What It Takes (153 page)

Well, it was a hell of an act! He looked, for all the world, like a man who thought he was going to be President. People were telling him, he was going to be President. They were asking him questions they would ask a President.

In New Hampshire, one afternoon that January, Dole cut away from his press herd to do a sit-down with the editors and bosses of
The Portsmouth Herald
. It was a conference-table affair, most cordial.

One of the news pooh-bahs said he’d seen Elizabeth on a recent stop. “She was terrific, really good. Made everybody feel real comfortable.”

Dole’s comment was entirely candid: “She’s a very disciplined person.”

Dole said he’d be in New Hampshire often, with Congress adjourned. “You know, I’ve seen six or seven Presidents, and they’re never happier than when Congress is out.” Right away, the room eased with knowing male chuckles. Dole said: “One of ’em told me, it’s like being
born again
when Congress leaves town.”

Dole was going to take these guys for a quick tour through the cloakroom, the insider world of verbal nudge and wink. Within ten minutes, he was in
deep
cloakroom, telling a story—him and the President, arguing the INF. “So I told the President, I said, ‘You know, you got Cranston and all these liberals for your treaty now—but what happens when you want more for conventional weapons? They’re going to vote no, and then we’re really in the soup! You know, you got Jim Wright already talking about a
peace windfall
!’ ” One Dole eyebrow descended in eloquent disapproval. “There isn’t going to be any
windfall
. Conventional arms cost more than nuclear.”

Robert J. Dole, Commander in Chief, was not going to let Speaker Wright
touch
the Pentagon—that much was clear.

It was also clear, these spellbound editors thought they were sitting with a winner. The general manager, Azio Ferrini, asked Dole: “How do you feel about just the enormity of the responsibility?”

Dole leaned back in his chair: “Well, you gotta use your Cabinet more. You gotta find some good people, gotta know everything ...”

When it was over, Dole stayed behind for a minute or two, to say goodbye. When he got to the car, he was almost skipping. He said to Mari Maseng: “I don’t know if he’s going to endorse me, but he’s
for
me! He’s
FOR
me—says I’m going to win!” The driver, a local, said: “Then he’ll probably endorse you.” Dole was still talking: “... Says Bush is soft! Says what we got is an
appointee
against a professional politician!” Dole’s eyebrows were dancing. “I said, ‘Well, I never put it exactly like that, but ...’

“Well. Let’s goooo!”

Dole was trying not to get too excited. He said that was one thing he learned from Ronald Reagan (maybe the only thing): the Gip never seemed to get too up, or too down—he was always just a little optimistic. Dole thought that was a good way to be.

Good way, maybe, for someone else.

Dole might as well resolve to be Sudanese.

The fact was, Dole couldn’t act, at all—couldn’t act like he didn’t care (when he did), couldn’t act like he might just have a chance (when he was winning), or act like criticism rolled off his back (when, clearly, it was aimed
at his throat
) ... Dole couldn’t act like he was having a fine time, playing the game—no matter how often Mari, at his elbow, hissed: “Senator, smile!”

This was no game. For one thing, he couldn’t afford to lose. “You know, I’m not running again,” he said, on one midnight flight back from Iowa. “Sometimes you have to lose, and it makes you stronger. You can come back. But I’m not running again. This is my time.”

It was even more than that:

For the first time, he felt he
ought
to win. Who was going to row the country out of this sea of red ink? The Democrats? (Steering the wrong way!) ... George Bush? (Who’d do the paddling for him?) ... Dole saw only one man tough enough. For the first time, in his mind, he was The One.

And the most delicious fact in his grip: he could do it!

Not just the election—though his standing was on the rise everywhere (“I was in Texas and Alabama and Mississippi yesterday, and it’s
happening
!”)—he could change the direction of the country, thereafter.

It didn’t even look that hard to him. He knew the job ... and he knew what people could take. Sometimes, when voters asked about the deficit crisis—What had to be cut?—Dole would break off his answer with a shrug: “Come
on
!” he’d say. “This is America! Nobody’s gonna hurt that bad.”

