Brody Young took his time.
Cheri’s due date came and went, and when her obstetrician finally decided to induce labor, the little guy still waited a full day to make an appearance. When he finally arrived at 2:40 A.M. on May 26, 2001, he had to torture us a bit-turning blue and refusing to breathe-until the medical team finally got him to take a big gulp of air and say hello to the world. At eight pounds nine ounces, he was a sturdy little guy, and Cheri, with her background in neonatal and pediatric nursing, seemed to me to be the most attentive mother in the world. She would need all of her strength and expertise, because in her first few months as a mother, life was going to challenge her in some extraordinary ways.
At the time Brody was born, our house was undergoing a major renovation. When we brought the baby home, we had access to the basement and the second floor, but the first floor, including the kitchen, was blocked off with plastic sheeting and the walls had been taken down to the studs. In the same period, my job was becoming even more demanding, and the senator and his family had come to rely on me-and reward me-in new ways. I was not just the senator’s aide. In his eyes, I was a friend, and we spent increasing amounts of time hanging out like a couple of buddies. I knew that unlike Mrs. Edwards, the senator was not insatiably curious about policy and public affairs. She might read briefing books to relax. He liked to lie on the couch and watch stupid movies like Tommy Boy with Chris Farley or sports.
We went regularly to UNC basketball games together, usually taking our kids and giving Cheri and Elizabeth the nig Fht off. If we were traveling, I would call ahead and have the hotel staff tape the game and cue it up on a tape player in his room. If we happened to be at the senator’s beach house on the coast, we’d take a run, buy some ribs, and follow a bunch of superstitious rituals-changing seats or even moving to a different room-that we hoped would bring good luck to the team. In March, we went to Atlanta to watch the 2001 Atlantic Coast Conference tournament. When we checked into the Ritz, the staff thought I must have been with former United Nations ambassador and Atlanta mayor Andrew Young and put me in the presidential suite. The senator quickly suggested I take his regular room and give him the suite, which I did. Duke beat UNC in the finals (by sixteen points-ugh), and after the game, as we eased out of the VIP parking lot in my Suburban, I revved my engine as if I were going to run over Mike Krzyzewski, the Duke coach, as he walked in front of us toward the team bus. “Don’t do it, Andrew!” shouted the senator, and we got a big grin out of Krzyzewski.
For a couple of North Carolina boys, first-class treatment at the ACC tournament represented the ultimate male bonding experience, and I could feel, as we spent time together, that Edwards considered me a true friend. Occasionally, when he asked me to do something above and beyond the normal call of duty, he’d smile and say something like “You know how much I appreciate everything, Andrew. You aren’t staff, you are family. You know that, right?” He said it like a big brother and with so much casual sincerity that I believed him and would, naturally, do whatever task he might request.
I had worked hard to win the senator’s trust, to become invaluable. And the more I heard about his ambition and dealt with the staff in Washington, the more I began to believe that if I wanted to capitalize on my connection, I would have to leave Raleigh. An opportunity arose days after Brody was born when Will Austin, the scheduler in the senator’s Capitol Hill office, gave notice of his resignation due to a family emergency.
A senator’s scheduler is far more than the keeper of the appointment book. He or she occupies the desk closest to the senator’s private office and is the one who controls who will see him and who will be left waiting. In a business where “face time” is the most valuable currency, the scheduler gets a daily, if not hourly, supply. The scheduler is trusted to know a senator’s whereabouts at all times and becomes the one person relied upon to settle conflicts or enforce a time-out when the demands get too great. Because of this power, the scheduler can be more important even than the chief of staff, legislative director, or press secretary. Will Austin was a great scheduler because he put the senator’s needs first, juggling appointments and events to accommodate his need for rest and exercise and his low tolerance for boredom. There were times when Edwards would come into the office, tell Will to hold all his calls and meetings, and just close the door. Will kept the hordes at bay.
On the evening after Will had announced he was leaving, I met the senator at the airport in Raleigh. He got into the car, skipped the pat on the shoulder and “Good to see you, Andrew,” and reached for the Chardonnay. “I don’t know what the fuck I’m going to do about Will leaving,” he said. “I don’t have anyone I want to put in there.”
