What It Takes (180 page)

Junior talked to his father, just before Memorial Day. He kept it casual—the normal stuff: Laura’s fine ... the kids ...

Only at the end. Junior asked: “How are you, Dad? ... Are you okay with this thing? You think it’s all right?”

“Yeah,” said George Bush. He sounded surprised by the question. “People don’t know who this guy is ...”

He meant Dukakis. There was no doubt in Bush’s mind what the issue would be in this campaign. And also no doubt: Dukakis had no idea about life in the bubble.

That would make all the difference.

“I mean, who is this guy? ... You’ve got to remember, Dukakis has never been here before.”

As Atwater liked to tell it, the focus groups proved they had the silver bullet. Hell, they had enough ammo to perforate Dukakis. And Lee was just the man to make Bush pull the trigger. Lee brought videotapes of the focus groups to Maine. If Bush could only
see
those voters ... when they found out how liberal Dukakis was ... well, he’d have to agree! He’d have to go negative.

Atwater meant to get the whole Gee-Six, present Bush with a blank white wall of consensus: he
had
to attack. Lee had to make sure of Mosbacher. He was the only Gee-Six who had not seen the focus groups. “Ah’m tellin’ you, this is
it
,” Lee said. “These people were, uh,
stunned
when they started hearin’ this shit ...”

Teeter had the numbers: by his count, Bush was seventeen points down—worse with women. Voters didn’t know much about either candidate ... but they knew what they liked. Bush was behind on the critical “internals,” like “leadership” and “able to get things done.” Worse, still, most voters described themselves as “conservative,” or “somewhat conservative.” And when asked which candidate was more “conservative,” the majority answered ... Dukakis!

Lee went to work on Teeter to convince him: Bush had to attack,
now
. They had to drive up the negatives on Dukakis—
now
—or risk falling so far behind that Bush would never catch up. Like Jerry Ford against Carter, they could run a
perfect
campaign, and still fall one or two points short. “You gotta tell George Bush,” Atwater said. (Lee knew, if Teeter would play ball, Brady would fall into line.) “Ah’ll tell ’im th’ same thing,” Lee said. “But don’t you come in there an’ fuck me, now!”

Ailes maintained he didn’t need the numbers, focus groups, or any high-tech bullshit to prove to
him
what Bush had to do: he had to paint Dukakis as an out-to-lunch-in-left-field
liberal
... from the
most liberal corner
(Brookline) ... of the
most liberal state
... who’d never been anywhere, or done anything, that taught him
a single goddam thing
about the rest of the country. Ailes and Atwater were in agreement on tactics: hit Dukakis, early and often. Atwater thought it was crucial for the race. Ailes thought it was crucial for Bush.

Ailes had devined a fact about the Veep—it came clear while Ailes interviewed Bush for a bio ad. They were talking about World War II, about the bombing run over Chichi Jima. Bush recounted how he saw flames shoot along the wing of his plane, and smoke fill his cockpit.

“Why didn’t you bail out?” Ailes asked.

Bush didn’t pause, didn’t think, didn’t blink. “I hadn’t completed my mission,” he said.

That’s when Ailes knew: if you gave Bush that sense of mission ... the only way you’d stop him, after that, was to kill him.

So Ailes was working on the Veep. “Two things voters have to know about you,” Ailes said. “You can take a punch, and you can throw a punch. ... You’re gonna have to make the hit.”

By the time they all arrived in Maine, the Gee-Six were collegially, collectively agreed: they would make the case for attack—
right now
. They would come at Bush from every angle, and convince him—or wear him down. Teeter would do the numbers. Atwater would show the ammo—he’d
make
Bush watch those tapes. Ailes would sketch out the language, the ads. Mosbacher would assure Bush that Party surrogates would sing the song. Fuller (Fuller was in!) would make sure the White House hummed along.

All together, they would make George Bush go after Dukakis. It was their only hope! They had to do
something
! ... They gathered at dinner—the night before their first sit-down with Bush at Walker’s Point—and rehearsed their roles. They would not back down! They would all insist! They’d fight all week if they had to.

