What It Takes (152 page)

“Ahh, I don’t know,” John said. John could not have told her what it was—not then. It was only later ... he felt the hole in the middle—the way everything was perfect, all together (they acted like it was all together), except John and Mike—they weren’t doing anything together. It was only later, John felt so ...
stupid,
so
used
... for falling in again, playing his role, acting the part, in some private play of Michael’s.

What did Mike want—for John to tell him he’d been right?

D
ICK GEPHARDT FLEW TO
Iowa the day after New Year’s—five weeks to give it one more hard shot. His ads were on the air—they started the day after Christmas, and reaction was good. He didn’t know how good. (His vacation was four days’ skiing with the family, and Jane had docked his phone privileges—he only managed a few stealthy calls from the phone at the top of the chair lift.)

But as soon as he was back in the state, he could feel the ads. The trade ad hit the hardest. Voters came up to Gephardt and quoted the ad back to him—as if, maybe, he didn’t know and they had to
tell him
about this ad ... unbelievable! It said just what he’d been
talking about
!

So Gephardt started using the ad, almost word for word, in his speech:

“We make a car here called the Chrysler K-car ... costs about ten thousand dollars in the United States. Competes against the Hyundai. That costs about seven thousand dollars. So that’s the competition, and I accept that. ... But if we took a Chrysler K-car and tried to sell it in Korea, they put on nine different taxes and tariffs ... and when they’re done, that K-car that cost ten thousand dollars here would cost
forty-eight thousand
in South Korea. ...

“So, when I’m President I want to have a meeting with the South Koreans ... and I’ll say two things: first, we’ll keep our military commitments, because that’s the kind of people we are. We give our word, we keep it. But, second, I’m gonna ask them to take off the taxes and tariffs that
we
don’t have on
their
products. And if they
don’t
, they’re gonna leave that table wondering ... how many Hyundais are they gonna sell here, for forty-eight thousand dollars a copy!

“They can bring the Mitsubishis, and the Toyotas, and the Mercedes-Benzes, and the Volvos, and the record players, and computers—all of it—I don’t mind it. But,
by golly
... if they can bring their products here and sell them with
ease
, I want us to be able to take our products there—and sell them with
EQUAL EEEASE
! ...”

That’s what Dick was talking—
equalese!
... And now, every time he gave them equalese, the crowd would halt him with cheers.

In a state hit hard by a slump in exports, where so many workers had lost their paychecks, lost their plants, as manufacturing moved overseas, the issue was a good one ... but, God knows, he’d been drumming Iowa with the Gephardt Amendment for
years
, and it got him ... six percent.

True, these words were better, as he wasn’t talking about his arcane bill, or the unfathomable billions in the national balance of trade. He was talking about two cars (that they knew) and one (unknown) set of menacing Asians ... and that lent focus, a target for ire. ... But why would this new
example
turn the tide when, for years, they’d watched their own factories shut down and their neighbors or kin put out of work? Were they confused before about what Gephardt meant?

No, but now he’d become something palpable in their lives. He was on that screen, whence the great world came to them ... not once, but several times a night: he was a presence, a force, of size, he was ... bigger than Geraldo!

And just as angry.

And more serious, more important ... almost (dare one say?) noble ... because, in the end, he was not on TV for money, or ratings, syndication, selling soap, no ...

It’s Your Fight, Too!

He was ... for them.

And as TV validated Gephardt—made him larger than life, the size of celebrity (which is like in degree unto personage, or President)—so, then, his appearance in their town, their school, their neighbor’s home, or their own freezing barn, validated that enormous presence on TV. It was not just slick hoopla cooked up in Hollywood—or Washington. He was
there
... and he said the
same thing
... and they heard him, and cheered him, and they were, thereafter, linked to that huge figure on TV.

And the last shining strand of this gossamer pulled straight back through the heart of the web ... because their cheers (so loud, so many new people!) validated Gephardt in his instinct, his effort, to
be
that man on TV.

And when that happened (it was only a matter of days—Gephardt could just
do
that kind of thing) ... he
was
huge. He was coming like a freight train.

