Gephardt, like no other, weaves his life into campaign
By Jill Lawrence, USA TODAY
SIOUX CITY, Iowa — Dick Gephardt, Democratic presidential candidate, is describing every parent's worst nightmare.
Thirty years later, he still remembers his wife's tears, the doctor's words. Their 18-month-old son, Matt, had a huge tumor on his prostate. It was too big to take out and wouldn't respond to chemotherapy. The small auditorium at Morningside College is silent as Gephardt quotes the doctor's verdict: "He's not going to be alive in four weeks."
Matt is now 32, married and living in Atlanta. "He's a gift from God. He shouldn't be here," the Missouri congressman tells his rapt listeners. And he wouldn't be, Gephardt adds, except for good health insurance — which everyone will have when he's president.
In a season when almost all the Democratic contenders are relying on the personal to enhance the political, Gephardt is running perhaps the most personal campaign of all. Four, six, eight times a day, in living rooms, cafes, classrooms and libraries, he unspools The Dick Gephardt Story: an impassioned, occasionally wry tale of one man's life. It's all woven into an indictment of the Bush administration and plans for a Gephardt administration.
It's much livelier than what people expect from a man who spent 27 years in the House, 13 of them as Democratic leader. And it may be working.
Gephardt, the plodding party workhorse, wants to be the alternative to Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor whose campaign is propelled by the Internet and anti-war sentiment. But can Gephardt, who once called himself "not the flashiest candidate around," turn himself into a show horse? "I really do believe that I can excite people," Gephardt, wedged into a tiny plane headed from Denison to Sioux City, says as he eats a piece of peach pie. "But I've got to get the chance to do it. The chance is the nomination."
Gephardt, 62, ran for the presidential nomination in 1988, and Iowa was the only state he won. The three most striking aspects of his second try are large-scale policy proposals, a focus on his own life and a relaxed demeanor. All can be attributed to his liberation from congressional politics. He has stepped down as Democratic leader, and he isn't running for re-election. He's finally breaking out of bland.
"To be successful in the legislative process, you must be boring. He achieved that," says Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. "But I've seen the change. He's much more attractive as a public figure than he's ever been."
TRAGEDY = CAMPAIGN FODDER
One candidate writes of his teenage son's death. Two talk about their Vietnam service. A fourth recounts the near-death of his toddler. Another discusses his brother's death in Laos.
The political is highly personal this season for the Democratic presidential field.
Dennis Goldford, chairman of the political science department at Drake University, says the technique helps candidates "form that personal bond so the voter says 'that guy understands me.' " Military allusions tell voters that "like you, I am a patriot."
Peverill Squire, a political scientist at the University of Iowa, says hardship is better left to TV ads and books. Face to face, he says, "it makes people uncomfortable. They begin to think that you're using it for political purposes rather than as a way of suggesting 'this is why I am the way I am.' "
Missouri Rep. Dick Gephardt's policy proposals stem from his son Matthew's cancer and other family trials. Other examples:
Howard Dean writes in Winning Back America, his new book, about his younger brother Charlie's disappearance 29 years ago in Laos. Dean campaigns wearing an old black belt that was Charlie's. The discovery last month of remains believed to be Charlie's prompted Dean to make unusually personal comments. He talked to reporters about survivors' guilt and the anxiety that led him to seek grief counseling in the 1980s.
Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry talks about his prostate cancer in a new television ad. A decorated combat veteran injured in Vietnam, Kerry often reminds voters of his service. A new book by historian Douglas Brinkley, previewed in The Atlantic Monthly, is based on Kerry's writings as a young soldier. "Time will never heal this," he wrote to his parents after a good friend was killed.
Retired general Wesley Clark's first ad describes his injuries in Vietnam. He said at an appearance last week that Dean was skiing "when I was recovering from my wounds."
North Carolina Sen. John Edwards writes of his 16-year-old son's death in a 1996 car accident in his book, Four Trials. His pitch to voters includes references to growing up the son of a mill worker in a small town.
By Jill Lawrence, USA TODAY
What the crystal balls say
Sabato rates the candidates' chances of winning the nomination in a monthly "Crystal Ball" report. He moved Gephardt up to second place, behind Dean, in his December update Tuesday. National Journal's weekly "insider survey" of 50 political professionals also puts Gephardt's chances as second to Dean's. Stuart Rothenberg, publisher of an independent political newsletter, grades the pair the highest in a report card on the candidates and their campaigns.
Gephardt's support for the Iraq war and $87 billion to pay for the aftermath isn't popular with Iowa's liberals. Asked if he's worried, Gephardt called the war "the right thing to do. I have to do what I think is right for the country."
Gephardt leads in one recent poll of likely participants in the Iowa caucuses, Dean in another. The two are waging an ad war on Iowa TV — Dean criticizing Gephardt's views on Iraq, Gephardt responding by suggesting Dean's a hypocrite. They also disparaged each other in the Democrats' debate Nov. 24 in Des Moines.
Craig Crawford, a columnist for Congressional Quarterly, says Dean's first target is "quite telling. Gephardt is emerging as the lone establishment Democrat who could slow Dean's momentum."
