What It Takes (65 page)

Mostly, Sasso worried about Michael—would he go? For the moment, that was the ball game. What was the point of pushing this, or stressing that ... if Michael walked away? Sure, there had to be a theme for the campaign—but first there had to be a campaign. Sure, Michael ought to use the time, now, to learn—but first Michael had to hear what he needed to hear.

There was one time, by happenstance, Michael collided with a chance to learn. He had an event at the Harvard Club, in Boston. It was early evening, after a day at the State House; Michael was making for his meeting room ...

“Hey, great to see you, Mike. Glad you’re here ...”

That was Teddy Kennedy, the first guy they ran into at the club. Kennedy was hosting a confab on arms control, and the major-league multiple-reentry-first-strike-throw-weight muckamucks had flown in.

“Listen,” Kennedy said. “I’m having a few of these guys up to my hotel room, after. You know, just to kick things around ... love to have you sit in ...”

This took Michael completely by surprise, so he murmured thanks ... said he’d certainly try.

But after Michael’s event, when it came time to go to Kennedy’s soirée, Dukakis was antsy.

“This isn’t gonna be all night, is it?” That’s what he wanted to know from Mitropoulos.

“We’ll stay as long as you want, Governor.”

Michael knew he ought to go—the words “D-5 missile,” after all, had never escaped his lips, and soon he’d have to talk about how many the U.S. ought to build, and why. ... But Dukakis does not like to be the dumbest guy in the room. Michael is always the smartest guy in the room.

“I don’t know ...” Michael was frowning at his watch. “Ahhh ... I don’t wanna go in there.”

Mitropoulos shrugged, and stopped. “Up to you,” he said.

Michael’s eyes were down at his watch again, and he muttered something about the Stop & Shop. He said: “It’s my night for groceries.”

What he wanted them to have was a sense of mission. It could not be just a campaign for office. Wouldn’t work that way ... and wouldn’t matter. He wanted them to feel they were working for the people, to change the country ... not just for Gary Hart. It was not about him.

That’s the way he’d always worked: the mission, this
crusade
, was his lever to move the earth ... ever since 1971, when he marched in his cowboy boots straight to the big time in American politics as manager of George McGovern’s campaign for the White House. Of course, in those days, it was easy. They were all young, for one thing—McGovern’s “army,” and its general, Hart—and they didn’t fit in with the pros who ran politics. Hart would show up in those boots and his skinny blue jeans, shirt open at the neck, and too-long hair, and he’d start to talk, and you could
see
, you could
feel
, how different it was with him, the freshness of his thought and his faith in the power of ideas.

He was quiet, and mannerly, with that diffident Kansas politeness that had nothing to do with
politesse
, and a preacherly belief about the campaign—like his boss, Senator McGovern, from Hart’s neighbor state of South Dakota, the son of a Methodist pastor (that same crusading Wesleyan gospel), who was so
decent
. ... “George McGovern,” Hart used to tell the kids in the office, “is who we are.” It was easy to see that theirs was a campaign to change American values, a campaign for the dignity of each man, the future of all men. Then, too, if matters got muddy, they had this gyroscopic certainty: they were working to unseat the evil Nixon. They were working to bring the boys home from Vietnam. To change the system ... end the war ... bring the country back to its senses. That’s why Hart could tell those college kids: it didn’t
matter
that they were sleeping on floors, fifteen to a room, with hot dogs to fuel another day, canvassing through the snow. They had a mission. ... That’s why the McGovern campaign could take a dive at the convention on the South Carolina credentials challenge: sure, purity would argue for more blacks, more women, in the South Carolina delegation. But not at the risk of losing this prize. “Now, wait a minute ...” Hart would tell the black caucus, the women’s caucus. “Remember who it is we’re running against. It’s
Richard Nixon
.”

It was easy then for Hart to construct a
new kind
of campaign: there was no model for that sort of insurgency, and they had no choice about being different. Hart had a list in the office: all the Party chairmen, local officials, Congressmen—the regulars. And Gary insisted that his kids make an effort to call them, try to include them, let them know when McGovern was coming to their districts. But none of the political pros took much note. They couldn’t feel the ground moving under them. The press couldn’t see it coming, either, kept writing that McGovern was “a one-issue candidate” ... “from a small state” ... “no money, no endorsement” ... “lacks Muskie’s broad support.” Hart would fume at the morning papers—it was so
frustrating
: “They just can’t get it, can they?”

