What It Takes (125 page)

“Hello, everybody. You know my wife, Jill. ... Three and a half months ago ...”

Jill was on his left, close, her right arm almost touching him. She stared straight ahead at the wall of cameras, the pack ... but she met no one’s eyes. She hated them. First time in her life ... but it was true: this was hate. They were destroying what Joe worked for, twenty years. It was just another story for them. They were excited: the crowd at a hanging. She couldn’t believe how Joe was—so controlled.

He kept it short and sweet: no ranting, no self-pity.

He’d made mistakes, he said. And now, with the glare on those mistakes, it was impossible to make people see Joe Biden. He had to choose between his campaign and his chance to influence the direction of the Court.

“Although it’s awfully clear to me what choice I have to make, I have to tell you honestly, I do it with incredible reluctance—and it makes me angry. I’m angry with myself for having been put in the position, for having put myself in the position, of having to make this choice. And I am no less frustrated at the environment of Presidential politics that makes it so difficult to let the American people measure the whole Joe Biden, and not just misstatements that I have made.

“But, folks, be that as it may, I have concluded that I will stop being a candidate for President of the United States.”

He thanked his supporters.

He thanked the press for being there.

Then he turned on his heel, and walked out.

It was a performance of grace and guts—everybody noticed. They commended him in “analysis” pieces that weekend. They said Biden did it to himself—at least he was sport enough to say so. It made everybody feel better.

Broder went so far as to write a column about the time he saw Joe stop in an airport and spend a half-hour with a man who had AIDS. See, Biden did have character.

It was okay to say so, once he bowed out so nicely—give the guy a break.

Like that story about Jimmy’s bankruptcy: the
Times
never did follow up. Not a word. Probably thought they were being kind—pulling back, once Joe got out. They wouldn’t see it otherwise ... as the Bidens saw it ... for instance, as blackmail.

Joe didn’t have time for postmortems. He had the hearings, thank God. After his statement, he walked through the anteroom, straight to the hall and the Caucus Room. Jill and Mark Gitenstein walked alongside.

“I did the right thing,” Biden said. He didn’t even seem to be convincing himself. He was calm, quiet, clear. “I can concentrate now—do the hearings. At least, I can do a good job.”

Mark was nodding. He was going to say ...

“No!” Jill said. And it jolted them: her tone. Jill
never
cut in like that. Joe and Mark each thought she was talking just to him.

Jill said, with steel in her voice: “You have got to
win
.”

O
F COURSE HE WANTED
to win—wouldn’t have tried if he didn’t think he could. But when he started—when was it? four years ago? almost five!—Dick Gephardt didn’t think he could lose.

Not that he thought himself inexorable victor—no, the odds were always against him. But if he just did
well
, if he ran a decent race ... he’d have to end up better. A national figure, a force for the future!

It was strange, but the road to the White House was the path of least resistance. Dick made the turn in ’83, after Senator Tom Eagleton tipped him off: Eagleton would not run again in ’86. He was going to announce his retirement, and he wanted Dick to jump in the same day—say he meant to be the next Senator from Missouri.

Well, it was a hell of an invitation. Dick could emerge anointed, with Eagleton’s blessing, Eagleton’s money. (Lou Susman, the Senator’s high-dollar man, was more eager than Tom! ...) But it would have been bloody—a primary, statewide, against Harriett Woods, a go-getter liberal, a hard campaigner ... a
woman
. It made Dick edgy: he’d have to talk about abortion. Gephardt had always voted with his district—pro-life—to outlaw abortion. But he didn’t want to climb into bed with the antiabortion zealots in Missouri ... they were crazy! Anyway, after that, he’d never be able to get
outta
bed. He could never run nationally as a pro-life Democrat (unless he meant to do without Democratic women).

So, Dick didn’t jump. And when he balked at running statewide ... well, the only choice was to go national. Jim Wright was already angling for Speaker (after Tip announced his retirement), and Dick could have made that a fight ... but talk about
bloody
! He’d end up with enemies aplenty, even if he won. So he contented himself with Chairman of the Caucus—fourth in the leadership. That was his ticket to the top ... and it wouldn’t upset anybody.