“How about me?” I said without thinking.
“Would you want to do it?”
In fact, I had been thinking about a change for several months. My work in Raleigh had become routine, and I felt I needed a new challenge. I had even started to talk to Cheri about working on Capitol Hill, if only to see if I could keep up with the high-powered people on the senator’s staff there and make myself available for further advancement. Will’s spot seemed like the perfect option.
The senator responded with an eager smile, saying I could have the job if I wanted it. But he urged me to make sure that Cheri and I both knew what we were getting into. When I got home that night, she didn’t hesitate. She said I had to try out Washington and that she would support me. I then took a quick trip to consult with the staff there, learn what the job entailed, and make my decision.
My visit took place on a typical June day for Washington, which meant ninety-degree temperatures and high humidity. The Edwards office was in the Dirksen Building, a big slab that occupies half a block along Constitution Avenue between First and Second streets NE. Built in the 1950s, the place is covered in marble that is so white, at certain times of day you risk temporary blindness from the reflected sunlight when you step outside.
Will Austin, the man I would replace, and my old friend Julianna Smoot met me at the Edwards suite, which was on the second floor. They showed me around, introduced me to the people who would be my coworkers, and talked about the job. Based on what they said, my assignment would be demanding, but I thought I could handle it. However, Julianna and Will didn’t explain the real challenge involved until we had left the building for lunch and settled into an outdoor table at a little restaurant.
For several minutes, the two of them talked about the pressure they felt working on the Hill and the cutthroat nature of the competition both inside the Edwards office and with the staff who worked for other members of the Senate. A case in point was Josh Stein, who had done more to get John Edwards elected senator than anyone because he had run the Senate campaign. Josh had served as “acting” chief of staff or deputy chief of staff. But he never got the chief of staff job on a permanent basis because of Mrs. Edwards. She told me that she believed that Josh kept things from her, and that made her suspicious. (In fact, Senator Edwards often told key staffers to withhold things from his wife.) Eventually, her disapproval would drive him back to North Carolina, where he won election to the state senate.
Will and Julianna did their best to make me understand the environment inside the Edwards operation-they used the term snakepit and warned, “They’ll suck you dry”-but I didn’t really want to hear it. I was too busy thinking about how inspiring it would be to walk to work on Capitol Hill every morning and take my daily run on the National Mall in the shadow of the Smithsonian Institution. I insisted that Cheri and I were ready for the move, that everything would Krytbe okay.
“But Andrew, you have everything you could want right now,” said Julianna. “You have a beautiful wife, a baby, a house, and the chance at a normal life. That’s what we all want and don’t have. Why would you want to come up here and give that all away? D.C. is miserable. The people here suck.”
It was almost impossible for me to understand what they were saying. Washington seemed beautiful, exciting, and full of opportunities. The job was a perfect fit for someone with my skills, and it would put me at the center of the action. Cheri and Brody were going to come north with me. The senator was even giving me a big raise to go with the new title, and he insisted we use their condominium in Alexandria -just across the Potomac from Washington -rent-free while we got settled. What could possibly go wrong?
You know how most babies are lulled to sleep when you put them in a car seat and start driving? Not Brody. He hated the car and cried for much of the four-hour trip up Interstates 85 and 95 and into the District of Columbia. Cheri did her best to quiet him, and from where I sit now, years later, I have to say she also did her best to bury her own anxieties about moving to Washington and leaving behind a house still undergoing renovation and a good, stable life. I had asked her to “just believe” in the move in the same way that I had asked her to “just believe” when we met and got married. Things had worked out so far, so she set aside concerns about money and the fact that she didn’t know a soul in Washington and came along.
When we got to the city, we went straight to the Embassy Row district and the Edwards mansion on Thirtieth Street NW, where the neighbors included the ambassadors from Italy, the United Kingdom, Brazil, and South Africa. A massive seven-bedroom house with marble walls and a sweeping central staircase, the place reeked of power and money, but when the Edwardses met us at the door, they seemed like the same people we knew in North Carolina. If anything, they were even more down-home friendly, and they welcomed us as if we were good friends. They insisted we have dinner with them, and the senator grabbed his car keys and said, “C’mon, Andrew, let’s get some ribs.”
