What It Takes (97 page)

Of course he was fit. Hell, they’d already voted him onto the U.S. Court of Appeals.

And Biden was already getting hammered for “playing politics” with the Supreme Court—and not just from Dole. Hell, Joe expected it from Dole. It was the press climbing all over Biden’s back.

George Will led the charge, the day after the nomination:

“Six months ago, Biden, whose mood swings carry him from Hamlet to hysteria, was given chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee, an example of history handing a man sufficient rope with which to hang himself. Now Biden, the incredible shrinking presidential candidate, has somersaulted over his flamboyantly advertised principles. ...

“Either Biden changed his tune because groups were jerking his leash or, worse, to prepare for an act of preemptive capitulation.”

Then
The Washington Post
editorial page skewered him for his promise to the groups—before he’d even held hearings!

“As the Queen of Hearts said to Alice: ‘sentence first—verdict afterwards.’ ...”

The next day, Mark Shields blew taps for Biden’s Presidential hopes: “By seeming in the Bork nomination fight to be the prisoner or the patsy of liberal pressure groups, neither Biden nor anyone else will fill that bill of leadership for change.”

The next weekend, in Cleveland, Joe was making a speech, and he mused aloud, he’d made a mistake, coming out against Bork.

Christ, then even Donilon got pissed off. From a phone booth, for hours, he tracked Biden’s flight path—finally caught him in Iowa. “Senator, what the hell did you do out there?”

“Tom, you don’t even know what I said. You had to hear the whole thing ...”

“You were waffling.”

“I was not waffling.”

“Did you use the word ‘mistake’?”

“Yeah. I gave an explanation of how ...”

“You said ‘mistake’! That’s the lead tomorrow, I guarantee it.”

Sure enough, the next day, Biden was not just a flip-flop ... now he was waffling!

“Jesus! Everything I say ends up on the front of
The New York Times
!”

Biden had never been in this sort of shit-storm. There were two daily papers in Delaware, a couple of UHF towers in the cornfields outside Dover. Give him an hour, he could call every editor in the state. (And he would!) But how do you call every paper in the country?

No, he’d bought himself a fight. Not only would he have to win in the hearings ... but to beat Bork he’d have to convince his fellow Senators that they could vote against a judge simply because he was too right-wing (not because he was unfit, or stupid, a bigot, a swindler—something easy) ... he’d have to win over the editorial boards, the
Post
, the
Times
,
Wall Street Journal
,
Time
,
Newsweek
... he’d have to get control of the interest groups, bring them in line with his strategy ... he’d have to find a message that could mobilize the voters—show them how a Justice Bork could affect their lives.

What he’d bought, in short, was another campaign ... on top of his campaign. He could not fall on his face in one ... and have any chance in the other. And this new campaign was not against Gephardt, Dukakis, Gore—any of those stiffs. He had to take on the Reagan majority, the forty-nine-state-landslide majority, and do it inside of two months.

What was it Will’s column said? ... No, it was the headline:

THE SENATOR IS OVERMATCHED

The horror was, it might be true.

See, you had to understand how Joe thought about Bork. This was what lay at the base of Joe’s depression. This was why his son Beau was off to college next month at Penn. Hell, this was why Joe said that stupid quote to the
Inquirer ... Send us a Bork
, he’d said.

Not because he knew about Dork. At that point, he didn’t know squat ... except ... Bork was big-time. He taught Constitutional law, for Chrissake, at
Yale
!

You had to understand how that was, to Joe.

One time—this was years before, his sons were young, in grade school—Joe was sitting around with his pals in Wilmington, a weekend, somebody’s backyard.

Joe said: “Where’s your kid going to college?”

One friend said: “Christ, Joe! He’s eight years old!”

Another said: “Ahh, there’s a lotta good schools now.”

“Lemme tell you guys something,” Joe said. And he wasn’t just shooting the shit. He had the clench in his jaw.

“There’s a
river of power
that flows through this country ...”

His buddies rolled their eyes, but Joe acted like he didn’t see.

“Some people—most people—don’t even know the river is there. But it’s there.