Actually, the job was perfect: he could make of it what he chose—for instance, a straight shot to the evening news. Dick would be
invited
to speak for the Party, get out front to define the agenda. That would carry him all over the country ... new friends, new connections ... he was already running flat out for ’88. At least, he was out there to offer himself, as he’d offered himself on St. Louis doorsteps. He’d see how it went, how people reacted ... what did he have to lose? The filing deadline for his House seat would fall on March 29, 1988 ... three weeks
after
Super Tuesday. The worst that could happen: he’d be back in the House—a stronger runner, after a practice lap.

But five years has a way of changing a man’s mind. So much effort, by so many people ... people counting on him. Other people’s money, promises to keep ... all the problems he’d talked about for years—as if he knew—now, he
knew
.

He’d voted, every year, for Meals on Wheels. Nice program: food for old people. Who’s against it? ... Dick was for old people—“senior citizens,” he called them—always scored high on the rankings compiled by their lobbyists. But now, in Iowa—a campaign event, a photo op—he delivered a Meal on Wheels. And this old lady came to the door, on her walker ... she was so
happy
he was there. She wanted to tell him what it meant ... the food was fine—but what it meant was, a person came by, every day, to ask for her ... a person who cared. She could live in her own house. She didn’t have to sit in some warehouse for old bones. (She didn’t call it a “senior citizens’ home” or a “Title-Eight, Type-Two, Long-Term Health-Care Facility.” It was that brick box across town, where people went in and never came out.)

He visited the GM plant in Fremont, California. It was shut down in 1982 because of low productivity, high worker-absentee rate, high defect rate ... maybe the worst plant in the company (which was going some, in GM’s case). And then GM switched it over to building the new Chevy Nova—a joint venture with Toyota—and replaced the plant’s top brass. The new manager came from Japan: the son of Mr. Toyota himself. Well, the defect rate went down—among the lowest in the corporation ... lower absentee rate, higher productivity. The high muck-a-mucks were eating with assembly-line workers in the same cafeteria, the workers were meeting in quality councils, showing up before shifts to do calisthenics ... and they felt great about it!

That’s just what he’d been talking about—attitude! You get people together and find out what they want ... and then
do it
!. You could turn it around! That’s what the
country
had to do. That’s what
he
could do ... what he
had
to do!

It’s like a drug, the feeling you could make a difference—a big, thumping, history-denting difference in the lives of all those people, those hundreds of thousands of hoping, hurting individuals who have stared at you in school auditoriums, coffee shops, and living rooms. The twelve hundred men and women from the J.I. Case plant, in Bettendorf, Iowa, whose jobs took off one day and landed in South Korea—he wanted to tell them, things would be better ... he would
make
them better ... he could
do it
!

But he had to win.

And that was different from not losing.

And the twist in his belly, that end of September 1987, was he was not winning. He wasn’t even not-losing. When it mattered most, to
him
... he was sinking like a stone. But worse than that, he’d stand on a courthouse lawn (his seventy-ninth county!) and he’d wind up his speech ...

“
Give me your will ...

“
Give me your vision ...

“
Give me your commitment ...

“
Give me your belief ...

“
And, together, we can make America great, and strong again
.”

And maybe there’d be forty souls, forty pairs of eyes, maybe thirty seeing him for the first time ... and he could not see in them any faith that he could make the difference. He could not even read belief ... that he
wanted
to make things better.

What he saw was suspicion.

Even before Joe Biden withdrew,
everybody knew
... it was Gephardt who did him dirty.

It started in the sour soup of the pack, of course. Not that it showed up in stories ... but still, everybody knew. Tell the truth, the pack was edgy—this Karacter Kop routine was screwing up their campaign, their own shining shot at History! Candidates toppling like trees in a clear-cut! Where would it stop? People were blaming
them
! ... So, someone was gonna pay for Biden. That video started the whole sooty snowball—who sent it?

Gephardt, Gephardt, Gephardt ...

The wise-guy community echoed back this delicious and well-known poop, the more avidly in Iowa (they might be in Council Bluffs, but hey!—they were in the know). And from that point, it was an epidemiological certainty that the “activist” population would be infected.

