What It Takes (140 page)

But it was not altogether a new leaf for George—or, he hadn’t quite finished turning the old one. In November ’75, he got a cable from Kissinger:
THE PRESIDENT ASKS THAT YOU CONSENT TO HIS NOMINATING YOU AS THE NEW DIRECTOR OF THE CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
,

Bar said: “I remember Camp David ...”

What she meant was, she remembered that day, at Camp David, when George accepted the worst job of his life—the RNC. What she meant was, the CIA was under the same sort of cloud as the Nixon campaign of ’72. Senator Church’s Select Committee on Intelligence was turning up evidence of illegal operations, assassination plots, domestic spying. (
What did they know? When did they know it?
) ... She just wanted George to stop and think: Did he want to walk into another swamp?

But she had no illusions; George would never refuse the President. Anyway, she could see how he felt: this was a
big job
... worldwide ... critical to the country, critical to the man in the Oval Office. He wouldn’t have to fight for the President’s ear—would he? ... He cabled back to make sure.

No, he’d have full access, control of his own shop, his own staff. (Bush started calling himself Head Spook.)

And, within days, he found out that this—that he—was part of a major shake-up: a new Defense Secretary, Don Rumsfeld; a new National Security Adviser, Brent Scowcroft; a new Commerce Secretary, Elliot Richardson ... and most intriguing—a new opening for the national ticket, in 1976 ... Nelson Rockefeller had bowed out as Ford’s running mate.

Who could tell what would happen now?

There was a whole new team taking the field ... and, at last, Bush would be in the great game!

He cabled his acceptance. He flew back to Washington.

Only weeks later did he learn that some Senators (and not just Democrats) didn’t want Bush in the game. Only then did he hear the theory (it had occurred to him, as a matter of fact) that they’d brought him back just to smear him in another swamp of misfeasance ... to give him a job from which he’d
never
recover—not politically, not in the public mind ... that they’d brought him back to
bury him forever
. Worse still, as the price of his confirmation, they wanted him to remove his name from consideration as Ford’s running mate.

How
dare
they? It was like taking away his right to
vote
! It was ... unconstitutional! Had to be!

Well, maybe. But the decision was out of his hands. Before the Senate Armed Services Committee confirmed Bush’s nomination, Gerald Ford wrote a letter, assuring the committee:

“... There should be continuity in the CIA leadership. Therefore, if Ambassador Bush is confirmed by the Senate as Director of Central Intelligence, I will not consider him as my Vice Presidential running mate in 1976.”

W
HEN DOLE GOT THE CALL
from Gerald Ford, at the GOP Convention in Kansas City, he was so excited, he blurted out: “Mr. President, I can’t believe it!” Then, with his next breath, he accepted the Vice Presidential nomination.

A lot of people couldn’t believe it. Elizabeth was stunned. The family went into a tizzy. Kenny told a reporter in the Muehlbach Hotel: “I’m looking for my cleanest dirty shirt.” ABC had a crew on a chartered plane, already bound for Howard Baker’s hometown—they had to U-turn in midair and head for Russell, Kansas. Nelson Rockefeller, the retiring Veep, had only hours to put together his speech of nomination.

“The man of whom I speak,” Rockefeller said that night, in the Kemper Arena, “can take the heat! He can not only take it, believe me, he can really ‘Dole’ it out!”

With that rhetorical flourish, Ford’s Advance men appeared with blue-and-white Ford-Dole signs, still smelling of ink ... but Dole’s name set off a floor demonstration that lasted, alas, less than ten minutes. UPI was already on the phone to Bill Roy, who had the bad grace to bring up dead babies in garbage cans. “It may be,” Roy predicted, “what some people will call a dirty campaign.”

Newsweek
called Ford’s selection “impulsive,” and called Dole the “cut-and-shoot junior Senator from Kansas.”

The New York Times
got hold of Phyllis (at that point, Mrs. Lon Buzick, wife of a cattleman and prominent Republican in Sylvan Grove, Kansas), who thought Bob would make a bored Vice President—too aggressive. But with Ford thirty-three points behind, Phyllis said, Bob might save the day. “Bob Dole,” she said, “will just tear into Jimmy Carter. He is just as smart, and just as tough, and just as hard ... he can campaign forever if he has to—even with the arm.”

That’s what Ford and Co. had in mind. The President would stay in the White House, conducting himself Presidentially. (Polls showed Ford lost support when he went out to campaign.) What Ford wanted was a running mate who would bleed Carter with a thousand cuts, make news, get the ink, take the heat ... meanwhile, shore up the GOP in the heartland (where farmers still resented Ford’s cutoff of grain sales to the Soviet Union).

