What It Takes (124 page)

Joe sat back with a sigh. “So they write ‘Biden admits plagiarism.’ So ... that’s all right.”

It wasn’t all right.

“But I’ll tell you,” he said, with new toughness in his voice, as the plane dipped toward Washington. “My learning curve on this thing is moving.”

A woman from the office was waiting with a car outside the private terminal. “How are you, Senator?”

“I’m all right,” Joe said firmly. “All right. Really.”

Joe was late for the hearings ... didn’t matter. This was just the loose ends. No one was watching, Saturday afternoon, with baseball and football on TV.

Biden had his closing planned, another stirring evocation of man’s fundamental rights ... but when he closed that afternoon, he talked instead straight to Bork. This was a different tone of voice than he’d had four days before. This was not for the cameras.

“You know, Judge ... it is a lot harder on one’s family than it is on the principal, when a member of the family is undergoing any test.

“You have been undergoing a test, but that is part of the process, as you well know, Judge. No judge, no nominee, is entitled to the spot. ... It is not a presumption automatically made, any more than it is a presumption when one of us stands for election ... that we should be elected.”

In the chair at the center of the table, in the almost empty hearing room, Biden looked older than he had four days ago. There was almost a shrug in his voice.

“That,” he told Bork, “is the process.”

By that time, smooth Howard Fineman had phoned Biden’s committee staff to ask about the comments Joe made in New Hampshire, a few months ago.
Newsweek
had a tape, from C-Span. ... That stuff about his IQ, and his scholarships, how he graduated with three degrees, at the top of his class ...

By that time, what could the staff say?

What could Joe say?

That he got pissed off? It was late? His head hurt? He only meant to shut the guy up?

No, he’d have to say: he lied.

That was the process.

Sunday, Joe was home, but there must have been a hundred press calls (he’d never worried about giving out his number).
Newsweek
wouldn’t hit the stands till the next day, but half the world seemed to know about the piece (
Newsweek
fed the story to the wires, to assure the magazine got proper credit).

Thing about the calls—they didn’t want explanations. There’s a difference, Joe figured, when they know what they want to write. What they wanted was a comment—to show they’d called; a no-comment was just as good. He’d explain one thing, they’d bring up another. Jill couldn’t stand it. She said: “There’s no way to
answer
...”

For Joe, the calls were a blur—accusations, from voices he knew. People he
knew
... or thought he knew. The moment he would always remember—when the hopeless absurdity sank in—was one call: he was trying to explain that he
did
change in law school, he
did
buckle down, he
could
argue a case ... yes, he
did
win the moot court competition ... really! Honest!

And Val, bless her heart, came rushing to him on the phone with a frame she’d taken off the wall—his moot court certificate. He’d forgotten it was on the wall. She
ran
... with this stupid framed piece of fluff, like water for a man in the desert. She carried it in both hands,
running
!

What was awful was how happy they were ... triumphant! His moot court certificate!

H
OW COULD HE STOP IT?
His campaign was hemorrhaging. Ridley was near emotional collapse. The gurus were clueless. Joe sent Val up to sniff the wind in New Hampshire, whence she fired back a telegram:
THE PEOPLE ARE WITH YOU. VICTORY IS YOURS.

But that was just Val, being a Biden. They both knew that.

No less a savant that R. W. Apple, in
The New York Times
, was beating the tribal drums under the headline:
BIDEN’S WATERLOO?

(And who was Apple’s featured Washington wise guy, helping to drop the dime on Joe? “What’s clearly revealed here is that his intellectual habits are lazy, undisciplined and sloppy,” said Apple’s “campaign expert,” the pilgarlic-pollster-pundit-columnist-TV-guest-part-time-Biden-guru-who-gave -Joe-the-Kinnock-tape-in-the-first-place, William Schneider. “That’s a major weakness, and it will seriously damage him.”)

Worse, the papers were starting to speculate on whether Biden’s woes would catapult Bork onto the Court. Joe couldn’t let that happen. That would inflict his failure on the country, probably for twenty years.

But he couldn’t give up the chair. That would be confirmation of everything they wrote about him.

That was the bottom line: he had to keep his life out of the Bork fight. Then, he would do whatever it took—however many years it took—to set the record straight on his own life.