People stood up at events and asked Gephardt: Why’d you do it?

Gephardt said he didn’t do it. As far as he knew, no one in his campaign did it.

As far as he knew!
... Wasn’t that wiggle room?

Even if they believed him—say, half those staring citizens on the courthouse lawn—they didn’t believe for long. Their neighbor heard
for sure
. ... Anyway, this thing spread like herpes B—no way you’d catch up with one man in a Ford van.

Dick was supposed to be bringing in the old Biden folks ... forget it! Lowell Junkins, the top of Biden’s Iowa heap, the last Democratic candidate for Governor, was jobbing Gephardt every chance he got. And as he was the one man the big-feet consulted to find out where Biden-folk were likely to land ... his chances were legion.

But the press didn’t need persuading. They’d always had that Gephardt figured: the man would do
anything
! (He made his
mother
move to Iowa ... what is she? Ninety?)

It was like his flip-flop on abortion ... the guy got off the pro-life wagon just before going national—how convenient.

Then he discovered the trade deficit because he needed the unions.

Then he signed onto Harkin’s farm bill because he’d need the farmers.

It all
fit
, see ... not just Doak and Shrum plotting to ruin Biden because they hated Caddell. The whole Gephardt operation was a band of desperadoes! The newest was Joe Trippi ... brilliant, yes, but his pockets were filled with grenades—
everybody knew that!
Trippi was going to do
message
—God only knew what Gephardt would say now, now that he’d tailored his whole image to Iowa ... that whole Eagle Scout thing ... and Iowa saw through it. (D’you see the poll? Guy’s fallin’ apart!)

Now there were rumors Gephardt meant to sack his Iowa operation (after Fleming put an
army
out there for him!). Was he getting rid of the guilty parties?

Everybody knew something was fishy in that Gephardt office. You never even saw those people out to dinner! ... Teresa Vilmain, head of the Dukakis Iowa campaign, threw a party—it was for the Biden folks, but everybody came ... everybody but the Gephardts. That’s what people talked about, all night—and days thereafter. Not one Gephardt person! Teresa was nobody’s fool—
she wouldn’t invite them
! The Duke’s people hadda know something ... right?

Missss
-ter Eagle Scout!

Dick was without tools to combat this disaster, unequipped by experience. His life’s method was built on the certainty, the requirement, that people would look into his eyes and see he was decent, optimistic, patriotic, faithful to the Lord, considerate of his fellow man. ... Seldom had he been mistrusted—never attacked.

He had no idea what to do.

His problem could not be solved by denial—they did not believe him. And his constant instinct in times of trouble—to work harder—was useless. He could not prove a negative by visiting three more Iowa counties, not even three a day. The intensity of his effort just made it worse. It made him laughable—the dread and fatal affliction.

His issues, his program, offered no protection: people did not believe that
he believed
in his issues ... they were campaign-convenient, too clever by half. Reilly took polls in Iowa on the trade issue. Almost eighty percent of the sample agreed with Gephardt’s position ... but they wouldn’t vote for him.

That’s what was dawning on Gephardt: it was about
him
... the issues, the organization, were only important insofar as they showed
him
. ... And not in the comfortable, unassuming way that had always worked before: Dick Gephardt, honest broker ... that nice young man who helped the community association with its articles of incorporation ... that knowledgeable young Congressman who cut through red tape at the VA ... that patient legislator who sat through 165 conference committee meetings, just to buff the burrs off that Gramm-Rudman bill.

No, that was not enough.

“People in this country look at politicians like doctors—solve the problem ...” That’s the way Dick talked about his discovery. “They don’t really know about the gall bladder ... so they want to know something about the doctor.”

This wasn’t like his other campaigns. It was not just more doorsteps—this was something else.
He
would have to be something else. There were millions of people out there, going to pick their President. It didn’t matter how hard Dick worked—he was not going to lock the baby blues on their faces and
listen
to them all. They weren’t
going
to get in a room with Dick and figure out what they wanted to do. They wanted one guy, at the front of the room, to
tell
them what they were going to do—or, at least, what
he
meant to do.