They didn’t have to fight. From his terrace, Bush gazed out at the rocks and sea and said, mildly: “Well, you guys are the experts ...”

Sure, he’d watch the focus-group tapes.

He didn’t mind going after Dukakis.

He didn’t need surrogates—he’d do the attack himself.

It was over in five minutes.

True, they sat around most of that day ... but there was nothing more to decide. On the schedule, there were five more days of meetings in Maine ... but that would be just blather with the issues groups. The real issues were settled over one cup of coffee.

Atwater was on a plane for D.C. the next day. Lee was triumphant ... but mystified. He never even had to speak!

What none of the white men could quite concede was that the issue was settled before coffee was served ... before any Gee-Sixes got to the big house, to tell George Bush what he had to do.

Bush knew what he had to do.

Bush would do what he had to, to win.

If that meant
mano a mano
with Dukakis—so much the better. There, at last, was a message that meant something to Bush: That guy shouldn’t be President!

It all went back to the view from that big house. (Maybe it was not entirely coincidence that the course was set at Walker’s Point.) All the research, the focus groups, were just detail, to Bush—had nothing to do with the decision.
One look
told Bush all he had to know.

In the view from the Point, Dukakis was
obviously
a little outsider (Who
was
he? Where’d he ever
been
?) ... who did not know the world, as it was to George Bush.

Dukakis was another one-worlder, blame-America-first, UN, World Court, human-rights
liberal
... who was going to
give away the store
!

Dukakis was another put-on-a-sweater, turn-down-the-thermostat, fifty-five-mile-an-hour, five-thousand-pages-of-Energy-Department-regs
Governor
... who’d try to thin the mixture in the great economic engine.

Dukakis was another brainy tax-and-tinker-technocrat
Democrat
... who was going to ...
screw ... everything
...
up
!

Dukakis was ...
Jimmy Carter
.

That solved a lot of problems for George Bush.

Bush could vow (in fact, he did, while he hosted the press that weekend) that he’d labor to define himself ... he’d show the country what he believed in ... he’d work like the devil on that vision thing. ... But he wouldn’t have to. The Bush campaign would not be—could not be—about nothing ... as long as it was about Dukakis.
He
shouldn’t be President!

From the moment Dukakis appeared in the bombsight, there would be no lack of mission. Bush would protect the heritance!

If the W-word at the Point was Winning ... if there was only one man to tend the big house ... if there was, in
every good
family, one in each generation who must be steward ... then there must be one to take his turn at the helm of the great ship, and steer it on, unharmed, to the shores of well-being. Bush lived his life to be that man.

There was a line that crept into his speeches, after that weekend. It never got famous, like the catchy bluster of “Read my lips!” ... but people in the crowds would look up when he said it ... there was such an (unusual) air of conviction in Bush’s voice. ... It came at the end of his praise for Ronald Reagan, how people felt differently about the U.S.A. now ... how different was the economy, the business climate, the tax code ... Bush would praise all these supposed achievements, and then say:

“
And I’m not going to let them take it away
.”

There was the mission! (It wasn’t just “me-me-me,” after all.) There was the message of the campaign, in one line. And that line made perfect sense to Bush—once “them” became Michael Dukakis.

After that, Bush would do ... whatever it took.

By the time that started to show, the white men had told everybody—everybody who was in-the-know—how they got together (collegially) up in Maine, on Memorial Day, and set the course ... they convinced George Bush.

For the book writers and other keepers of the index entries of History, there were long, loving analyses of the focus groups, the people-meters, the attitude sampling, the ad testing ... the science behind the lightning bolts that leapt from trembling white fingers. There were accounts of the fateful dinner, where the Gee-Six hammered out the crucial consensus,
the attack on Dukakis
... which they carried, thence, to Walker’s Point.

It was all that loving, knowing science that let the newsmagazine savants declare this ... (ta dumm!) ... The Year of the Handler.

It was the handlers describing their dinner.

Of course, Bush had to eat, too ... but there wasn’t the same level of science: just a motorcade to Mabel’s Lobster Claw ... cheers on the porch ... Mabel made her usual fuss ... got everybody seated, got the Service squared away, and came over to shoot the shit with Bush.

