Week Thirteen: "NOT ALL OF THEM EASY TO PIN DOWN"

Flyin' around . . .

Now reading: Chapter One Hundred Twenty to Epilogue (pages 954 to 1047).

Check back on Sunday for a running discussion. Until then, tweet thoughts and quotes with the hashtag #wit2012.

DISCUSSION: Chapters Ninety One to One Hundred Five

From Sasha Issenberg, Slate columnist and author of The Victory Lab

Michael at a press conference, 1988

Has What It Takes ever been fully appreciated as a book about one of the great folkways of campaign journalism, the dance between newspapers and hometown candidates?  As a former political reporter for The Boston Globe, I was was taken by the great account of the paper’s protective stance towards Dukakis.  That Hub-centric parochialism seems wildly out of date given the far less friendly relationships it’s had in intervening cycles with John Kerry and Mitt Romney. (I recall asking colleagues and old-timers what the Globe’s rapport was like with Paul Tsongas in 1992, and no one had an feel for it.)

What we see later in the section from two other ’88 candidates is more like it.  There’s Gephardt wishing that the St. Louis paper would just ignore him: “Could we—just once!—get one decent story from the Post-Dispatch ... so we could raise a little money?”  And Dole getting dogged by The Hutchinson News, which — as we learn in an aside that tells us more about the Senate Minority Leader than the little daily — is his “old nemesis—the Prairie Pravda,’ he called it.”

But Richard Ben Cramer takes us quickly from the umbrage that the Globe felt upon Hart’s reentry into the campaign to the “spark of life” Dukakis felt on that occasion.  With Hart available, Dukakis found self-definition:

With Hart in the race, Michael Dukakis could be obviously cleaner, more moral, more rational, more disciplined: here was a foil for the Dukakis morality play.

Gary Hart, back in New Hampshire

This makes me think how much What It Takes is a book about primary campaigns — in fact, a novel approach to political narrative that could only have come out of a primary campaign.  Journalists and pundits tend to underestimate how fundamentally different primaries are from general elections: calling it “an intra-squad game,” as some professionals do, seems to overlook the extent that the rules of the game are entirely different.  The big rule of American politics is party.  Political parties offer our structure: intellectual and ideological coherence, an available pool of manpower and an electioneering apparatus, and and an organizing principle for people who require shortcuts to navigate a complex mix of policy and leadership options.

People may say they vote the man, not the party, but most research we have says they’re wrong. In a presidential general election, most voters’ decisions are effectively predetermined.  Sometimes it is direct, as is the case among straight-ticket voters, and sometimes an indirect decision-making maze, but it almost involves the candidates’ parties.  We are basically choosing not between two men, but between a Democrat and a Republican, with all other information — about their records, biographies, agendas, ability to have a beer with — surfacing only to complicate the choice.  (A small fraction of the electorate, far smaller than one would believe from cable news, are actual independents with no partisan predisposition.)  From the moment two candidates each win a nomination, the terms of their battle is more or less set.

In Iowa '88, Dick never got a good pack. (Here in 1994)

But primaries have no such readymade architecture. Public opinion can be unusually volatile because there isn’t much cost to a voter of changing her mind from one Democrat to another.  The big institutional contrast we rely on for guidance doesn’t exist.  The lazy voter can’t shortcut his or her way to a choice among three Republicans or five Democrats, and the seriously civic-minded will probably struggle to find many serious issues where the candidates disagree.  Without parties to hem them in, candidates in presidential primaries have to do the difficult work of self-definition — magnifying policy, character and biographical distinctions to represent broad differences of direction — and usually in a multi-sided field that turns self-mythology into a game-theoretical conundrum.

And so we have Dukakis, newly energized because his most formidable rival has reentered the race. Only in a multi-candidate primary field could a candidate feel to script “a foil in [his] morality play”; it is hard to imagine Dukakis thinking of “cleaner, more moral, more rational, more disciplined” as meaningful contrasts in an ideologically polarized general election.

There’s a reason What It Takes basically ends by the time we get to the conventions. Having the good fortune to report What It Takes in an election year with two wide open nominating contests not only gave Cramer more than a dozen protagonists from among whom to choose.  It is in primaries that candidates have a strategic imperative to indulge what Freud called the “narcissism of small differences.”  Without that self-regard — and the reflection and self-examination it demands — Cramer would have had a much harder time entering the psyches of the people who want to be president.