When we got in the car, I realized that this was the first time I had ever ridden while he drove. And when we took off in the direction of Connecticut Avenue and his favorite hole-in-the-wall barbecue joint, it struck me that I had no idea where we were going. It was a little unnerving to give up control, and the experience made it clear to me that I had left a certain comfort zone. The senator and Mrs. Edwards seemed to sense what Cheri and I were feeling, and they talked about how much time we would spend with them and how they would help us ease into our new life. When they gave us the key to their condo and directions to Alexandria, they told us not to worry about using it and to stay as long as we wanted. No rent. No worries.
It was late evening when we finally got to our temporary home, and no doubt our first impression was affected by o K afur fatigue. However, even after a good night’s sleep, the free condo was still a dark and depressing space with furnishings from the 1970s, as well as an orange shag carpet, a bare-bones kitchen, a living room with a sofa and TV, and a tiny bedroom. It was on the second floor of an odd-looking building that had dozens of units, but we never saw a single other soul coming or going. The neighborhood struck us as cold, not family friendly, and we quickly decided it was not the kind of place where Cheri would be comfortable hanging out alone with Brody while I was at work.
Two days of house hunting with Elizabeth convinced us that we could not possibly afford to buy or even rent a house in Washington like the one we had in Raleigh. We eventually found something we could afford-a gutted condominium in the Watergate complex-and signed a contract to buy it. While we waited for the closing, we took out a month-to-month lease on a nicer apartment in a big complex in the Virginia suburb of McLean. It was the kind of place where almost everyone (me included) left so early in the morning and returned so late at night that it might as well have been a ghost town. Alone and isolated, Cheri spent her days with a brand-new baby who fussed and cried all day long and never slept through the night. As the weeks passed she grew more miserable, feeling she had lost her comfortable home, the support of friends, and even her husband.
I became one of those workaholic drones who kissed his wife and baby good-bye at dawn, fought the traffic all the way to the office, and spent the next twelve hours or more in a constant frenzy of phone calls, meetings, and paperwork. To make matters worse, I learned that politics in D.C. is not like politics in good old North Carolina. It’s a full-contact sport where you have to watch your own back.
That lesson came on my first day at my new desk beside the door to the senator’s private office. The person who sat closest to me, who had been Will’s assistant, was supposed to show me the ropes, but she was unhappy about being passed over for the job I had gotten. (The Edwardses had clearly led her to believe she would get it.) Although we ended up being close friends, we had a rough start, and she won round one. She told me a bit about working with the senator and his key people and how to set the schedule and then left me to fend for myself. I could feel her smile at my back as she watched me, the upstart from North Carolina, fail miserably. I could not cope with three desk phones that seemed to ring constantly (and often simultaneously) and a stream of people who just showed up at my desk demanding time with the boss. I kept a cheat sheet on my desk, but I still had to learn a new vocabulary-what’s the cloakroom?-and the meaning of the bells that kept ringing (they signaled votes on the Senate floor). While all this was going on, I experienced frequent moments of startled amazement as famous men and women rang the phone. Once John McCain called to speak to the senator, and I looked up to see him on television at the same moment.
I thought I was handling things fairly well when suddenly the door marked “Private,” which led to an outside hallway, swung open with a bang and a loud voice boomed, “Edwards! How the fuck am I gonna get you elected president if I can’t get you on the fuckin’ telephone?”
I looked up to see Senator Edward Kennedy Kdwabarreling toward me. He had some papers in one hand, and in the other he held a leash attached to a big dog with curly black hair. (Called a Portuguese water dog, the breed would become famous when Kennedy gave one to President Obama’s family.)
Only Kennedy could get away with keeping a dog in the U.S. Capitol, and only Kennedy could charge through a private entrance and expect to see my boss immediately. He was stopped by a door that had been closed when Senator Edwards announced he needed to lie down on his sofa and get a bit of rest. When I told Kennedy I would get the senator for him, he asked why no one had answered the many calls he had placed to the private telephone that was one of the three on my desk.
Senator Kennedy then explained that the telephone I had been using all day to place calls was, in fact, a sort of hotline for the White House and senators. It was not to be used except in an emergency. As the door to the inner office opened and Senator Edwards appeared, I was in the middle of apologizing. Both men started to smile, and I could tell the little crisis had passed. Kennedy’s face softened.
