What It Takes (164 page)

Dole let the paper drop from his gaze. “Give it to George,” he said. “I’d have to read it first.”

Good line. Got a laugh. And Dole lost his chance to make his point on taxes.

Dole would replay that scene in his head for years afterward. Sometimes he’d lie awake at night, thinking what he could have said. Maybe he should have signed the damn thing.

It was certainly bad politics to refuse—his supporters said it killed his chances in New Hampshire. They said it was the only time in ’88 that anyone lost on a matter of public policy.

He did lose, decisively. By Tuesday, it wasn’t close, though Dole kept hoping it wasn’t true—maybe the feeling in his belly was wrong, things had changed, or ... maybe his Big Guys were right! There were Wirthlin’s numbers in the paper, again: Dole was going to win!

By Tuesday, it came clear with a sickening lurch that the big mistake was saying—ever—Dole was going to win. If Dole could have set his goal for the week to cutting into Bush’s lead, he might have looked terrific. But it wasn’t Dole who said—aloud—he was going to win. That’s what he had Big Guys for. That’s what people told Dole to do: find some guys and turn the campaign over. Well, he did that! ... What’d it get him?

They’d sat there all weekend and done
nothing
... while Bush killed him! Seemed like every ten minutes on TV: Bob Dole was gonna raise your taxes! Bob Dole wouldn’t back Reagan on the INF! Bob Dole would raise the price of
heating oil
... for God’s sake, in the middle of winter! Bush might as well have said that Dole liked to bury children in ice! ... Bush and Ailes ...
killed him
... while Dole and his Big Guys sat in their hotel.

Dole did his events that Tuesday morning—enough to get on TV ... then it was lunch, and back to the hotel for a meeting with the savants. Bill Brock was there, along with the Political Director he’d hired (another twelve grand a month), Bernie Windon. There were a couple of true Dole-folk who shrank into the woodwork, as they did whenever high Klingons were present. Rudman’s smart guys were in and out, with news from local polling places. Wirthlin was there, of course, as was Dole’s old pollster, Tully Plesser—both calling friends at the networks for news of the exit polls. David Keene, Dole’s right-winger consultant, flew up from D.C. He was drafting a statement (“We’ve come a long way ... proud of our volunteers ...”) for Dole to use if the news was true—if he had fallen short.

Keene detested Brock and disrespected Windon—not just as ideological sellouts, but incompetents, wastrels, and failures. Rudman’s people were furious at Wirthlin, contemptuous of the Dole command that pissed away this chance in New Hampshire. The true and humble Dole-folk reviled all Klingons and regarded the New Hampshire ops with secret but satisfying sneers of comeuppance—those were the know-it-alls who tried to tell
Bob Dole
what to do! ... That evening, CNN reported “a high official in the Dole campaign said this election was kicked away by people who didn’t know what they were doing.” The source might have been any man in that room. (The sad fact—Riker breathed the word amid the faithful: the “high official” was Dole.)

Dole was sitting on the luggage bench at the foot of his bed while this gaggle of helpers discussed his prospects. That meant he had his back to half of them. That was okay. They tell you, you’ve got to hand the campaign over ... till you lose—then it’s your fault.

He thought it was his fault—he could have signed that paper from du Pont. He could have insisted they make the ad about taxes. He could have ordered them to run the ad about Bush. They tell you, people don’t like that kind of ad—maybe they don’t. But they watch it. Bush knew that—his people did. Dole thought it would have been different if he’d had an Atwater, someone to carry the attack. Dole couldn’t get Brock to
answer
Atwater—Brock thought it was beneath him. Dole said, “I’ll do it myself.” Then everybody’s wringing their hands:
Oh, no! Senator’s got to Be Nice!
He was nice. No one answered Atwater.

But nobody’s got to be nice when they’re kickin’ you in the face! A
President’s
got to be tough. People didn’t know Dole was tough. People knew what they saw on TV—they thought Bob Dole was a liar.
Bush made him a liar
. All the while, they told Bob Dole he was winning—so he sat on his hands and took it.

“Look,” Keene was saying, “we get through Super Tuesday if we target right, we got four million for media, if you target that, we get back to the Midwest with a spending edge, and then ...”

Brock said: “We’ve got eight hundred thousand.”

