The Politician (17 page)

The first real action in the battle came in May 2003, when nine Democrats took the stage together for a debate in South Carolina, where the senator was almost a favorite son. The only thing this session established was a sense of who the serious candidates might be, and the list included Edwards, Joe Lieberman, Dick Gephardt, Vermont governor Howard Dean, and John Kerry. Kerry and Dean, who were from states that bordered New Hampshire, were considered to be the front-runners, and they spent much of their time sniping at each other, as if it were a two-man race. After the debate, Senator Edwards announced that he was not going to run for reelection to the Senate, so that he could keep his focus on higher office. But even with this distraction removed, he found it hard to reach the voters with his message. As the months passed, it became clear that we weren’t getting much traction in our effort to catch up with Kerry and Dean. Donors noticed, too, and since they were most interested in supporting the man who might actually get to the White House, we found it more difficult to talk them into writing checks.

As money became tight, I received lots of calls from field-workers who found that their campaign-issued credit cards were being rejected. (The worst moment came when the current body man, a young fellow named Hunter “Rock Star” Pruette, had his card rejected after dinner at a restaurant with the candidate himself.) On many nights I had to fax credit information to hotels at one or two in the morning so that our people could check in, and every day I engaged in a running battle to control spending. But no matter what I tried, the guys on the road were able to outfox me. For example, when I required them to double up in hotel rooms, they started listing the names of volunteers as their roommates. These people weren’t actually in the rooms, but the trick allowed them to get their way in the tussle over money.

The people who work in big campaigns are all, by definition, ambitious
and competitive, and they are often highly manipulative. They also fall into camps that have very different perspectives on the candidate and the future. Outside consultants, professionals hired for their expertise, may care about the cause and the Democratic Party, but they are also concerned about their reputations, bank accounts, and future work. They want to win because it’s good for business. Campaigns also rely on thousands of volunteers who come and go. Most of these people never have any contact at all with the candidate. People like me, who had an established history with the candidate, hoped to continue with Edwards long into the future.

There was an odd feeling on our campaign, because very few staffers came from North Carolina and I was the only one who had worked for Edwards in the Senate. Nick Baldick, an established political pro who had had little prior contact with Edwards staffers, was hired to run the presidential campaign and given full control. (People who once ran things for Edwards in the Senate were either let go or given minor positions.) Baldick also brought in manuals left over from the Gore campaign and his own people, including an associate named John Robinson. Calling himself “J. Rob,” he arrived in Raleigh driving a little Mazda Miata sports car and lugging a huge amount of bad attitude. From the moment he set himself up in the office opposite mine, he tried to intimidate me (and everyone else) by barking orders, making mocking remarks, and sending a stream of text-message requests even though I was sitting ten feet away and always available for a talk.

J. Rob didn’t appreciate that besides managing all the demands of the campaign staff and the senator, I was still taking care of the personal needs of the Edwards family. Here J. Rob had something in common with my wife, Cheri, who also questioned the time I put into the care of the Edwards clan. But although I could understand the concern, I figured that as long as I didn’t screw anything up, J. Rob should leave me alone.

On a particularly bad day, when J. Rob kept on sending me annoying texts about problems I was working to resolve, I answered one of his messages
with a wisecrack. Incensed, he got up from behind his desk and actually walked the vast distance across the hall to my doorway and glared at me. I was on the phone, so I covered the mouthpiece and said, “I’m on a call.”

J. Rob was not accustomed to being sloughed off. He turned on his heel, and as he retreated into his office, he slammed the door hard enough to shake the walls. Soon after I completed my call he came back, stood in the doorway with his arms folded, and said, “You were sassing me.”

I leaned back in my chair and said, “No. I don’t think so. That’s the kind of thing a little kid does to his parents, so I wouldn’t say I was sassing you.”

“Well, I don’t care what the fuck you call it,” he shouted. “
You
work for
me,
and you don’t
ever
talk to me like that.”

With that, he turned away and went to retrieve a gym bag so he could change his clothes and go for a run. Now I was incensed. I got up, followed him, and growled, “Don’t ever fucking yell at me. I was here way before you got here. I’ll be here long after you are gone.” Completely fired up, I followed him to the elevator, took out my cell phone, and challenged him: “Why don’t we call the senator right now and see if he wants to fire me or you? I’ve got his number. We can settle this right now.”

Suddenly, J. Rob wasn’t so eager to yell back. He muttered something about calling his man Baldick, and when the elevator came, he got on it and disappeared. I noticed afterward that he stopped yelling in my direction and the flood of text messages slowed to a trickle. Two weeks later, Nick came to town for a meeting with key staff, and as we sat around a table we were asked to introduce ourselves. When it was my turn, I hesitated—as always—owing to my fear of talking in groups. J. Rob jumped in to say, “I’ll tell you something about Andrew. He hates it when people yell at him.”

Because the professionals had their own games to play—like the one between J. Rob and me—and their long-term careers to consider, they tended to get distracted and preferred a conservative campaign style. (Later I would realize that some of these guys wouldn’t attack an opponent in the
primaries because they were worried about getting jobs with whoever won in the end. Unfortunately, Senator Edwards listened to these consultants and followed their advice too closely, almost becoming robotic.)

Despite their flaws, they were very good at their jobs, a fact that became obvious to me when it came time for us to shift from “exploratory” status to a genuine presidential campaign. First they arranged for an informal “announcement” on Jon Stewart’s program,
The Daily Show,
which would appeal to younger voters. Then they put together an event for the big formal announcement. The main event would be held in Robbins in front of the old textile mill, which had been shut down and stood as a massive brick emblem of the troubles in small-town America.