“Did you know this used to be my office?” he asked, leaning down to me, his voice taking on an almost conspiratorial tone. He then launched into a story from 1980, when he ran for president and was assigned a Secret Service detail for protection. One day while Kennedy was in his office, the agent on duty slipped away for a moment with an aide with whom he was having an affair. (“This was before it was cool to be openly gay,” said Kennedy.) In the time when the agent was gone, a would-be attacker slipped into the office with a knife. “Fortunately, the agent returned in time and he tackled the guy, right here!”
Kennedy slammed his hand on my desk with a whack, which startled me and made Senator Edwards laugh. The two men then retreated to his office, where they talked politics for a while. When they emerged, Edwards said, “Hey, Andrew. Don’t use that line anymore.” Later, Kennedy would invite me to his “hideaway” office in the Capitol building. Tucked in nooks and crannies behind unmarked doors, these private offices are prized bits of real estate that few people ever get to visit. Kennedy’s was filled with pictures of his family and one of John F. Kennedy’s famous rocking chairs.
At about this time, I saw Senator Kennedy again at the Capital Grille, where he met Senator Edwards for lunch. After he asked me how I found life in Washington and I told him I barely left the office, he told me another story. “Yeah, it’s not like it was when I first got here,” he said. “It used to be civilized. The media was on our side. We’d get our work done by one o’clock and by two we were at the White House chasing women. We got the job done, and the reporters focused on the issues.” He passed for dramatic effect and added, “It was civilized.”
As much as I loved Kennedy, Bill Clinton occupied a level of professional politics that was all his own. Despite his many controversies, when he was engaged, no one had better instincts, a better command of the issues, or a better network of powerful, loyal supporters. In a town full of great egos, no one disputed this assessment. One of the Kt. most illuminating duties I performed while in Washington involved driving Senator Edwards, Senator Chris Dodd, and a couple of other Democrats to a meeting with Clinton where he allowed them to pick his brain. I waited outside, and when my charges returned and we got back on the road, they all sat in stunned silence. Clinton had been so impressive that they didn’t know what to say. Finally, Dodd muttered, “I don’t care how long I live. I’ll never be that good.”
The experience with Dodd and the others proved the value of being the guy who drove for a senator. Ironically, for someone who often served as a driver, I have an incredibly bad sense of direction, which was why I once tried to get out of driving Edwards to Andrews Air Force Base for his first ride on Air Force One. I didn’t know the route and told the senator to have someone else drive, but he insisted he knew how to go. We left with just enough time to get there but got terribly lost. The Secret Service called several times, and the president finally left without us. Edwards missed his flight, and of course he said it was my fault. Within a few weeks of being in Washington, I had two strikes: the mix-up with Kennedy and the Air Force One fiasco.
Fortunately, most days didn’t bring dramatic challenges or encounters with intimidating world leaders. On most days I worked from early morning until well past dinnertime, juggling phones, reviewing hundreds of requests for appointments, and playing palace guard whenever the senator decided he had had enough and just closed his door to rest. When the Senate was in session, I had to keep track of floor votes-signaled by the bells system-and make sure the senator got to the chamber on time. On occasion, this would require me to race outside to the Mall (where he might be jogging) or to the Senate gym, where a lot of members liked to hide from their staff s, the public, and lowly members of the House of Representatives, all of whom were denied access.
As much as senators may project an aura of deliberation, dignity, and decorum, the facts of life inside the world’s most exclusive club are much messier. Many times, senators cast votes on the basis of a signal from a staffer or a party leader, and they have no idea about the matters being considered. Aides often control the flow of business; I once heard that the cloakroom staff-who were among the most powerful people on Capitol Hill-delayed bringing the senators to the chamber for a vote because they wanted to see the end of an episode of the TV program 24. On several occasions I would have to chase down the senator, because he had gone for a run and refused to wear a cell phone or pager. More than once I put him in my car so he could get to the cloakroom on time. He’d stand in the doorway of the Senate in shorts or sweats to signal thumbs-up or thumbs-down to have his vote recorded.
