What It Takes (129 page)

Then, Michael asked:

“How’m I doing?”

“You won.”

Then, Michael Dukakis grabbed Tommy O’Neill in a hug, and in each other’s arms, they jumped up and down on the bed.

T
HE AWFUL THING ABOUT
it was—Michael was so happy! He’d
just about
got to the point where he knew this Presidential campaign was doable ... as he meant to do it. He’d
just about
got to deciding ... he liked it. It
was
different—the excitement, the way people looked at him, the way he felt, talking to them—it was ... just terrific.

Michael was even prepared to concede (this was the true measure of his comfort) there were parts he didn’t understand. The way to communicate what he meant to do, the
kinda guy he was
—he hadn’t got there yet, didn’t have the lines. But he would! ... Or, at least, he’d try. What he’d lost was the fear of the strangeness and size—this wasn’t going to swallow him whole.

He didn’t have to give up his life!

Not all of it ... some things. (He’d lost his cucumbers ... very upset about his cucumbers. He should’ve
known
, the way his Katharine was, she’d
never
water them!) But not the big things—he could govern. He could stay on top of state business—three days a week! And here was the delicious secret:

He’d come back to the State House, and he saw—like a grown man who goes to see the house where he grew up ... it was so small! One day that September, he said to his finance chief, Frank Keefe: “You know, my friend, this is a big, wonderful country we live in. You oughta go out and see it.”

A big, wonderful
world
. ... He had a splendid chat with a man named Lenihan—Deputy Prime Minister of the Republic of Ireland. Lenihan actually came to see
him
. Michael had actually
been to Dublin
. They had plenty to discuss! It was most cordial! Most agreeable. ... This foreign policy stuff—this was not from Mars. He could do this!

And then ...
then
! Came to visit
Oscar Arias
.

The President of Costa Rica ... winner of the Nobel Peace Prize
... came to Michael’s office, and they talked—very well, indeed. They agreed that Reagan’s contra war was bankrupt, immoral,
illegal
. ... Michael and Oscar Arias agreed on the Arias Peace Plan!

And the best part—in the middle, Kitty called. His bride! ... Jean Hines, Michael’s secretary, put Kitty right through.

“I’m sitting here with President Arias ...”

She could hear the pride and pleasure in Michael’s voice.

“Katharine? What do you want me to tell President Arias?”

“Oh, God, Michael! I don’t know! Tell him we all have great hopes for his peace plan ...”

Michael turned from the phone, and relayed this message in perfectly precise Spanish.

Why wouldn’t he be happy?

He was taking the measure of a new world, and it fit him!

He was taking the measure of this huge new campaign ... and he was of size.

How did he know? The way he always knew: his
organization
was covering the ground. Michael was, first, an organizer. That was the root talent that had hauled him into the State House. And now ...

His organization dwarfed his opponents’. Hart was gone. Biden was gone. Jesse Jackson had no pros on the ground. The rest were lightning-seekers: they had to hope for a big win, then try to catch fire. Fire was not Michael’s style.

“Nope ... it’s a marathon, my friend.”

The difference, of course, was money ... and Michael was having another sterling quarter—another
$4 million quarter
! In fact, at the end of September, he was scheduled for a million-dollar evening in Boston. One event: one million dollars.

It was a dinner—with musical entertainment: the plan was for Michael to come on stage ... and play his trumpet! Michael hadn’t touched a trumpet for years, but such was his comfort now, he agreed. And, being Michael, he went to work—he practiced.

Friends would call the house, talk to Kitty:

How’s Michael?

“Oh, God. Don’t ask! He’s upstairs, playing his trumpet.”

In the State House, they asked him: “How’s the trumpet going?”

“The lip?” Michael would answer, with a shrug. “The million-dollar lip?” Of course, by the big day, he was ready. He would play trumpet, correctly.

That was the day ... Sasso came to the State House, four o’clock. He told Michael: he was the one who sent out the tapes about Biden.

Michael just stared, fiercely ... then he sagged in his chair. He shook his head slowly. His voice came from far away.

“
Why?
” he said. “John ...
why
?”

