What It Takes (181 page)

For God’s sake, he’d won Nebraska! ... “Do you know,” he asked a tableful of wise guys, in Boston, “how long it’s been since a
Democrat won Nebraska
? ...” (To their shame, none of the wise guys pointed out that Dukakis had not run against a Republican.)

West Virginia—he won every county! Michael told his cabinet: “They
love
me in West Virginia!” (His Chief of Staff, John DeVillars, did
suggest
that the opposing candidate was black, and could have got lynched in West Virginia.)

Anyway, the point was, they could
try
to tell him that people were watching him, now, in California ... now that he was the nominee, he had to start filling in the blanks ... say
something
to begin the fall campaign with a bang ... but Michael simply shrugged them off. Steady as she goes! The basic economic message (good-jobs-at-good-wages) would win California—and everywhere else.

They could tell him he had to expand his circle—reach out to the leaders of the Party, broaden his base ... in fact, Estrich did put Dick Moe (the senior Mondale hand, late of the Gephardt campaign) on the plane with Michael for California ... and Congressman Tony Coelho came along (what a nose for a win!) ... but that didn’t mean Michael
talked
to them. In fact, as his entourage grew, Dukakis talked less and less to anyone. He’d sit in the front of his big plane (a different plane—this one had a bathroom in front, for him) ... and he’d do his State House paperwork ... or he’d read a newspaper ... one night, he balanced his checkbook.

He just had to keep marching. ... One week into June, California and New Jersey would vote, and Michael would have his delegates.

He just had to let people see the kinda guy he was.

He just had to keep hold of his life.

Then, the foundation of his life crumbled.

In Los Angeles, Kitty took her morning walk, her left foot started to drag. She couldn’t get it to move properly. Her head was throbbing. She had hot flashes, chills. ... She’d felt the symptoms before. She tried to ignore them—like the drinking: it was just the stress. It would pass. It wasn’t a problem. ... Still, she couldn’t ignore this ... God! Multiple sclerosis! ... A brain tumor! ... She wasn’t sure she wanted to know. But she was scared now. She went to a doctor, had a scan. Two disks were pressed against her spinal cord. When the L.A. neurologist sent the tests to Michael’s old friend, Nick Zervas, head of neurosurgery at Mass General, Zervas ordered Kitty home.

She made it back on Wednesday, six days before the California vote. When Zervas scheduled surgery (he said there was risk of paralysis), Michael got the word in San Francisco. He called Jackson and canceled their evening debate. He made it back to Boston by midnight. Motorcycle cops led his car down the Storrow Drive. Michael slept on a cot by his bride ... 6:00
A.M.,
they wheeled Kitty to the operating theater. Kitty’s sister, Jinny, sat with Michael in the hospital room. Michael spread his State House papers on a table and looked like he was working.

“God,” Jinny said, “this came at the worst time ... just before California.”

Michael looked up. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Without her, I don’t want to do anything.”

Nick Zervas called Michael with updates every hour or so. They were taking bone from Kitty’s hip, they were cutting open her neck, they were replacing her disks with the extra bone ... it looked okay, Nick said. After each call, Michael would go back to work. Kitty was on that table more than four hours.

He should have known. He blamed himself. He
told
her to see a doctor! He should have
made
her slow down. ... Staff from the State House came to Michael for instructions on the press. There was a crowd downstairs. The hospital switchboard was overwhelmed, calls from Washington, flowers arriving ... Michael didn’t want to hear about that. ... Finally, Zervas came back, said it looked fine. “As soon as she can wiggle her fingers and toes, we’ll be all set.” Zervas had scans and X-rays to show ... Michael might want to talk to the press. “No,” Michael said. “You talk. It’s not my place.” He just wanted to see his bride.

In Intensive Care, she asked for a raspberry Popsicle. Michael was beaming. The nurses went
running
to the dieticians, who went
running
to find her Popsicle. “I feel like a Mack truck hit me,” Kitty said. Zervas asked: Could she wiggle her toes? Kitty wiggled. Her eyes were shining. Michael thought she looked like a queen. “I need an ice cream and a massage,” she said. “Well, we can do the former—I
think
...” said Michael. He looked twenty years younger. His voice had snap. “The other [his eyebrows danced] ... that’ll have to wait.” The dieticians were still in a lather for Kitty’s raspberry Popsicle. Jinny told them: “You know, she’d take grape.”