And he knew it. He called his killers in Washington and told them: “This thing is gonna
happen
. We can
win
.”

That’s when Shrum came out to listen to the new stump speech. If something was happening out there, he had to know. The next speech, the next ad, had to build from these new facts on the ground.

So they drove Shrummy out to a one-street town—just a car dealership and a Catholic church, way up north, by the Minnesota line, where the windchill could crack the skin on your face. It was Sunday, they had to wait for people to come from church. And the farmers stood in Sunday-best, in a shed with a concrete floor, while Dick climbed onto a wagon in front, with his own new shiny green seed jacket on, a tractor behind him ... and he was belting it out:

“
Why shouldn’t farmers VOTE on the program?
...

“
Why should BIG GRAIN COMPANIES TELL YOU THE PROGRAM?
”

Shrummy tried to listen, but he had nothing on except a nice little corduroy jacket and a fine, white Italian scarf, and he was gingerly dancing on the concrete, where the cold ate through the soles of his Italian shoes, and ... well, he just couldn’t concentrate, with his
feet,
you know ... while he hugged himself for warmth and hopped on the cement, and he said: “No
wonder
these people are unhappy. S’not economic problems! It’s fucking
cold here
... there’s not one decent piece of architecture, and no decent
restaurants
!”

That was about the time the pack decided it was Shrum who’d created this monster new Gephardt—laid him down on a marble slab and poured in that angry populist juice. ...
Everybody knew
Shrummy was a genius.

Had to be
someone,
see ... because the pack had written Gephardt off—the guy was a stiff! (Of course, they hadn’t watched him lately—who’s gonna watch a guy at six percent?) Then they’d gone home for Christmas, his ads went up ... and the first poll they saw when they drag-assed back to freezing Des Moines—the guy was even with Dukakis! (Their darling!)

It was a
trick
—had to be ... a stratagem ... which they’d have to ferret out.

Must be the ads—who did the ads?—Doak and Shrum! Those two sly desperadoes must have body-snatched ol’ Eagle-Scout-conference-committee-split-the-difference Dick ... and trotted him out for ’88 as a fire-breathing class warrior!

So the big-feet went straight to the source—Doak and Shrum—and what could the boys say? ... That the Hyundai ad was Trippi’s idea? That Gephardt had been saying this same stuff for two years? That, so far, they’d gurued the man to the point where his kids thought he was going to lose, he had promised his wife he’d hang up his spikes, he was facing total political extinction ... he was fighting like a cornered marmot?

No. Their man was on the move! This was their own shining shot—they’d be in all the books. Not to mention, this was their livelihood. (They’d grown to love those year-end ceremonies where they wrote each other million-dollar checks.)

So they talked about the ads—modestly, becomingly—and they made sure to mention, Dick had input.

And some of the press followed up on that tip, and rode along with Gephardt (he was so happy his herd was growing) ... and asked:

Who told him to talk so tough?

What happened to Gephardt, the consummate insider?

Wasn’t this kind of a transparent ploy?
...

But Gephardt was no fun. He’d look them in the eye, and say, “No.”

He had the gall to insist: he meant what he said!

Of course, they didn’t believe that crap for one minute.

He went to dinner with the editors of the
Register
. The maximum boss, Jim Gannon, was host at his house, and he had his editorial chief, Jim Flansberg, and the publisher, a fellow named Charles C. Edwards ... and their wives all came ... Gephardt brought Murphy. Gannon had the thing catered—drinks and dessert in the living room.

It was a wonderful talk, a wonderful night. They liked him! Gephardt was
sure
. He’d been in politics twenty years. Surely, he could tell who liked him. Afterward, Dick called Carrick: “I think we really got to them. They caught on ... even the editors, I think ... they really listened!”

Yes, they did. The next editorial in the
Register
was entitled:
HITTING THE WRONG NOTE.

“Actually, if you listen closely, Gephardt is not as protectionist as his stump rhetoric would indicate, but that’s not reassuring. It smacks of demagoguery, which may be his real problem.”

That was the same day Gephardt picked up
The Wall Street Journal
, and read: “The farm crisis is over.”