Monday, Joe burrowed into the hearings like a kid hiding under the porch. Bork was off the stand. Panels of judges and legal scholars were testifying for and against the nomination. No one could get to Biden while he sat in the chair ... he didn’t even get up to pee. He kept the committee in till eleven at night, while he stared ahead, mostly silent.

It really came down to three separate issues.

There was the Bork nomination ... and the Biden campaign. He could not go out to save the campaign at the risk of the Bork nomination. He could not even take time now to defend himself, personally. If he screwed up on Bork, that would be the end of his reputation. That was the third issue—and the big one: his word as a Biden. That was the loss he could not overcome.

He took time, the next day, for one meeting: a session with his Congressional supporters. They’d stood up for him proudly, at announcement, a hundred days before. Now they only wanted to know: Any more shoes gonna drop?

And Joe, a hundred days ago the proudest of all on that grand stage, had to think before he answered. When he did talk, sadly, all he could say was: “I just, honest to God, don’t know.”

He’d been raking through his life in his head ... anything else someone could use?

That speech ... that line ... was that his? Who wrote that?

Doak and Shrum—Pat was so sure they were bleeding him—what had he confided to those guys?

Or were his own people—guys with him now—leaving the ship?

Who could say, with blood in the water?

Word was spreading in the capital: Biden was about to call it quits. Joe had told the gurus to draft a withdrawal statement.

That day, there were two hundred press calls. Rasky had the twenty-foot conference table covered with messages. He and Donilon tried to call them all: of course, the big-feet first.

E.J. Dionne, from the
Times
, was ahead of the pack on Biden’s withdrawal. He was on the phone every few hours. At some point, he asked Donilon: What was the story on Jimmy Biden’s bankruptcy? The
Times
was thinking of doing a story. ... But E.J. didn’t press it: there was only one big story left on Biden—was there gonna be, you know ... any announcement tomorrow?

At the close of the hearings, Joe walked into the conference room, found Rasky with his head down, like he was studying the grain of the table. “What’sa matter now?” Biden said.

“We’re getting pressure from everywhere,” Rasky said. “I just talked to E.J. ... the great Paper of Record is trying to blackmail you out.”

But Joe was spinning too fast—didn’t have time to deal with cases. They’d deal with it all, that night, in Wilmington. He gathered gurus and staff—Donilon and Rasky, Gitenstein and Kaufman—but not Pat. Pat just wanted to attack the press:
straight to the people
over the heads of the press—take the road even Hart feared to tread. Biden wasn’t going to do that. And Joe couldn’t take a fight with Caddell now. So Pat stayed in D.C. (Ridley stayed behind as a fire wall between Caddell and Joe), and Biden took the rest home with him to Wilmington.

On the train, they clumped into an Amtrak coach, planning withdrawal. In Wilmington, the guys peeled off for dinner at a pasta joint. Biden would have dinner with family alone ... they’d all meet at Joe’s house to work out the final plan.

But when they got to Biden’s, there was no more plan, Joe had talked it over with the family. It looked like he was back in the race.

Joe paced his living room, doing the moves: he was gonna
prove
why this charge was bullshit, and that charge was bullshit. The law school thing—he’d have the head of the Delaware Supreme Court open the case, a full investigation. The Kinnock stuff he already explained—he’d used that stuff before, always with credit. The Kennedy lines—Pat already said he stuck those lines into the speech, Joe didn’t know. He’d said that at the press conference. The academic record—that was tough, but he’d explain ... it wasn’t three degrees, but he’d had two majors at Delaware. He did have a scholarship. He did improve in law school. If he could just get out to make the case to the people, he knew they’d be with him.

Yeah, but when could he make the case?

The campaign was dying.

Fund-raising ... forget it.

Rasky and Donilon, the pros, couldn’t see how Joe could do it. Not all at once. Something had to go. “You’ve had forty million dollars of negative TV dumped on you in the last week,” Donilon said.

“You know,” Joe said. “I’ve
never
been a quitter ... never quit anything in my
life
.”

“That’s right,” Beau said.