They just couldn’t do enough at the hospital. They were wonderful. Kitty had a big room with a view of the Charles River. Michael had to leave for a fund-raiser. But the staff was around, the Secret Service. Kitty got her friends on the phone, collect, from Intensive Care. (If they were on their phones, operators broke in and told them to get off the line—Kitty Dukakis wanted to talk to them!) Flowers came in and out by the stretcher-load. Kitty’s room looked like a Mafia funeral. Jesse Jackson sent a ficus tree as tall as Michael. Thousands of letters, cards, telegrams. Press and citizens crowded the lobbies. Patients from other floors hobbled by, just to get a glimpse of Kitty. Kitty’s dad flew back from California. He rushed in and saw his daughter, amid the flowers ... she looked wonderful! “How’re you feeling,” Harry said. Kitty said: “Turn on the television. Dad. They’ve been talking about me all day.”

“You know, Kitty,” said Harry, who’d lived his life on stage—no mean showman was Harry Dickson—“you have a real talent for making a career out of catastrophe.”

Jinny found it so strange what was happening to her sister. Not just now, in the hospital—but through the whole campaign. The spotlight, attention, tension—Jinny could
see
her changing. Kitty was so ... queenly, more and more, every day ... like their mother! That attitude ... a-lady-does-not-go-out-without-gloves
bearing
... Jinny never thought she’d see it from Kitty! Kitty was always the softie, the emotional
case
: she’d burst into tears at the
thought
of unhappiness—for anyone. She still had that impulse to help. That weekend, she was supposed to speak at the high school graduation of the Vietnamese refugee whom she’d rescued from a camp in Thailand. He was graduating with a full four-year scholarship to Brandeis. Kitty was so proud. She couldn’t look at a picture of him without crying. ... In her hospital room, she read to Jinny the speech she’d planned for the graduation ... and they both cried. That’s how it always was, with them. ... But the way Kitty arranged now, to have a staff person do the speech for her ... the way she told him
exactly
how she wanted it done,
exactly
what she wanted in the press, what she didn’t want—the way her staff buzzed around, told her how her last speech was so great, the way they talked about her interviews, TV shows, messages from leaders all over the country, scheduling sessions, a new Press Secretary—the way her sister
handled
it, that was ... a new Kitty.

Jinny didn’t know the half.

A few days into her recovery at Mass General, Kitty summoned Susan Estrich to the hospital. She wanted to talk about her staff. So Estrich schlepped across the river, to present herself.

Kitty said: “I want you to get rid of Andy and Marilyn.”

Estrich gawked. Andy Savitz had become Kitty’s spokesman. Marilyn Chase was her Chief of Staff—since the start! They’d both
killed themselves
for Kitty. Marilyn was one of the highest-ranking blacks in the campaign. Estrich wasn’t going to blow her off. Savitz thought he and Kitty had a relationship! (She called him by a Yiddishe nickname, Andilla). Estrich said Andy would be crushed!

“Well, they’re just not up to it,” Kitty said. “Get rid of them.”

“Look—do
you
want to have this conversation with them?”

“No,” Kitty said. “I don’t feel like it. I don’t want to see them anymore. You just do it. I’m in a different league now.”

Michael was in another league. He knew that—in his head. It was just ... he wasn’t any different, was he? He didn’t want to be. Estrich took as her new personal mission the effort to move Michael’s head past the last primaries, beyond New Jersey and California, to his contest for the
nation
... with George Bush. In daily phone calls, she’d tell the staff on the plane with Dukakis: “You gotta get him to talk about
after
June 7 ...”

Michael was ready for that.

“In a few days ...” he mused from a podium in California, “I’ll be planting tomatoes in my front yard.”

No. No! NO!
... Not what she had in mind.

The grungy loft on Chauncy Street had become the focus for intense aspiration—and not just from within. There were hundreds of calls coming in each day from officials, Party leaders, gurus, consultants, Washington smart guys. They had ideas, people to propose, concepts for the campaign against Bush, warnings from their home states, gossip, lines for Michael to use. Dukakis was their hope! And such a shining shot—their best chance for the White House in ... well, since Reagan started dying his hair. And they
all
said Dukakis had to take the attack to Bush, sharpen up his message, inoculate himself on crime and taxes ... and defense! Foreign policy! ... He had to form a team of admen ... start his consultations with the Party’s best and biggest ... he had to get busy! Michael had to
focus
—start listening! Start planning! High concept! Put an A-team with Michael on that plane! Come
on
! ...
Who’s talking to Mike?