Michael told no one. He had his million-dollar dinner. Steady as she goes ... he went into his hunch. He went to his funder. He played the trumpet, correctly. A group of schoolkids sang a song, on stage. Michael was supposed to watch. He watched.

“Michael! Smile! ...”

That was Kitty, next to him.

“Smile!” she whispered. “They’ll think you’re not enjoying it.”

Michael winced a sick little smile.

“Mi-chael!”

He muttered darkly: “Come on, babe.”

She knew the tone: get-off-my-back. There were people around ... they’d talk at home.

How could John not tell him?

Michael had told the press, the day before: that tape had nothing to do with him—
nothing
! If
anybody
in his campaign was involved, he’d be furious! He wouldn’t stand for it!

How could John let him go out there
—
in ignorance?

How could John betray him?

The funder seemed to last forever. Then they had a driver. Michael sat silent. Kitty worried. Something was terribly wrong. (On the way to the dinner, Michael had forgotten his trumpet—so unlike him!) In the backseat, she lit a cigarette. Michael didn’t say a word.

“Okay,” she said, after he closed the door on Perry Street. “What’s wrong?”

“Sit down.”

“Michael!”

“You better sit down. ... I found out today it was John who made those tapes.”

“Oh, God.”

Michael was standing slumped in the middle of the floor. She went to him, hugged him. But he did not give himself to her touch. He was beyond comfort.

She heard him on the kitchen phone: he called Paul Brountas. Paul was one of Michael’s oldest friends, a Greek, a law school pal, now a corporate
consigliere,
a successful man. Michael had made him chairman of the campaign ... but Paul didn’t have to do much. As chairman, he’d been mostly what he ever was—Michael’s friend.

Now, Michael told him, he needed Paul’s help. They talked about John. Paul thought John should go. Paul had never trusted Michael giving himself over to John ... it was an old story. Michael said they’d have to see what happened.

But what could happen?

Michael would have to make an announcement.

Tomorrow.

Early.

He would have to announce ... he had not known what was going on in his own campaign. How could he have known? John was the one he trusted. The one ...

He would have to announce, admit ... well, he had to talk to John. He dialed John’s number at home. Maybe John would not have to go ... a leave of absence ... an exile ... a penance. ... Michael had to think. He didn’t want to act from emotion, but there was so much hurt.

That’s not what John heard on the phone. He heard Michael’s voice, and he knew: Mike was going to be ... correct.

Michael’s pain, his need, was for family. John had erred. Therefore, John had betrayed. From that moment, John was not family.

And Sasso did not defend himself. He should not have to explain: what he did, he did for Mike. Anyone else, any member of the staff, John would have gone to bat for him—gone to the wall! ... But he would not say a word for himself, though he knew, if he did not sway Michael ... he was gone. His dream for himself was gone.

He shouldn’t have to argue with Michael.

For God’s sake, where was Mike’s loyalty?

Gone: in a contest between human loyalty and Michael’s idea of his own correctness ... there was no choice. It did not matter how Michael needed John, or what John needed. Compared to Michael’s idea of himself, astride the moral axis, human need—even his own—was
nothing
.

That’s what stung Sasso into prideful silence, what he heard in Michael’s voice: nothing.

W
HEN GOVERNOR-ELECT DUKAKIS
took the T to the State House, after the ’74 election, the first news to land in his lap—Boom!—the deficit was not one hundred million, nor even the whispered one hundred fifty. ... Try
three hundred and twenty-one million dollars
.

Michael didn’t bat an eye. He knew he’d have a problem to manage. Now he’d have a bigger problem. That was the only difference he saw. Did he doubt he could manage this problem away? ... Not for an instant. Was he unhappy? ... Not exactly. The pols and reporters who talked to the young Governor-elect strove to describe his air: they used words like “optimism” ... “eagerness.”

In fact, this was joy.

He was born to solve problems. Dr. Dukakis had trained himself for forty years to cure the ills. The problems were his reason for being. So the problems were bigger—
huge
—aha! Just as he’d suspected, as he’d
said
...

He was correct!

