The Politician (18 page)

Days later, I switched on CNN to see Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala, who hosted the political talk show
Crossfire
at the time, reporting from New Hampshire. They had bumped into Senator Edwards as he came out of a restaurant in Manchester, and he’d instantly agreed to walk with them to the network’s bus and conduct an impromptu interview. Snow flurries came down and the TV guys protected themselves with heavy coats, while the senator, who wore only a light jacket, bustled along as if he had all the energy and time in the world and couldn’t feel the blustery cold.

As they walked, Edwards said he had been hearing from voters who were worried about health care, especially the power of insurance companies and “the lack of any cost controls on prescription drugs, adding, “They’re very suspicious about it.” Carlson, a conservative, wondered aloud if Edwards might depict President Bush as “a big spender” when it came to health care and win some support from conservative voters. While Begala laughed at the notion, the senator picked up on it.

“Yes, I think that’s correct. You’re right about that.”

By this point in the broadcast, the three men had reached the CNN bus and Begala invited the senator aboard. He took a look at the vehicle, called the
CNN Election Express,
and blurted out, “Oh, cool bus!” It was an unguarded little remark, and it made him seem sincere, like the guy I used to know. Watching this series of unscripted moments, I shouted at the TV, “Dude, there you are! Welcome back, man!”

As they took their places in a little studio inside the bus, Begala and Carlson seemed thrilled. They told Edwards he was the first candidate ever to visit and then began asking about his previous experiences in life. This gave him a chance to attack George Bush’s policies at length and to talk about growing up in a small town and having experiences most Americans might find familiar. Then Carlson played right into his hands, offering up observations about how Howard Dean (like John Kerry) came from extreme wealth. The senator then went on to explain that Dean was never going to grab the nomination, and he made a reasonable argument for how he could actually win it.

“What will happen is what always happens in these multicandidate races. There are going to be huge changes between now and the New Hampshire primary, the Iowa caucuses, the South Carolina primary. Voters are going to start to focus on who their candidate should be. And they’re going to care about a lot of things. And one of the things is . . . who, in fact, can compete with George Bush everywhere, who will be the best candidate for the Democratic Party.”

Not long after this encounter, the senator called to catch up. When I told him I was delighted by his encounter with Begala and Carlson, he said the moment had revived him. “I saw those guys and just thought, Fuck it. I’m going to do and say what I want.” The result had given him a sense that if he could continue to present himself with genuine emotion and reached enough voters, especially in Iowa, he might just win the nomination.

With the heightened commitment came a new message, devised with the help of consultant David Axelrod. Edwards began to talk about “two Americas,” one where everyday people played by the rules but were buffeted by powerful forces beyond their control, the other populated by a wealthy and influential minority who wielded too much power and influence, especially in Washington. Following Axelrod’s advice, the senator emphasized hope for the future and resisted personal attacks on his opponents. He also tried to adjust his image a bit to address the complaint that he looked too boyish.

F
or the next month, the senator pushed hard and made steady headway. When Al Gore endorsed Dean, Edwards brushed it off with a wisecrack about how the Republicans have “coronations” but Democrats have elections. In both New Hampshire and Iowa, he discovered die-hard supporters, and polls showed he was rising in popularity as voters began to narrow their choices. The change was slow, however, and a week before the Iowa caucuses he was still in fourth place, almost twenty points behind Dean, according to one poll. That Sunday, he got some encouragement when he appeared on ABC and George Stephanopolous noted that a quarter of Iowa voters were still undecided, “and they like you.” Stephanopolous then played a video clip of a voter who said his one concern about Edwards was that he was a little too green.

“I’ve heard it all my life,” replied the senator. Then he talked in a way I had heard many times before, recalling how he was never expected to graduate from college or law school, and he wasn’t supposed to make it in his career as an attorney or as a candidate for United States Senate. At each
step he had surprised people (and himself) by not just succeeding, but excelling. “My job is to convince them with my passion, my energy, that I can get this done.”

