What It Takes (7 page)

“
Ladies and gentlemen, a real friend
...”

But George Bush couldn’t tell the Service to stick it. Wouldn’t be like that. ... Alas, that was the price of being Poppy.

And now, to throw out the first pitch, to get the 1986 National League Championship Series under way, the Vice President of the United States ...

In the broadcast booth, Keith Jackson segued smoothly out of a commercial for the ABC viewers.

George Bush! ... Calls Houston home! And you know what? He knows what he’s doin’. He was the captain of the 1948 Yale team ...

He’s out of the hole, and they’re cheering! The noise from the crowd is washing down on him from the walls of the Dome—it’s like a canyon, six decks! It’s huge. This is not even noise. It’s another sensation, more like touch, a feeling around the whole head, like hot air pushing in. You can feel it in your hair.

They’re on their feet! Standing O ...

Another man might have turned to wave, or raised a hand ... another politician, surely. But George Bush lowered his head, like he was embarrassed, or he had to watch his black lace-up shoes on the turf, the dirt around the plate. The cheers rained down on the back of his neck. Oh, he heard them, or felt them, really. By the time he passed the umpires meeting at the plate, his game face had changed to a broad grin of pleasure.

You could see he loved it. Up close, you could feel the fun in him, and the force—he did look terrific. Hell, sixty-two, six-foot-two, and not a spare inch on him. Still quick on a tennis court. Only doubles now, but not too shabby. That’s about the only game he had time for. Golf was too slow. Anyway, his putting was shot to hell. But tennis he kept after. Two sets last weekend. Got some sun. Did his running. Up close, you could see he was an athlete. Just a gleam of silver in his hair. Good bones, good tone in his face. Of course, if you saw that grin, you knew he was pumped up. ... This was great! Part of it was just gettin’
moving.
Never liked hangin’ around waiting, just alone, to think ... always happier doing. And walking onto the field: “We
love
this kind of stuff. ...” Jeez, it was great! ... But, of course, the crowd in the Dome couldn’t see that.

What did they see?

First, they didn’t see him at all, couldn’t tell which one was him, the way all the suits came out of the Hole together. And by the time the guys from the Service had peeled away, to stand in front of the photographers, massed on the first- and third-base lines, Bush had his head down, marching to the mound like a man to his doom. In fact, he looked small, all at once alone on the green expanse, overmatched by the huge arc of the Dome, the vast hall it enclosed, the noise from the high canyon. There was a cameraman from the Astrodome, with a Minicam balanced on a shoulder, walking behind him, relaying an image straight to the Diamond Vision screen in center field, but all he got, all the fans in the Dome got, was a fifty-foot shot of the bent back of the Vice Presidential neck. Of course, George Bush never looked up to see that.

That was the price. ... There was no other politician, certainly no other Presidential contender, who would not give one thought, one quick glance, to a Diamond Vision screen, with a picture of
him,
looming fifty feet high, right in front of his face. Not Bush: he couldn’t think about it that way, couldn’t see himself as he must look to others, couldn’t do “that image thing” ... “all that me, me, me stuff.”

You’d think he would have learned from Reagan, watching him for six years. You watch Reagan do something public, anything, like walk across the lawn to his chopper: every movement is perfect. There he goes ... with his big western walk, shoulders back, hands swinging easy at his sides, the grin raised to perfect angle, then one hand aloft in a long wave ... and every instant is a perfect picture. It doesn’t even matter if they’re screaming questions at him. At any one millisecond, as the shutter clicks, the President is perfect: relaxed, balanced, smiling, smooth.

Now watch Bush make for his chopper: hey, he knows that agent!—not part of his detail, but he met him on the last trip to Houston, got a kid who wants to go to West Point, wrote a letter for him. So Bush twists around and waves to the agent—lets him know he’s seen him, bends his head back to Bar to tell her, that’s Keith, the
agent,
remember? “MR. VICE PRESIDENT! MR. VICE PRESIDENT!” a photographer is yelling, and it’s Fred, the
Life
guy, who was on the trip to Cleveland last week, so while he’s talking to Bar, and pointing at the agent, he makes a face to Fred, to let him know he doesn’t have to shout. He
knows
him, see. Fred’s a friend! And there’s Steely waiting at the chopper stairs. Jack Steel! Known him for—God! Twenty-five years? And so he’s got to goose Steely, let him know he’s glad to see him, and he’s making a face at Bar about the way the photographers are shouting, and he twists around to see if the agent’s seen him, oughta ask him, but the engine’s so loud, and the wind’s whipping his hair in his face, which he’s screwing up to yell, as he pauses—gotta ask him—trying to balance, crouching in the engine wind, one foot up on the stairs: “Hey! How’s your
son
? ... YOUR SON? ...”

And at any one moment, as the shutter clicks, Bush looks like a dork.

