs, the handshakes and the back slaps) from afar. When you spend your days with your nose pressed up against the toy store window, you inevitably start wondering about the secrets hidden in the backroom. Journalists know just enough biographical details about
a candidate to connect the dots in a graphic that may lack artistic precision but appears close enough to reality for daily deadlines.

  As the self-appointed guardians of the entrance to the Oval Office, reporters are constantly alert for any character trait that smacks of Nixonian weirdness or suggests that maybe this guy shouldn't be entrusted with nuclear weapons. That's why the press during the 1980s was so merciless toward Gary Hart—that's why so much was made of his name change (from Hartpence) and his conflicting accounts of the year of his birth. This time around, the Boston Globe tried (unsuccessfully in my view) to paint John Kerry as two-faced for sometimes failing to contradict the easy assumption that anyone with his last name had to be Irish. Similarly, nothing makes Bob Graham's advisers more ner­vous than a protracted discussion of the color-coded notebooks (which I quoted from earlier) that he uses to record the flotsam and jetsam of his public life. Sadly, it doesn't take much of a jour­nalistic leap to go from these quotidian details to psycho-babble about Kerry's identity disorder or Graham's anal-compulsive behavior.

  For all my uneasiness about the shock (therapy) troops of the press marching off to cover a campaign carrying analytic couches on their backs, I recognize that a candidate is far more than a walking set of position papers. For me, the relevant distinction is between psychology and temperament. No reporter or profile writer knows enough to plumb a politician's inner psyche, but journalists are equipped with the observational skills to describe his personality and draw conclusions from it. It's the difference between unknowable causation and visible effects. A candidate will spend days huddled with his handlers deciding how to best portray himself on the campaign trail, choosing which biographi­cal snippets to stress and which policies to peddle. But a presi­dential contender's basic temperament remains an innate and immutable quality that defies the mind-clouding powers of even the most adroit political image makers.