The plan called for the Edwardses to spend the night before the event at his parents’ home. Wallace, his father, and Bobbi, his mother, were salt-of-the-earth types who were so kind that they sent us baby gifts, food when Gracie had surgery, and cakes for our kids’ birthdays. Mrs. Edwards did not enjoy spending time with them. When I arrived at their house in Raleigh to drive them to Robbins, it was six
P.M
., but she was far from ready, and she was arguing with the senator. (They didn’t seem to care if I stood there while they shouted.) We didn’t get out of the city until around eight o’clock, and on the way she said she wanted some strong cold medicine to take so she would be sleepy and ready for bed as soon as we arrived. I had to stop at three different stores but finally got what she wanted. As we pulled up to the house in Robbins, she was so out of it that the senator walked her to a bedroom, where she escaped for the night.

The next morning, the senator and I went for a run at four-thirty so his head would be clear enough to handle a string of live morning show interviews. Along the way, we passed his old high school and the mural of astronaut Charles Brady. As a youth, John Edwards had been the “golden boy” in his family and in his town. Sometimes I wondered if he had been loved too much back then and somehow got the idea that the rules might not apply to him the way they did to everyone else. I knew for certain that he was his mother’s favorite and that she had almost never disciplined him.
“Johnny just never made any trouble,” she would say, and in her mind this was true.

Bobbi had breakfast for us when we returned, and as we ate he called her “Mama” and referred to his father as “Daddy,” sounding very much like the fine Southern boy he was. After we ate and showered, he said, “Hey, Andrew, let’s go check things out.” We got in the Suburban and, after getting lost, which was hard to do in such a small town, found our way to the factory. As we drove, the senator asked me what I imagined his old classmates might think of him. It astonished me to hear that at a moment like this, when he was about to announce a run for president of the United States, he was thinking back to the kids he knew in school. But I hid my surprise and said, “They’re proud of you. I’m sure of it.”

The big abandoned mill had been draped in red, white, and blue to serve as a backdrop for a metal platform that faced a parking lot, where a crowd of several hundred people had already staked out their places. Music blared from the sound system, and TV crews were busy setting up their cameras. Clearly, our campaign crew would deliver the excitement they had promised.

Back at the house, the senator, his parents, and Mrs. Edwards sat for TV interviews, and then we all left for the mill site. When we got there, two thousand people, including busloads from hundreds of miles away, cheered the senator as if he were Elvis. His big applause lines addressed the failures of the Bush administration and his promise to halt government’s neglect of working-class people. The biggest cheers came when he talked of growing up in Robbins and said, “I promise to fight for you.” At the end, his campaign theme song, “Small Town” by John Mellencamp, poured from the loudspeakers.

The song matched the candidate’s biography, which was at the center of his message. Edwards insisted that he was not, as his opponents might say, a rich, inexperienced guy with oversize ambition. Instead, he was a son of small-town America with the strength and independence, thanks to his self-made wealth, to stand against the entrenched political power brokers.
For audiences who might hear him only once or twice, the way the candidate harped on small-town America in his appearances probably rang true, but for the staff of the campaign, who heard the words
small town
hundreds of times a day, the phrase and the song became more than a little irritating. When staff people gathered to watch him in a televised debate or speech, they often played a drinking game that required every player to drink a shot of something strong whenever the words “small town” or “I’m the son of a millworker” came out of his mouth. On a typical night, people would be howling drunk after half an hour.

Although this theme struck a chord with some voters and amused his aides and advisers, it was no substitute for a well-defined platform of ideas, and Edwards was criticized for a lack of substance. By November, polls showed him running a distant third or fourth, and both the press and political experts were saying he had a “gravitas” problem, meaning he seemed too young and inexperienced. When I caught him on television in this period, I detected little of the energy and passion I had seen at the Ocean Creek Inn and throughout his Senate campaign. That man was gone, replaced by a robot that looked like John Edwards but spoke like a man reading a briefing paper.

On many nights, my phone would ring and I would hear the senator on the other end. Sometimes he sounded petty and irritated by ordinary events. He especially hated making appearances at state fairs, where “fat rednecks try to shove food down my face. I know I’m the people’s senator, but do I have to hang out with them?” He sometimes called in the middle of a televised event. He’d say, “Hey, Andrew, I’m on TV talking to you. Turn it on.” He would then put on a serious face, pretending to talk about something important, and we would chat about basketball. When he asked, I also gave him some Ambien tablets from my own prescription, so that he could get to sleep on nights when he was just too wound up. These little conspiracies, which reminded him of the times we had spent together on the road, brought us closer together. And when, in these unguarded moments,
he asked for my evaluation of the campaign, I didn’t hold back. I told him that friends, family, and longtime supporters were telling me that the John Edwards they knew had disappeared. They wanted him to speak more forcefully about the needs of working people and issues like health care and how the insurance companies were running amok. I was very critical of the “inside the Washington Beltway” people and told him they were overthinking things. “Go with your gut instincts,” I said.

W
ith Christmas approaching, I was more involved with the preparations at the Edwards home than I was with my own family. While Cheri did the shopping and decorating at our house, many of the toys that needed my attention sat in boxes, but I put together an electric-powered toy Jeep for Jack, which I adorned with campaign stickers. I am sure that Cheri resented the time I gave to the Edwards family, but I was fully committed to the “never say no” work ethic. Cheri tried to understand.

When I picked Senator Edwards up at the Raleigh airport around this time, he was happy to be back in North Carolina but miserable about the state of his campaign. “Andrew, I am really sick of this shit,” he said wearily. “I’m not going to go down like this. I’m going to start being me. What the fuck do I have to lose?” As the third or fourth man in a race that had boiled down to six contenders, the senator had nothing to lose and everything to gain by a change in approach. I told him to start loosening up. He looked out the window at that familiar landscape and nodded in agreement.