So now, he gets to the mound and turns, and stands center stage in the great canyon, stands full frame on the nation’s TV screens, stands alone before the forty-four thousand, and the fifty million. And yet there is not one instant when Bush is at rest, smooth, balanced, his hands easy at his sides. Hell, he can’t drop his hands to his sides: they’ve got him bundled up like a kid in a snowsuit!

He’s got his blue blazer, and a silver tie, and the blue shirt stuffed with him and the vest, and gray flannel slacks, and a brown belt that doesn’t match the lace-up shoes, which he’s now inching backward at the crest of the mound, feeling tentatively for the rubber, as he balances with baby steps on the slippery dirt. And at last, he looks up ... and there’s the grin!

But, alas, no one gets to see the grin. Because as Bush looks up, what
he
sees is a
person,
Alan Ashby, the catcher, right there in front of his face, albeit sixty-and-a-half feet away. So Poppy’s got to have a
thing
with him—gonna be a friend, see. So he lifts up his right hand in front of his face, palm up, and with his wrist limp, flaps his fingers up together, as if he wants Ashby to come closer. A joke, see, just between Al and Poppy. But Ashby doesn’t know him, and he thinks it’s serious, so then Bush has to raise both hands,
quick,
palms out, with the ball flashing white in his left hand, to keep Ashby where he is, at the plate. By this time, there’s fifty million people who don’t know what’s going on with Bush, why he’s flapping his hands in front of his face.

By this time, ABC has cut to the center-field camera, and the nation has a view of the Vice Presidential back and backside. In this cruel shot, there is none of the athlete a fan might have seen up close, on the field. There is just the squarish silhouette of an aging white man, thick through the middle like any guy at sixty-something, looking every bit the interloper, like any guy in a jacket and tie who walks onto a ball field. Just a pol muscling in on a game that isn’t his—Hey, watch this ... think he can throw?

This is it: the moment, the glorious nexus. Poppy is winding up—well, sort of. He can’t really get his arms above his head, so they end up together in front of his face, and he sort of swivels to his left, and his left arm flies back—but it won’t
go
back, so he gets it back even with his shoulder, and starts forward, while his right lace-up feels for the dirt on the downslope, and he can tell it’s short while the throw is still in his hand, and he’s trying to get that little
extra
with his hand, which ends up, fingers splayed, almost waving, as he lands on his right foot, and lists to his left, toward the first-base line, with the vent of his blazer aflap to show his gray flannel backside, with his eyes still following the feckless parabola of his toss, which is not gonna ... oh, God! ... not gonna even
make the dirt
in front of the plate, but bounce off the
turf,
one dying hop to the ... oh, God!

And as he skitters off the mound toward the first-base line, and the ball on the downcurve of its bounce settles, soundless, into Ashby’s glove, then George Bush does what any old player might do in his shame ... what any man might do who knows he can throw, and knows he’s just thrown like a girl in her first Softball game ... what any man might do—but no other politician, no politician who is falling off the mound toward the massed news cameras of the nation, what no politician would do
in his nightmares
, in front of fifty million coast-to-coast, prime-time votes:

George Bush twists his face into a mush of chagrin, hunches his shoulders like a boy who just dropped the cookie jar, and for one generous freeze-frame moment, buries his head in both hands.

B
OB DOLE DIDN’T SEE
the ball game. He was working. Probably hadn’t seen a whole game since high school. He knew what he had to know about it. Liked it, sure, as far as that went. Not too far. Might see a few pitches, in passing, on the console thing in his living room. TV, VCR, radio, all in one sort of console, right in front of the easy chair. Everything he needed, if he was home. Wasn’t home much. What would he do there?

Home was kind of small, an apartment in the Watergate, his bachelor apartment, matter of fact. Elizabeth moved in when they got married ten years ago. No, eleven now. That made about ten years she was after him to get a bigger place. She was after him about a lot of things. She didn’t push it, though.

Anyway, the living room was the only real room in the place. Took up about the whole downstairs. On one side, sliding doors led off to a little concrete terrace, where Bob would position a chair on the Astroturf and sit in the sun, if he had a daylight hour to rest. But it was a ground-floor place, so there wasn’t any view to speak of, unless you considered other people’s walls and windows a view. Inside, there was his easy chair, a couch, a breakfront that nobody used much. A foyer led into the living room from one end, and a sliver of a stand-up kitchen led off near the other end. There wasn’t any dining room, or any real table. If the Doles did find themselves home for a meal, it was microwave whiz-bang and TV tables. Upstairs there was a box of a bedroom and a half-room of a study, packed tight with files and papers, the floor space in the middle taken up by Bob’s Exercycle. That was it, as far as home went.

Of course, no one ever saw the place, so they probably had the wrong idea about it. You mentioned the Watergate, people thought of big, luxury places. That ... and maybe one other thing. Actually, he wasn’t living there when the break-in happened. Back in ’72, he still had the house in suburban Virginia, with his first wife, Phyllis. Big house, sunken living room, a real dining room where they could have entertained; three bedrooms, a walk-in garage, yard, everything. Phyllis loved the place. Bob wasn’t home much. He was working. When he was around, he stayed in a spare, monkish room he set up in the basement. Never used the rest of the house. That was when the marriage with Phyllis was coming apart. Maybe that’s why he didn’t want a real house now. Hard to tell. No one had the guts to ask. There was a lot no one dared say to Bob Dole.