Dick Cheney, Ford’s Chief of Staff, told Dole: “You’re in charge from the Mississippi west.”

Bob Teeter, the President’s pollster, told Dole they’d have to win (or win back) 130,000 votes each day.

Ford said: “You’re going to be the tough guy.”

It wasn’t supposed to be a “nice” job ... or easy. The point was, Dole had a chance! Point was, they gave him the ball! Bob was so pumped up, he was racing around his hotel, grabbing hands, spreading cheer. He had one phone to his ear and another uncradled, on the hotel bed—someone else waiting. He was
thanking
people. (Never did
that
before! ...) He was so excited he invited Ford to begin the campaign in the
real
heartland—Russell, Kansas—the next day! Tomorrow!

That was the first time Dole brought the national show to Russell, and it hit with such a jolt ... the town would never be the same.
The President of the United States
was coming, twenty-some hours from now. The Air Force took over the nearest decent airport, seventy miles east, in Salina. The Secret Service choppered into Russell to pick out a site—the courthouse lawn. The Chief of Police called in reinforcements from a hundred miles; he placed them, with rifles, on the courthouse roof, the Legion roof, the buildings across the street; state cops poured in to help with traffic. Paramedics and ambulances arrived from nearby towns, the hospital went to alert: they had to have the President’s blood type in stock. The telephone company strung hundreds of new lines. Ev Dumler, head of the Chamber of Commerce, borrowed three sections of bleachers, and trucks to carry them in; he tracked down a P.A., took all the chairs from the Armory, and from the 4-H, too; dismantled and hauled in the stage from the fairgrounds, along with stock tanks for icing down thousands of sodas (the President wanted an old-fashioned barbecue). Scores of Republican ladies brought their grills from home to cook twenty thousand hotdogs (a bakery in Hutchinson put on a special shift for buns). The VFW color guard was scrambled to attention, the high school band crashed into rehearsals of “Hail to the Chief,” the Dream Theatre gave its marquee to the message
WELCOME PRESIDENT FORD AND BOB,
the radio station went live remote from the courthouse, the
Russell Daily News
swelled with extra pages of Dole-pictures, Dole-bio, Dole-record, and Dole-remembrance, all topped with the two-inch headline:
BOMBSHELL HITS RUSSELL. ...
Of course, no one got any sleep.

Who wanted to sleep?

Mae Dumler, Ev’s wife, said: “Well, I got so excited, I didn’t know what to do. So, I just made a pie.”

Bina Dole got so excited when the President was going to come
into her house
... she lost it, on her front step. She couldn’t find her key. Fifteen men in suits were standing, waiting, while Bina scrabbled around in her purse, until Jerry Ford said, “Bina, let me have a look.” Then Bina about dropped dead. The
President’s hand
was
in her purse
! (Elizabeth, at last, found the spare key behind a drainpipe.)

That day, as Bob stood on stage to speak, the President, Bina, Elizabeth, and Robin sat behind him. The sun was shining on the people, massed so tight, they hid the courthouse lawn. There were ten thousand souls in Russell that day. At the edge of the crowd, at the curb, on Main Street, the farmers leaned against their pickups—Doran’s friends. ... Doran Dole died the December before (Bob and Elizabeth cut short their honeymoon). Bob got the Vice Presidential nomination on August 19—that would have been his father’s seventy-sixth birthday. What would Doran say if he could see his town, and his son, now?

“I am proof...” Dole told the crowd, “that you can be from a small town, without a lot of material advantages ... and still succeed ... if I have succeeded.

“If I have had any success, it is because of the people here. ... I can recall the time when I needed help ... and the people of Russell helped ...”

Then he stopped speaking. He looked down. His left hand came up to his forehead, hiding his eyes. He was crying.

The silence was awful. It went on for a minute—felt like forever. Elizabeth wanted to go to him. No one knew what to do. Bob was sobbing, and could not stop.

Then President Ford rose from his chair behind Bob, and he started to applaud. And ten thousand people stood in front of him, clapping, cheering, until Bob looked up again and said, in a croak that was nearly whisper ...

“That was a long time ago ... and I thank you for it.”

Jerry Ford flew straight from Russell to a week or two of golf in Vail, Colorado. Dole hit the road ... and did not stop. He’d never seen a national campaign from the inside—now he was supposed to build one, on the fly.