Gephardt leapt out of his airplane seat, waving the paper. “Look at this! This is the
problem
! Where do they
get
this stuff?” (Well, the
Journal
had an expert to quote: one James P. Gannon, editor of the
Register.
)

The next day, Gephardt gave a blistering speech—a new phase of the campaign, he called it. He said he meant to refocus the issues: American jobs, the family farm, our children’s educations, Social Security, Medicare—they were all in jeopardy ... and why?

Because the multinational corporations, the grain companies, the oil companies, the bankers, the Wall Street traders ... all of Reagan’s favored friends, were making money hand over fist by selling off America’s economic base! And what’s worse, the gray-suited savants of the boardrooms—and
editorial boardrooms
—insisted that American workers, farmers, old people, poor people ... must cut back
their
standard of living ... to compete!

Dick called this cabal “the Establishment.” (That was Shrummy’s word.) ... Of course, the forty-year-old big-feet-in-bud went nuts; they hadn’t heard that stupid word since they’d failed to drive ROTC off campus!

Who’d this guy think he was?

Where was
he
in the sixties?

At that point, the well-known poop on Gephardt leaked off the editorial page and onto the front page:

GEPHARDT’S NEW TACTIC—ANGER

It was so
obvious
! ... Gephardt’s rage was just a creation of Doak, Shrum, Carrick, et al. ... Just as the Eagle Scout, door-to-door Dick was their creation before. ... In fact—
everybody knew
—Gephardt had been their creation
since the start of the campaign
!

That was the problem: the knowledge of this knowing claque reached back all the way ... to last February! ... Shrummy was try’na make this guy sound like Ted Kennedy!

How could they know ... what “Establishment” actually meant to Dick was “big shots.”

The way the big shots have it rigged, the little guy doesn’t have a chance!

Dick didn’t sound like a Kennedy.

He sounded like Lou Gephardt.

W
HAT DOLE’S PACK COULDN’T
credit: Bob was not mean. The press was always watching, with dread and fascination, for Mount Bobster to blow—never happened. There were a few puffs of smoke, around the turn of the year, when Bill Brock, Campaign Chairman, decided (five weeks before the voting began) that the time was right for his winter Caribbean vacation.

And there was a brief belch of ash when Dole actually
found out
what the Klingons were paying themselves: Skip Watts, for example, who used to be the volunteer chairman in Vermont, but now, in the Brock administration, was the Political Director, at, uh ... $11,000
a month
—not to mention the cost of the Washington condo the campaign was renting for him and the weekly airline tix back and forth to Vermont, along with incidentals, like, you know, Skip’s dry cleaning. ... Well, Dole did note that Watts couldn’t organize
Vermont
. But he only said that in his car ... and he never tried to do anything about it. What could he do? ... He asked Bill Brock for a list of Klingon salaries, but Brock said real talent never came cheap—and he added: “I’m running the campaign.” Dole couldn’t pick a fight with his Big Guy ... which would only
prove
Dole could not be
organized
... so, he dummied up.

Anyway, Watts was a feeder of mere middling appetite at the trough of Dole consultants. Dole’s old pollster, Tully Plesser, was adjudged to be not Big Guy enough, so Dole for President hired on Dick Wirthlin—about fifty grand a month (but, to be fair to Wirthlin, that was only supplement to his ongoing deal with the Republican National Committee, good for 800,000 simoleons per annum). ... Murphy and Castellanos, the media ops who produced the splendid $30,000 video of the Bob Dole story, clearly were not Big enough ... so DFP engaged a new guru by the name of Don Ringe, who came
aboard
for the satisfyingly Big Guy sum of $40,000 a month—which was just a retainer, ads would be extra ... which was no threat, as Dole observed: Ringe did not produce any ads.

But Dole only said that in the car.

He really had handed it over. ... Of course, the press pack didn’t believe
that
for a minute.
Everybody knew
. Dole was just trying to act Presidential.

The pack could not accept his excitement, all the good feeling he brought to his events—had to be a tactic, right? They were sure Dole was hiding his Karacter (everybody knew he was a bitter hatchet man) ... so, uh, he was trying to
act
upbeat ... right?