No, they’d have to be shown. So whenever someone
within
the campaign would complain that McGovern was slighted by Party bigwigs, or McGovern was left out of some news story, Hart would quote Tolstoy’s General Kutuzov: “Time and patience ... patience and time.” Hart would never authorize the purchase of a conference table, or chairs, for the meeting room. He hated meetings: theory was, if there were no chairs, people would say what they had to, and wrap it up. Yet, as often as he had to, Hart would sit for an hour, two hours, with his rangy frame folded atilt into a straight-backed seat, his cowboy boots propped on the edge of his desk, explaining: sure, they were thirty points back in the polls, but that’d
change
if they won Wisconsin ... and here’s how they could win Wisconsin. ... He’d listen for hours on the phone to his man in Milwaukee, Gene Pokorney, bitching and moaning: How was he supposed to win Wisconsin with no money? Then he’d listen to the daily whine from his New Hampshire coordinator, Joe Grandmaison: “I’m doing everything for this campaign. I’m going to the wall for the candidate. What are you doing for me, Gary?” He’d listen forever to Jesse Jackson, hectoring about what was owed to South Chicago, punctuating his demands with his favorite phrase of the time: “You hear where I’m comin’ from? ...” Hart heard, and heard again and again, and he’d sympathize, reason with them, try to explain ... he never blew. They shared a mission. There was no end to his patience.

And that’s how he wanted it to be. A different campaign, a shared sense of mission, a battle plan for a great crusade ... But somehow, now that it was his candidacy, now that he was thirty points
ahead
in the polls, now that there were
professionals
in Denver, plotting for him, moving him, and there were chairs in the meeting room, and a conference table, conference
calls
... it was harder to keep it straight. Fifteen years ... time and patience. But time was short now. They
gave
him no time. He couldn’t sit around, for hours, explaining. He’d have to cut past explaining: they’d just have to be shown. And, tell the truth, that suited him now. Somewhere, in those fifteen years, the patience had worn thin. If they just couldn’t get it ... well, that was their problem. If they wanted him in Iowa, and the best they could come up with was
a full day
of kissing ass in the state capitol, “private meetings” with “important Democrats” ... well, then, they’d just get it back in their faces: No. It didn’t matter if they sent in
twenty
call slips for Hart to phone this important local candidate from the last election. He’d already talked to the guy in person ...
visited
the smarmy creep. So every one of those call slips would slide into the side pocket of Hart’s sport coat, and that was the last they were seen. It wasn’t that he disrespected his staff—for God’s sake, he’d made himself slave to their schedule! Hart had the best in the business in Denver. He’d seen to it. But he wasn’t going to lower the level of his game. Not for anyone. Not this time.

So the white boys would visit the law office, whenever Hart had a day in town ... and they would talk. But for the rest—the colonels and captains in the “army”—they seldom saw Hart. They’d have to make an appointment. Even the ones who went back with him, all the way to ’72—they were middle-aged now, and there weren’t too many who could move their lives to Denver for this new crusade ... but there were a handful. Even they never sat and talked with Hart anymore. Judy Harrington worked on the field desk for McGovern, fifteen years before, and now she was running Hart’s tank. It was her people who monitored the states, and she was the one who had to pass on their urgencies:

“He’s just got to speak at this one Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner. It’s their Party’s only big event of the year. And we promised! ...”

“... This guy is getting pissed off. Gary saw him in Des Moines, told him he really wanted to get to know him. And now he can’t get through! Gary’s
got
to call him back!”

So Judy passed on the call slips, and the schedule requests, and memos ... for months. But she never saw Gary. And all she heard was: they could forget the J-J Dinner. No. No. ... And as to the calls, well, he had the slips. ...

So she made an appointment. It wasn’t about the calls, really, or the schedule stuff, any of that. She wanted to connect, to talk to him, to tell him how proud she was of him, how far they’d come ... she wanted to
see
him. But, of course, that had to be arranged. So it was late February when it finally got scheduled, and she went to the law office. But it was zoo-time that day.

