What It Takes (156 page)

Hart, in other words, proposed a plan for the nation. But it didn’t get much coverage. Hey, the big-feet had
been
to Ottawa with Hart—last year! Why go back?

Anyway, after that debate, everybody knew: Hart didn’t have New Ideas—not really. Hart had nothing to say.

H
E’D SAID ALL HE
had to say on that subject—answered the questions
a million times
... Jeezus! What did they want?

They wanted an answer on Iran-contra: What did Bush know ... and when did he know it?

For more than a year, ever since late ’86, Bush had been holding the line:

I did what I did
...

I told the President what I told the President
...

And honor forbids me to say more
.

Bush had said that so many times, he was frustrated. He thought he had answered
every conceivable nuance
. Of course, he never actually said anything.

But once he’d made his point ... well, anyone who insisted on bringing it up was just
rehashing
... try’na make him
look bad
. They were, you know, acting like bullies. And the old school code treats a bully with ... contempt.

That’s why he couldn’t believe—wouldn’t hear it!—when his white men warned that Dan Rather was going to jump him. ... “No,” said the Veep. “Dan’s a friend.” (He’d known Rather since Texas—Dan was just a local newsman. Bush was in the oil bidness ... Jeez, it’d been more than twenty years!)

But Fuller got tipped off that CBS News was trying to make the scandal
stick
to Bush. Teeter got tipped off. Teeley called a friend to confirm. Ailes said he knew
exactly
what those shitheads were planning. Atwater said he could
feel
they were up to no good. ...
Everybody knew
—or said they knew—except Bush, who insisted to Fuller, in New Hampshire:

“Dan’s been over to the house ...” (They played tennis!)

On the plane back to Washington, Fuller was trying to write out answers to questions Rather might ask.

“This is much too tough,” Bush said. “Why are you so uptight about this? Are the others worried?”

“Yes, sir, they are.”

“Well, you see, I’m okay with this.”

It was in the car at Andrews Air Force Base—Ailes had come out to meet them—Fuller said: “Look, if he really just trashes you on Iran-contra, why don’t you tell him, ‘How would you like to be judged, your whole career, on the seven minutes you walked off the set?’ ...”

Fuller was referring to the semi-famous incident in which Rather went ballistic because a tennis match delayed his newscast, and while he was on a phone, bitching to the powers-that-be, the tennis match ended, CBS had no anchor on the set, everybody panicked, and the network went to black. It was an incident much retailed by the pink-jowled lunchers—in other words, inside baseball.

But Ailes loved the line. He went
crazy
—repeated it about six times. Fuller knew, from that moment, it would be Ailes’s idea ... but Bush insisted: “It isn’t going to be that way. Dan’s a friend.”

And that’s why Bush played such a rabid net game, on the
CBS Evening News
, the night of January 25, after he
sat there
, and watched that ... that ...
crap
Rather put on the air, before the interview: it was
all
Iran-contra, it was
all
rehash, it was ...

How could Rather understand he wasn’t just conducting a tough interview? ... He was proving George Bush wrong in front of
his friends
, he was violating Bush’s
trust
! ... It was
betrayal
!

The short answer was, Rather had no clue.

“Mr. Vice President, we want to talk about the record on this because ...”

“Let’s talk about the whole record ...”

“The framework here is that ...”

“That’s what I want to talk about, Dan.”

“One-third of the Republicans in this poll, one-third of the Republicans and one-fourth of the people who say that, you know, they rather like you, believe you’re hiding something.”

“I am hiding something.”

“Here’s a chance to get it out.”

“You know what I’m hiding? What I told the President—that’s the only thing. And I’ve answered every question put before me. Now, if you have a question ...”

“I do have one.”

“Please.”

“I have one.”

“Please, go ahead.”

“You have said that if you had known, you said, if you had known this was an arms-for-hostages swap ...”

“Yes.”

“That you would have opposed it.”

“Exactly.”

“You also said that you did not know ...”

“May I answer that?”

“That wasn’t a question, it was a statement.”

“It was a statement, and I’ll answer it.”

“Let me ask the question, if I may, first.”

“The President created this program, as testified or stated publicly, he did not think it was arms for hostages.”

