The Politician (22 page)

Between the national TV shows and the debate, Edwards was seen by well over 100 million TV viewers in the span of a week. But when he suggested the campaign let him make a bigger effort to woo voters in the South, especially in North Carolina, Kerry’s people balked. Despite polls showing Democrats had the best chance there in decades, they refused to buy any television ads in the Tar Heel State. Instead, they focused their spending on the Midwest and sent the senator to out-of-the-way places like Latrobe, Pennsylvania, and Waterloo, Iowa. Edwards was furious about this.

For reasons that were never explained, the advisers and managers at the top of the campaign developed a surprising amount of confidence in the final weeks and, to our surprise, held back more than $14 million that could have been spent on advertising and get-out-the-vote efforts in Ohio and Florida. Although we kept hearing concern, even worry, in the voices of
friends, Kerry operatives talked to the press about the combination of states that would get them to the magic number of 270 electoral college votes. In every winning scenario, either Ohio or Florida was painted blue for a Democratic Party victory.

T
he campaign ended in Boston. On election day I flew into Logan with the senator’s family and friends and checked in at the Copley Plaza. (Cheri came with me to soak up the moment.) The weather was dreary, but the hotel was so alive with press and security people that it felt as though we had arrived at the center of the universe. Everywhere we turned we bumped into someone we knew, and our conversations were filled with a mixture of relief, hope, and gratitude. As Cheri and I sat at lunch with the Edwards family, the senator’s sister, Kathy, said, “You’re closer to him than anyone, Andrew, and if he’s elected, he’s going to need you even more.” His parents said they agreed, and it made me feel good.

Kathy was part of a large group I shepherded on a day that included an afternoon aboard an amphibious tourist craft operated by an outfit called Boston Duck Tours, which took us around to historic sites and to the Charles River and Boston Harbor. (The senator’s mother, Bobbi, got a chance to drive the “duck.”) All the while, I was receiving text-message reports on exit polls that were very promising for our side. As I gave them updates, Bobbi and Wallace seemed overwhelmed by the thought that their son might win the second-highest office in the country. We couldn’t be sure of the outcome, of course, but by the end of the afternoon, as Cheri and I went to the hotel to dress for dinner, we were almost convinced that the Kerry-Edwards team had won.

Our minds were changed as we gathered at the Palm restaurant for the last supper of the campaign. Although some in the friends and family group clung to the hope that we had received better “inside” information, the television reported that Bush was likely to hold on to the White House. As I checked in with people high in the campaign, they stopped talking about their new offices in the West Wing and started to sound very pessimistic.
Eventually they stopped answering their phones, and with their voice-mail files full, I couldn’t even leave a message.

After dinner, Cheri and I went back to the Copley Plaza with the senator’s family and got on the elevator with the folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary. Upstairs, we headed to the senator’s VIP area, where we ran into the actor Matt Dillon, model Christie Brinkley, and
Seinfeld
creator Larry David. By the time the polls started to close, we were almost sure we had lost, so although the place was filled with the sounds of phones ringing, people talking, and TVs blaring, the atmosphere was still fairly somber. We heard lots of reports of minority voters—our voters—being blocked from the polls.

T
he count and the media coverage reminded me of 2000, when I had sat in the senator’s living room and irregularities cast doubt on the legitimacy of the election, especially in Florida. This time the center of controversy was Ohio, where, we heard, people in mostly Democratic wards were having a difficult time with long lines and officials who challenged seemingly valid voter registrations. Although some newscasters called the election for Bush, at midnight Kerry conducted a conference call from his house with about fifty advisers and Senator Edwards and concluded that the race was so close, he couldn’t concede.

Even though he had problems with Kerry, Edwards saw the election as a battle of good versus evil and truly believed the country would be hurt by four more years of Bush-Cheney. Although he was concerned about all the people who were standing in the rain at the Kerry-Edwards rally site in Boston Common, the Bush-Gore fiasco of 2000 had made him deeply suspicious of the vote-counting process. Kerry continued to hold out, and at about three o’clock in the morning he sent Edwards to the Common to speak. (Many people thought it was strange that Kerry didn’t address the crowd himself.)