The night before, Mario Cuomo had announced, on a New York radio station, that he would not run. Bill Dixon and Billy Shore tracked Hart down at a downtown restaurant, where he’d taken Lee out to dinner for her birthday. Now, the next morning, Gary was rushed. Dixon was flitting in and out. They wanted Gary to go to New York, today, right now, to tie down some New York money, now that Cuomo was out. Elsie Vance, Gary’s personal assistant, was poking her head in the door to tell Gary about new meetings, people waiting on the phone, she had his ticket for New York. ... And Gary had his game face on. He was brusque. He greeted Judy: “What should I be doing better?”

This wasn’t what Judy wanted, or expected. She just wanted to talk.

“Well, you really ought to be taking care of these phone slips that come over here ...”

“Yeah. I got this one right here.”

“Yeah, you left him with the impression that you wanted to extend your friendship with him. You wanted him to come to Colorado or something ...”

“I don’t want to be friends with him.”

“Well, Trippi says ...”

“Look. The guy’s a creep. I don’t want to be friends with him. I don’t want him here.”

“Well, the guy’s poisoning the well in Des Moines, and it takes a thousand staff hours to make up for what you can do with one phone call.”

“Well, you people think it’s so easy to make phone calls. I must call three times for every time I get through. And the phone’s always busy, or I don’t get through. And I can’t sit around here, waiting for them to call back. Or I try to call them from the road, and then it’s impossible ...”

This was getting worse and worse. “What else?” Hart demanded.

“Well, why don’t you relate your candidacy in more personal terms?”

Gary’s face flashed annoyance. Well, he’d asked for it.

“Like last night, today ... why don’t you say, ‘I was really surprised about Cuomo. In fact, Lee and I were out to dinner, celebrating her birthday’ ...”

Hart cut in: “I’m not going to drag my family into this.”

“You
have
to use your family. You had the perfect opportunity today, and you didn’t use it.”

Hart was shaking his head. “I don’t want to relate to things in those terms.”

“You just have to
mention
it ...”

Now Hart flashed at Judy that look of scorn and hurt. What business did the press have, knowing where Hart was at dinner last night? What he said to Lee? What he and Lee were doing? He wasn’t going to talk about Lee. Wasn’t going to talk about any of that! And, for God’s sake, he shouldn’t have to explain
that
... to
Judy
!

Across the desk, she shrugged sheepishly. “Why do I have to bring up two things that piss you off?”

Hart just stared at her.
He
wasn’t pissed off! ... But he had no time to explain. He had to get to New York.

I
N 1955, AFTER THEIR
first year at Bethany Nazarene College, Gary Hartpence and Oletha Ludwig were named Freshmen of the Year. Oletha said she had no idea why they gave it to her—that’s how she was, so offhand about herself.

Of course she knew. She was the princess of the place, by right, almost by inheritance. Her father, S.T. Ludwig, had been president of the college some dozen years before—he’d appointed many of the faculty. It was the faculty who ordained the Freshmen of the Year.

Which is not to say she was undeserving: Oletha was attractive, full of good cheer, outgoing, chaste of heart and mind, observant in the faith—a model Nazarene girl. She was smart, or, to be precise, she was good at school. She’d always done well with grades and teachers. She had an easy, daughterly way with adults, especially church officials, who were around her home ever since she could remember.

The name Ludwig, see, was a great name of the church, its history stretching back to Oletha’s grandparents, Theodore and Minnie Ludwig, who were traveling evangelists when the Nazarene sect was young. Theodore was a German Methodist, preaching to the faithful in the old tongue, before he came over to the Nazarenes (at that point, a church only six years old) after his entire sanctification at a service near Sylvia, Kansas, in 1912. Minnie Ludwig was every bit the speaker and evangelist he was: in fact, she was even more of a drawing card at tent revivals and camp meetings. (“Come on in close,” she’d urge the faithful, in her piercing plains twang. “I don’t know whether my gospel gun will hit all of ye, s’far scattered ...”) For decades, they traveled town to town—forty-seven states, Canada, and Old Mexico, as Theo used to say—sharing the Good News, and winning souls for Jesus. By and by, their handbills also advertised a cornet player, who would complement their preachings ... that was their son, young Sylvester Theodore, or as he would come to be known, S.T. Ludwig.