Dole looked up, his eyes on the wall opposite. He didn’t speak. He looked like he’d frozen.

“
Eight hundred thousand for Super Tuesday?
” Keene was humphing—he wanted it clear whose doing this was. “Well, if I were you, I’d start cannibalizing everything I could get my hands on. We gotta have at least ...”

Brock said, “Eight hundred thousand for the campaign,”

“
Total?
”

“There’s four million budget!”

“Things have changed.”

Dole knew things changed last fall, when he handed it over ... changed at L Street—had to rent another floor of that building, glass walls. You walked in, there were glass walls, two or three layers, you could look through, past the valets and flunkies, to Bill Brock. Cars waiting downstairs—limos, drivers, guys standing around ... staff, consultants. Clink said it cost a hundred thousand a day just to keep the doors open. Hands off! ... Dole was hands off—and they spent his money.

He turned it over and they cut his throat!

He would
never
do that again.

When would he ever have the chance again?

It was over. The Big Guys were talking about the South, Super Tuesday, Illinois. But Dole knew it was over. The way Bush was organized down South, Dole’s only chance was to win New Hampshire, to win everything on the way to Super Tuesday. Dole didn’t speak again in that meeting. Didn’t talk to Brock that afternoon.

That night, George Bush won New Hampshire by nine points. Dole spent the night trying to be gracious: he hit his marks, he made his statement, he thanked his volunteers and supporters, he vowed to go on. He smiled ruefully and told the cameras: he’d made up a lot of ground in a week—he never expected things to be easy.

At the end of the night, the very end ... he was on live remote with NBC ... and who was next to Brokaw—beaming like the cohost of the big election special? George Bush! ... But Dole didn’t know that. He had no monitor ... no one warned him. He was sandbagged.

Brokaw said to Bush: Any message for Dole?

“Naw, just wish him well,” Bush said. “And meet him in the South.”

Then, Brokaw and Bush, both smiling, turned toward the monitors—to see Dole ... but he couldn’t see them. He was sitting in a hotel room, looking at a camera lens. The talk in his earpiece sounded like the chatter before any interview:

Senator, can we get a mike check?
...

Senator, can you hear Tom?
...

And then Brokaw’s voice:

Senator? Any message for the Vice President?

It was Dole’s face on the air—but he didn’t know that. ... The camera caught the dark flash in Dole’s eyes, as he said:

“Yeah. Stop lying about my record.”

Dole said later, he deserved one chance to tell the truth.

Elizabeth said later, Bob was
so
tired ... he was not himself.

Of course, the wise-guy community said right away, Dole was a hatchet man. New Hampshire proved, the voters
saw
, Dole could never learn to Be Nice.

What did it prove? What did any of it prove? All the work, all the people who helped him—little people who never took a dime, didn’t want anything—they’re the ones who got shafted for trying, against the odds. Dole thought he should have known. He blamed himself. There were a hundred things he could have done, could have
tried
. God knows, he tried, but ...

He couldn’t sleep—couldn’t sleep at all, lay there all night, tried to lie still ... until he couldn’t try anymore and it was five o’clock and there was no reason to lie in bed. That’s when Dole came down to the lobby of the hotel and sat—no one around, he just sat. Pen in his hand. Careful suit. Perfect shirt, tie. And no one around. What would he have said, anyway? He was sorry? ... He
was
sorry. He didn’t say that often ... but that’s what it was, this time.

This was his time. And now, it was over.

He’d lost it, lost the feeling—and the hope. It was always going to be tough in the South, even if he’d won New Hampshire. Bush had been making friends in the South for ... well, ten years, probably more. People would say to Dole: “Well, we like you. Bob. But this is George’s time ...”

When was Bob Dole’s time?

This was his time. And they took it away!
... He’d lost before. He wasn’t going to whine. But this time was different. This time, he couldn’t sleep at all, couldn’t stop his head: things that could have been different ... all the things he’d done ... probably wrong—half the things, anyway.

But the worst part wasn’t things he’d done. It was the pictures of Bush—that’s what he couldn’t stop—
pictures of Bush!
In his head! Bush throwing snowballs, driving trucks, forklifts ... unwrapping his Big Mac. Dole never wanted to see that in his head. And he never wanted to say—even in his head ...