He wasn’t the kind to chat about his life—or anything else, either. Not that he was silent, Coolidge in the Cloakroom. No, he was always ready with a joke, always had a greeting for you, most often: “Howy’
doin
’?” or sometimes “How’sa
goin
’?”

Dole’s voice was made for the empty distance and mean wind of the prairie. His few words were audible no matter what was going on around, especially the vowels, which would linger and fall with the kind of descending Doppler effect you hear when a race car passes.

“Howy
DOOOOnn
? ...”

Meanwhile, Bob Dole was already on to the next greeting, or out of the room altogether. See, he didn’t really want an answer. He was working.

For someone he knew, especially someone who wanted something, he’d always make up a special greeting. At a fund-raiser, he’d spot the guy—say, the lobbyist for the rice growers—who was heading for him, coming at him for something ...

“There he
ihhhhhzz
,” Dole would exclaim, and then with his good arm raised, his left hand in a fist, his thumb jutting up, pumping the air, he’d rasp out:

“
Rice! Rice! Rice! Rice! ...
” Like he was cheering for the guy and his rice bill. But he wasn’t cheering. He was getting by before the guy could pin him for something.

Dole always spotted them first. In a crowded room, his gaze was constantly darting. He had the nervous eyes of a basketball guard, the playmaker who brings the ball up: he had to watch the whole court, he had to know first how the play would develop. Meanwhile, he had to keep dribbling.

“Agh, kinda
hot ...
need some
rayyne
...”

“
Howydooon
...”

“Hey, Bob
Dohhhlh ...
Gooda meetcha ...”

In fact, that was his job in the Senate, as the Leader,
Majority
Leader: to push the play, make something happen, meanwhile keeping track of his votes, what the White House wanted, Cabinet departments, polls, his constituents, the calendar, members’ schedules, their bottom lines when votes were tight, their points of particular pride and fear. Of course, Dole had been Leader only for the last two years, but this was a case of the job finding the man: he’d kept a hundred balls in the air for a couple of decades now.

That’s how it was in the Senate that day, October 8, 1986, when the budget was still hanging fire, and the House couldn’t seem to send over a continuing resolution, just a simple CR to keep the government working for another few days, much less a spending plan for a year, and the bill to go along with it, to raise the debt limit, so the government could borrow; meanwhile, the President was vowing he’d veto any CR that delayed a budget past Friday, two days from now, and the Speaker of the House was threatening a lame-duck session, to reconvene and take up the budget after the midterm election; meanwhile, Goldwater couldn’t get any defense appropriation worked out in conference, and Hatfield, Chairman of Appropriations, was tied up with the CR, so Dole had to schedule Hatfield’s river-gorge bill when he could attend; meanwhile, the Senate was supposed to have a trial, its first impeachment trial in fifty years, of a judge who, in turn, was suing the Senate (and Bob Dole), so they had to pass a resolution to authorize legal counsel and schedule executive session for the trial and, somehow, drag the matter to a vote; meanwhile, thirty members were up for reelection and some were gnashing their teeth to get home, and Metzenbaum let Dole know that Monday next, Yom Kippur, was the holiest day of the year for the Jews, and DeConcini and D’Amato reminded him it was also Columbus Day and they had political commitments at home; and the President was getting ready to go to Reykjavík to meet Gorbachev, and he asked for a one-day ratification of the new defense treaty with Iceland, so he could take that along; and meanwhile, the White House was getting heat on this Iceland summit—the nonsummit summit, no agenda, no plan, no preparation—so Dole was drafting a resolution supporting Ronald Reagan as he went to Iceland, signing on the Senate, so it looked like the government had a plan and spoke with one voice to the Soviets; meanwhile, the House finally sent a CR, a two-day extension so the government could write checks, but someone over there tacked on a requirement to hire back the striking air-traffic controllers, so Dole checked with the White House and found out Reagan would surely veto that, and he sent it back to the House, to get the air controllers re-amended out; meanwhile, he worked out ten consent calendars with Bob Byrd, maybe thirty or forty bills they could agree upon en bloc, and got those taken up, along with Hatfield’s river gorge, and Exon’s used-car Truth-in-Mileage Act, Danforth’s amendment to the Telecommunications Act, and Stevens’s amendment to the Second-Class Postage Law, Simon’s and Sarbanes’s Human Rights Resolution, the conference report on the bill to keep VISTA alive, the authorization bill for the Federal Maritime Commission, and maybe a dozen other bills, along with forty-two minor nominations, and he got them all out by 8:15, after eleven hours on the floor, whereupon Dole hustled back down the grand hall, back toward his office: he had work to do.