What It Takes (77 page)

Well!

You could hear two or three of these stories for the price of a dinner. The staff, the Advance men, the local people who helped his campaign: they had stories about these ... these ...
women
, who would flounce up during Hart’s speech, or just at the end of an event somewhere, and announce that Gary wanted them to come along on the plane ... of course, no one could write
that
.

But couldn’t you just die? ...

It was
so obvious
. And so contemptuous ... of
them
!

That’s what really got to the pack.

It wasn’t that they were friends of Lee Hart, who, after all, was the only one with standing in this case ... when you got down to it. No one could suggest that Hart didn’t do his job, or neglected to learn about the Middle East or something, because he was busy chasing skirt.

But for Chrissake, the man was
running for President
!

So what?

So, it said something about his
character
—didn’t it?—his fidelity to his vows.

But what could
they
say about Gary and Lee’s vows? Not a thing. Neither Gary nor Lee would discuss them.

Well, for God’s sake, it showed something about
his judgment
. The man had to know he was living in a fishbowl.

But what could
they
show? That he came to the door in a bathrobe? That he called Warren Beatty a friend? That there were these ... these ...
tomatoes
! ... on his plane?

No, they’d have to do better. It was awful ...
knowing
... day after day, for months, with the stinking fish in the pot ... and Hart climbing in the polls. ... What it was, was weird.

They couldn’t ask Hart! Well, they could ask. But that and a quarter would buy them coffee, so they could rev up and tell each other more stories. They could talk it over with their wise-guy friends—even Hart’s own wise guys, the professional staff he’d assembled in Denver. Oh, the pros all knew the way the steam was blowing from this stockpot—sure ... and they meant to keep their own index entries in the books, too. So they’d say: “Yeah, I asked about that ... I didn’t wanna get involved if he was gonna, you know ... (Hey, don’t use my name, huh?) ...”

“Well, what’d he say?”

“Who?”

“Gary!
What’d he
say
, when you asked?”

“He didn’t say, I mean ... you know, it wasn’t him, personally, I talked to about it.”

“Oh.”

It was worse and worse—the steam on the stovetop—as April arrived, and Hart’s announcement was imminent ... and profile season was in full swing ... and no one could spill the soup!

This particular odor actually went back to ’72, the McGovern days, which was the first time Hart got famous in a hurry. The irony was, George McGovern was attracted to Hart for Gary’s churchly, almost geeky goodness, his mannerly midwestern respect, his serious and stubborn application to the job at hand. (McGovern, son of a minister, was the man who’d built the South Dakota Democratic Party on three-by-five cards.) But by the time the press discovered Hart—descried his strategic genius, strangely enough, just after McGovern started winning—that was not the Gary Hart they introduced to the public.

No, their Gary bore almost no relation to the quiet, brainy Denver lawyer who prowled the campaign’s ratty offices in a cheap suit and too-wide tie. Their Gary Hart wore jeans and cowboy boots, he was young, long-haired, flip, quirky ... friend to movie stars, scourge of the old Party bosses ... leader of the-young-and-the-restless (that bulge in the bell curve again), who, in those days, were so richly celebrated as the flower and the hope of a tired world. Their Gary was ... in a word, sexy.

But that was okay. In fact, it was terrific: it fit with the story line, the ethic of the day. Remember,
Time
mag was doing Day-Glo covers, and “Make Love, Not War” still meant something—while there was a war. The political revolution that Hart was engineering followed on the bare heels of the sexual revolution—in fact, it seemed like one big mudpie. These McGovern kids were taking over the Party ... in fringed jackets and miniskirts! The young were taking over the Earth ... it was only Nixonites and like protofascists who had not the grace, or the God-given instinct, to bow toward this bright new light. And Hart? ... Well, Gary was a Style Section darling, a political rock star. Even Teddy White, who by that time had seen too many campaigns, was stirred to note in his
Making of the President 1972
, young Gary Hart’s “skin-fitting pants over slim cowboy thighs.” (Yowlll!)

White also noted that Hart “drew the eye” of all the women in the campaign, though he was careful to add that Gary was too busy for romantic adventures. (Of course, White also called those women the “yearning maidens of the McGovern camp,” so he can’t have done much research there.) Alas, there were others of the older generation who were nowhere near so careful and kind—others who wanted Gary Hart’s job. Even before McGovern started winning—surprise!—the old pros descended and counseled McGovern that he could no longer trust his affairs to Hart and those other kids. (
Sure, it’s worked surprisingly well, but come on, now, George ... get serious!
) Ted Van Dyk, an old Humphrey man, made a run, and later teamed up with his pal Frank Mankiewicz, an old Bobby Kennedy Press Secretary; and after McGovern won the nomination, they were joined in the dump-Hart effort by Larry O’Brien (ex-JFK, ex-LBJ) and his cronies from the Democratic mainstream. In each case, you could call it a political battle—or maybe a generational war—but it got personal in a hurry. Along the way, McGovern was informed that the office was a shambles! There was no control! No organization! (For God’s sake, there weren’t even meetings to attend!) And Hart—well, how could he restore order, when (they whispered) he’d been to bed with half the staff?

McGovern never did bite—not hard enough to dump Hart—but meanwhile, the Washington whispers were launched as extra ammo in the anti-Hart fusillade. Lee Hart had moved to Washington with Gary, but she was miserable and lonely (Gary was never home), and so, in the summer of ’71, she took herself and the kids back to Denver ... just when the first assault on Hart’s job was kicking up the whispers and whines. By ’72, when Hart’s strategic success had made his job so much more appealing, the whispers got so public, so many, and so juicy, that Sally Quinn, the Style Section Queen (and a friend of Mankiewicz), descended to visit upon Hart ... the profile.