No one talks about how rules are bent and senators cast a lot of blind votes, because the illusion of a serious legislative body at work is useful to us all. It reassures voters, who want to believe that their men and women in Washington are serious about the public’s business, and it reinforces the Senate’s aura of authority, which can be a valuable thing in times of crisis. (We all want to think they are superior human beings wh Kumaen matters of war and peace are under consideration.) Besides, as everyone in Washington likes to say, politics is like sausage making: You really don’t want to know how it’s done.
For the sausage makers-elected officials, their aides, consultants, pollsters, and party hacks-the product of all the effort must include, first and foremost, getting elected and reelected. This is why first-term presidents and members of the House and Senate live in a state of continual campaigning and fund-raising. Senators spend roughly a third of their time raising money for campaigns, and if they aspire to higher office, they must consider how every vote and every public statement might affect their future.
From the moment Senator Edwards first heard he was being considered as Gore’s running mate, he imagined himself as a future president and shifted his focus away from the work of the Senate. Mrs. Edwards had the same idea and was even more enthusiastic about their prospects for inhabiting the White House. They both began to read everything they could find about national politics and global issues, including the briefing materials produced by the staff. And they began to host weekly policy dinners at their mansion, where they learned from experts who understood issues, public opinion, and the quirky system that the parties use to pick nominees. The main features of this process include early straw polls, caucuses in Iowa, and the primary election in New Hampshire. Iowa and New Hampshire are two small rural states that cannot possibly reflect the will of the nation but can make or break a candidate. Iowa has a particularly arcane process that requires voters to stand in certain places to be counted for their candidate, and the horse-trading can go on all day.
Although every senator sees a future president in the mirror every morning, decorum prevents the hopefuls from formally announcing their intentions until a year or so before the caucuses. (It’s just bad manners to let your giant ego show any earlier.) For this reason, precampaign planning takes place behind a curtain of secrecy that adds a little thrill for those involved. I got behind the curtain in early September 2001, when I organized a day-long strategy session at the Edwardses’ Embassy Row house.
The living room at the mansion was so big that it could accommodate fifteen people, arranged in a big circle of sofas and upholstered chairs, with room to spare. The original list of attendees was actually sixteen, but just days before we got together, Julianna had a bitter falling-out with Mrs. Edwards. The senator publicly claimed that Julianna had resigned after an argument about record keeping, but he later told me the truth. The problem had been a personal conflict with Mrs. Edwards, as it had been with Josh. Julianna was replaced in the coming campaign by a couple of seasoned fund-raisers named Steve Jarding and Dave “Mudcat” Saunders. Mudcat was a colorful Southerner who liked to say he was going to make John Edwards the favorite of “grits-eatin’, gun-totin’ rednecks all over.” Mrs. Edwards loved him.
I was upset about Julianna’s absence but soon got lost in the excitement of the business at hand-planning K821a presidential campaign-and the impressive circle I had been welcomed to join. When the meeting began at ten A.M., I was seated next to Bob Shrum, a balding, middle-aged man with sloping shoulders who was one of the most experienced political consultants in the country. Shrum was famous for never having backed a winning presidential candidate, but to be fair, his man Gore had won the popular vote in 2000. Shrum had also guided dozens of people to victorious races for the House and Senate and authored some very important speeches, including Ted Kennedy’s 1980 convention address, which was one of the best political addresses in American history. Our side of the room also included pollster Harrison Hickman and Erskine Bowles, a North Carolina native who had been chief of staff in the Clinton White House. Among the rest of the participants were Edwards aides, his friend Tom Girardi (the lawyer in the famous Erin Brockovich case), and, of course, Senator and Mrs. Edwards.
The senator, who wore blue jeans and a light blue button-down shirt, opened the daylong session with a three-page, single-spaced speech that he stood up to read. After thanking everyone for attending, he said, “You are all here because I think you are smart, I trust you to tell me the truth, and I need your help.”
As the senator explained, we were not there to help him decide on a run for president in 2004. He was already assuming that he would run and that we would be on the team. “Each of you will make big sacrifices for me, sacrifices that Elizabeth and I can never repay,” he predicted. “But you can be certain that I will work as hard as I can on the things I am responsible for.” Edwards added that his immediate goals included “raising a ton of money, learning more about issues, getting to know opinion leaders and political leaders nationally, figuring out better ways to talk about these issues, to explain my views, and maintaining a good public image that will help whether I run for reelection or run for president.”