He set out to make a government unlike anything the citizens of the Commonwealth had ever seen. “The best government,” he promised, “this state has ever had.”

This would be a government of principle, not patronage. That was the first order of business: a radical patronage-ectomy, a
professional
personnel operation. No one would have a job because he was friend to Dukakis. In fact, no one of any political persuasion or prominence could get a job of any description for a friend.

Of course, he wasn’t asking others to swallow anything he wouldn’t. When anybody from his own campaign asked about a job in the State House, Michael would give them that dirt-on-the-carpet look, and scold: “You know that’s not possible.” ... Why? Because they were friends!

And Michael didn’t stop with jobs—all favors
had to cease
! The Governor had at his privy command the power to dispense low-number license plates. This was a harmless, much-coveted sign of standing, something like the Order of the British Empire, or a Lenin Medal for Valiant Factory Production. Best of all, it cost the Commonwealth ... nothing.

“Nope. No special plates. That’s not the way we’re gonna do business.”

“But Michael,
somehow
you gotta thank your friends.”

So Michael told Kitty to schedule a dinner—not too big, maybe twenty-five people.

“Good. I’ll hire a caterer.”

“The way they charge?”

“Michael,
I
can’t do it!”

So ... the Governor-elect made turkey tetrazzini for twenty-five.

Then he cleaned up.

Then, thanking was over.

The first thing he thought of was to cut the Governor’s payroll in half—who needed staff? (No, actually, the first thing he thought of was to give back ten thousand of his salary—who needed more than thirty thousand a year? ... But Kitty talked him out of that.) Next, he got rid of the limo, and the state cop who drove it—what’s wrong with the T? ... The cops, of course, still had to protect him. Now they
all
had to ride on the T.

Next, he had to find a cabinet. That was serious. That was principle! No, that was a matter of
multiple
principles. ... In fact, so complicated was the web of Dukakisian imperatives that Michael put Fran Meaney in charge of the talent search. Only Fran, his longstanding partner in reform, could find the correct people.

First, they had to be clean.

And bright—that went without saying.

And not from Michael’s campaign—no one would say he gave jobs to his friends.

And
generalists
—they should not have friends among the issue groups they’d regulate. (In practice, that meant most would know nothing about their subjects. Not everyone found it as easy as Michael to keep from having friends.)

Then, at his first press conference, someone asked the Governor-elect how many of his ten cabinet secretaries would be women.

On stage, next to him, Kitty said: “Four!”

Michael said that sounded correct.

So, four women became a principle.

And minorities—that was a principle, too.

“That’s great,” said Fred Salvucci, the transportation sage. “Now all’s we need is an Italian woman whose mother was Hispanic and whose father was Chinese and spoke Swahili.”

“Cute,” said Michael. “Very cute, Frederick.”

Somehow, Salvucci slipped through the web and got appointed Transportation Secretary ... though he knew the field, had helped Michael’s campaign, and could even be described as a friend. (Then again, he was correct, and clean, and had been virtuously ignored for years while he and Michael inveighed against the roads.)

In Michael’s pure vision, the cabinet would actually run the state—the Secretaries and the Governor would make the hard choices—without interference of politics ... not even the politics of the Governor’s office.

That’s why Dukakis could cut his own staff... why he could hire another rookie, David Liederman, as his Chief Secretary: because the
cabinet
would act as his counselors. They were all going to be on the same team, weren’t they? They’d meet together, pull together ... cure the ills, make Massachusetts work—wouldn’t they?

Of course they would! They’d work in concert, they’d reason and discuss ... at least until some reporter started writing something into a notebook ... after that, the Secretaries mostly ceased to reason—what they did was make speeches.

See, that was a principle, too: not only would the cabinet run the state, give the Governor its candid counsel ... it would do so in meetings open to the press and public. Michael thought it important for citizens to see clean government. They ought to come and watch!

So they did, until one cabinet meeting wherein the Secretaries of the Commonwealth were interrupted in their reasoning by demonstrators who stood up to shout: “No welfare cutbacks! No welfare cutbacks!” And Michael wasn’t going to stand for that crap! He called an emergency recess, and told Liederman: