What It Takes (52 page)

And then, they were back in Joe’s old house, with takeout Chinese, and Ted Kaufman was there, who was Biden’s old Chief of Staff, who these days was running around the country, raising money for the campaign that might not be. And Joe was trying to tell them he had to do it
his way
, there wasn’t any point in running if he had to twist into some new shape. And he didn’t just mean the house ... he meant everything, his work in the Senate, the Judiciary Committee, his home, his family ... weekends—he had to have weekends home.

Weekends!

“Look, Joe ... it’s not going to happen. That shit you been telling Jill—weekends home, campaigning together, she won’t have to go out alone ... that’s bullshit ...”

“If you guys don’t think I can do it ...”

“It’s not that ... you can do it!”

And Joe knew he could do it—not a doubt in his head, honest to God, his word as a Biden—it was destiny
... if he could see the moves
. He had to figure out ...

Joe was thinking of Jill, what she said on the plane, coming home from Hawaii, just a few days before. They’d done a round of fund-raisers on the Islands (turns out that’s where the Jews from L.A. spend their Christmas) ... and they’d stayed with Pat Caddell, who had the use of a house there. Joe and Pat went back a long way, to the start, to ’72, when Joe made his first Senate race and signed on a brilliant twenty-two-year-old pollster from Harvard—that was Caddell ... before McGovern, before Carter, before the White House and all that bullshit ... hell, Joe knew Pat before Caddell had any enemies, and that was going back some. They were like brothers. They’d helped to create one another.

Anyway, the strange thing was, this time, they almost didn’t talk about the campaign. After so much talk before. After Pat tried so hard to get Joe to make the race, in ’83 ... they’d talked forever about that. But now, this time, when they both knew it was Joe’s time, neither wanted to bring it up. And the conversation Joe remembered from that trip took place on the plane, coming home from Honolulu. The airline pulled one of those stunts where they get you in the plane, and then it sits on the tarmac, for hours, waiting for something ... and Jill was staring out the window, they were quiet, until a sigh of such concentrated sadness escaped her that he turned to ask: “What? ...”

“Nothing ... just ... it’s never going to be the same—is it?”

Joe asked, gently: “Don’t you want to run?”

“It’s not that, it’s just ... everything’s so perfect now.”

Even Joe, who was always looking to move up, had to admit ... the kids were doing great, Jill was going back to school ... Joe was forty-four, had a lock on his seat, on his state, just became chairman of one of the Senate’s most powerful, visible committees. And he could do that job, he could be ... a force. It was perfect. But Joe was not a man to let perfect alone.

This could be his time ... he had seen the way he would be, a thousand times ... back in college, ’63, ’64, when he was driving back and forth to Syracuse to see Neilia, every weekend, he went over and over his statewide race—Governor, or Senator—he knew how that would be, every move ... and after that, there was President. Like night followed day. He would make that move, that race, and in his mind’s eye, his race looked like John Kennedy’s ... a young man’s race, an excitement in the nation, a call to get America moving again, after a sleepy two Republican terms, against an unpopular Vice President—and Kennedy was forty-three years old, and not well known in the nation, but the time was right to move the spirit of the country ... and it looked ...
just like this
. Hell, Pat could see it in the numbers—Pat was a prophet with a poll—and he told Joe, must have told him a hundred times, that a new generation was ready, now, to shove the country toward its ideals. This time, ’88, would be the first election when more than half the voters would come from the postwar baby boom ... the bulge in the bell curve would inherit the earth. But Joe didn’t need numbers: he could see it himself, when he spoke, when he seized a room, a campus hall, or a roomful of Democrats, and the feeling, the “connect,” rushed back at him, and he could see the faces, the women in tears, when he talked about the dream they’d all shared, twenty years ago. ... He remembered the first time it happened, Atlantic City, the convention hall, three years ago, a room full of regulars, sixty-year-olds, party pros ... a thousand muldoons and the smell of cigar smoke, and perfumed women stiff with makeup, and still, even so ... when he got to the end, where he spoke of the dream and the dreamers, John Kennedy, and Bobby, and Martin Luther King:
Just because our heroes were murdered, does not mean that the dream does not still live ... buried deep ... in our broken hearts
... he saw it happen, saw it that day as he would see it again in his mind, another thousand times ... that crowd of party hacks, who’d heard a million speeches, who didn’t give a
shit
... did not know what to do. There was silence. Then they stood. And then, only then, they began to cheer ... and some of them wept. And they did not talk to one another, or pick up their coats, or look for the exit. They stood, looking up at him, and clapped and cheered, for ... must have been five minutes. Joe knew, his time was coming.