Dole had Dave Owen doing money—Owen took an office in Washington, (Eighteenth and L streets), slapped a couple of million Ford-for-President dollars into the Riggs Bank on the corner. That same day, Owen rented a Northwest Orient 727 for the next ten weeks ... so there wasn’t extra money to throw around.

In fact, it was a wicked combination—a plane, and not much money. For one thing, to pay costs, they had to rent half the plane to the press, who’d badger Dole constantly ... and since they had the plane all the time, there was no point paying extra money to stay anywhere. So mostly, they’d fly Dole out and back—same day. To be precise, they’d load him up at National Airport for a godawful 6:00
A.M.
hop to some breakfast, and do three or four stops across the country, picking up hours, heading west ... by evening, they’d be in the Southwest or the Rockies, or on the West Coast ... after which, they’d fly Dole back across the country all night. It did save money, and time. It just about killed Dole.

The demands were horrendous. Dole was supposed to hit every major media market ... but concentrate on the farm states ... but make news every day ... and hit Carter, always, hit him, and hit him. Ford was in the Rose Garden. Dole had the press to himself. He did all the speaking. He needed things to say, and he had no issues staff, no speechwriters (save for his own humble Senate folk).

They were piling on staff as fast as they could: press Advance and Larry Speakes from the White House; Lyn Nofziger, Charlie Black, and Paul Russo from the Reagan team. Dole tended to rely on his Kansans—Owen, Bill Taggart, Kim Wells ... but he didn’t listen to anyone, really, save to the White House, where Teeter’s polls and Jim Baker’s instincts determined the program (more farm stops, more and more ...). On the plane, there was a continuous turf war, constant bickering about who was giving Dole the best advice. The last thing Dole would do was sort out that cockfight. True to form, Dole’s staff did whatever it wanted—except for the ones he trusted, who did whatever he asked.

He was supposed to hit Carter ... but hit him with what? So the Washington smart guys started a briefing book, which would travel on the plane, for the Senator’s study. Within weeks, there were special briefing books, depending on the issue—all color-coded, so the
master
briefing book referred to appendices: “See Blue Book” ... “See Red Book” ... “See Green Book,” and so on. It was weeks before Dole said: “Doesn’t anyone on this plane know I’m colorblind?” So they stuck big labels on the books: “THIS IS THE RED BOOK” ... “THIS IS THE GREEN BOOK.” Dole never opened the damned things, anyway.

In fact, he was mild about Carter—by his standards. (
Time
mag called him a disappointing “tabby cat.”) Before his nomination, Dole said Carter looked like “southern-fried McGovern.” But the White House Big Guys got nervous (southerners might be offended), so they warned Dole off that. Then Dole started telling his crowds: “I
used to
call him southern-fried McGovern ... but I have a lot of respect for Senator McGovern ...”

(That was true—and mutual: one of the first calls to Dole-for-Veep came from George McGovern, suggesting a few ways Bob might get under Jimmy Carter’s skin.)

In his own view, Dole was “sticking to the issues.’ Carter was committed to the Humphrey-Hawkins bill for full employment. So Dole would suggest, at every stop, that a Carter White House would have two hotlines—one to the USSR, the other to the AFL-CIO. Carter could not make clear the arithmetic of his “tax reform.” He had to clarify, then reclarify. Dole snapped: “Carter’s got three positions on everything. That’s why he wants three debates.”

Actually, there would be four debates: for the first time, the nation would see the Vice Presidential nominees square off. (Dave Owen tried everything to scuttle that plan—to the point of making Ford’s Big Guys watch a tape of Dole at the Kansas State Fair. But the Veep debate was scheduled, nevertheless.) Dole was supposed to take one day a week to study his briefing books and practice answers ... but whoever made the plan for Dole to sit still in mid-campaign could not have known the man. Elizabeth (who was on leave from the FTC) rode along with Bob for days, tried to engage him in pepper drills ... but even with his new wife, Bob was not much for games. As the fateful date neared, Dole’s thin staff devoted itself to preparation: they had to find a quiet, secluded space for practice (finally begged a room at Nelson Rockefeller’s Washington estate) ... they set up a studio to duplicate the stage Dole would find in Houston ... they hired a video crew ... they had Senators Domenici and Stevens help with new briefing books ... they got Dave Gergen, one of Ford’s top aides, to bring up questions and to play Mondale ... it took weeks to get the thing set up perfectly, for practice. Then Dole wouldn’t come. He sat in his office, making phone calls. Finally, on the last day, he came to the house, stood behind the podium, looked at himself on the monitor ... and walked out.