Gephardt is doing poorly in polls in New Hampshire, which holds the first primary Jan. 27. Although he has support from 21 international unions, he lost two important labor endorsements to Dean. He hasn't raised large amounts of money (although he says he's doing better of late), and he isn't using it to impress at splashy events. "Less hoopla, more organization has been our mantra," says Steve Murphy, Gephardt's campaign manager. "The glitz is going to come from winning."
Personal policies
Gephardt first started talking about Matt's ordeal in 1993 and 1994, as a way to explain why the Clinton health care plan was needed. "It really seemed to make that connection," he says in an interview aboard his plane. "I grew up in a time when you didn't talk about yourself. But I began to see that that was important in getting people to understand."
So when he developed his campaign proposals, "I just thought I need to tell people what I know about this, how I know about it and why I care about it."
Gephardt delivers his stump speech like a dramatic monologue, alternating calm passages with tirades against Bush. His rhetoric is as angry as Dean's (sample line: "If we have four more years of this crowd, we're going to be on our knees"). But the effect is leavened by scripted quips and family stories.
Chrissy Gephardt, Gephardt's daughter who is a lesbian, recently appeared on CNN with her father and, at his request, campaigns for him around the country. She doesn't figure in his stump speech, at least in Iowa, but everyone else in his family does:
• His father, who lost his union job driving a milk truck because of a bad back. "He never had that much money again," Gephardt tells a group at Cronk's restaurant in Denison. He never had enough money to pay all his bills, Gephardt says, and in 21 years never made a payment on the principal of his $4,000 house.
• His mother, who died several months ago at 95. "Wonderful woman," he says at Sam's Sodas & Sandwiches in Carroll, a row of Norman Rockwell prints hanging behind him. "Worked five different jobs. Wound up with one pension from one employer, $42 a month. She had credit in all of them, but nobody tied them together."
• His wife, Jane, who has campaigned for him 16 times — twice for St. Louis City Council and 14 times for the House. "Sometimes now when I introduce her, I choke up because of what she's done to help me," he says in Waukee, and sure enough, he is choking up.
• His daughter Kate, who had to live at home as an adult because her teaching salary was only $17,000. Gephardt says he felt so bad for her he agreed to repay her college loans — and fully expects to still be making payments after eight years in the White House.
• Matt. After the diagnosis, "I remember just holding him and not wanting to let him go. Because I didn't think he was going to make it," Gephardt says quietly in Sioux City. "The next day the doctor said, 'We found some new therapy; we don't think it'll work; your insurance will cover it' — magic words — 'We're gonna try.' "
Gephardt and his daughter Chrissy disagree on gay marriage — she supports it, he opposes it — and although he says the country needs to do more to end discrimination against gays, he isn't advancing specific policies.
But the rest of the family's travails are the basis for many of his proposals. Among them: a portable pension plan that would let workers take their pensions with them to new jobs; a Teacher Corps that would pay off college loans for students who agree to teach for five years; trade policies designed to protect U.S. jobs and lift living standards for Third World workers; and a health plan — "Matt's Plan" — that Gephardt says would offer insurance to everyone.
Gephardt would repeal all of Bush's tax cuts, even the ones that benefit lower- and middle-income people, to finance "Matt's Plan." Gephardt's health care plan builds on the current employment-based system and would cost more than $200 billion a year. He says it will create more jobs than Bush's tax cuts and put more money in the average family's pocket. "I'll also argue to you that this is a moral issue," he says.
Gephardt is aware the plan could be used against him, particularly in a general election, because low- and middle-income families will lose tax relief. But he says his plan will give them four times as much in savings on insurance. "Bush will say 'Gephardt wants to raise your taxes,' " he tells Iowa voters. "I'm not going to let him get by with that. His tax cuts are for the wealthy. So bring him on. I want to have that argument. I'll take it to him every step of the way."
Sometimes personal politics can backfire. "It didn't go down too well with a lot of people" when Al Gore linked his sister's cancer death to tobacco politics at the 1996 Democratic convention, says Peverill Squire, a political scientist at the University of Iowa.
'He doesn't put us down'
But in Denison, in Carroll, in Waukee, people say they are happily surprised by Gephardt. In Waukee, Tom Spear, 63, says he's now leaning toward him and away from Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry. "I was very impressed, more than I thought I would be," the retired school superintendent says. "He doesn't put us down as folksy farmers. I feel that John Kerry sometimes does that a little bit."
Spear also says he's not sure Kerry could win the Midwest against Bush — but Gephardt probably could. Gephardt would rely on union support, his Midwestern roots and what he calls the public's yearning for "steady hands" in a terrorist era to help him beat Bush.
It's hard to see a path to the nomination if Gephardt loses here. Some don't even see one if he wins. Dean's campaign manager, Joe Trippi, worked for Gephardt in 1988. He says Gephardt is replaying a doomed "one-state strategy."
Murphy counters that Dean is running a one-state strategy — New Hampshire — and says Gephardt has "learned the lessons of 1988." The campaign has offices and paid staff in nine states and will add four more in January. In addition, Gephardt has full-time fundraising staff in California, New York, Florida and Texas.
Whether it works depends in large part on whether voters will take a second look at a man most of them know only as a talking head on TV, if they know him at all; a man who has never governed a state, never been elected outside of his congressional district, and is now trying to do what only James Garfield has done: win the White House from the U.S. House.
Asked if he'd recommend to aspiring presidents that they run for the House, Gephardt laughs. "I love the House," he says. "No regrets." |