It would not leave him alone ... five in the morning! Had to come down to the lobby ... but he couldn’t get away from it. For the first time in his career—first time in thirty years, anyway—Bob Dole said to himself:

“Maybe I could have done that ... if I was whole.”

B
Y THE TIME BIDEN
got to the motel, his headache was picking up steam. He probably should eat—had to eat! Christ—he did the forty-five-minute speech at the University of Rochester, then stood and answered questions for four and a half
hours
.

What happened was, he did the INF speech—a new era dawning with the Soviets on arms control. But the first question was about plagiarism. So Biden answered for twenty-five minutes straight ... after that, his motor was racing.

Bob Cunningham, from the Delaware staff, was traveling with Joe on this run—first time Biden had got moving since the Bork, Ginsburg, and Kennedy nominations; first time he’d hit the campuses since his own campaign fell to shreds. After an hour and a half of questions, Cunningham gave the signal—held up his watch, so Joe could see. Biden nodded, but he just kept talking. So after another hour, Cunningham cut off the audience mikes. That just made Biden come down, offstage, so the kids wouldn’t have to shout their questions. After four hours, Cunningham went to the lobby, got his coat, Biden’s coat, the briefcase ... then walked back into the hall and stood next to Joe, with coats and all ... but Biden just threw an arm around him and kept on for forty minutes more.

“Hey!” Joe said, on the way to the motel. “You think we can still get a pizza?”

But this was Rochester, near the airport, one
A.M.
Nothing was open. Biden went to his room, sat down on the bed and ... WHAM.

It hit in his head like a brick. He must have blacked out. He didn’t know how long. It was like that time in New Hampshire—but worse. He couldn’t move.
His legs wouldn’t move
...

He had to move. He had to prove he could move. He forced himself off the bed, to be sure his legs would do ... he stared at his hands, and they moved. He couldn’t think ...

It couldn’t be a heart attack. He wouldn’t be standing, thinking, talking ... he talked out loud in the empty room. His voice. It sounded right, his voice. But his
head
!

God, there was never pain like this. Not in Joe’s life. What the hell was
happening, GOD!
He felt sick, dizzy ... the
pain
. ... He tried to throw up. He had nothing to throw up. It couldn’t be food. He’d had no food.

He had to lie down. He’d be better, sure, if he just got down and kept still. He gingerly laid himself flat, on the bed, in his clothes.

He did not move all night, save to the sink, the toilet, to try to throw up. He thought if he could just stick it out through the night, get to the plane ... if he could just get
home.

Tommy Lewis met the plane in Philadelphia. Cunningham came off.

“Hey. Where’s Joe?”

Cunningham had the briefcase. Joe asked him to carry his case. That’s how he knew it was bad. He’d been with Joe since they’d served together on the County Council ... Joe
never
wanted people toting for him. He’d rather lose an arm.

“He’s coming. He’s sick.”

“Bad?”

“He had his face in the bag the whole way.”

Then Joe came. He was gray. He looked like death. He said he’d be all right. Just get him home.

Tommy got him home, but it took a half-hour to get him out of the car, and up to his room. Tommy half-carried him up the stairs. He got Joe onto the bed. Tommy had to take Biden’s shoes off for him.

Joe thought if he closed his eyes, he could will the pain away, control it. But he could not.

Jimmy Biden called. Tommy gave him the news.

“D’you call a doctor?”

“Joe said just let him rest. He’s got a plane again, two-thirty ...”

“Bullshit. Get a doctor.”

Tommy called Joe’s local doctor, the same guy who’d diagnosed Joe’s pain as a degenerated spinal disk, a couple of weeks before. Tommy was trying to figure out how to call Jill at her school without scaring her to death.

But Jimmy called Jill: no more screwing around. Hospital for Joe—right now.

Jimmy was in Washington, he was the one who fixed it up at Walter Reed—the Army Medical Center, on the Beltway around the capital. He went to the boss. That’s how Jimmy worked. “Will you take my brother?”

“Of course, Mr. Biden.”

They were going to fly Joe down in a chopper, but it was snowing like hell that day, February 11. Anyway, Joe was too fragile to fly. The doctors at St. Francis in Wilmington had found blood in his spinal fluid—they were pretty sure that Biden had an aneurism in the brain. If it blew—change of pressure, a jolt in the air—it was curtains.