The diehards who stood in the rain on that cold November night numbered in the thousands. Many had on Red Sox caps, worn like emblems
of their tremendous patience, which had been rewarded just days before when their beloved team had finally won the World Series after eighty-six years. They had seen Tom Brokaw and Wolf Blitzer declare Bush reelected on the big TV screens set up near the stage but remained waiting faithfully to hear from their candidates. When Edwards appeared, they cheered so loudly that his parents called from the hotel to ask me if the Democrats had actually won. Of course they had not, but I thought that the roar confirmed that the wrong guy had been at the top of the ticket. “We’ve waited four years for this victory,” he said. “We can wait one more night.”

By morning, when it seemed they had lost Ohio by about one hundred thousand votes, Edwards spoke to Kerry and could tell he was devastated. Although Edwards thought he should wait and perhaps contest the Ohio result, Kerry soon conceded to Bush via a phone call and then scheduled a public appearance for ten-thirty at historic Faneuil Hall. While he waited for this event, the senator asked me to find his parents and bring them to his suite. When I brought Wallace and Bobbi to the room, I could see that something other than the election was going on. The senator told his parents and then told me that they thought Mrs. Edwards had cancer.

At Faneuil Hall, Senator and Mrs. Edwards seemed untroubled, smiling for the audience and applauding as John Kerry thanked them for their hard work and friendship. She had seen a doctor four days earlier and with his support delayed further tests so they could continue the campaign. As soon as the event ended, they went to see a specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital, who performed a biopsy that confirmed the cancer was present and showed it had spread in a way that was extremely serious.

As public figures who had made their life experience part of their political appeal to the nation, the Edwardses didn’t wait to tell the world about their crisis. Their statements to the press, and background provided by aides, helped reporters present them as bravely soldiering on—Mrs. Edwards went to a dozen events after she learned she might have cancer—for the good of her husband, the Democratic Party, and the country. Ironically enough, the news of Mrs. Edwards’s diagnosis appeared in the press
at the same time the media was filled with analysis of the election and articles predicting the senator’s political future. Although he was widely regarded as the Democrat most likely to challenge Hillary Clinton for the 2008 presidential nomination, he downplayed his prospects, noting that for the foreseeable future he would be focused on his wife’s health. I felt a chill when he talked privately about how her cancer affected his chances for attaining a higher office.

Cheri and I returned to Boston two weeks later, bringing Cooper to Children’s Hospital for his surgery. While doctors in North Carolina wanted to employ the same technique they had used on Gracie, the surgeon in Boston was a specialist who used three tiny incisions and high-tech instruments to make the repair. Cooper’s recovery was quick. In a week we were home, and within a month he was pain-free and growing like a weed. Although we faced an uncertain future in the aftermath of the election, our family was healthy and together for the holidays.

Just after New Year’s, I drove down to Fuquay-Varina to pick up the senator’s brother, Blake, and drive him to the airport for a flight to Colorado, where he would surrender to the Arapahoe County sheriff and begin serving a sixty-day sentence in the county jail. His plane departed at seven
A.M.
, so I had to fetch him at about four-thirty. He lumbered out of the house looking dejected and scared. The drive was tense and awkward, and our conversation was punctuated by his apologies. Blake was worried about how his problems reflected on his brother and how he had upset Mrs. Edwards. “Man, Elizabeth must be pissed,” he said.

As I said good-bye to Blake at the airport, I tried to encourage him by saying that everyone makes mistakes and that he would soon be home again. He asked me to make sure that the senator wrote to him while he was in jail. I got out of the car, gave him a hug, and thought it was bizarre that no one in his family had come to see him off. I passed along Blake’s request several times, but I heard the senator never called or wrote him while he was in jail.