Beau was the one who made the case for staying in. Beau and Hunt were furious, and hurt. They couldn’t believe their father would even
think
of getting out. This wasn’t about politics, or the public—this was about their dad’s honor. “You’ve got nothing to get out
from
,” Beau said. “All the stuff they said—there’s nothing real.”

It was almost eerie how alike were father and son ... and Beau made the argument with such feeling, such intensity ... it looked like Joe might fight it out to the death.

“If you quit now, people will think that all that stuff about you is true. If you stay,” Beau said, “keep the spotlight, you can make your case directly to the people—right over the heads of the press ...”

Then Rasky got into it with Beau: What are you talking about—over the heads of the press? How? ... Have you been talking to Pat?

No, Beau was not talking for Caddell. This was from Beau.

“If you quit,” Beau said. “You’ll be ... like Hart!”

Caddell was on the phone now—not once, but every ten minutes. Pat had arguments for Joe, arguments for Jimmy to make to Joe, something he had to tell Beau—
right now
. ... It was nuts. Caddell was stirring the pot to a froth from a hundred miles away.

Pat’s next call, Rasky went to the kitchen—he’d try to calm Pat. ... But no—how could Pat be calm?

“You guys,” Caddell screamed, “have formed a
vigilante committee
to get
my candidate OUT OF THE RACE
!”

In the living room, Gitenstein was warning: this attack on Joe was going to contaminate the vote on Bork. “If we win on Bork, it’s gonna be in spite of us. If we lose now, it’s gonna be because of us. The only way you’re going to shut the press up is ... get out.”

Ted Kaufman was the last to weigh in. After fifteen years with Biden, Wilmington to Washington every day, Ted wasn’t talking about the press, the campaign, or the Bork fight—Ted thought of Joe. So it seemed like there was nothing more to argue, after Ted said ... “Get out.”

It wasn’t that Joe didn’t see the logic. He’d known since he got home, and started talking with the family: he’d have to get out. He had no way to fight. Christ, he knew that... with his head. But his heart—his family! his sons!—could not accept ... “I quit.”

He would not say it!

In the end, of course, it was all about family.

Jimmy, Frankie—they saw the logic. They were the ones who told Joe, flat out ... it hurt, sure, hurt Joe, hurt the family ... but that didn’t change anything.

Jill wanted out. The calls to the house ... so
nasty
. There was no explaining. Those people didn’t want to hear the answers. They just kept ... well, it was awful.

It was late that night, Rasky took Joe aside, into the library, told him more about the call from the
Times
. They were going after Jimmy; it wasn’t just Joe anymore.

Soon after that, Joe called to Jill, and they started upstairs. Joe paused, turned on the staircase, and said quietly to Gitenstein: “Mark, you get to work on a statement.”

The old Judiciary hearing room was packed an hour before Joe’s appearance ... the whole tribe assembled: government reporters who’d been sitting in the hearings, political reporters just back from Iowa, big-feet holding court at their seats. The back of the room filled, then the aisles. (David Broder would report that twenty-eight TV rigs were present.) The air was scarce. But it was social.

“Hey, what’re you doin’ here, slumming?”

“Hey, d’you have lunch?”

A reporter pressed against the side wall started paddling his arms and yelping. ... Hah! Feeding frenzy—see?

The few who knew Biden were quiet. “I’ve covered him for eight years,” said Nadine Cohodas, from
Congressional Quarterly
. She looked like she was going to weep.

Debby Orin, from the
New York Post
, was working the ones who knew—working hard: “There’s something really wrong about this. I feel awful. I mean, don’t you think it’s wrong, there’s something wrong?” She’d fix her sharp dark eyes on one, then the other: “Don’t you think it’s wrong? I mean, who did this to Joe? I’ve heard the White House on the law school thing, but, I mean, what about the other stuff, you know? Who? ...”

(Gephardt, Gephardt, Gephardt ... they answered. They all knew the poop on Doak and Shrum v. Caddell. If you weren’t known to be in the know about Doak and Shrum ... well, who were you? Anyway, Biden was dead meat. Next case.)

The door behind the podium swung open and Val emerged, with her husband, Jack, then brother Jimmy, then Jill and Joe. Biden stepped up to the podium, topped with a fungal bouquet of microphones.