After John Kerry had the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination wrapped up, the Dallas Morning News published an article citing all the reasons he should ask John Edwards to jo ^in the ticket. The arguments revolved around three main points. The first was that Edwards had proven himself in the primaries to be a disciplined and exciting campaigner. Second, “his private life, finances and pre-political career [had] all have been vetted” when he was considered to be Al Gore’s partner in 2000. And third was his Southernness: He had the accent, the regional base, and the charm to balance Kerry’s persona, which was colder than a New England winter.
Although it’s generally bad form to be seen vying for the running mate’s spot, especially when you are still in contention in the primaries, Edwards had started sending signals that he was open to an offer even before Super Tuesday. Using go-betweens like Bob Shrum, Harrison Hickman, and South Carolina congressman James Clyburn, he made sure Kerry understood his strength as a fund-raiser, communicator, and effective campaigner. Polling showed he was far more popular than Dick Gephardt, who we believed was Kerry’s personal favorite, and no one looked better on television. As part of a charm offensive aimed at getting Kerry’s attention, Edwards agreed to be featured in the March 8 People magazine. The article highlighted a telling comment from a female voter who said, “He’s real, and he’s easy to look at.” (This comment was tame compared with the words women whispered in Edwards’s ears or wrote on notes they pressed into his hand at public appearances. I knew this because I had been with him in the past when he rebuffed advances from women and a few men, which seemed to come whenever we were in public.) Altogether, Edwards seemed to provide the perfect balance for Kerry. In fact, the only negative where a Kerry-Edwards ticket was concerned was that the two guys didn’t like each other very much.
When we talked about him, the senator complained that Kerry, despite his long-winded, professorial demeanor, “just wasn’t all that smart.” The man seemed well-informed, he added, like someone “who had read The New York Times every day for twenty years,” but he wasn’t a creative person or even a good problem solver. He also found Kerry to be aloof and far too aristocratic in his bearing to succeed as the leader of a party that looks for major support from unions, African Americans, and people in big cities. During the primaries, Kerry had been the opponent our side most loved to hate. Our political strategist Jim Andrews, who I swore cussed and smoked in his sleep, used to bellow, “We just can’t let this mother-fuckin’ blue blood get in the White House.”
The resentment toward Kerry had been heartfelt, and it had come from the top of our organization, but when it appeared that the two teams might join forces, my boss tried to see the advantages. When Edwards met with the head of Kerry’s search committee, Jim Johnson, he stressed how they had complementary strengths, and whenever we talked about it, he focused on the idea that we would both move our families into the vice president’s mansion and that after eight years as Kerry’s second, he would spend eight more in the White House. He talked often about our kids growing up together in Washington. (I liked this idea, too, and when Gus Gusler, lawyer for Hootie & the Blowfish, teased me and asked me what I charged for “delivering groceries,” I replied, “Sixteen years in the White House.” He laughed and said, “I would, too.”)
A comas Edwards saw it, Al Gore had squandered the opportunity Clinton had handed him. He said he wasn’t going to make the same mistake.
We had these conversations in my Suburban, at his home, and on the occasions when we took our kids out for some fun. During the spring of 2004, our two families grew as close as they would ever be. Jack and Emma Claire came to our house regularly, sometimes with their nanny, Heather North, and they would play for hours on end. Sometimes I’d take the whole gang out on the lake in our motorboat. I don’t think four kids ever had more fun.
In late spring, when the Edwardses were in Washington, they walked from their home to Kerry’s house for what could only be called job interviews. Kerry brought the senator to one part of the house, and his wife, billionaire heiress Teresa Heinz, took Elizabeth to another. (For political purposes, she called herself Teresa Heinz Kerry, but she never adopted this name legally.) As I heard it from Elizabeth and John, these meetings went terribly. Teresa asked Elizabeth if she would pursue any particular causes as the vice president’s wife. When she began to talk about education, Teresa cut her off and began talking about the education foundation she supported with millions of dollars. Elizabeth told me the same thing happened when she brought up a school computer lab the Edwardses established at Broughton High and Teresa acted like “she owned IBM.” They spent perhaps five or ten minutes together, and then Teresa left Elizabeth alone to search out her husband.
According to Bob Shrum, the two senators also struggled to get along. In an attempt to establish some intimacy, Edwards told Kerry he wanted to tell him a story no one else knew. He then told him about embracing Wade’s body in the medical examiner’s office. Kerry was stunned and put off, because Edwards had actually shared the same tale with him once before.
When I saw him after this meeting, Senator Edwards said nothing about the Wade story but confessed that he had serious doubts about whether Kerry would make a good president. The Edwardses both called John and Teresa “complete assholes,” and the senator concluded that their shared wealth, power, and privilege had left them out of touch with ordinary reality. He said, “Andrew, I’m rich, but they are ludicrously rich. How can he possibly be the leader of the Democratic Party? I bet he doesn’t know the price of milk.” (Mrs. Edwards always made sure her husband knew the price of milk, as well as gasoline, just in case someone asked.)
Of course, these personal feelings didn’t affect the senator’s professional ambitions or his public statements. All through the spring, he helped the Kerry campaign in any way they asked, even flying to the ends of the earth-okay, Fargo, North Dakota -to give a rousing speech on the nominee’s behalf. Inside the Democratic Party, support for a Kerry-Edwards ticket began to build. Kerry still had other candidates on his list, and while he labored over the choice, Senator Edwards invited my family to join his at Disney World, and he paid for the trip. The group would include little Jack and Emma Claire, plus the Edwardses’ twenty-two-year-old daughter, Cate, and the Young family of four. Or four and a half, since Cheri was eight months pregnant.
The summer high in Orlando averages about ninety degrees. The humidity generally hovers around 75 percent, and it rains every other day. These conditions would be hard enough on anyone hauling kids around the Magic Kingdom, but our group was further challenged by the fact that Mrs. Edwards was recovering from an abdominal operation (she still had a surgical drain in her belly) and Cheri was pregnant. In retrospect, I would guess that we mounted this expedition primarily so the world would know the Edwardses were at the most American vacation spot of all if the call came for him to be vice president.
To be fair, John and Elizabeth did not expect that he would be chosen, and the vacation was a thrill for the kids. A terrific father, the senator took Emma Claire and Jack on the flying teacups, allowed himself to look as silly as possible aboard the Dumbo ride, and endured the cloying melody of “It’s a Small World (After All)” as many times as they wanted. The experience was a little more difficult for Mrs. Edwards, who tended to have an inflexible concept of fun and was never able to relax like her husband. Instead, she seemed to get preconceived notions about what an experience should be and then tried to force everyone to play certain roles so the picture looked as she had imagined it would. For example, when we saw Peter Pan she had the kids listen as she told the entire story when all they really wanted to do was rush to see the young woman dressed up as the character.
The characters were a huge hit with the kids, and the Edwardses chose to pay for VIP treatment, which meant we had a tour guide-her name was Tracey-who drove us from the hotel to the theme park in a van and then stayed with us to make sure we got to the front of every line and got into the better restaurants on the property. Tracey saw our group at its best and its worst. One morning as she collected us at our hotel, Mrs. Edwards noticed something had been left behind with the senator, who was still in their room. I happened to be talking to him via cell phone, so when she tried to reach him she couldn’t. When she found out what was happening, she actually cussed me out in front of my family and people who stood nearby. I just took it, which made me feel humiliated. When the senator finally appeared, he discovered a stony silence in the van. Eventually, Cate spoke up and asked Mrs. Edwards to apologize. To her credit, she did. But I was reminded of all the times Cheri questioned how the Edwardses treated me and thought her concern was valid.
Mrs. Edwards was especially tense that morning because she and the senator were starting to think that he would not get the call to be vice president. That night, we had dinner at Chef Mickey’s, where the kids got to meet a gang of Disney characters. As we walked into the place, Brody saw Mickey Mouse and ran over to see him, with Emma Claire and Jack following right behind. The senator and I chased down the kids, and then I went to our table and took a moment to check my phone. It showed six or seven missed calls, all from the same number in Washington, D.C.
The messages were from Mary Beth Cahill, a major figure in the Massachusetts Democratic Party who was John Kerry’s campaign manager. After leaving one of the messages, she had handed the phone to Kerry, who said, c wh220;Hey, John, this is John Kerry. I’m hoping to speak with you as soon as we can.”
As I finished listening to the messages, the senator appeared with the kids and I told him what was going on. His eyes got wide, and I asked if he wanted to go back to the hotel and return the call. He said he’d prefer to do it right away and asked me to find a private place where he might use the phone. I had performed this duty for him countless times, and it’s remarkable to see how people always respond positively when they are told that a prominent person needs a private place to conduct important business. In this case, the manager of Chef Mickey’s cleared out a little outdoor smoking spot for employees and we sat there at a table, with amusement park rides in the background and lights starting to come on all around us.
When we reached her, Mary Beth didn’t put Kerry on the phone and was evasive about the purpose of the call. All she wanted to say was that Kerry was inviting Edwards to a meeting in Washington and wanted him to fly up the next evening. They then engaged in a little debate over whether he would travel in a private jet or fly commercial. He wanted the campaign to send a jet so he could avoid public attention and because the gesture would signal their respect for a family man interrupting his vacation. She wanted him to head for Orlando International Airport and hop a commercial flight to save the campaign money. (I suspect she also feared that if they sent a jet, it would indicate that Edwards was already the chosen one.) They agreed that he would try to get to Washington, but they left the transportation issue up in the air, so to speak.
When we returned to the table inside Chef Mickey’s, Mrs. Edwards was bursting with curiosity. The senator explained what had transpired with the calls but emphasized that Mary Beth had not told him anything about the reason for the invitation. For all he knew, Kerry wanted to reject him in a face-to-face meeting. Mrs. Edwards insisted that the senator go to Washington as requested, even if it meant spending a few hours on a commercial flight.
The buzz about the call continued until we returned to the hotel, where Cheri went to the Edwardses’ suite with Elizabeth, and the senator and I took the kids down to the pool to swim and watch the nightly Disney fireworks show. We ordered some drinks, and after his third or fourth glass of wine, he got a little louder and more pessimistic about his prospects. Almost certain he wouldn’t get the nod, he said, “Andrew, this is bullshit. Unless they send me a jet, I’m not going. He’s fucking with me, he’s yanking my chain. I’ve been in the Senate with him for four years, why does he need to meet with me?”
Worried that the senator was speaking too loudly poolside, I went to pay the bar bill. When I turned around, he and the kids were gone. I assumed they had returned to the room, so I went upstairs. They weren’t there. Mrs. Edwards lost her temper and screamed at me, “Andrew, you know how irresponsible he is. You can’t leave him alone with four kids.”
She called security and we all searched the hotel. I went back to the pool area, where I saw him and he asked, “What’s going on?” He was carrying a bunch of clothes and there wer c ane four buck-naked kids trailing behind him. He explained that he had taken them to a little beach for a moonlight swim in a pond where big signs warned, do not swim. alligators.
