What It Takes (78 page)

But Sweeney, the press guy, looked at her like she’d drooled on her shirt. Was she nuts? ... Did she think
The Wall Street Journal
was gonna share with the
Chicago Tribune
? Get real! ... Anyway, Sweeney already had talked to Hart, to explain that it wasn’t personal. They weren’t just ganging up on
him
. It was the system, after all. And Hart had sighed and said he’d do a certain amount—as much as he could. So the upshot was, Sweeney had just about
promised
these guys ... not everyone, of course, just the top fifteen, maybe twenty. Well, call it two dozen.

So Hart was loaded up with interviews: at least one, usually more, every day. And in the product of this season, you could just about trace his jawline as it set, just about see his lips getting white. In the early profiles, you could tell he was all right—not that he liked the stories, much, no ... they mostly took the line that
Hart
had improved. He was more
at peace with himself
, or
with his past
... the same kind of stories you see on the sports page when a star comes back from drug rehab. But that story line let the writer deal with current facts—Hart was doing everything right, his ideas were hot, he was winning everywhere—and still set the Grape-Nuts to rattling in the bowl.

It was later in the season, just before announcement, that matters got ugly. Hart had heard the questions too many times. “Come on, now,” he’d say, at the first rattle of Grape-Nuts. He’d smile, like maybe he could jolly them past it. But, of course, he could not. Perhaps, he’d suggest, with patience too obvious, they were seeking mystery where there was none—or answers that didn’t matter. “I don’t think people are interested in that.” Then he’d start lecturing the big-feet on what voters wanted to know. It wasn’t name-age-momma, that was for sure. Hart himself had tried to put these matters to rest with an article, an autobiography, “One Man’s Luck,”
five thousand words
about Ottawa, his parents, church ... and you know what? ... No one wanted to print it! He finally placed the piece in
The Boston Globe
, but it was a struggle ... because it just did not matter!

“
You
are the only ones who ask me about it.” Hart didn’t have to add:
you shallow-minded nincompoops!
Of course, the stories had him shifting in his chair, frosty, grim, beleaguered ...
uncomfortable with himself
.

The apotheosis, the end of the line, came with E.J. Dionne. ... Of course, it wasn’t just one interview with E.J.—he was
The New York Times
! And Dionne did not mean to content himself with thirty inches off the front page on the day of announcement. He was planning a full-dress magazine piece, the cover of the Sunday
Times Magazine
. Sweeney thought E.J. was the one who might connect the dots—
to prove
Hart was not flaky. His ideas, his candidacy, his very being, had a long and intelligible history.

The white boys thought it was a splendid idea: E.J. was the smartest of the new generation, and if
The New York Times
said Gary wasn’t weird, the whole pack might settle down. So Casey put E.J. on the schedule in Iowa, and on the schedule in New Hampshire, and in Denver ... and wherever else he wanted. Meanwhile, the magazine’s photographer got hold of Sweeney, to set up the shoot for the cover. The guy was a major-league New York portraitist, the kind who was looking to make that one magic moment—you know, by making the subject jump up and down to get loose, or by blowing a Harpo Marx horn at him, just to change the mood ... whatever it took. This guy was an artist. Problem was, that one magic moment took time, so the photographer wanted Hart to pose for three hours.

Well, Sweeney wouldn’t even ask Hart about that ... the guy had to understand, this wasn’t exactly, you know ... Gary’s
thing
. So Sweeney hondled and wheedled, and finally, the fellow said he’d settle for an hour.

So Sweeney went to ask Hart for a half-hour. “I know that’s a long time,” Kevin said. He was talking fast, trying to get a nod before Hart knew what hit him. “But it’s a big cover, a big piece of paper. You know, it’s for E.J.’s profile ...” (Even Gary acknowledged that E.J.’s profile had to be good.)

“I’m not going to pose,” Hart said.

“I know, I know,” Sweeney said quickly, “but it’s only going to be twenty minutes.”

“I don’t care. I’m not going to pose.”

Sweeney was panicky. He tried to keep at his joke, keep it light. “I know, but it’s only gonna be fifteen minutes ...”