The discussion that followed consumed the entire day. Everyone was concerned about a possible Gore candidacy and the repercussions of running against the Democrat who was “robbed” in 2000. The only other candidates even being discussed within the party were Joe Lieberman, Dick Gephardt, Massachusetts senator John Kerry, and Senate majority leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota. This was hardly an intimidating lineup to Edwards, and as we considered Edwards’s national connections, his charisma, and his fund-raising potential, he looked more and more like a winner.
When Shrum got his chance to speak at length, he opened a notebook and ran through a series of points, touching on everything from the key elements of organizing a campaign to media strategy and policy priorities. I was blown away by the breadth of his expertise, and during a coffee break I told Hickman I was very impressed. Hickman, turning competitive, said, “Don’t be impressed, Andrew. That’s the same exact shit he’s been saying since 1980. The same recurgitated stuff.”
As lunch was served, the group worked on a long list of items that would have to be accomplished before Edwards could announce he was running. He had created a political action committee (PAC), which could be staffed to raise money, research issues, and support K, acandidates in key states who could be helpful later. We talked about setting priorities for the senator’s time in Washington, North Carolina, and around the country, and we reviewed a series of conferences where we could bring together experts in areas such as economics, foreign policy, and health care so the senator could become better informed. As a member of Senate committees that dealt with intelligence, health care, science, and commerce, he was already positioned to speak out on most of the important issues, but he needed to make himself more visible. As part of this effort, he would have to go on some fact-finding missions abroad, where he could beef up his image as a world leader. Of course, the issues didn’t matter if we couldn’t use them to connect with the public. Here the senator stressed “getting exposure with the people who matter.” This meant national media and TV and print in places like Iowa and New Hampshire.
For me, the fellow with such a profound fear of public speaking that he remained silent all day, the meeting was a crash course in presidential politics taught by people who understood the process. For example, amateurs who think the first important races take place in Iowa and New Hampshire don’t understand that the candidates fight one another first in a contest over money. Months before any votes are cast, pundits scan campaign finance reports to see who is raising the most dough. The leader in that race can pay for more staff, ads, and travel and is anointed the front-runner. At the same time, candidates take positions on issues with fund-raising in mind. If you want to get donations from oil executives, for example, it helps to be a supporter of drilling in the Alaska wilderness. Money is so important that even if you are the most brilliant candidate, political commentators will relegate you to second-class status if you are not among the top three in fund-raising. Below this level, you simply cannot compete in a national campaign.
I also learned that day that geography is not necessarily destiny when it comes to party politics. A lot of people were worried that Iowa governor Tom Vilsack might jump into the mix. If he did, he could expect to win the first voting of the season at the Iowa caucuses. Some might see this turn of events as a negative, but you could also conclude that Vilsack would take Iowa out of play for everyone, which meant that a candidate like Edwards could concentrate all his time and money on the New Hampshire primary. If he did that and won in the Granite State, he’d become the overall leader.
In nine hours, not one person said anything to discourage the senator from running. In fact, everyone who spoke had supported the idea, and they all seemed to assume they would have positions in the future campaign. I would include myself in this group, and as the senator stood up to end the day’s work, I thought about being part of the team, accompanying him on campaign trips, waiting out election night returns, and celebrating victory.