In the morning, with the families set to spend the day at the Animal Kingdom theme park, Jim Johnson, Kerry’s lead scout in the hunt for a running mate, called a little after eight o’clock. He said he wanted to go over the issues that Kerry was considering as he settled on his choice. His first concern had to do with whether his vice president was serious about the work of governing. The second was long-term loyalty. (Kerry wanted a guarantee that if they lost, Edwards would not run against him for the presidential nomination in 2008.) The third and final concern was about Edwards’s stand on the issues. Kerry wanted to make sure that his partner at the top of the ticket would present a united front with him.
It sounded to me as if the Kerry team was giving Edwards a chance to get the answers right. With visions of life in the vice president’s mansion in my head, I urged him to go see Kerry even if he had to take a bus. I was surprised when he wouldn’t be moved on the private jet issue and surprised again when they actually gave in to his demand. We spent the morning at the Animal Kingdom, where several rides take you through pretend wilderness settings around the world. After lunch with the families at the Rainforest Cafe, I accompanied the senator back to the hotel for a change of clothes, then drove him to the private airport. He was excited but also irritated to be called back for what seemed like another job interview. When we got to the airfield, we drove to a small jet that was waiting with its engines running so the cabin could be air-conditioned. The senator went up the steps, stopped at the door, and gave me a wave before ducking inside. I noticed that he looked nervous.
Only John Kerry and John Edwards can say for certain what happened in their meeting later that day. I know that Edwards stopped first at his house and went for a jog. The get-together was held at the home of Madeleine Albright, secretary of state under Clinton, and Edwards was driven there in a town car rented in my name. The windows were so heavily tinted, no one could see him. According to Edwards, who filled me in, Senator Kerry was friendlier than he had been before and impressed that Edwards had interrupted his vacation to have the meeting and that he was heading back to Orlando that same night so he could be with his family.
It’s hard to imagine John Kerry having a relaxed conversation about something as ordinary as Walt Disney World, but according to Edwards, when he told him that he’d spent the morning at the Animal Kingdom, Kerry’s eyes lit up and he said he had loved visiting the park with his daughters. During the rest of the time they spent together, they discussed the upcoming campaign, which would be both a referendum on George Bush and a chance for the Democrats to present some new ideas, and the overall political landscape. Kerry did ask Edwards whether, in the event that they lost, he would challenge him in the 2008 primaries. Edwards proudly told me he let Kerry think a challenge was unlikely but in lawyerly fashion left himself an out.
Besides impressing Kerry with his commitment to family, Edwards believed he scored big points when he was told that both Dick Gephardt and Senator Bob Graham had said they would be able to accomplish more as vice president because they were experienced in the ways of Washington. Edwards didn’t make any counterclaims for himself or try to criticize these other contenders. Instead, he noted that people with their skills and extensive experience would be perfect picks to serve in somewhat lesser jobs in a Kerry-Edwards administration.
I heard all about this when I went to the airport near Disney World to meet the jet that brought Edwards back that night. While I waited outside the private terminal, I watched a couple of maintenance workers who were hanging around for this one last arrival, playing cards, smoking cigarettes, and reveling in the fact that they were getting paid overtime. The jet finally landed at 12:50 A.M., and as the senator came inside, I could see he had relaxed with a little wine. He introduced himself to the card players (as if they really cared who he might be) and then said, “Man, I gotta piss.” (The senator was irked that the jet was too small to have a decent toilet.)
Once we got in the car, Edwards refused to tell me what had happened until I assured him that everyone he had left behind had enjoyed themselves during the day. Once I’d done this, he told me about the car with the tinted windows, Albright’s house, Kerry’s interest in the Animal Kingdom, and the substance of the conversation. He thought it was ridiculous that Kerry had asked him to promise he wouldn’t run in 2008 but considered the rest of the meeting a terrific success. Kerry had stopped just short of offering him the job, but before the session was over he’d shown Edwards a mock-up of a Kerry-Edwards campaign logo: red, white, and blue, with an American flag.
It was about two o’clock when we got to the hotel. We went upstairs together, and as we split to go to our rooms we exchanged a victorious high five, like a couple of UNC ballplayers celebrating a three-pointer. The next day, the national press was reporting that John Kerry had conducted a secret meeting with the person leading the contest to join the ticket. Several commentators noted that since John Edwards was at Walt Disney World with his family, he was almost certainly out of the running. But one source, ABC’s The Note, offered a hint by posting the mileage from Washington, D.C., to Disney World. I never figured out how they knew and why they didn’t follow up on it.
Several days passed while Kerry made his final pick. The Youngs and the Edwardses went home to North Carolina, and at both houses the phones rang continuously. For four days, I couldn’t say anything as friends, colleagues, neighbors, and members of the press called to ask questions and share rumors, the most persistent being the idea that the only one on the Kerry team opposed to Edwards was Teresa Heinz Kerry. Gradually, her resistance was overcome (or set aside), and by the Fourth of July, Edwards seemed to be in the lead, according to everyone we spoke to.
On that day, I accompanied c I the senator on his annual “Beach Walk,” which was really just a stroll along the ocean with stops to talk to voters and their families. In private moments, we discussed where we might hold the first Kerry-Edwards rally in North Carolina and decided we could get the biggest crowd in Raleigh. Robbins was now way too small.
Two days later, in the early morning hours, deliverymen working from trucks that stopped at newsstands throughout the New York region hurled onto the sidewalk bound stacks of the day’s New York Post. On the cover was a big photo of Dick Gephardt and John Kerry below the headline KERRY’S CHOICE.