The Victory Lab

Richard Ben Cramer on The Victory Lab

"Sasha Issenberg is our most acute observer of the modern political campaign. With vivid portraiture and crystal-clear prose, he takes us beyond the charge-and-counter-charge, the rallies and stump speeches, to show us the hidden persuaders."

The Victory Lab reaches bookstores on September 11. Pre-order today.

Discussion

This is perhaps the most uneventful week of the reading, simply for very little happening that moves the story forward. Dole and Bush are duking it out in the early stages of the primaries, Dukakis is energized by the returned, resurgent Gary Hart, and Dick Gephardt is pouring it all into Iowa, which he then wins.

The section is essentially a critique of the reporters, consultants and shapers of conventional wisdom looking for the patterns -- real or imagined -- that make or break the candidate. The most indelible image is that of Bob Shrum in his Italian scarf and shoes, freezing in an Iowa barn full of ticked off farmers, too cold to think. There's also the examples Sasha mentioned above, as well as Gephardt's realization that he would never get the press to like him, and Bush getting sandbagged by his tennis pal, Dan Rather -- not to mention what Broder was writing about Hart. The press' animosity was the price of admission. All of these men paid.

Share more quotes and scenes in the comments.

Week Eleven: "PINK-JOWLED LUNCHERS"

"I have respect for you, but I don't have respect for you tonight"

Now reading: Chapters Ninety One to One Hundred Five (pages 790 to 871).

Check back on Sunday for a running discussion. Until then, tweet thoughts and quotes with the hashtag #wit2012.

DISCUSSION: Chapters Seventeen to Twenty

From Lizzie O'Leary, correspondent for CNN

Ordinariness. That’s the thing here.

Cramer knows (even in the intro) “The President – was someone altogether larger, and more extraordinary, than we.” But these men are, well, not.

So you tunnel in at ground level. There is no soaring historical arc. No “first.”

Just a bunch of guys, pushed along by another bunch of guys, who are busy inventing the science of modern campaign warfare.  Often internecine. The brilliance of the book is that the drama comes from the ordinary.

Since we’re on the Biden and Gephardt introduction chapters, it’s this bit that nails it for me:

So everybody in the country who could read knew that Biden wanted to run, but he wasn’t going to run without message … and he didn’t have a message … nothing to say. 

Great.

They stay up all night, they talk about everything, but they can’t find their hook. And Biden hasn’t seen The Big Chill. He’s not a generation-definer, he’s just a guy.

And Gephardt? He “could keep that intelligent-dog look through a six-hour meeting.”

Brutal.

Just ordinary guys. Cramer says his goal is for you to feel the experience. And you do. Sometimes I want to cringingly turn away.

Discussion

'Guru Madness' is catching in this week's reading as we meet the final two candidates: Joe Biden and Dick Gephardt. Both Democrats, both utterly screwed.

Pat Caddell, 1988

We read about the mess of Senate staffers, former Mondale aides and gurus that comprise the Biden campaign. The big idea is to make Joe Biden the healer of twenty-year-old wounds -- to give the post-war generation its second chance at changing the world. "To reawaken the dream."

But that wasn't Biden. He was a few years too old and many years too mature to get wrapped up in "this generation thing: '68. . . . He was married. He had kids. Anyway, even in college he was the guy who wore a suit jacket to class." But Pat Caddell, in his guru wisdom, sought to remake him into Bobby Kennedy, and it was all supposed to start at the 1987 California Democratic Convention.

As Biden is furiously editing the speech, tossing papers to and fro, and as Caddell is crawling around on his knees trying to save the essential sections of his Baby Boomer opus, something goes wrong. The speech is all out of order, pages go missing, and after they reassemble the Frankenstein text in Sacramento, Biden calls Jill before the speech, reads her a section and says, "I told you we had the best speechwriters."

Actually, Bobby Kennedy had the best speechwriters. Thanks to our friends at Buzzfeed, we bring you this video.

Nobody caught Biden's mistake at the time because no one was really paying attention to him: it was still Gary Hart out front. And nobody seemed to catch Cincinnati's Jerry Springer as he ran for Congress in 1969, not even when This American Life cut a profile of his political days in 2004. Young Springer, who allegedly volunteered on RFK's campaign, drew a lot of comparisons to the slain Kennedy. It's no wonder why.