To Dole, it boiled down to a matter of will, and the glorious fact was, that’s what he brought to the job. He’d read enough history to know how they talked about the times calling forth a single man. ... No one from Russell, Kansas, would talk aloud in terms that grand, but ... Gagghh! Kinda looked like it was working out!

He had to stop at another newspaper—
Foster’s Daily Democrat
—he went to toodle the editorial board ... meanwhile, the crew from
Tanner ’88
would be waiting at the door. They were shooting a cable TV series about a fictional Presidential campaign, starring the mild and charming Michael Murphy as the mild and charming candidate—a fictive Democrat—Jack Tanner. Dole was supposed to help out with a cameo.

While Murphy waited for Dole’s meeting to end, he talked about how easy it was to work with real candidates. He thought that running for President must be a lot like acting. (The one who surprised him, he said, was Gary Hart. “He just—the elevator doors opened and there he was, with just one guy, frail, alone. ... You know, suddenly, I
believed
he had to push that girl off his lap.”)

When Dole came downstairs, he barely broke stride, just paused on the sidewalk with Tanner. The cameras rolled.

“Hi. Jack Tanner.”

“How ya
runnin
’?”

“Good, good ...”

“You’re closin’ the gap!” Dole said.

“Well, not like you! I’m envious,” said Tanner.

Dole dropped an eyebrow, flashed a hint of smile, and said: “We’re workin’ on it!”

Dole was flawless. “O-kayy ... good luck!”

Of course, he wasn’t acting. He was being Bob Dole ... as he was, just out of camera frame, at the door of his car, when he uttered into the winter air this prairie haiku:

“Agh! Hollywooood! ... Let’s go! ... The big moneyyy!”

Dole had no fear of cameras—nor of the herd: he knew how to make news, and he was surely the only candidate to admit he would listen to the press. (When voters asked how Dole would avoid the fog that suffused the White House in Iran-contra, Dole’s first remedy was press conferences. “They’ll tell you if you’re missing something.”)

So, of course, he was offended when the press kept asking about his money—his income, taxes, net worth. He knew the stuff came from Bush. (It came, precisely, from the Bushies in Iowa, who were panicky now, trying to prove Bob Dole was
not “
One of Us.”) That made sense—Bush was losing. Bush had nothing to say for himself, so he was trying to knock down the Bob Dole story. Okay ... but Dole could not believe
the press
was going to help! They were trying to make Dole admit ... he was rich!

Well, it was gonna be a cold day in hell—Dole had just got so he could talk about being poor!

And what did it matter, anyway, if Bob Dole, at age sixty-four, had a million dollars, or a couple of million? The point was
not
where people ended up—it was where they started.

If he had a few dollars now, well, uh, well ...
he worked for it
. He made it the
hard way
! He, he ...

He married it.

But he wasn’t going to say
that
.

In fact, he wasn’t going to talk about that money.

In 1974, when he had to make his first disclosure, Dole’s fortune was $30,000, in a cash account, in a bank in Russell. ... That changed the next year, when he married Elizabeth Hanford. But that didn’t mean Bob
did
anything with that money ... or even knew much about it. In fact, Elizabeth didn’t know much. When she asked Dave Owen, Bob’s money man, if he’d help with her finances, she brought a shopping bag to the office. She was in a meeting when Owen picked it up: he was on his way out of town, and he took it with him, on and off airplanes for a few days. When he got a chance to poke through the bag, he was horrified to find
bonds
, bank statements, old receipts,
savings certificates
, check stubs,
insurance policies
, credit card reminders,
stock certificates
... everything jumbled in a heap that was worth ... well, to put it simply, Elizabeth had two million in a shopping bag. She wanted Dave to take care of it.

So, he did. Elizabeth signed over a power of attorney, and Owen became her personal investment adviser ... until 1985, when the Doles (by that time, Senator and Secretary, the capital’s pet power couple) set up Elizabeth’s blind trust. The trustee was to be Mark McConaghy, Dole’s old staffer on the Finance Committee who now worked for Price Waterhouse. Of course, McConaghy was a policy wonk, not a businessman, so he brought in Dave Owen as investment adviser.