In Raleigh, my phone rang at about six A.M. A friend whose father was a bigwig in the national Republican Party practically shouted into the phone, “Congratulations!” He then explained that his father had received word that Edwards was on the ticket. The source was completely reliable, he said, and the New York Post was as wrong as the Chicago Daily Tribune had been with its DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN screamer in 1948. The Republicans must have had a very good line into the Kerry operation, because I called Senator Edwards immediately and heard that he was still waiting to hear the news.
I got off the phone with the senator in order to keep his line open and practically shook with anticipation. Although the senator was the focus of the decision, and no one outside my immediate circle even knew I would be affected, I felt as though the rest of my life depended on what John Kerry was thinking. Desperate for information, I called Fred Whitfield, a friend of mine who just happened to be Dick Gephardt’s neighbor in Washington. (A close friend of Michael Jordan’s, Whitfield was then an executive with the Washington Wizards basketball team.) Whitfield said that Gephardt was in town and some media folks were camped out by his door. But the mood in this crowd was not positive. This suggested that the Post was wrong and Edwards was in.
While I had talked with Fred, Kerry had finally phoned Edwards to ask him to be on the ticket. The match was made, and the senator immediately called the hotel where Elizabeth was staying. Ironically, she was in the washroom and didn’t get to the phone before it went to voice mail. I then got through to the senator, and he told me, “It’s good, Andrew, I’ll call you back in a second.” After he finally spoke to her, he dialed me right back and said, “We’re in, Andrew, and we’re going to win it.”
Mrs. Edwards flew home immediately, and the family called on me to come help them pack to leave for the Heinz farm outside Pittsburgh. The mood at their house was high, and while the senator and I talked in the library, he said, “Andrew, isn’t this great? We’re going to do it. We’re really going to do it.”
In an unguarded moment, I tried to joke with the senator by saying, “Yeah, but it’s too bad that Kerry is such an asshole.”
In an instant, the rapport between us disappeared. The senator called out to his wife, “Did you hear that, Elizabeth? Andrew thinks Kerry’s an asshole.” I was suddenly flushed with embarrassment, and though I couldn’t hear her reply, I’m sure it was a scolding remark. The senator went into another room, and although the chill soon thawed, I had been taught a lesson. Everyone in the Edwards camp now approved of John Kerry, and this would be our attitude for the foreseeable future.
I was willing to go along, but I was unable to stop noticing the things about the Kerrys that struck me as odd. For example, when the Kerry and Edwards families got together for their first photo op at the Heinz family farm, Teresa took it upon herself to reach over and try to pull little Jack’s thumb out of his mouth. Of course, this was the moment when the photographers started clicking and it was the picture published in many leading papers. Soon enough, commentators in the Times and on National Public Radio were asking, What business was it of hers to handle a nervous four-year-old who was someone else’s kid?
The family summit at the ninety-acre farm was followed by a four-day campaign swing that would end on Saturday in Raleigh. They traveled on a Boeing 757 that was decorated with the Kerry-Edwards logo and were met by big crowds in four states. (The senator had come a long way from the days when I drove him around the state with a Velcro-backed U.S. Senate seal.) While they rallied the faithful, I raced around the Edwards home to prepare it for a crew from the CBS News program 60 Minutes (they were going to tape interviews in the living room) and for the Kerrys to stay overnight.
The Edwardses were not meticulous housekeepers, and I was hard-pressed to chase down all the dust bunnies, empty Diet Coke cans, and throw out old newspapers and magazines that cluttered the place. Once again I had to move furniture out so that TV cameras and lights could be positioned, and I had to make sure that the balky air-conditioning system was in good order and the kitchen was stocked for both families and the media crews.
Just like many VIPs I had worked with, the Kerrys sent their preferences ahead. According to the list, Teresa would eat either grilled salmon with steamed vegetables or one of two types of salad: Cobb or chicken Caesar. John Kerry wanted Boost energy drinks (strawberry or vanilla) and a dinner of roast chicken, meat loaf, or pot roast. They both requested chocolate cake and only one kind of wine-Kendall Jackson Sauvignon Blanc. I made sure every item on the list-including peanut butter and strawberry preserves-was in the kitchen. Following Mrs. Edwards’s orders, I also hired a chef to stand by and prepare whatever anyone wanted.
The main event for the North Carolina visit was an afternoon rally at North Carolina State University that drew more than twenty-five thousand people. It was to be the largest political rally the state had ever seen and would raise the hope that Edwards might actually give the Democrats a chance to win North Carolina for the first time since 1976. While en route, the senator called to ask me to send a sport coat to the airport. I ignored the request because it was ninety-plus degrees and I was extremely busy.
“ 3” face=“Times New Roman”›The rally became a love fest, with Edwards shouting, “He’s with me!” and Kerry asking if the Tar Heels would mind lending the nation Edwards’s services for eight or maybe sixteen years. At many points in the rally, the huge crowd roared its approval. One of these moments arrived when Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” rang out of the sound system. After the song, Teresa Heinz Kerry took the microphone and assured folks that “these Johnnies will be good if Elizabeth and I have anything to do with it.” Later, she explained that she and Mrs. Edwards would protect their husbands from those who would “inflate their egos or try to destroy them.”
I know about what happened at the rally only because I saw bits of it on television. I was at the senator’s house, making sure all would be ready when they arrived to talk with Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes. I thought I had considered every potential problem when I called an air-conditioning guy to make sure the balky cooling system would hold up. Then I started to hear a noise that sounded like chirping in the chimney for the living room fireplace. A bird had somehow found its way inside. After I made a racket and the bird stayed put, I placed a frantic call to an exterminator-the company was called Critter Gitter-who agreed that it was an emergency and came right over.