Few things in adult life can match the passion and excitement of being a key player in a political campaign. During the days, weeks, and months of hard work devoted to a shared goal, people start to feel like soldiers in a battle or members of a football team driving toward a championship. You come to believe that your side stands for all that is good and the other side represents ignorance and evil. Fueled with adrenaline, ego, and hope, you work harder than you ever dreamed you could, accomplish things you never thought you could, and Kou form bonds stronger than those of family. In the end, you get a score-the election results-that tells you whether you have won or lost. The verdict can test your nerves, but no matter how it works out, you know you were in the game-in this case, the ultimate game-and that can be deeply satisfying. Visions of the campaign danced in all our heads as the meeting at the senator’s home ended, and then, as everyone stood, Erskine Bowles spoke:
“Senator, what would you tell someone who asked you, ‘Why should I vote for you to be president? What makes you the most qualified candidate?’ ”
The room fell silent. The senator looked at Bowles with a mixture of surprise and anger, and then he struggled to answer. He said something about how his upbringing and career fighting for ordinary people against giant corporations had prepared him to lead. When this didn’t come out right, he added some thoughts about health care and education and making things better for the middle class. But he offered no grand vision of America or big policy ideas, and as he struggled, I realized that in all the hours of talk, no one had said anything about what an Edwards presidency would mean for America. There had been no discussion of what he stood for. Edwards was caught off guard, but in a way Bowles had helped him by exposing how unprepared he was. The senator later told me that Bowles had made him very angry. The two men would never become close.
I drove Bowles to his hotel that night, and because traffic was bad, we wound up spending an hour in the car together. He said the senator was indeed an appealing political figure, but he had serious doubts about the timing. A 2004 bid, if it went badly, might end his chances forever. For this reason, he would advise Edwards to get more seasoning in the Senate-“actually do some good work with the opportunity he has there”-and run in 2008. He would make a better candidate then and, if he won, a better president (Bowles’s experience as Clinton ’s chief of staff had taught him that presidential politics and the office itself were brutally demanding.) I understood his point but heard Edwards’s counterargument in my head: He had a tenuous hold on his seat and might not win reelection in 2004. If North Carolina rejected him then, he wouldn’t have a chance at higher office later.
By the time I dropped him off, I was convinced that Bowles had given Senator Edwards what he had asked for-his best straightforward advice. I admired his intelligence and honesty and the fact that he refused to let me help him bring his luggage and golf clubs inside. This little kindness made it easier for me to get home to see Cheri, who had once again spent the day alone and made me a well-balanced dinner that went cold on the stove.
Real estate never cured anything, but Cheri and I hoped that the tiny Watergate apartment we had bought (at a bargain price, because it was gutted) might make life a little easier. The McLean commute was adding about two hours to my workday. If we lived at the Watergate, I could spend most of that time at home with Cheri and Brody. I still had to drive, because I needed my Suburban to ferry the senator around, so ma K arss transit was out; but it was much closer to the office. Cheri would be able to walk to shopping or even visit me for lunch. We both had these benefits in mind on the morning of September 11, 2001, the date we were supposed to close on the purchase. As usual, I needed to be at work early and spend the entire day stuck behind my desk. For this reason, we arranged to sign all the papers separately. I went to the office, did some work, and then drove to the bank so I would be there when it opened at nine A.M. Cheri would come later in the morning with Brody and drive herself home.
Shock jocks were one of my guilty pleasures back then, and I had my radio tuned to one of the local morning madness shows when the person who read the news interrupted the raunchy jokes to report that a plane had crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. The men on the program brushed her off with a little banter about a wayward pilot in a Cessna, but she didn’t join in. She seemed to have a hunch that something more serious was going on.
In the lobby of the bank, I noticed the security guard there was watching the news-including live pictures of the World Trade Center -on a little portable TV. I went inside, found the office handling the closing, and quickly signed a stack of papers. As I walked back through the lobby, I saw that the guard’s TV was still tuned to the news, only now a second plane had hit the south tower. Witnesses had begun to report that both strikes had been made by jet airliners, not prop planes, and it was starting to seem that a coordinated attack, using hijacked planes, was under way.
My schedule that day called for me to meet the senator at the Capitol building. In those times before the 9/11 attacks, a staffer with a senator’s license plate could park right beside the Capitol steps, as I did that morning. As police ran mirrors under the car (for security purposes), tourists gawked into the blackened-out glass to try to see who was inside. People pulled out their cameras and asked me to roll down the window. I got out and stood on the steps beside my car, Diet Coke on ice, motor running, when the city just got quiet. Suddenly, officers were running around and people were streaming out of the building. Sirens began to wail in the distance, and someone in the crowd said the Pentagon had been bombed. (In fact, it too had been hit by a plane, and 125 people had been killed.)