Anyway, Dole never seemed to notice that he lived like a millionaire: cars waiting, airplanes, staff. It seemed to him an extension of his Senate stature. He wasn’t rich—he just had work to do! As for
money
... well, Dole didn’t think about the money.
He
had nothing to do with that money!

Alas, he did, of course.

He didn’t just have his apartment anymore, and his parents’ old house in Russell: he had a condo in a Florida white men’s preserve. Well, legally, Elizabeth had the condo—but that nicety didn’t stop
The New York Times
from turning its “candidate profile” into a heavy-breathing investigation of how the Doles did the condo deal. (In the end, the
Times
couldn’t pin down anything improper.)

Dole couldn’t content himself anymore with writing the occasional shy and secret thousand-dollar check to some charity, or some down-and-outer, like he used to whenever he felt the urge, to help people (usually disabled people) get back on their feet. Now he had the Dole Foundation, which was another million-dollar affair, with its own intricate and legalistic exigencies.

Dole could not issue anymore a one-page Senate disclosure, listing his salary and maybe some speaking fees. ... Now he was earning another forty thousand a year from his
Face-Off
radio shows with Ted Kennedy; he had investments—and possible conflicts of interest with industries affected by legislation in the Senate; and then, too, there was income from Elizabeth’s trust, part of which had to be reported jointly, and ...

Alas, inconvenient as it was, Dole was rich.

And what was
worse
: after Bush started
pointing out
that Dole was rich, the newspaper in Hutchinson, Kansas (Dole’s old nemesis—“the Prairie Pravda,” he called it), suddenly found itself in possession of a stack of information about investments made and contributions passed along by Dole’s friend, Dave Owen. (Jeez—wonder where
that
stuff could have come from!)

So
The Hutchinson News
launched its own investigation, to suggest that Owen was making
a dirty fortune
... wielding
Dole’s political influence
... to steer
federal contracts
... to
friends
who would
contribute
... both to Owen’s favored
political campaigns
—and to the engorgement of the
Elizabeth Hanford Dole Trust
.

Phew!

Well, it was complicated—all of Owen’s business was too complicated by half ... and by the time the
Times
went to work again, reporting the stuff reported by
The Hutchinson News
, it didn’t just look intricate—it looked
awful
.

It looked—it
smelled
—to the pack on Dole’s plane like ... bad fish!

So, in New Hampshire, Dole conducted a bang-up event in a packed pancake house: Elizabeth introduced him with the Bob Dole story, then Bob came on with a charming appeal to
open up the Party
... to let the government respond to people’s
real problems
... and to
preserve the opportunity
, which was America’s hallmark and her gift to the planet ... and, amid a standing ovation, Bob made for the door, where the press was waiting.

Senator! What’s your net worth, jointly, with Elizabeth?

“Beats me.”

WhatchurestimateSenatoryoumustknowabouthowmuchYOURNETWORTH?

Dole stopped and faced his accusers. “I’m the candidate,” he said. “My net worth is very little. But I don’t have any idea.”

Are you a millionaire?

“Me? I doubt it. I own an apartment and a car, and I don’t know how much money is in the bank, but ... I guess very little.”

Don’t the voters deserve to know?

“They’ll find out. They know. I publish it every year, so it’s no secret.”

Will you release your income tax returns?

“I don’t know. I’m not going to let
him
set the timetable. ...”

(He didn’t have to say he was talking about Bush. It was Bush who demanded that Dole release his tax returns.)

“This has got nothing to do with my background! ...” In the shadowed entryway of the restaurant, Dole’s face was getting darker. This was what he got for taking questions.

“... I can’t understand why the press would swallow this in the first place! Obviously, this is a diversionary tactic. And some of the press bought it. They like to poke around! Every year, I put my disclosure in the
Record
—everything, including joint ... which makes me look rich. My little holdings, I think, will be made available, but that’s not the point. The point is, where did we start in this life? I know where I started, and I know where I got—where I am. Just because I’ve been somewhat successful is, I think, sort of the American dream! ...

“Nobody gave it to me. I didn’t have rich and powerful parents! ... I don’t really have much. ... I’ve given about half a million to charity over the last several years. I’d like to see the Bushes match that.”