“Some people know about the river, but they can’t get in ... they only stand at the edge.

“And some people, a few, get to swim in the river. All the time. They get to swim their whole lives—anywhere they want to go—always in the river of power.

“And that river,” Joe said, “flows from the Ivy League.”

Robert Bork came from the River of Power.

And now he was going to the Supreme Court.

Unless he was stopped by Joey Biden—Syracuse Law, ’68.

T
HE IMPORTANT THING FOR
Michael was: no mistakes. He didn’t get in this thing to be embarrassed, and he didn’t get in to give up his most precious attainment—control. He’d scowl at the schedule his mechanics brought up to the State House. What is this, leaving for New Jersey at four?

Fund-raiser there starts at six ...

Michael’s head would start shaking—no. “We said three days a week.” He meant three days in the State House—state business. He did not mean three days, eaten away by interviews, meetings with the campaign staff, phone calls, fund-raisers. He meant three days as Governor Dukakis. The Governor did not leave his desk at 4:00
P.M. “
Three days means three days, my friend.” Of course, he didn’t mean friend, either.

No mistakes meant nothing could drop through the cracks. Certainly not state business ... but more than that: the Governor could not be
accused
of letting anything drop. If the campaigns, the career, of Michael Dukakis were based on philotimy—the way the voters, and he, saw himself, the perception of his own correctness—then, certainly, this new, this largest campaign could not erode that view. Michael did things one way—correctly. And the correct way, to him, meant the way he’d always done things.

He always had a blizzard of bills before the legislature. So that year, he was working up a blizzard of bills. And not small bills: a thorough reform of condo conversion (Michael had introduced the bill to create the first condos, twenty-three years before—how could he drop the ball now?) ... insurance reform (Michael made his name, in the sixties, with no-fault insurance—he wouldn’t let the system crumble now!) ... a multiyear attack on the state’s solid-waste crisis ... billions for reform and aid to higher education ... a complex and expensive fix for the state’s $9 billion pension gap.

There was a task force, supposed to come up with a bill for universal health care—the first such system in the country. (Six hundred thousand citizens of
his Commonwealth
had no basic health insurance—a disgrace!) But the problems were so intractable, politically explosive, that the task force only came up with two little demonstration projects. Dukakis announced that
he
would pull together a bill for universal health care.
He
would hold the meetings.
He
would forge a consensus.
He
would ride the bill through House and Senate. ... Sasso almost choked at the news. This was just the thing to send Mike down in flames. And
time
... where would they get the
time
? ... But Michael said it was the correct thing to do. End of discussion.

That was, after all, the point of brilliance that had brought Dukakis to this run for the White House. Government that worked (at least, his government) worked because everybody in it could count on Michael to do the correct thing—not most of the time, but every time. Dukakis would make policy on his understanding of the greatest good for the Commonwealth. And the policy he stated was the policy in fact—no deviation, no deals. No one had to check with the corner office for a secret political agenda. Good government was Michael’s agenda.

Same with the campaign: the plan was the plan. There was a certain solid comfort, knowing always where the candidate stood. There was none of the pulse-thumping brilliance of the Biden nights. Then again, there was never the palm-sweaty fear, wondering what the candidate would say or do.

Michael would say what he planned to say. He would not add to a speech. (No, but he’d subtract: he had radar for the snappiest applause lines ... he’d cross them out.)

Michael would do what he said he’d do, what he always did in a campaign. He would assemble the best machinery at hand, set it to puffing and pumping, then keep building it, steadily, prudently—always with an eye to
ekonomia
—until he was satisfied it could organize and control the territory he meant to cover.

Once (only once) he was asked about Hart’s theory of concentric circles. Michael started shaking his head before the theory got to first circle. “You go out, you build a statewide or a nationwide organization as quick as possible,” he said.

“I’m not a concentric-circle guy.”

End of discussion.

