No Excuses: Concessions of a Serial Campaigner - Hardcover

Shrum, Robert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0743296516 ISBN 13: 9780743296519

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2007

Synopsis

A Democratic strategist offers a behind-the-scenes portrait of presidential campaigns from the past thirty years, discussing the political runs of such figures as George McGovern and John Kerry while offering insight into the personal experience of running for national office. 100,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

Robert Shrum has been at the center of Democratic politics longer than virtually any other operative. Involved in more than thirty winning Senate races, he was senior strategist in the Gore 2000 and Kerry 2004 campaigns. He is a Senior Fellow at New York University's Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service. He lives on Cape Cod with his wife, the writer Marylouise Oates.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

4

The Dream That Wouldn't Die

Among contemporary American political leaders, Edward Kennedy is the best known for the longest time, the best understood, and the most misunderstood.

For more than twenty years, he was a prime entry in the lexicon of the "great mentioner," the culture's mythic but powerful gatekeeper to the list of those routinely described in the media as being "mentioned" for president. After he was elected to JFK's Senate seat in 1962, he was one of the most junior senators but one of the most famous. So in his early days, at President Kennedy's suggestion, he walked the corridors of Capitol Hill, entered the offices of his senior colleagues unannounced, and asked the receptionist if "the Senator" had a few minutes to see him. It was a gesture of respect, seemingly effective, Kennedy told me years afterward -- until he sat down with the Senator of Senators, Richard Russell of Georgia, who'd been in office since 1933. Kennedy had read up on each of his colleagues. For Russell, he thought he'd found the ideal grace note. He said he hoped the Georgian would help him learn the ropes; after all, they did share a rare kind of kinship: they'd both come to the Senate shortly after turning thirty. Russell didn't smile. "Senator," he drawled, "there is one difference. By then, I'd been elected Speaker of the Georgia House and then Governor." Ted Kennedy loves to tell the story.

His first chance for the White House came sooner than anyone could have imagined. After RFK's assassination in 1968, there was a sudden movement to draft "Teddy," who had just given a speech pledging to "pick up the fallen standard." How close did he come to a nomination he didn't seek? Bill Daley, who served as secretary of commerce in the Clinton administration, shared with me his insider's perspective as we were embroiled in the 2000 Gore campaign. Just before the '68 convention, Bill walked into his parents' home. His father was Chicago mayor Dick Daley, the last great big-city Democratic boss. Bill found the basement filled with stacks of ted kennedy signs. I thought we were for Humphrey? he asked his father. Not if Kennedy will take it, was the answer. But those signs never saw the light of the Convention Hall as the last Kennedy brother shied away from running.

Many years after Chicago, Kennedy told me he worried that he wasn't ready for an all-out campaign in 1968. It was only three months after the trauma of a second assassination -- and he was concerned about his brothers' children and his own. He decided he could wait for another time. In one election cycle after another, all the way into the mid-1980s, Kennedy would lead in the polls as the Democrats' choice for their next nominee. It was in the mid-eighties, on a flight from South Africa, that he looked back on it all and said he'd learned that in politics you couldn't necessarily pick your time; when the door was open, you had to go through it. He didn't run in 1972, I'm convinced, not simply because of the accident at Chappaquiddick but because Nixon looked unbeatable. In 1976, Ford, too, was an incumbent and Kennedy would have to forgo a reelection campaign for the Senate. But as 1980 approached, the door seemed to be opening; yes, Carter was the Democratic in-cumbent, but increasingly beleaguered even within his own party. After what seemed to be the failed presidencies of Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter, Democrats from some of the party's top operatives to the grass roots were beginning to look again to a Kennedy restoration.

***

When Carter shut down the process of governing amid the energy and economic woes of the summer of 1979, the nation watched with mingled fascination and apprehension as he retreated to Camp David for a week of séances with philosophers, historians, religious, labor, and business leaders, and a sprinkling of governors and members of Congress. As the president of the United States sat on the floor listening and taking notes, his guests told him what was wrong with America. Vice President Mondale, who had left Camp David early, was convinced, as his top aide Jim Johnson told me, that what was happening was "crazy." Mondale, Johnson said, seriously considered resigning the vice presidency. Coming down from that mountaintop, Carter delivered what would become known as the "malaise" speech. That word wasn't in the text, but it was in an earlier memo from his pollster Pat Caddell and became a trademark phrase as it leaked out of the Camp David sessions. Ironically, though I didn't realize it at the time, the speech's description of a "crisis of confidence" in the country echoed Robert Kennedy's warning amid the turmoil of 1968 that there was "a deep crisis of confidence...in our leadership." There was another irony: Carter spoke of a president "who feels your pain"; the line didn't work for him the way it did when Bill Clinton recycled it a decade and a half later.