Hart was staring at him now, with that look. “I don’t think you’re listening,” Hart said with precision. His voice did not rise a jot. “I’m not going to pose. I’m not going to pose. I’m not going to pose.” Then he paused to see if that had sunk in. “I have got to run for President on my own terms. If I don’t, I won’t be a good President. I probably won’t even be President.”

There was silence. Sweeney had nothing to say. Hart tried to ease the sting: “Look. I’m not going to hide from the press—those people want to come in here, right now, take pictures of me and you talking ... that’s fine. Any event, in the meetings ... that’s fine.

“But I am not going to look at a camera and smile for more than thirty seconds. Because ... I ... feel ...
cheap
.”

So that took care of the portrait, but not the profile, no. E.J. kept reporting, right through the announcement and beyond—his profile wouldn’t appear till May. Meanwhile, he spent four hours with Hart in two separate interviews, nipping, yipping at the heels of his story, herding it toward the corral. Hart went through Ottawa with him, Bethany Nazarene College, and Yale, the Kennedy years, the McGovern campaign, the U.S. Senate, the run for the White House in ’84 ... he even talked about his kids, his marriage! And though it was hard for Hart to judge, he could tell that E.J. got it—mostly. The way he nodded, the questions that followed. ... It seemed—at last—that Hart had made his life,
somehow
, transparent to a ranking big-foot. Still, there was something, something more ... E.J. had to know.

So they met once again at a Formica table in a hotel cafeteria, in New Hampshire, early morning: a breakfast interview, and E.J. showed up with his baggage, fifteen years of Hart profiles in folders, which he stacked on the table, next to his paper place mat. E.J. was unsettled, uneasy that morning. He seemed to be yipping and dancing more than ever around his questions. He’d start to ask, then pause to brush a lock of hair off his brow, and knock his files of profiles into avalanche, and then try to gather himself, to ask, to try, or—well, whatever it was—again.

Finally, it was Hart who leaned across the table and stopped him: “E.J., what
is
it? What are you looking for?”

“Well, I don’t know, I mean ...” E.J. said, feinting at his forelock. “I mean, I wanted to know, from you ...”

Hart fixed him with a parent’s stare, a look of dwindling patience.

“Okay,” E.J. said. “Why do
you
think ... that
we
think ... you’re weird?”

Well, that was the end of Hart’s profile season. He decreed, after that breakfast: no more. Sweeney was sputtering and fretting in the van—it was just the
system
... but Hart was clear: no more.

Of course, that didn’t do much to relieve the sour steam in the stockpot. Hart was going to announce next week. Their profiles had to run this Sunday—next Sunday, max! And Hart wasn’t doing interviews! Wasn’t enough that the guy was weird: now he was hiding from them!

So Sweeney was out there spreading salve, trying to explain that Hart was tied up: focused on announcement, you know ... which was true in its way, because Hart had got it into his head that he was going to announce like Van Buren, or Zach Taylor. He was going to have a few people up to his house, his cabin on a slope of the Rockies, and from his wooden front porch, he’d declare his intention to change this country.

They wanted roots? Well, let them see the real bedrock of his life, his old homesteader’s cabin on the stagecoach road through the mountains to Denver. Let them stand with their cameras on the land Gary loved, on the old trail that he’d walk with his dogs, showing visitors where the stage used to run ... where the Indians could overlook the road from those rocks ... where the creek wound, rushing, down the slope, past his homestead. They wanted to see his life? Let them see something real ... not the dime-store version they kept plugging into their stories.

“Gary, there’s going to be hundreds of people. TV, radio, writers, photographers—everybody’s got to come.”

“Why do they all have to come?”

Well, they all had to come because they all had to come. That was the system, what announcement was about. The white boys wanted a nice, clean, faceless square in downtown Denver, with balloons and cheering crowds—you know, the regular stuff ... but Gary insisted on something better.

“Well, it can’t be the cabin. Where the hell would you put ’em?”

“They could set up their cameras right in front of the house.”

“Yeah, but how about cars? Their trucks.
Satellite
trucks!”

Gary talked it over at home, and Lee wasn’t happy ... but it was Andrea who ruled it out. She was living at home; she didn’t want that horde trampling over the place.

So Gary gave up on the house.