With a strong flashlight, the exterminator spotted a nest of baby birds and then gave me the bad news. They were members of an endangered species. This meant he had to follow specific procedures to ensure the birds’ safety. I believed what he said, but as politically incorrect as it may sound, I didn’t care what he did to get rid of this feathered nuisance. “Just get them out of there as fast as you can,” I told him, and then I left the room so I wouldn’t have to watch. To this day, I can’t tell you what he did, but it worked. And fast.
As the exterminator was leaving, the Secret Service came through the house to make one last security sweep. I forgot to tell them the AC guy was in the crawl space. He jumped out of his skin when he saw the bomb dogs and had to explain why he was there. The Secret Service declared the house safe even though they were not happy with the condition of the chef. While I was running around, he had downed a couple of beers.
When the candidates arrived, the Kerrys looked at the house with obvious disdain. Though the plan had called for them to spend the night, they made it clear they would not. Senator Edwards, obviously in a bad mood, complained to me that I had forgotten to send his sport coat to the big rally, which meant he couldn’t make a show of peeling it off in front of the crowd and saying, “It’s great to be back home.” Kerry found everything the cook had made inedible, and the Secret Service drove his body man to a Boston Market store for replacement food. Teresa, who was nervous about the 60 Minutes appearance, drank a glass of wine. Loosened up, she then paced around the house and clomped up and down the wooden staircase, making so much noise that the field producer had to holler, “Cut!” several times during Stahl’s interview of the candidates in the next room.
Seated side by side, Kerry and Edwards grinned like a couple of guys who were having fun, and I believed they were. The hostility they may have f cheyelt seemed to have been submerged in their pursuit of a mutual goal, and they insisted that they were comfortable with their roles and their agenda. When Stahl pressed him with questions about their relationship, Senator Edwards reduced the issue to a matter of commitment. “At the end of the day, all the words in the world will not make up for one thing,” he said. “You have to have trust. I trust him.”
After a break to get people arranged, the candidates’ wives joined the interview. As I watched from the back of the room, I marveled at how far Mrs. Edwards had come. I knew she was uncomfortable, but she looked composed and she spoke without hesitating. Stahl was most interested in how these women saw their roles, and Mrs. Edwards accurately described herself as the person who would tell her husband the truth when others would not, and would provide a sort of ballast to keep him stable. To have someone who will play this role is “a very good thing,” she said.
Like Mrs. Edwards, who had always tried, in her way, to help her husband maintain his balance, I would be assuming a role similar to the one I had played since I volunteered for his campaign. I tried to make things run smoothly for the senator and to fix problems as soon as they arose. My immediate concern was the upcoming national convention in Boston. The senator asked me to be responsible for the care of his family and friends. While other people might get frazzled by logistics and dealing with emergencies, it came easily to me.
At the convention, Mrs. Edwards gave me a tough problem to solve when she left a dozen or so messages on my cell phone explaining that she had left the outfit she intended to wear when her husband accepted his nomination at a dry cleaner’s back in Raleigh. I knew that the last flight to Boston left Raleigh- Durham International Airport in less than an hour. With a few quick calls, I managed to get someone to race to the cleaner’s, pick up the outfit, and take it to the airport, where my contact with American Airlines got it on the flight. Mrs. Edwards was thrilled when her clothes arrived just a few hours after she’d informed me they were missing. (She also insisted I remove two women from a list of VIP guests from North Carolina, though I wasn’t told why they had to be cut.)
The following day, I had to get the senator’s friend and former law partner David Kirby from his law office in Raleigh to the arena where the convention was held in just over three hours. (He was stuck in an arbitration and feared he was going to miss his best friend’s nomination.) This task involved pulling strings with friends at the airline, who parked his car for him and held the flight. When he landed at the airport, he saw himself on TV in an interview I had set up the day before. The police escorted him from Logan International Airport to the Fleet Center arena. Kirby arrived grinning and flabbergasted. “Damn, the only person you need to know in this world is Andrew Young,” he told people in the senator’s box. “Fuck John Edwards. It’s Andrew who gets things done.”
I appreciated Kirby’s praise, but for me the real reward came in just attending a historic politica ctorl event where future leaders emerged. This was where Barack Obama gave the speech that made him famous. The speech was electrifying, and minutes after Obama left the podium, I brought Kirby’s daughter to take a picture with him. Although Senator Edwards had told me Obama was lacking in substance, I could see he was a brilliant person with a level of confidence similar to what I saw in Edwards. He was far more appealing than John Kerry.
As far as the average television viewer could tell, Kerry and Edwards were a closely bonded team and the convention was a celebration of their shared vision for the country. But I was close enough to the senator at this time to hear what was on his mind, and after less than one month into his partnership with John Kerry, I could tell it was starting to come apart. He wasn’t ready to start calling him names again, but he was frustrated because Kerry wouldn’t listen to his advice and had insulated himself with too many advisers. (At one point, he had more foreign policy aides than President Bush had in the White House.) A typical example of the way the men were diverging arose as Edwards was preparing his acceptance speech, which would be his first extensive address to a national audience. For six years, the senator had been calling on people to embrace a heartfelt hope for the future. More than any other word, hope was at the core of his politics.
Hope was not exactly an original theme. Jesse Jackson had made his name with speeches in which he implored the country to “keep hope alive.” However, it is a reliable and positive message. Unfortunately, Kerry’s staff insisted that the refrain in Senator Edwards’s speech be built on the word help, as in “Help is on the way.” The difference is not as small as it may seem. “Hope” allows people to imagine solving problems on their own. “Help” suggests a handout, which can deprive a person of his or her dignity. Edwards stood his ground and got to use the theme he wanted.