Rep. Dick Gephardt, first term congressman, 1977

As for our man from Missouri, reading about Dick Gephardt's straight shot up the St. Louis political hierarchy and into Congress reminds me: had he not run for president again in 2004, it could have been Speaker Gephardt instead of Speaker Pelosi. You get the sense that he knew how to bring people together, all those bills with his name on them. It would take most members their entire careers to get their names on just one of those things, and yet Gephardt in such a short amount of time compiles so many, what else could he do but run for president?

The guy has a gift. "You could feel him listening," Cramer writes. "Gephardt could keep that intelligent-dog look through a six-hour meeting. . . . until you were weak from being listened to." And accomplished though he is, he wants to get more done than the House can offer. So he runs.

And then Guru Madness catches. Bill Carrick is brought in to remake the campaign, who brings on Bob Shrum who brings on David Doak. All of a sudden its a cluster of "the new hired killers" who don't know what to make of their listening robot. Shrum is late for his first meeting with the Gephardts by hours (he's busy talking with Andrew Cuomo about his dad). Yet when he shows up late, Dick is still pleasant and eager, ready to listen. And so, as Bill Carrick tells the other gurus, "You don't wanna let up on this guy. You can't push hard enough on this sumbitch... you let up, he'll pussy out on you."

It's a wonderful thing, running for president.

Top Tweets

RT @JRBoh: Tom Donilon watched Mondale "walk around in his underpants, chomping a cigar and fuming about his campaign." p. 256 #wit2012
— Alex Burns (@aburnspolitico) July 10, 2012

p.282 I've heard of candidates like this, but never worked for one: Kling: "You got to fight not to give Dick too many calls…." #wit2012
— MC RMoney (@MCRmoney) July 15, 2012

Cramer on Gephardt's campaign: "paint-by-numbers...he was doing everything they told him. It's just that he wasn't doing anything." #wit2012
— Jesse Towsen (@jtowsen) July 15, 2012

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Week Four: "IT'S A GREAT AMERICAN"

There will be Biden

 
Now reading: Chapters Seventeen to Twenty (pages 240 to 311)

Check back on Sunday for a running discussion. Until then, tweet thoughts and quotes with the hashtag #wit2012.

DISCUSSION: Chapters Ten to Sixteen

From Steve Kornacki, co-host of The Cycle and writer for Salon

The first time I interviewed Michael Dukakis was on the afternoon before Election Day 2000. I was a senior in college and, almost on a lark, had dialed his office number at Northeastern University in Boston, figuring I’d put in a request with his secretary and never hear back. Needless to say, I was startled by the voice that answered my call. “Dukakis here.”

Governor Michael Dukakis, 1986

The interview I proposed would be broadcast to a journalism class of about 20 students and no one else, but he readily agreed. My team and I showed up outside Meserve Hall a few minutes before the appointed hour – just in time to run into the Duke, who was finishing up the two-mile walk from Perry Street to campus. We introduced ourselves and told him what we hoped to achieve with our project (something about inspiring young people to public service, I think) and he replied with an expression straight out of What It Takes: “Terrific.”

My hope had been to get him to engage in some spontaneous personal reflecting on the experience of running for president. If you’ve read Cramer’s book, you probably know how this worked out. Dukakis had long before done his thinking about the 1988 race and had a familiar, thoroughly non-introspective answer ready for everything I asked. He’d give his stock reply, then segue to the present tense, which meant the Bush-Gore race. Occasionally, a student would pop in to ask about course selection or internships, and he’d efficiently oblige. The phone rang every few minutes, and his conversations were brisk and business-like – except one, where his mood suddenly turned affectionate and playful. Kitty, obviously.

Listening as he talked to his wife that day was (and, 12 years and six subsequent interviews with him later, still is) my one glimpse of the other Mike Dukakis – the one who we meet in Chapter 11 chasing his cousin Tiki around with a severed fish’s head. When he hung up with Kitty, he didn’t miss a beat and went right back to talking Bush, Gore and national healthcare. Like Cramer writes, with Dukakis, “there are only two types of people. There is family, and there is everyone else.”