They settled on a park near Gary’s house—Red Rocks Park—and Gary would have his mountain backdrop, they wouldn’t have to build a crowd. They’d bus in the press, give them time to set up, then Gary would come, with the family ... might not be bad! They could do a downtown rally after ... but announcement, the tape that would run forever, would show the mountains, clean, strong, and bold ... and set the theme of Hart’s True Patriotism: “I am running for President ... because I love my country.”

Hart wrote his speech himself—eight minutes, no chaff. He spoke without notes, without a TelePrompTer. He thought if he could not say, without reading, why he was running—well, why should anybody listen? He said his campaign would likely make mistakes, but he would campaign on the issues that mattered. He would never talk down to the voters. He would never hold them cheap with appeals to passion. He would try to define the national interest, and rely on the voters’ judgment to set this country on a better course. “Ideas have power,” Hart said. “Ideas are what governing is all about.”

Well, talk about weird!

The way the cameras got it, the picture was Gary Hart on a rock, and Lee and the kids on another, just below, with the mountains behind ... that was fine ... but there wasn’t another human being in sight! In fact, most of the pictures were just Hart and cold stone in a forty-degree wind.

C’monnnn
! Talk about a
loner
!
Chilly ... aloof
. ... There it was: right in the focus rings of their Nikons!

But by that time, it hardly mattered—or it mattered in a different way. Because that day, April 13, was the cover date of the
Newsweek
with Howard Fineman’s profile, “A Candidate in Search of Himself.” Let history record: smooth Howard it was, who tipped over the soup.

What he did, he got a wise guy, John McEvoy, who’d worked for Hart in ’84 ... and they’re running through the weirdness ... and Howard says:
Everybody knows
the guy is getting laid.

Howard says: It’s so
obvious
...

Howard says: He’s not even watching himself. Someone’s gonna write it, and then there’s hell to pay ...

So McEvoy finally says: “Yuh, well, you know ... he’ll always be in jeopardy ... if he can’t keep his pants on.”

Bingo! Howard writes him up ... and there is hell to pay. McEvoy later insisted that line was off the record—and, anyway, pure speculation.

That’s pretty much what Howard telegraphed, leading into the quote with one of the garbage source-codes:

“...
many political observers
expect the rumors to emerge as a campaign issue. ‘He’s always in jeopardy of having the sex issue raised if he can’t keep his pants on,’ said John McEvoy,” etc., etc. ...

Hey, but what’s the difference? The rumors were in print ... and, therefore, fit matter for questions to Hart.

“
Senator, how do you respond to rumors about your womanizing?
”

In fact, that’s all they were talking about in the plane on the grand announcement tour. Hart now had an official sex problem. The odor of bad fish filled the plane.

That didn’t mean they could write any more than the rumor. Still, no one had anything, except a secondhand wise-guy quote. ...

But then came Lois Romano, from the
Post
, the dread Style Section again. And she was after Hart:
Yes or no?
... She insisted: There are rumors.

Hart went ballistic again: “Come on, Lois,
who
?” he demanded. “Where do the rumors come from?”

So she told him they came from the Biden wise guys ... then, too, the Dukakis camp.

Hart was seething. They were out to get him! (Just as he’d always suspected!) Of course they had to make
him
the issue: he was five miles ahead on every issue a President might actually have to face! But how the hell could he disprove rumors? He was running for President of the United States, and the only thing anyone wanted to know was whether he slept around.

Larry Barrett, the urbane chief of political big-feet for
Time
magazine, was next on the list for tête-à-tête. Barrett’s come-on was calm, respectful. “Gary,” he said, “I’m going to ask you once—and then we can get on with the campaign, okay? ... Now, how ’bout these rumors?”

Hart made a fatal mistake. “All I know is what reporters tell me,” he said. “If it’s true that other campaigns are spreading the rumors, I think it’s an issue.”

Well, the back of the plane went crazy. Hart was accusing the other campaigns of starting rumors about his sex life! That was politics. That was fair game! At last, the lid was off, and they could all dip their ladles.

“He’s gotta come back here and talk to us!” they demanded of Kevin Sweeney. “Kevin! He’s gotta hold a press conference.” Sweeney had no interest in a press conference on sex rumors. This was Hart’s announcement tour. How about one goddam
day
where the message was
why the man was running for President
?