Well, poor Dick Moe didn’t have much success.

Kiley had just about given up. Losing every day wears a man down. Kiley was ready to go back to polling.

Nick Mitropoulos had Stockholm Syndrome—he sounded more and more like Dukakis.

Brountas was supposed to take care of the VP—and Michael wouldn’t even sit down
with Paul
, to talk about that!

Susan asked Michael: Who do you
want
to talk to? ... What about Bob Shrum? ... Bob Squier? ... Tom Donilon?

Michael didn’t want hired guns from Washington.

What about a senior Party pro like Bob Beckel?

“Ahh, John Sasso is worth three of Beckel.”

Sasso!

Actually, it wasn’t Susan who brought up John’s name—but everyone else did, ticklishly, secretly. They all had the idea that Susan would go batshit if John came back. Actually, Susan made it clear she’d never stand in John’s
way
... but that was a different matter. Mitropoulos, Kiley, Corrigan, Kitty—even Brountas—whispered John’s name.

But the fact was, Michael liked it
monos mou
. He’d shown—hadn’t he?—he could do without Sasso ... not to mention the legions from D.C. He would admit: “Maybe we need some help with communications ...” Sure. (Maybe they could get Kirk O’Donnell, a Boston man, a Kevin White, Tip O’Neill hand—a guy from Michael’s world.) But that didn’t mean Michael would hand
himself
over. Or make himself over. Change the kinda guy he was?

His checklist was clear. First, he had to win, to settle this matter with Jackson. People said he had to talk to Jesse ... of course he’d talk to Jesse—once he’d beaten him.

Then, the VP selection—Paul was working on that. His Campaign Chairman! What more could Michael do?

Then, the convention. So he got Susan’s memo on the convention ... all her ideas, for speakers, themes, strategy ... he read the memo, and he said: “Okay. Fine. Sounds good. Anybody you want me to call? Anything I should do?”

What was so complicated? The only thing he wanted from Estrich was a name for a Transition Director—someone to start working now on the first hundred days—Michael had to
govern
.

Sure, Bush would come after him—just as his opponents had tried to knock him off for the last year!

But he’d won!

That last night, he won Montana, and he won New Mexico, and he won New Jersey, and he won California—
a sweep
. Jackson never got close. Michael got his delegates. What else did he need?

He made a speech on his last night—another mobbed ballroom:

“... What quicksand for our opponents if they waste this opportunity on mudslinging and name-calling! Because the American people are not interested in what Mr. Bush thinks of me, or what I think of him. They want to know which one of us has the strength and the ability, and the values, to lead our country ...”

Just a warning.

That day, the exit polls showed Dukakis ahead of Bush by thirteen percent. In California (where both men campaigned), the split was
seventeen
percent.

The front of the
Los Angeles Times
proclaimed:

DUKAKIS GAINS VICTORY WITHOUT SPLIT IN PARTY

Yes, that was a great satisfaction.

The New York Times
was even closer to Michael’s fond philotimy:

WITH DISCIPLINE, NOT DAZZLE, DUKAKIS OUTLASTS HIS RIVALS

And a couple of days later, he was bent to his tomatoes, in his front yard, in Brookline ... black mulch in his garden—his dream, his prize ... with his bride at home, resting more comfortably every day, on the mend, soon to be ... good as new!

A
COUPLE OF DAYS
later, John Sasso arrived, to have a talk with Michael. “Mike, I want to come back. I can help. Do it
now
, while you’re on top ...”

“Ahh, I don’t know,” Michael said. “It’ll be a bad story. The papers’ll kill me ...”

“The papers are calling
me
, Mike ... you know? I’m tired of ducking so you won’t be hurt. If you can’t bring me back, I’m gonna come out. I gotta start doing something for myself now. I’ve gotta stop acting invisible. I’m gonna talk to some people, start moving around. I’m gonna do some interviews.”

“Whaddya
talkin’
about?” Michael said. “You know everybody loves you—you
know
they think highly ...”