Joe found Ridley’s face talking to him in the kitchen. “... No way Pat can be any part of this campaign. When
The Washington Post
reports you and Pat lounging on a beach in Hawaii, it’s a red flag, and they’re gonna do anything to get Caddell ... they’ll
kill
you, just to nick him, make him bleed, and you’re on the beach with him. Taking a condo he arranged! You know whose condo? For your information—this must be Pat’s idea of, like, a neat move, right?—the condo belongs to the manager of
Alice Cooper
.”

Joe met this information with a blank stare. He didn’t know any such woman. He had not a clue about rock ’n’ roll stars who performed in drag, who assaulted live chickens on stage, who spat on the audience or performed strange acts on inflatable toys. Biden was still a bit hazy on the Beatles. Alice Cooper? ...

Ridley lapsed into a painful, tuneless rendition of “School’s Out for Summer” ... while Donilon told Joe,
that’s what they meant
: borrowed condos, real estate deals ... things had to change; the bullshit had to stop; if Joe meant to run, this was serious, total.

“You give up
everything
... give up your life. It’s gone. Home, friends, you’re not there. And you’re all alone. Completely alone. Your relationship with your wife, your whole family, is going to suffer. ... You know why? Because you’re going to want this worse than anything, and it’s going to take over. And there’ll be
weeks
when you’re not even gonna
see
home, whatever house ...”

And it dawned on Joe that these sonsabitches were still beating on him about the house ... and he made a move, he planted and wheeled for the sideline ... he held up a hand in the kitchen and told Donilon, and Ridley, and Ted, that he had news for them. They could shut up ... because what they didn’t know, what he hadn’t said, was, he’d already
decided ... he didn’t have to buy the house
.

No, he said, with a dazzling Biden smile, into the sudden silence ... there was
another
house. (“Believe it or not ... this
other
thing happened ...”) And this time he got all three of them into the Bronco for the trip to the city, while Joe explained, it
was
in the city, but you’d never know, with the green around, in a cul-de-sac, but it wasn’t big, the kind of house no one would even notice, if they were driving by, like this, see—see, where the headlights ... see there? ... “Wait, I’ll show you next door—know what it went for, last year, this time last year? Guy bought it, moved in last spring—look at this!” ... It was after midnight now, as Joe stabbed the houses with his Bronco lights ... and he already talked to the guy, there was a deal ... (in fact, he’d talked to the guy yesterday, when he knew Ridley and Donilon were on their way up, to talk about the big house).

... And he could build the wall up in front, there, see? ... “Wait, I’ll drive in, you’ll see.” With a gate, like a compound, but smaller, see? And the whole deal, he could have the whole thing for ... and no way
anyone
could say a goddam
thing.

And it
was
quieter in the Bronco as they drove back, and Joe said he knew what they meant. He’d talked about it with Pat. This time, the whole thing would come down to character. That’s one of the reasons he thought he could do it. ... The issues, the Senate, people might pick him apart ... (God knows, they’d been talking him down, for years, since he made it clear he’d rather go home each night than be in the club ...). But one thing he knew: they would never take him apart on character—his basic honesty—his fabric as a man.

And the boys in the Bronco said they knew that, too ... but Joe could not imagine how the press would come after him. There were only two papers in Delaware, and everybody knew Joe, or thought they did. ... But this was the big leagues. They’d try to kill him, and Joe would have to watch every move. “Stuff you been saying ... won’t wash ... stuff about your history ... it’s all going to come out. Anything you did to get the house ... women you went out with ... stuff you said, ten years ago ... everything comes out.”