The events of 9/11 have become a shared national story, and it’s not necessary for me to outline here all that happened to the country that day. Like millions of Americans, I first tried to call home but discovered that the cell phone system would not work. (I heard that security officials shut down Service so the terrorists could not use their phones.) I then went to the Dirksen Building, where I ran into the senator coming out of the building. I called the Capitol police and asked where I should take him. They were overwhelmed and offered to take him to a secure location, but not any of his family members. Only senators in the direct line of succession to the White House get Secret Service protection, not rookie senators. They were polite but busy. Angered, Edwards drove home alone to be with his family.
Since big symbolic buildings were obviously targets, the po1ice evacuated the Capitol and all the congressional office buildings. The radio was alre Kradady reporting that many streets and highways were being shut down, so I knew I couldn’t get home. With no alternative, I jogged over to the office we used for campaign fund-raising, which was in a nondescript building that would never attract an attacker. Staffers welcomed me, and we watched the day unfold on several small TVs. We tried to make sense of what we were seeing and compare it with rumors everyone had heard about helicopters being shot down on the Mall and other possible incidents. Each of us took turns using the landlines to try to call loved ones. I quickly discovered that phone service to Greater Washington, including McLean, was still blacked out, but I was able to call family out of state. With their help, Cheri and I were able to pass messages to each other.
The cell phones never did work that day, and by late afternoon the police had yet to reopen all the roads. I walked/hitchhiked to one of the Potomac bridges, crossed to the other side, and then managed to flag down a cab that brought me home to McLean. The sun had already set, and Cheri was way past overwrought. After months of isolation, single parenting, living out of homes in two states, dinners for one, and now an attack on the Pentagon-which was close to the Watergate-she had reached a decision. She didn’t want the life of the stay-at-home wife and mother supported by a Capitol Hill staffer who worked up to eighteen hours a day and weekends, too.
“Brody and I are going back to North Carolina,” she told me. “You can come with us if you want to.”
The expression on Cheri’s face made it clear that her mind was made up. Within a few days, her car was packed and she drove back to Raleigh. We agreed that I would try to follow as soon as possible. For a few months, she lived primarily in Raleigh but occassionally visited me in Virginia. I tried to stick it out but I had to recognize that living apart so much caused too many problems. At one point, in the middle of an argument she turned to me and said, “Andrew, you’re stuck with me, so you might as well get used to it.” To someone whose parents had divorced, sweeter words had never been spoken.
By Thanksgiving, I knew I didn’t fit in Washington-I was not cut out for that kind of politics-and needed to find a way to return to North Carolina. This is not to say there weren’t some extraordinary moments for me during my Washington duty. Cheri and I got to use the senator’s tickets to see a symphony at the Kennedy Center, and he insisted I use Elizabeth’s ticket to sit in the visitors’ gallery at President Bush’s first State of the Union address following the 9/11 attack. (She was worried about a terrorist attack, and as parents the Edwardses always avoided being in the same place when they had any fear of a dangerous incident.) But the occasional symphony or special event cannot restore balance to your life. We were determined to reclaim our life in North Carolina, so we sold the place at the Watergate, and to save money I moved out of McLean and into a tiny basement apartment in the city. (It had just one little window, and that was in the bathroom.) I didn’t tell anyone at work that I was fixing to leave, but I started planning and looking for the right moment to give my notice. In the meantime, I marveled at the cutthroat competition for advancement that dominates life on Capitol Hill.
I Koma watched from afar as a staffer named Miles Lackey maneuvered to replace chief of staff Jeff Lane. Miles made his key move at the end of the year, when he accompanied the senator on a trip abroad that included Afghanistan, where U.S. forces had just ousted the Taliban rulers who had given safe haven to al-Qaeda. Soon after their return, Lane was out and Lackey was in. At around the same time, another staffer left after a conflict with Elizabeth over the Christmas card list, which had been expanded to include many political figures in Iowa and New Hampshire. Another colleague had so many stress-related outbursts that he was required to get anger management counseling.
My unhappiness must have been pretty obvious, because eventually John Edwards noticed. I was driving him out to Dulles International Airport (National was still closed because of 9/11 security concerns), and he suddenly just said, “You don’t like it up here, do you, Andrew.”
“No, Senator, I really don’t.”
“You want to go back to North Carolina?”
“Yeah.”