“That’s the President, Mr. Vice President.”

“And that’s me. Because I went along with it because—you know why, Dan?—because ...”

“That wasn’t a question, Mr. Vice President.”

“I saw Mr. Buckley, heard about Mr. Buckley, being tortured to death—later admitted as a CIA chief—so if I erred, I erred on the side of trying to get those hostages out of there and the whole story has been told to the Congress.”

“Mr. Vice President, you set the rules for this talk here. I didn’t mean to step on your line there, but you insisted that this be live and you know that we have a limited amount of time ...”

“That’s why I want to get my share in here on something other than what you want to talk about. ...”

The fact was, Bush wouldn’t listen to a question ... much less answer anything. Meanwhile, million-dollar minutes were bleeding away, the producers were yelling into Rather’s ear to
wrap it up! CUT ... DAN! WRAP IT UP!
... And Rather was still trying to get his first clear answer.

“I don’t want to be argumentative, Mr. Vice President, bu ...”

“You do. Dan, this is not a great night, because I want to talk about why I want to be President, why those forty-one percent of the people are supporting me, and ...”

“And, Mr. Vice President, these questions are ...”

“I don’t think it’s fair to judge a whole career, it’s not fair to judge my whole career by a rehash on Iran. How would you like it if I judged your career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York? Would you like that?”

Turned out, Rather didn’t much like it. Nor was Bush, at that moment, his most sanguine self. After nine minutes of Bush stonewalling, taunting ... after Rather finally cut him off and went to commercial ... after CBS switchboards lit up with calls of protest (how could Dan treat the VP that way?) ... Bush was still so fired up in his Capitol office that he ripped out his earpiece and announced, with a sneer:

“Well, I had my say ...
Dan
.”

Ailes tried to tell him: his mike was still live. Bush didn’t care.

“He makes Lesley Stahl look like a
pussy
,” Bush said. The CBS crew tried to get Bush to take off his microphone. But Bush was like a warrior with his foot on his enemy’s neck, whooping to the heavens.

“... But it’s going to
help me
. Because that bastard didn’t lay a
glove
on me.

“... And you can tell your God damn
network
that if they want to talk to
me
, they can raise their hands at a press conference! No more ‘Mr. Insider’ stuff.”

The next day, Pete Teeley tried to tell the press pack: Bush meant Lesley Stahl was, you know ... a pussy
cat
. Bush apologized for his language, insisted he never would have taken the Lord’s name in vain if he’d known people could
hear
him. (As if the commandment read: Thou Shalt Check Thy Mike.)

But the interesting thing was how everybody around Bush, Inc.,
loved it
... the Killer Veep!

Atwater was spinning a cloud of sparkling dust about “defining events”—one or two such moments would make a President—and the Bush-Rather face-off was, in Lee’s terms, “the defining event.” Teeley said the “debate” would put an end to all “the wimp bullshit.” Bush had gone toe-to-toe with the toughest! Rich Bond insisted Rather had tried to “bully George Bush”—that would help Bush in Iowa. George Wittgraf, Iowa chairman, showed himself an attentive Atwater acolyte when he talked about the dust-up as the ... “shaping event.”

Bush was
so
pleased: couldn’t believe all the nice things people said, all the calls of congratulation, the way people cheered at his events. Publicly, he went into Audie Murphy mode—he conceded it was “tension city” in the studio, joked about deserving “combat pay.” But he also said Rather was just doing his job. (You see, he wasn’t wrong, after all—Dan
was
a friend.) ... Everybody came out fine, as far as Bush could see: his press pack was
delighted
, writing “defining event” analyses, thumb-suckers on the Age of TV Politics, delicious Karacter studies on the virile New Bush, or even-more-delicious behind-the-scenes blow-by-blow on how Ailes had
planned
the whole showdown ... you know, who sandbagged whom?

Wasn’t it great how it worked out?

It was left to Bob Dole to point out: Bush never answered anything.

And how would Bush deal with Mikhail Gorbachev ... if he got so riled up by Dan Rather?