The suspension of the presidency while Carter was at Camp David, his subsequent nationally televised jeremiad, and then his sudden decision to fire five cabinet members put more pressure on Kennedy to challenge the incumbent. Senate Democrats worried that Carter at the top of the ticket would drag them all down. At the top of the White House, there was a sense of bravado -- or maybe it was wishful thinking -- that a Kennedy challenge might be good for Carter. Chief of Staff Hamilton Jordan's assistant Tom Donilon remembered Jordan arguing that facing and defeating Kennedy would redeem the president's apparent weakness and strengthen him for the general election. This would prove to be a colossal miscalculation.

Kennedy hadn't announced, but the first confrontation was looming -- on his home turf, in Boston, at the dedication of the John F. Kennedy Library in mid-October 1979. It was the prelude to a campaign that would change my life, bringing me back into national politics not for a year but for a quarter century. Kennedy would become a close friend. And it was in that 1980 campaign that I met my future wife.

I was in the crowd on that sunny day as Carter, Kennedy, and the Kennedy family sat with stiff cordiality on the platform in front of the library. No one was prepared for Carter's artful and witty gambit. The president borrowed a riff from JFK and with an uncharacteristically light touch applied it to the otherwise unspoken political drama that was on the minds of everyone in the audience:

I never met him, but I knew that John Kennedy loved politics, he loved laughter, and when the two came together, he loved that best of all.

For example, in a press conference in March 1962, when the ravages of being president were beginning to show on his face, he was asked this two part question: "Mr. President, your brother Ted said recently on television that after seeing the cares of office on you, he wasn't sure he would ever be interested in being President."

The audience laughed. Carter smiled, and so did Kennedy -- he had to. But Carter was just warming up:

And the questioner continued: "I wonder if you can tell us whether, first, if you had to do it over again, you would work for the presidency and, second, whether you can recommend this job to others?" The president replied, "Well, the answer to the first question is yes, and the second is no. I do not recommend it to others -- at least for a while."

The laughter reached a crescendo, but Carter wasn't finished:

As you can see, President Kennedy's wit and also his wisdom is certainly as relevant today as it was then.

The successive waves of mirth that rolled across the lawn were real, but there was an almost palpable sense of unease among those preparing the return to the New Frontier.

I had no doubt I wanted to be part of that journey. But aside from a few perfunctory interactions after I'd met Kennedy on the McGovern plane, the only time I'd spent with him was during a weekend when Sarge and Eunice Shriver had invited me to Hyannisport. It was the first time I got a sense of him as a person. On the patio at the Shrivers' for drinks before dinner, I chatted with Rose Kennedy, who asked me question after question about my background, what my father did, where I'd gone to school. Then she called out: "Teddy, Teddy." He came over. Look at all Bob's done -- she recounted it to my chagrin -- and he didn't have any of the advantages your father and I gave you. Kennedy was bemused in the easy way I'd get used to in future years, and sat down to ask me more about myself.

I discussed the idea of joining the 1980 campaign with Dick Goodwin. Of course I should do it, Dick said. He was going to Washington for a strategy meeting at Kennedy's McLean home and he'd get it done. Later in the campaign, Goodwin told me it hadn't been all that easy. Steve Smith, Kennedy's brother-in-law and my future good friend, at that point wasn't thrilled about the idea of hiring "Shrum." He had turned on Carter, Steve objected, why not us? According to Dick, Kennedy himself wryly observed that quitting Carter probably shouldn't be a disqualification -- after all, he was about to run against him. (And the notion that I'd resign in protest again was far-fetched; you can only do that once in a lifetime unless you're an unguided missile -- but maybe Steve worried that I was.) Goodwin took out a checkbook, wrote a check to Steve for $10,000, tore it in half, gave one half to him and kept the other one himself. If Shrum did anything crazy, Dick said, he'd give Steve the other half and he could cash the check. Kennedy said, in effect, let's give it a try -- and Dick told me later that the check would have bounced; he didn't have $10,000 in the bank.

In late October, Steve offered me a job. I'd travel with Kennedy -- one week on the plane, one week off -- an obvious safety valve; if necessary, I could be removed quietly and permanently to the headquarters. I'd be working with Carey Parker, who'd be on the plane all the time. Carey, I'd quickly learn, not only had an incisive, first-rate mind; he also had a rare kind of selflessness that invariably put...

Edition details

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0743296516
• ISBN 13: 9780743296519
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 544