T
he silence that falls after a losing political campaign is almost total, like the quiet inside an abandoned mine. The senator said, “There’s no other business to compare it with. Based on how people vote, you go from almost leading the free world to not having a job in twenty-four hours.” A few media types might call for help with their postmortem stories, but after a day or two you no longer hear from the thousands of people who a week earlier jammed the phone lines with advice, requests, and offers of support.

After John Kerry and John Edwards lost, they didn’t even call each other very much. In fact, they lost touch in a matter of weeks as Kerry prepared to return to the United States Senate and Edwards turned his attention to his wife’s health and his own uncertain future.

Mrs. Edwards’s prognosis seemed dire. Her cancer was aggressive, and by the time it was discovered it had already moved beyond the duct where it started and into surrounding tissue. When this occurs the cancer can spread almost anywhere in the body, and the best treatment is an all-out assault with chemotherapy and radiation. It was a grueling regimen that took about six months to complete. During this time the senator divided his attention between her, their children, and his own struggle to get past his
defeat and set a course for his political future. During a week when Elizabeth was between treatments and strong enough to be alone, the senator and I went together to Figure Eight Island, where we could rest and brainstorm.

The Edwards beach house sits on the Intracoastal Waterway, with a commanding view of the water. During our first few days, the senator spent much of his time walking on the beach and reading through a stack of books by or about Bobby Kennedy. Calls from political supporters brought the suggestion that he run for chair of the Democratic National Committee, and if he’d been interested in this kind of nuts-and-bolts party work, he could have had the job. However, he rejected the idea because he didn’t see how he could run for president from the DNC position, and he was probably right. When Howard Dean announced he wanted the job, he more or less accepted the end of his own desire to occupy the Oval Office.

Aside from occasional chats with his cronies, the senator’s main contact with the outside world during this beach retreat came from Elizabeth, whom he called about half a dozen times a day. I was impressed by their friendship and how he valued her input. Sometimes she’d ask to speak to me so that I could give her a report on his spirits. More than once she said, “I’m glad he’s with you, Andrew. It makes me feel safer.”

At night we would go to Wilmington, where restaurants that bustled with business in the summer were mostly empty and quiet. Although he sometimes seemed plagued by doubts about his campaigns for the White House, he also made arguments about why he had done it and even why he should try again. Invariably, the rationale would come down to his concern “for people who can’t help themselves” who needed him to be their champion, their white knight.

In all these conversations, the senator noted that Elizabeth was certain that he should mount another campaign, whether she was sick or not. During this time he admired her determination, but I noticed that he also complained more about her mood swings and demanding nature. Toward the end of the campaign, she had started picking fights with him as he was
leaving for a flight or about to go onstage for some event, not caring how it might make him late or affect his performance. Often these arguments were about staffers she didn’t trust (she didn’t trust most of the senator’s aides) or about something he said or did that she didn’t like. “Sometimes I think she’s crazy,” he said.

We drank a little more than usual during this week, and as the wine took hold, the senator invariably talked about the tragedy of his son Wade’s death, going over the details as if repeating them might release some of the pain. On the day it happened, Wade’s companion, who survived virtually unscathed, had called friends in the neighborhood, who knew about it before the Edwardses. The senator told me about how the police came to their home and Elizabeth knew what was happening even before they spoke. She screamed, “Tell me he’s okay! Tell me he’s okay!” When they hesitated, she collapsed on the floor. One of the officers turned to Edwards and said, “I’m sorry, sir. Your son was killed instantly in a wreck.”

As he told this story, the combination of emotion and wine filled the senator’s eyes with tears. He said, “This is just between you and me, okay?” and then continued. The most poignant moment would come when he recalled that when he went to the medical examiner’s office to identify Wade, he actually climbed onto the table where he had been laid out so that he could embrace him one last time. This was the same story he told John Kerry, but unlike Kerry, I didn’t judge Edwards for repeating it. I know that people have to tell their tales of grief over and over again, so I didn’t mind. I hoped the process would help him recover his energy and optimism, and by the time our retreat was over, it seemed he had.