When the time came, and Edwards stood before a sea of flag-waving partisans and the major networks all beamed his image and voice across the nation and the world, the senator did his duty by praising John Kerry and then rocked the house with a series of declarations that each ended with the promise “Hope is on the way.”
The speech was a hit with everyone except John Kerry’s top people. Afterward when I ran into Julianna Smoot, she said, “You picked the right horse,” and told me, “You deserve everything you get.” She asked me to pass word to the senator that she hoped he would call her. He never did.
The next night, Kerry stuck to his choice of “Help is on the way,” and while the delegates gave him all the noise you could ask for, the speech did not wind up on anyone’s list of best American political addresses. In contrast, Barack Obama’s brilliant keynote address, which challenged the idea that Americans were hopelessly divided, marked a historic moment. It was the one performance that every analyst gave a top grade, and more than anyone knew, it revealed the future of American politics.
Coming out of the convention, the Kerry-Edwards team had a significant lead over Bush-Cheney, but by the time the GOP had their convention and their alli candes began their well-funded attacks-remember the “swift boaters”?-it became obvious that it would be difficult to unseat the incumbent. Kerry’s decision-making style-slow, even dithering in response to the lies coming from the far right-frustrated Edwards, and he told me he suspected he was being sent to make low-impact appearances in out-of-the-way spots because Kerry was afraid of being upstaged. So much for trust.
Presidential candidates handpick staff for their running mate long before the candidate is even selected. As a result, Edwards had only two of his loyalists with him during the 2004 run. As often happens, tension arises between the vice presidential nominee-who’s supposed to be a lapdog-and the people serving the person at the top of the ticket. This dynamic was in full force on a weekend when I joined Edwards at his beach house. Except for the presence of the Secret Service guys, the weekend recalled the time we had spent together in years past, and we talked more football than politics. But when we did discuss the campaign, Edwards bragged about how he had won a minor victory by getting Peter Scher, whom Kerry had picked to be his chief of staff, to “go native.” By this he meant that Scher had come over to his side of things in some dispute with Kerry.
Candidates never recover the time and energy wasted on distractions in a campaign, so it’s always best to keep them out of intramural battles over issues like staff loyalty and to control any personal issues that might flare into controversies that would draw attention from important issues. During the 2004 campaign, the senator’s younger brother, Blake, a good ol’ boy who reminded me of the actor John Goodman, began telephoning the lawyer Wade Byrd, who was a big political contributor. Blake wanted help with what he said was a serious problem. With Roger Clinton and Billy Carter in mind, Senator Edwards asked me to find out what was going on and resolve it.
It turned out that Blake had a history of arrests for driving under the influence and had had his license suspended in Colorado. He had contacted Wade Byrd in hopes of getting his license back and perhaps having the charges removed from his record. But as I quickly discovered, this was not even a remote possibility. Instead, as authorities in Colorado indicated, Blake was wanted for failing to appear on a decade-old charge of driving while intoxicated. The press learned of the warrant for Blake’s arrest and descended on the little house he shared with his longtime girlfriend, Debbie, in the town of Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina, which the senator had bought for them.
While Blake and Debbie hid behind their locked front door, Mrs. Edwards reacted angrily when the press called the campaign. “How could he do this?” she asked, as if Blake had gotten drunk and taken to the road in a deliberate attempt to derail his brother’s ambitions. The senator was more relaxed in his response. He issued a statement that said he understood that Blake had committed serious crimes but that he was now taking responsibility and that he loved him.
The senator asked me to visit Blake and Debbie to reassure them, and help them network their way to the best lawyer available, who could try to delay the proceeding in Colorado until after the election. Eventually, we found someone who promised to do just that. The main challenge in thi calls process would be to help Blake with the anxiety he felt about the case and getting him to Colorado. Although his crimes had been dangerous, Blake hadn’t hurt anyone, and the man I knew was truly remorseful and frightened about what he faced. I did my best to reassure him, and when the time came for him to appear in court in Colorado, I picked him up at his house at five A.M. so he could catch an early-morning flight and avoid the press. I’ve never seen a more forlorn person than he was as I dropped him at the terminal, but the outcome of the hearing was a reprieve: The judge delayed sentencing until January. Until then, Blake was a free man and the press would leave him alone.
It may come as a shock to the obsessive, twenty-four-hour-a-day crusaders who work in presidential campaigns, but life goes on for people who live away from the frenzy of cross-country tours, press conferences, and debates. On August 11, 2004, the Kerry-Edwards team was arguing with George Bush about health care. You might say I was involved with the same issue, but in a far more personal way, supporting Cheri in the delivery room as our third child, a boy we named Cooper, came into the world.
Before he was born, doctors had told us the odds were against Cooper having the kind of congenital anomaly that made Gracie’s first months of life so difficult. When he showed some of the same signs of distress, but in a milder form, we asked to have him checked out anyway. Incredibly, we went through many of the same problems we had getting Gracie diagnosed until we confirmed that lightning sometimes strikes twice. Cooper did have an almost identical problem, and while we didn’t have to address it immediately, surgery would be required.
Informed by our previous experience, we decided to find the best surgeons for the job. I turned to a logical source, a famous malpractice attorney named Tom Demetrio, who helped us narrow the choice to Children’s Hospital in Boston. The doctors wanted to give Cooper some time to grow stronger, so we scheduled the procedure for late November. Cheri would keep a close eye on him until then. I would go back into the frenzy of the campaign, which, thanks to the swift boaters, became one of the nastiest in modern times.