That was the problem: Bush couldn’t run a nice, clean campaign against Dan Rather without Dole spoiling everything—pointing out
he
was still in the race ... still
ahead
, where it mattered, in Iowa, where polls showed a jagged post-Rather blip for Bush ... for about four days ... after which Bush’s numbers settled back to nowheresville.

It was
so
frustrating.

And there was Dole, sailing around the state, talking farm, talking Midwest-neighbor, talking “One of Us” ... the man had the nerve to stick to that poor-boy-from-Kansas routine (when Bush-for-President had gone to such lengths to
prove
that Dole was rich) ... he had the gall to announce he was organized in every Iowa
precinct
(when everybody knew Dole could not organize) ... he had the
cheek
to conduct himself like a statesman, a man with a mission—like a winner!

This was not the Bob Dole the Bushies were counting on. They never bargained for efficient good humor.

These were the worries of George Wittgraf, Bush’s Iowa chairman, as he made his familiar drive, three hours east and south from his hometown, Cherokee, to the capital, Des Moines.

Wittgraf had been working Iowa for George Bush for nine years—almost a quarter of his time on the planet ... and now Bush was stuck (forever, it seemed) in second place ... and all of Wittgraf’s efforts were headed for the thirsty drainpipe of history (he wasn’t going to make a
footnote
for Germond and Witcover) ... unless, somehow ...

He had to get under Bob Dole’s skin—show him up! Show him to the voters of Iowa as the volcanically nasty, shifty-eyed, razor-tongued, dark-hearted, mean-minded, bile-besotted
snarler
... that Wittgraf (and all good Bushies) knew him to be.

And Bush, Inc., had one week to pull it off.

Actually, Wittgraf started typing the minute he got to the office, at the start of that last week before the caucus:

“Iowa Republicans must weigh Bob Dole’s record of cronyism and his history of mean-spiritedness carefully, before they decide whom to support as our Party’s nominee for President. ...”

The heading at the top of Wittgraf’s page said “Press Release,” but in Wittgraf’s lawyerly mind, it was a summation to the jury—his last chance to make the case. The defendant (Dole) ...

“... showed his mean-spirited nature in 1976, when he nearly single-handedly brought the Republican national ticket down to defeat.

“... fails to mention that he and his wife are now millionaires, and had an income of $2.19 million from 1982 through 1986.”

Wittgraf also could not neglect to mention that the Doles lived in “Washington’s posh Watergate apartment complex” ... that they took vacations (regularly!) at a Florida condominium (purchased with the help of Dole’s agribusiness buddies) ... that Elizabeth’s blind trust was
under federal investigation
. ...

The next day, Wittgraf sent this screed to the
Register
... and waited for the explosion.

Dole was at a school in Latimer, Iowa, when Bush’s love note caught up with him. Mari Maseng, Dole’s former Communications Director (now Press Secretary—the Klingons demoted her) backed the Senator into a broom closet.

“Senator, I think this is the kind of thing that—granted, you know, it’s upsetting, but ... you know, the kind of thing where a lot of anger is probably not what we ... you, you probably want, you know, a ‘more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger’ kind of thing, that ...”

Dole just nodded, listening, looking down at the closet floor, with the air of a man who was waiting. Was she finished?

“Senator ... more in sorrow ...”

What she meant was:
Oh, God,
please—five days to the caucus,
please
—don’t go nuclear now!
Be Ni-i-ice
.

Dole stepped out of the closet, and into the waiting iron ring. What he said was ... sorrowful—this kind of thing made him feel sorrow ... because it was
pathetic
—a pathetic,
desperation tactic ... by George Bush
.

After that, Dole was warmed up.

Someone asked: Was Dole sure that Bush was behind that release?

“Either George Bush is responsible for this kind of campaign ... or he’s totally out of control,” Dole said.

“Maybe he
isn’t
in charge. ...

“Maybe he’s not
in the loop
! ...

“I want George Bush to hold this in his little hand and say, ‘I stand by every word.’ ”

Of course, Bush meant to do no such thing. When his pack pinned him, in Clinton, Iowa, the Veep said of the press release:

“I don’t endorse it. But I don’t reject it.”

Oh, yes, he said, he’d authorized it—he was in charge!