"He lived in the state like a working man lived." Dukakis, riding the T, p. 185. #wit2012
— What It Takes 2012 (@WhatItTakes2012) July 7, 2012

Discussion

I am always intrigued by how Cramer introduces us to candidates. Bush at the Astrodome, Dole schlepping around. Here we meet Michael Dukakis, at ease, being playful and boyish, as Steve writes above. Though we do get a good picture of his stiffness, his dislike for "Sasso-grease" on the wheels of state government, and even his top aide's effort to rebrand him as "Mike" (see the campaign commercial at left) when he preferred "Michael."

Robin Bush

We also meet Gary Hart, brilliant and burning, who doesn't talk much unless he's talking about ideas -- a trick he learned with girls in high school. The reader is shown that he is "Right From The Start" yet also 'Doomed From The Start,' with the photographs of him exiting his townhouse behind an attractive young woman. Even with all his heady interactions with Mikhail "The Soviet Gary Hart" Gorbachev and Henry Kissinger, his womanizing would become the beef of his candidacy.

But the personal does matter. How the candidates coped with adversity in their lives -- and this is one of the more controversial aspects of this book -- provides insight to how they will operate their campaigns. Experiences with three family members are explored in this selection. Hart's son, angry and demurring. Dukakis' brother, the original Duke, bitter and depressed. And Bush's daughter, taken at such an early age.

Word of the Week

diddybop ('didi-bop') - noun

an overly eager member of the news media exiting a campaign plane

Share more quotes and scenes in the comments.

DISCUSSION: Chapters Four to Nine

UPDATE: Guest Post by Jonathan Martin

The first thing I think of when I consider What It Takes is the Dole voice. It's a book full of evocative imagery, but I always hear the Bobster's half-formed sentences whenever somebody mentions the Cramer opus.

And these chapters include one of the classics, best conjured in Norm Macdonald of SNL's impression "Well, agh, kinda don't . . . I mean, politics," Dole says when asked about his hobbies.

One can taste the bean soup, visualize the cloak room and picture the Leader with that crooked grin and closed right fist.

A beaut.

Discussion

So, the Great Power Outage of 2012 has waylaid our first guest post, so let me just kick off this week's conversation.

Last week's reading, the last half of Book One, is the most humanizing stuff about Bush and Dole. Bush skips college to fly in the Pacific, (the nickname: "George Herbert Walker Bush," because he was so "Not Like That"). Then he gets shot down, picked up by the Finback, and we meet Barb. Then there are his Yale, packed G.I. Bill apartment house years.

Bina Dole with her son Bob, 1976.

Some of the best stuff in the entire book, though, is Dole's experience: going to war, in the war, and after the war. The eight cigarette butts stuck in his plaster cast on the train is one of those details that let you know how far the strapping, 6"2, 195 lb. athlete had fallen. When the geezer in Dawson's asks if he wished they'd just finished him off, and he says he wouldn't be alive if he thought like that. I mean, you really get why he ran for president three times. He couldn't be kept down.

Bush and Dole's experiences are incredibly humanizing, the sacrifices they made and the challenges they faced. Yet even they had to prove they could relate to everyday people. As Jonathan writes above, even Dole had to answer for his hobbies.

Top Tweets

"The Ping-Pong table in the front hall in Greenwich...was an explicit rejection of the lives around them." #wit2012
— Michael McMillin (@michaelmcmillin) June 30, 2012

The treatise on knowledge in politics on 112-115 is brilliant and excerptable. #wit2012
— Jesse Towsen (@jtowsen) June 29, 2012

p.87 sounds like the Bush's lives being "Not Like That" was faith without practice.Looking forward to the price of milk. #wit2012
— MC RMoney (@MCRmoney) June 27, 2012

Share more thoughts, quotes and scenes in the comments.

Week Two - "HE TOLD ME WHAT TO WRITE"

Bob Dole, 1942

Now reading: Chapters Four to Nine (pages 80 to 158).

Check back on Sunday for a running discussion. Until then, tweet thoughts and quotes with the hashtag #wit2012.

What It Takes 2012: How It Works

Hello, and thanks to everyone who is participating in What It Takes 2012, kicking off tomorrow, June 18. This is how it works:

1. Start the week's reading on the designated Monday.
2. Tweet quotes, observations and other thoughts with the hashtag '#wit2012'.
3. Stop by this blog on Sunday to discuss the previous week's reading.

And that's it. Pretty simple. To quote the Bobster, "Gottagoo . . ."