Unlike other candidates, Edwards promised Iowans he would never raise taxes on the middle class and that he would help everyone who qualified go to college, no matter their income. He raced around the state talking about hope, and as he had when he ran against Faircloth, he refused to be baited into attacking his rivals. “Cynics do not build this country, optimists build this country,” he repeated to crowds that were growing larger every day. By midweek, Howard Dean was sniping at him by name in his TV commercials, and he had earned the endorsement of the state’s most important paper, the
Des Moines Register
. The front-page article was titled “John Edwards, Your Time Is Now.” This endorsement was so important that the senator called me at one-thirty in the morning, saying, “Andrew, this is huge.” Then he had me connect him by phone with his parents. The next day, John Kerry began attacking Edwards with snide remarks about his youthfulness, saying he was probably “in diapers” in 1969 when Kerry served in Vietnam.

In the brief exchanges we had on the phone during this push, Edwards sounded to me like a preacher at a revival meeting where everyone was catching the spirit and wanted to come to Jesus. Hoarse and exhausted, he was thrilled by the way people responded to his attacks on Bush and his optimistic message about a future with a Democrat in the White House. He understood that caucus participants were far more committed to the success of the party than people who voted in primaries and that they didn’t want to see their own guys shred one another. For this reason, he avoided making harsh attacks on his opponents. Grassroots Democrats seemed to appreciate his restraint. “We’re getting through, Andrew,” he crowed. “We really are.”

When the caucuses finally met, Edwards surged from fourth place with 11 percent to second place at about 32 percent. Unfortunately, John Kerry, who had also made a furious final week crusade, finished five points ahead
and came out the clear winner. Howard Dean, who once seemed unbeatable, fell to below 20 percent and was then captured by TV cameras making a speech that included a strange-sounding victory howl that was instantly dubbed the “Dean scream” and subjected to endless mockery by pundits, comedians, and Internet commentators.

Inside the Edwards campaign, we knew that with another week’s time we could have passed Kerry and won Iowa. Instead, the Massachusetts senator with the long résumé and extremely sober demeanor got most of the press attention as the campaign shifted to New Hampshire. Kerry, who like Dean lived in a neighboring state, had a huge advantage over us, and we had only a week to try to close the gap. To make matters worse, we were running out of money faster than we were running out of time. As the senator dashed around the state, he discovered the crowds were smaller than they had been in Iowa, but we couldn’t afford to buy enough advertising to reach them through the media. On election day Kerry scored his second win, Dean made a comeback to claim second, and Edwards finished a distant fourth, just behind General Wesley Clark.

With his early wins, the fund-raising tide also turned toward Kerry, as donors who were eager to be with the winner rushed to show their support prior to March 2—called Super Tuesday—when ten states from Vermont to California would hold primaries. In Raleigh, I juggled money to keep Edwards on the road, and the staff was pared back. The senator’s mood and the feeling in our offices turned dark as it seemed that barring some disaster, Kerry was going to run away with the nomination.

Although it’s wrong to wish bad fortune on someone else, a feeling of hope rippled through the campaign when the Internet site
DrudgeReport.com
—run by a mudslinger called Matt Drudge—posted a story suggesting Kerry had had an affair with a tall, twenty-seven-year-old blond news reporter. We had heard similar rumors and innuendo for months and began following the story with so much intensity that another Web site measured the Internet traffic and announced that we had checked
DrudgeReport.com
a thousand times. When this got out, John Robinson
went around the office telling people to cut it out. We were making ourselves look bad.

Soon after the supposed affair was reported, Alexandra Polier, who was supposedly Kerry’s paramour, stepped forward to say the story was a lie. I’d like to believe she told the truth, but in politics you never know. True or not, her statement killed the best chance we had at overcoming Kerry. In the last week before Super Tuesday, some commentators said the senator was keeping up the fight only to position himself to be the vice presidential candidate on a Kerry ticket and was therefore being too easy on him. Then Edwards took some swipes at the front-runner, trying to depict him as a Washington insider. It didn’t work. Kerry won every Super Tuesday state, except for Dean’s Vermont, by big margins. To our credit, Edwards finished second in all nine of those states and grabbed 41 percent of the Democrats in Georgia, the one state in the Deep South.