But what an organization he built: experienced, professional, disciplined. ... Zealots, ideologues, true believers (first circle, indeed!) made Michael uneasy. There was a job to do. Michael wanted smart, tough hands. These he found mostly in Boston (to be precise, Sasso found them for him). Michael liked to deal with people he knew, or, at least, people from worlds he knew. Susan Estrich, the campaign’s Deputy Manager, came from Lynn, Massachusetts, and was now a professor of law at Harvard. Jack Corrigan, Chief of Operations, was a native of Somerville—Harvard College and Harvard Law—who’d worked with Sasso since the 1980 Kennedy campaign. Chris Edley, chief of the issues shop, was not only Harvard, but Swarthmore College before that. Nick Mitropoulos, the body man, another son of Greek immigrants, was associate director at Harvard’s Kennedy School before Michael whisked him off to the State House, after his comeback in ’82.

To these, Michael now added a handful of the dispossessed Hart staff ... but none of the idea wonks, none of the believers. He got the most professional, Paul Tully, as Political Director. He got Alice Travis, an experienced California organizer. He got Teresa Vilmain, the toughest young whip in Iowa. ... Actually, Sasso got them. By the time they sat down with Michael, they’d already decided that here was a candidate who had the legs to go all the way. Their (mandatory) interviews with Dukakis were mainly to foster his sense of control—no mistakes!

And to this organization, Michael now added money—scads of money. This was the province of his fund-raising superstar, Bob Farmer, another friend of years, another Harvard Law graduate. (And no ideologue—Farmer started his fund-raising for the Republican John Anderson.) Farmer promised Michael, before the campaign, he could raise six and a half million dollars by the Iowa caucus—enough to get Michael through to New Hampshire. By the time Michael announced, and Farmer set up shop in Boston’s Meridien Hotel, he fondly forecast that Michael could beat Biden’s impressive first quarter: one-point-seven million dollars (in three months!). ... But now Farmer was shredding his own best predictions. Money arrived in a flood. Everybody who was anybody in Massachusetts wanted to play. Greeks all over the country wrote checks like this was a wedding. By the end of Michael’s first quarter, Farmer had raised four and a half million dollars.

Of course, it could have been more: but Michael would not take PAC contributions, or more than a hundred dollars from state employees; he forbade Farmer to dun people who did business with the state; not one cent from lobbyists; and anybody who wanted a job—send back his check! Michael had to raise money
his
way ... that is, correctly. Actually, Farmer had to raise the money correctly. Michael only had to show up at the dinners. It was Farmer’s point of pride that Michael never had to sit down and talk with money men ... never even had to pick up the phone!

What a marvelous machine was Michael’s campaign!

“We try,” said the brilliant body man, Mitropoulos, with a puckish smile (phyllo wouldn’t melt in his mouth) ... “to play error-free ball.”

With Michael, it was more than try ... more like compulsion. It wasn’t just speeches (of course, he had to work over the speeches) ... and not just his interview with every employee (the Dukakis campaign would spend five hundred dollars to fly the new receptionist for Washington to the State House, so Michael could tell her how to answer phones correctly) ... Michael wanted to see, to edit, every press release. He wanted to see every questionnaire sent back to newspapers and interest groups. He wanted to see the thank-you notes.

Alas, that left little time to take care of business.

What business?

State business!

That was the summer, 1987, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts opened Route 25. It was a fine road, seven miles of clean new concrete to take an hour off the commute from the Boston suburbs to the Cape. Michael meant to go to the opening. He built the road.

Sasso said: “Mike, you’re not Governor anymore. You’re running for President.”

Michael said he wanted to go.

“Mike! Who gives a shit whether Route 25 is open?”

Governor Dukakis opened Route 25.

He was on time. He was always on time, though he hauled along more staff, more press than anybody else. In fact, this day, for his lunchtime talk at the Colonial House restaurant in Boone, Iowa, Michael was early.

“Guys, what’re we doin’ here?” he demanded in the van. He had fifteen minutes till he was scheduled to appear in the restaurant’s basement. What was he supposed to do—sit and
chat
?

No. He was out of the van, pumping down Main Street, like this was a power walk. Into the first shop:

“Hi! Mike Dukakis. Tell me who you are.”