By the end of September, everyone in the campaign assumed the race would be neck and neck to the finish. The war in Iraq occupied much of the candidates’ time and attention, but they also traded jabs related to character, and who might be better suited to the job of leading the free world. Occasionally, a gaffe or minor mistake gave comedians something to squawk about and distracted everyone from the substance of the campaign. For our side, one of the worst came when John Kerry insisted on going windsurfing in the waters of Nantucket.
Hard as it may be to accept, Kerry’s hobby had actually been the subject of intense conversation inside the campaign, and it was widely agreed that it was the kind of activity many Americans would view as effete and unpresidential-what if he fell off?-and it would be better if he just gave it up until after the election. Despite warnings, Kerry just couldn’t resist. On a day off he spent in cff Nantucket, he put on a bathing suit, grabbed a pair of gloves, and took to the water atop what looked like a surfboard with a sail. The image of Kerry tacking back and forth reminded everyone of the opposition charge that he was a “flip-flopper” who couldn’t stick to a position and prompted Jay Leno to say, “Even his hobby depends on which way the wind blows.”
Fortunately, the first presidential debate came about ten days after the windsurfing exhibition and shifted the conversation away from the water. Kerry seemed to outpoint Bush in the first of the three presidential events, but the result was so close that it put more pressure on Edwards to score a knockout in the one encounter he would have with Vice President Cheney, the Darth Vader of Washington. Of course, Cheney also faced similar pressure, as Republicans said he needed to stomp Edwards in order to seize the momentum for his side.
The Republicans seemed most concerned about Senator Edwards’s telegenic looks and his ability to work a room. Standing next to Edwards, Cheney would look like a stooped old man. However, Kerry’s people gave away some of this advantage in the negotiations over the debate format when they agreed that Cheney and Edwards would be seated at a table for the entire ninety minutes. (The Republicans said they were concerned about how standing would affect Cheney’s heart.) Presumably the Democrats received something in return from the Bush side, but I never heard what it was.
When the date of the debate arrived, I escorted the senator’s parents to Cleveland and brought them to the site at Case Western Reserve University. During the event, I was positioned a few yards from the stage. I like to believe it helped him to see my friendly face. He performed about as well as could be expected, limiting the points Cheney scored against John Kerry and steering the discussion toward the deception the White House had practiced to get the nation into the Iraq war. The vice president went to great lengths to sell the country on his extensive experience in government, which stretched back more than thirty years. Edwards came back with a perfect retort, saying, “Mr. Vice President, I don’t think the country can take four more years of this kind of experience.” However, his performance was not flawless. At one point he brought up Cheney’s lesbian daughter, and this would be viewed by many as a cheap shot.
On my scorecard, Cheney failed to get the big victory he needed and Senator Edwards prevailed, as he showed he was equal to the job of vice president. The instant polls done that night found similar sentiments among viewers, but as time passed, the Karl Rove Republican spin machine shaped opinion and more people began to say that Cheney had won because he didn’t collapse when confronted by Edwards’s superior communication skills. This is how the scoring often proceeds with debates. First impressions are followed by endless nitpicking, and before you know it, the partisan analysis matters more than what actually happened during the debate itself. In the case of Edwards vs. Cheney, the only certain conclusion you might reach is that very few voters were moved out of their preestablished groupings, which found them divided almost evenly between the parties.
Unfortunately, Americans were so hardened in their positions that as election night grew close, everyone realized that we were fig cat hting over a tiny number of voters-a few hundred thousand in each of a handful of “swing” states-who might actually be undecided. Kerry’s campaign team decided that Edwards could serve them best by making a series of national TV appearances, and he performed perfectly on shows ranging from The View to The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Leno and Edwards liked each other. The host told the audience he loved the oft-told story about how every year Edwards took Elizabeth to Wendy’s for hamburgers to celebrate their anniversary. He said that any man who could get away with that deserved to be elected.
Between the national TV shows and the debate, Edwards was seen by well over 100 million TV viewers in the span of a week. But when he suggested the campaign let him make a bigger effort to woo voters in the South, especially in North Carolina, Kerry’s people balked. Despite polls showing Democrats had the best chance there in decades, they refused to buy any television ads in the Tar Heel State. Instead, they focused their spending on the Midwest and sent the senator to out-of-the-way places like Latrobe, Pennsylvania, and Waterloo, Iowa. Edwards was furious about this.
For reasons that were never explained, the advisers and managers at the top of the campaign developed a surprising amount of confidence in the final weeks and, to our surprise, held back more than $14 million that could have been spent on advertising and get-out-the-vote efforts in Ohio and Florida. Although we kept hearing concern, even worry, in the voices of friends, Kerry operatives talked to the press about the combination of states that would get them to the magic number of 270 electoral college votes. In every winning scenario, either Ohio or Florida was painted blue for a Democratic Party victory.
The campaign ended in Boston. On election day I flew into Logan with the senator’s family and friends and checked in at the Copley Plaza. (Cheri came with me to soak up the moment.) The weather was dreary, but the hotel was so alive with press and security people that it felt as though we had arrived at the center of the universe. Everywhere we turned we bumped into someone we knew, and our conversations were filled with a mixture of relief, hope, and gratitude. As Cheri and I sat at lunch with the Edwards family, the senator’s sister, Kathy, said, “You’re closer to him than anyone, Andrew, and if he’s elected, he’s going to need you even more.” His parents said they agreed, and it made me feel good.