It was a neat piece of work, an article Hart would rue for years. You could tell the interview was friendly—hell, here was Sally, urging, just for starters ... show me your socks ... no,
under
your boots.

Hart showed her his socks.

Then, there was Hart, explaining how he was with women—holding doors, lighting their cigarettes ... and gosh, it was baffling, how they could call
that
... you know, macho! (You could almost hear him purr.)

From her first description of Hart’s looks (“chiseled, movie-star profile, tousled styled hair, full lips, crinkly eyes”) ... “looks,” Quinn adjudged, “with a hint of cruelty” ... to the gambit with the socks (Hart “placed one long black-booted leg on the desk”) ... to the mention of a poster of Candice Bergen (bestowing upon Hart her “sultry smile”) ... it was a flirty fifty inches, from the start ... but alas, just foreplay.

The climax had to wait for the last breathy column, where Hart was asked about his marriage ... now that Lee was back in Denver, and Gary was alone. Quinn wrote:

“He will only say of his marriage, ‘I have almost no personal life at all. I lead a completely political existence. If one party doesn’t share the same interests you’ve got a problem. Let’s just say I believe in reform marriage.’ ”

From the Monday morning when he saw the paper, Hart could not believe what she’d done to him ... what he’d done to himself. He meant to be candid, charming,
at ease
. (At one point he was quoted: the best thing was “not just winning, but winning, and making it look easy.”) But you don’t learn ease on the job with Sally Quinn, no.

He was horrified at the hurt he’d done to Lee ... and
himself
. It was so irresponsible ... clumsy ...
bush league
. He never would have said those things, if she hadn’t been, you know, attractive ... but even so ... damn! Lee had gone and left him here ... he barely saw his own kids. That part about no personal life—he meant it, but even so ... why
did
he say it?

Well, he learned a lesson—the hard way. It didn’t matter what he saw around him, the marriages on paper, the people in the campaign, on the press plane, in the field offices, all running away from hearth and homes, living for the day (and the night!) ... you still couldn’t
say
it! Well, he never would again. He’d never discuss his personal life—not with reporters—hell, no!

But then, too, never would that quote go away. It would come back with him, to Washington, when he took his seat in the Senate. It would surface in files in 1984. It was alive and swimming in the stinking bouillabaisse in ’88—oh, very much alive!

And a strange, rotten bit of fish it seemed to this new pack, though they, too, had been young in ’72. They were in schools, or coming out to first jobs. They, too, had long hair, and tight pants over slender legs ... and if sex were money, they all would have been rich.

But here’s what the wooers of this generation missed ... Biden, Caddell, and all the trackers of this bulge in the bell curve: the salient fact about this boom generation had nothing to do with its love-and-drug-addled idealism, when it—when they—were the hope and heritors of the world.

By 1987, they still felt the world was theirs; the nation, the society (and everyone in it) ought, by all rights, to march to their tune. But the tune was changed, the times transformed. They’d done their own thing, they’d been the Me Generation, they’d sung “We Are the World” (and they
meant
it) ... but the salient fact, at this point in their lives was ... they were turning forty.

They were worried about their gums.

They were experts on soy formula.

They were working seriously on their (late, or second) marriages.

They were livid about saturated fats in the airline food.
What, no fiber?

They did not drink, they did not smoke, drugs were a sniggering memory. They worked all the time, except when they were calling home.

And they certainly, God knows, did
not
mess around!

Sex! ... It was tacky. It was dangerous. It was (sniff!) ...
not serious
.

And being ... (They Are the World) ...
this
generation, no one else was going to get away with sex, either.

Or drugs.

Or ill health.

Or fouling
their
air with noxious smoke.

Or music so loud they couldn’t hear their cellular phones!

Or driving without a seat belt, and a baby seat ... like they had ... so they could navigate the mortal dangers of the world, to get home, where there was some decent (i.e., French) springwater.

They had become the Thank-You-For-Not (smoking, eating, drinking, fornicating ... or anything else I don’t do) Generation. In their self-referential certainties, they were:

The
Generation.

Their mortality, their middle age, their growing and overweening fear must now become their world’s fear.

And here was Hart—so dedicated (still!) to undermining the safe security of convention—even
their
conventions. Jesus, this guy just reeked of danger!

Here was Hart—(still!) unconvinced of their God-given bulge-driven
right
to decide what was right for him ... or sane for the rest of the world. Well, if that wasn’t arrogance!

Here was Hart (reform marriage, indeed!)—who
everybody knew
was (still!) getting laid ...

Well, the sonofabitch was
prima facie
crazy!

So they all took their shots. In the trade, it’s called “profile season,” but it’s actually akin to the first day of duck hunting. The candidate flies over on his way to announcement, and there’s hot steel hurtling skyward from every marsh in the land. Every major paper in the United States, every big TV news outlet, radio guys, foreign press, news magazines, journals of opinion and polemic (even book writers!) ... are bound (as guardians of the process) to opine on what this day, this week, this season means in the lives of candidate and country.

This is their chance to lean back and spend some time summing up
how this guy is
... in other words, what’s wrong with him. And in ’88, when
everybody knew
this whole election would boil down to Character ... well, this was the wannabe-bigs’ big chance!

Back in Denver, Sue Casey, the Scheduler, essayed at the meeting a radical suggestion: Why not let Gary talk to several at once? They all asked the
same questions
... and everyone around that table knew how Hart would get, if it went on for days, for weeks ... on name-age-momma. “We could have him do, like, five in one swoop,” Casey said with a smile of hope against hope. “And then, if they had special questions or something, after, you could put ’em in the car, five minutes, and ...”