And back at the house, Joe said he understood. He wanted them to know everything. And he started then, with his recitation: the anatomy of Joe Biden—confession and apologia ... it went on for hours. Must have been close to one
A.M.
when he started, but that was the Biden campaign: there was no clock.

The debts—he went through his finances whole, the mortgages, the credit cards. He was into Visa, Amex for thousands.

The women, between his marriages—a list, with commentary—and how Joe was: that was a hard, hard time for him ...

And Jill’s first marriage ... not the greatest guy in the world. And then he brought Jill in—must have been two in the morning, or after—got her downstairs to tell the guys about
her
inventory ...

And farther back, Joe’s life with Neilia—before the accident—when he was a County Councilman, and a lawyer before that ...

And law school, before that ... Ridley would remember, Joe mentioned that he’d flunked a course in law school. But the others, Kaufman, Donilon, would not remember anything about the law course ... how could they? Joe talked for hours, until the boys were slack-jawed and yearning for bed ...

And before that, University of Delaware, where he only screwed around, trying to be Joe College—got probation for dousing the dorm director with a fire extinguisher. ... Then there were hijinks from high school, streaking the parking lot. ... They were getting back to childhood sins, stuff where the priest says, “Two Hail Marys” ... but Joe was still talking.

And there were streaks of light in the sky when he finally put the guys to bed in the guest rooms, and they were all played out. It had been quite a night, Night of the Bronco, and they’d had their talk ... more talk than they’d ever imagined. ...

It was only the next afternoon, on the way back to D.C., that they tried to sort it out. Would he run? Never did say, that whole night ... Joe was still looking for the moves. Could he run for the White House and run the committee? Keep the life he’d made with Jill? Time with the kids? Money for college? Hit the connect that fed his own engine? ... It was all tied together in Joe’s life, in Joe’s mind ... with the house. That was the other thing: he never did say, that night, exactly what he would do about the house.

The house on North Washington Street was a middle-class home, as Scranton defined it. In fact, Washington Street itself was an inventory of Scranton’s strata, a serial history. Close to town, nearest the valleys where Scranton first grew, the houses were small and mean—built for coal miners, who packed the place during the great age of steam. Farther out, say fifteen to twenty blocks from the town’s center, the houses grew bigger, almost grand—for a pocket of professional men, managers of industries and the anthracite mines that were the bedrock of all. And then, in the twenties, the trolley pushed out past that “millionaire’s row,” and modern smaller houses sprang up along the route, another ten blocks or so, almost out to the old city dump. That was Green Ridge, and a good neighborhood—not easy for an Irishman to buy there, not back then.

But Pop Finnegan made it. He was a college man, and a pretty tough cookie, Little All-American quarterback for Santa Clara College (or so the family always maintained), when he and the century were young. He was in San Francisco, trying to finish college, when the earthquake hit, and that drove him back to his birthplace, Scranton, where he went to work for a coal company, then the gas company, then the newspaper. He married Geraldine Blewitt, the daughter of the former City Engineer (and then State Senator), Edward F. Blewitt. And by the thirties, when Ambrose Finnegan moved his wife, Geraldine (and her unmarried sister, Gertrude), his four sons and his daughter, Jean, to Green Ridge, to North Washington Street, there was no one to deny that the Finnegans were a family of respect.

True, the home was in no way fancy—the Finnegans had no airs—but it was full of life and family; the noise of five kids pounding up and down stairs; big, crowded, clamorous Fourth of July barbecues; and long, loud arguments at table (Pop was a newspaperman, after all) on politics and affairs of the day. The Finnegans were all opinionated. A guest for dinner would get a fine feed, but at the same time, he’d better watch what he said. All his ideas were fair game: they’d take him apart. That’s what they did to Joseph Biden—Joe, Sr., as he would come to be known—when he showed up as a dinner guest, just after he moved to Scranton, in 1936. See, Joseph Robinette Biden was not of their world. In fact, they’d never met anyone like him.

He was an elegant boy. Handsome, yes—movie-star looks—but that wasn’t his distinction. It was a matter of style, of carriage ... class. Joseph Biden, just a senior in high school, had already seen a bit of the world, seen the best ... and to him, this coal-cracker town of Scranton was, well ...
not
the best.