“George, do you know how to potty-train a Greek boy?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Do ka-ka!”

Bush threw his head back and laughed at the ceiling. Then he motioned her close, and asked her, in a near whisper: “What’s fourteen inches long, and hangs in front of an asshole?”

Mabel gave him a dirty look. He must have heard that one from her own cook!

“Oh, George, I heard that! ... Dukakis’s tie!”

M
ICHAEL WAS DOING JUST
enough. He was beating Jesse Jackson every week, every primary: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, West Virginia ... no mistakes! Dukakis meant to sweep every race, to the last checkered flag, in California, June 7. He meant to win enough delegates to be absolute master of his convention. He wouldn’t need help from any other candidate. He wouldn’t need anybody ... no deals! So he had to keep beating Jackson.

Michael liked to win, and this was the easiest winning he’d ever done. Every Wednesday, front pages all over the country confirmed to him everything he’d done right. Every week, new polls showed him edging higher in a head-to-head contest with that hapless Bush. Every month, new Farmer-funders pushed Michael’s bank balance higher—twenty-two million ... twenty-five million ... until, at last, he’d raised the legal limit,
twenty-seven million dollars
(lucre like no Democrat ever had) ... after which, Farmer began to raise “soft money” for the Party. On the road, six or seven times a day, another group of greeting pols would tell Michael how excited they were about his chances, their chances, in November ... what a marvelous machine was the Dukakis campaign. What a marvelous candidate—three days a week!

Actually, it was more like two, or two and a half. The closer Michael got to the nomination, the harder he clung to his
real life
. (The day after he won New York, when Michael
knew
his miracle would happen, Al Gore wanted to meet, to make peace. Michael couldn’t spare the time. He had to fly at 7
:00
A.M.
back to Boston, his corner office ... where his crucial meeting dwelt for a half-hour upon spring shrubbery planting at the State House.) Whenever the issues staff wanted the Governor for a briefing on foreign policy or defense, Michael would insist: that was campaign time. Sure, he’d sit for a briefing (well, he’d sit for twenty minutes, then pick up a newspaper)—but they’d have to cancel Indiana. ... But they
couldn’t
cancel Indiana—because Robin Toner, in
The New York Times
, was already questioning where the hell Dukakis was spending his days (God forbid she find out, Michael hadn’t sat for a foreign-policy briefing in the last month and a half) ... Farmer and Kristin Demong needed Michael three nights, for
another million dollars
(Fine! But that was campaign time) ... and the Washington office could not explain to the Party powers why their nominee had not deigned to come to the capital
once
in the last two months. (Said the dean of smart guys, Robert Strauss: “Doesn’t he wanta call me?”) ... And, of course, that didn’t count things like strategy sessions, message, advertising, or communications in general, which Dukakis would never discuss for more than four minutes, anyway.

Why should he? He was winning every week!

There were folks who suggested to Michael (well, actually, they suggested to Estrich, or to Brountas, or to Kiley, or they’d call John Sasso in exile—Michael had no time for suggestions) that he might want to change his, uh ...
priorities
... now that he bade fair to become the leader of, you know, the
Free World
—maybe he could scale back his work on the state sludge-dumping program, maybe leave off interviewing District Court judges, let someone else chair the next few meetings of the Governor’s Statewide Anti-Crime Council.

Out of the question!

In Michael’s view, the campaign was going fine! His problems were in the State House. What did all those campaign wise guys know about his revenue estimates for fiscal ’89? ... He was going to have a heck of a time closing that budget gap! ... Serious problems with the Senate President, Mr. Bulger ... a thorny dispute on aid to parochial schools. When Estrich had the temerity to suggest one extra day to meet with important pols in Washington (“Governor, those guys can kill us in the press!”), Michael reminded her about that
extra weekend
he’d given her when she got so panicky about Wisconsin.

To Michael, this was just the standard whine about his schedule. The wise guys told him he had to win Iowa, or else! They cried alarums when he lost South Dakota ... when he lost Michigan to Jackson ... when he wouldn’t ratchet up his schedule for New York. But he never listened! Strong, steady Michael had won it
his way
... he’d been correct!