Kathy was part of a large group I shepherded on a day that included an afternoon aboard an amphibious tourist craft operated by an outfit called Boston Duck Tours, which took us around to historic sites and to the Charles River and Boston Harbor. (The senator’s mother, Bobbi, got a chance to drive the “duck.”) All the while, I was receiving text-message reports on exit polls that were very promising for our side. As I gave them updates, Bobbi and Wallace seemed overwhelmed by the thought that their son might win the second-highest office in the country. We couldn’t be sure of the outcome, of course, but by the end of the afternoon, as Cheri and I went to the hotel to dress for dinner, we were almost convinced that the Kerry-Edwards team had won.
eight=“0em” width=“1em” align=“justify”›Our minds were changed as we gathered at the Palm restaurant for the last supper of the campaign. Although some in the friends and family group clung to the hope that we had received better “inside” information, the television reported that Bush was likely to hold on to the White House. As I checked in with people high in the campaign, they stopped talking about their new offices in the West Wing and started to sound very pessimistic. Eventually they stopped answering their phones, and with their voice-mail files full, I couldn’t even leave a message.
After dinner, Cheri and I went back to the Copley Plaza with the senator’s family and got on the elevator with the folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary. Upstairs, we headed to the senator’s VIP area, where we ran into the actor Matt Dillon, model Christie Brinkley, and Seinfeld creator Larry David. By the time the polls started to close, we were almost sure we had lost, so although the place was filled with the sounds of phones ringing, people talking, and TVs blaring, the atmosphere was still fairly somber. We heard lots of reports of minority voters-our voters-being blocked from the polls.
The count and the media coverage reminded me of 2000, when I had sat in the senator’s living room and irregularities cast doubt on the legitimacy of the election, especially in Florida. This time the center of controversy was Ohio, where, we heard, people in mostly Democratic wards were having a difficult time with long lines and officials who challenged seemingly valid voter registrations. Although some newscasters called the election for Bush, at midnight Kerry conducted a conference call from his house with about fifty advisers and Senator Edwards and concluded that the race was so close, he couldn’t concede.
Even though he had problems with Kerry, Edwards saw the election as a battle of good versus evil and truly believed the country would be hurt by four more years of Bush-Cheney. Although he was concerned about all the people who were standing in the rain at the Kerry-Edwards rally site in Boston Common, the Bush-Gore fiasco of 2000 had made him deeply suspicious of the vote-counting process. Kerry continued to hold out, and at about three o’clock in the morning he sent Edwards to the Common to speak. (Many people thought it was strange that Kerry didn’t address the crowd himself.)
The diehards who stood in the rain on that cold November night numbered in the thousands. Many had on Red Sox caps, worn like emblems of their tremendous patience, which had been rewarded just days before when their beloved team had finally won the World Series after eighty-six years. They had seen Tom Brokaw and Wolf Blitzer declare Bush reelected on the big TV screens set up near the stage but remained waiting faithfully to hear from their candidates. When Edwards appeared, they cheered so loudly that his parents called from the hotel to ask me if the Democrats had actually won. Of course they had not, but I thought that the roar confirmed that the wrong guy had been at the top of the ticket. “We’ve waited four years for this victory,” he said. “We can wait one more night.”
By morning, when it seemed they had lost Ohio by about one hundred thousand votes, Edwards spoke to Kerry and could tell he was devastated. Although Edwards thought he should wait and perhaps contest the Ohio result, Kerry soon conceded to Bush via a phone call and then scheduled a public appearance for ten-thirty at historic Faneuil Hall. While he waited for this event, the senator asked me to find his parents and bring them to his suite. When I brought Wallace and Bobbi to the room, I could see that something other than the election was going on. The senator told his parents and then told me that they thought Mrs. Edwards had cancer.
At Faneuil Hall, Senator and Mrs. Edwards seemed untroubled, smiling for the audience and applauding as John Kerry thanked them for their hard work and friendship. She had seen a doctor four days earlier and with his support delayed further tests so they could continue the campaign. As soon as the event ended, they went to see a specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital, who performed a biopsy that confirmed the cancer was present and showed it had spread in a way that was extremely serious.
As public figures who had made their life experience part of their political appeal to the nation, the Edwardses didn’t wait to tell the world about their crisis. Their statements to the press, and background provided by aides, helped reporters present them as bravely soldiering on-Mrs. Edwards went to a dozen events after she learned she might have cancer-for the good of her husband, the Democratic Party, and the country. Ironically enough, the news of Mrs. Edwards’s diagnosis appeared in the press at the same time the media was filled with analysis of the election and articles predicting the senator’s political future. Although he was widely regarded as the Democrat most likely to challenge Hillary Clinton for the 2008 presidential nomination, he downplayed his prospects, noting that for the foreseeable future he would be focused on his wife’s health. I felt a chill when he talked privately about how her cancer affected his chances for attaining a higher office.
Cheri and I returned to Boston two weeks later, bringing Cooper to Children’s Hospital for his surgery. While doctors in North Carolina wanted to employ the same technique they had used on Gracie, the surgeon in Boston was a specialist who used three tiny incisions and high-tech instruments to make the repair. Cooper’s recovery was quick. In a week we were home, and within a month he was pain-free and growing like a weed. Although we faced an uncertain future in the aftermath of the election, our family was healthy and together for the holidays.
Just after New Year’s, I drove down to Fuquay-Varina to pick up the senator’s brother, Blake, and drive him to the airport for a flight to Colorado, where he would surrender to the Arapahoe County sheriff and begin serving a sixty-day sentence in the county jail. His plane departed at seven A.M., so I had to fetch him at about four-thirty. He lumbered out of the house looking dejected and scared. The drive was tense and awkward, and our conversation was punctuated by his apologies. Blake was worried about how his problems reflected on his brother and how he had upset Mrs. Edwards. “Man, Elizabeth must be pissed,” he said.
As I said good-bye to Blake at th cto e airport, I tried to…