The talk of Edwards joining a Kerry campaign as the vice presidential nominee, which began even before Super Tuesday, flared for a moment after he decided to withdraw from the presidential campaign. (One of our supporters actually waved a handmade Kerry-Edwards sign at the gathering in Raleigh, where the senator announced his decision.) E. J. Dionne of
The Washington Post
said that Edwards had actually gained a great deal in his losing campaign and had positioned himself as a favorite in the veep sweepstakes. (Dionne complained, however, that Edwards had failed to challenge Kerry in a way that would toughen him up for the fight with Bush.) But while the pundits pointed to Edwards’s appeal and potential, not one of them mentioned the challenge the senator faced coming to terms with his loss—the first major defeat in his entire life—and figuring out what he would do next without an office to serve as his platform.

When he returned to North Carolina, we went to a postcampaign gathering that the headquarters crew threw in a local brew pub. (Remarkable as it may seem, some of these devoted workers would be meeting John and Elizabeth in the flesh for the first time ever.) I knew that the Edwardses, especially Elizabeth, were sore about the advice they had been given—and
accepted—until his “fuck it” moment in Manchester, so I was wary of how things would go at this event. The senator was fairly upbeat and appreciative. Elizabeth was not. At one point I saw that Kayla, who had come from California to volunteer, was crying. Nick Baldick, a big, hulking tough guy, stood alone looking very upset. It struck me that I would be the only one kept on salary, while he, J. Rob, and the rest had just become unemployed. I went over to console him and said, “Nick, you did a great job. The best you could.” He nodded and then with a little catch in his voice said, “Thanks, Andrew. I wish Elizabeth shared that thought.”

A
fter John Kerry had the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination wrapped up, the
Dallas Morning News
published an article citing all the reasons he should ask John Edwards to join the ticket. The arguments revolved around three main points. The first was that Edwards had proven himself in the primaries to be a disciplined and exciting campaigner. Second, “his private life, finances and pre-political career [had] all have been vetted” when he was considered to be Al Gore’s partner in 2000. And third was his Southernness: He had the accent, the regional base, and the charm to balance Kerry’s persona, which was colder than a New England winter.

Although it’s generally bad form to be seen vying for the running mate’s spot, especially when you are still in contention in the primaries, Edwards had started sending signals that he was open to an offer even before Super Tuesday. Using go-betweens like Bob Shrum, Harrison Hickman, and South Carolina congressman James Clyburn, he made sure Kerry understood his strength as a fund-raiser, communicator, and effective campaigner. Polling showed he was far more popular than Dick Gephardt, who we believed was Kerry’s personal favorite, and no one looked better on television. As part of a charm offensive aimed at getting Kerry’s attention, Edwards agreed to be
featured in the March 8
People
magazine. The article highlighted a telling comment from a female voter who said, “He’s real, and he’s easy to look at.” (This comment was tame compared with the words women whispered in Edwards’s ears or wrote on notes they pressed into his hand at public appearances. I knew this because I had been with him in the past when he rebuffed advances from women and a few men, which seemed to come whenever we were in public.) Altogether, Edwards seemed to provide the perfect balance for Kerry. In fact, the only negative where a Kerry-Edwards ticket was concerned was that the two guys didn’t like each other very much.

When we talked about him, the senator complained that Kerry, despite his long-winded, professorial demeanor, “just wasn’t all that smart.” The man seemed well-informed, he added, like someone “who had read
The New York Times
every day for twenty years,” but he wasn’t a creative person or even a good problem solver. He also found Kerry to be aloof and far too aristocratic in his bearing to succeed as the leader of a party that looks for major support from unions, African Americans, and people in big cities. During the primaries, Kerry had been the opponent our side most loved to hate. Our political strategist Jim Andrews, who I swore cussed and smoked in his sleep, used to bellow, “We just can’t let this mother-fuckin’ blue blood get in the White House.”