All the Truth Is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid (37 page)

When she spoke to me, Donna Rice certainly implied that she had lied at the time when she claimed nothing untoward had happened. It was an impossible situation, Rice told me, and she had said what she thought she was expected to say. But even twenty-six years later, she declined to be any more specific than that. When I
asked her why she continued to shield Hart, long after anyone but me really cared, she sighed.

“I guess it’s hard to explain,” Rice told me. “Just imagine that your whole life is out of control. Everything completely out of control. And the only thing you have any control over are your own choices going forward. You’ve made a decision that you want to take the high road, that you want to be seen as a person of integrity and character, in spite of the perception that has formed about you in the media and the public’s mind. And so every choice that I made was toward one that would not play into that image.”

In other words, it wasn’t only Hart’s reputation that Rice continued to try, with her silence, to salvage from the wreckage of history. It was also her own.

I was conflicted all along about whether to broach this subject with Hart, or whether to just to let it be. I hadn’t wanted to trip that particular emotional wire during our days of conversation on the front porch of the cabin or in the study, and certainly not while Lee was around. I didn’t look forward to enduring a lecture about how we journalists were all the same, and I feared that Hart would shut down and stop talking altogether. And so I waited, just as E. J. Dionne had done all those years ago, until all the other questions were asked. And by the time I arrived at the Dubliner, already partway through writing the book and intending for this to be our last interview, I was still trying to decide whether I had a responsibility to fully interrogate Hart about the sordid missing details of his story.

I can’t say he didn’t give me an opening, either, when he repeated his line, yet again and without my asking, about both parties denying there had been a relationship. I could have told him then that Donna Rice made clear she had obscured the truth. I could hear myself telling him that he had one last opportunity to get right with history, and he needed to take advantage of it.

As we sat there at the dimly lit table in back, though, it occurred to me that I was about to follow the same path, for the same reasons, as all the older journalists who had helped lead our politics into the
vacuous black hole it had become. I would be reduced to saying, essentially, that the story of Hart’s affair was already “out there,” that it needed at long last to be verified or disputed. I would tell him that I didn’t want to ask about such things—I had, in fact, spent my entire career avoiding them—but my readers expected me to ask and deserved to know. It would be my turn to argue that I really didn’t have a choice but to go where the story led.

But of course, I did have a choice. We all did, and we always had. This was exactly the point I had been stumbling toward all along. And so, as our talk wound down and Hart’s old aides began to drift into the pub, I closed my notebook and considered for a long moment this man across the table from me, still with the tailored suit and perfectly knotted tie of a statesman, still clutching his satchel of agenda items pertaining to the nation’s business.

For twenty-six years, he had maintained an unwavering silence about the seamy events of that week, and the myriad reasons for this weren’t really that hard to deduce, if you knew him at all. He stayed silent partly out of pride and arrogance—a refusal to acknowledge that he had been less than entirely truthful, even with himself. But he stayed silent, too, because he had already played a role in destroying the reputation of a young woman he barely knew, and he didn’t think it his prerogative to drag her through it again. Because the truth would only cause more pain to the devoted wife he had loved, in some deep and spiritual way, since they were teenagers, and the children whose admiration he cherished and had never lost. Because he harbored a fierce conviction that private affairs had no place in the public arena, and he was going to hold fast to that conviction until his dying breath, no matter how anachronistic it seemed to others.

There’s a way to describe a man who holds that tightly to principle, whatever the cost. The word is character.

I’ve chosen to cite the sources for my material in the text of the book itself, rather than annotating them separately. At the core of the book are more than twenty hours of conversation with Gary Hart, as well as dozens of interviews with aides, reporters, and other participants in the events of 1987 and afterward. Oral histories, though, can be misleading; years have a way of dulling some memories and cementing some myths. So wherever possible I’ve confirmed accounts with more than one source or with news accounts from the time. Where the recollections of sources conflict in ways that can’t really be reconciled, I’ve tried to be transparent in pointing that out.

I relied heavily on several books from the period, most notably Richard Ben Cramer’s
What It Takes
and Paul Taylor’s
See How They Run
, both of which offered excellent accounts. Along with these and the additional books I’ve cited throughout these pages, a handful of others informed my thinking in ways more general or tangential, and they deserve some mention, too. These include:
The Neoliberals
by Randall Rothenberg (on the rethinking of Democratic orthodoxy undertaken by Hart and his contemporaries);
Boyd
by Robert Coram (on the father of military reform); and
Star
by Peter Biskind (on the life and times of Warren Beatty).

Neil Postman’s
Amusing Ourselves to Death
served as a kind of North Star for my evaluation of media and social trends in the
1980s. It’s a brilliant, enduring work, and anyone who cares about the state of our public discourse should read it.

As I’ve learned, sometimes painfully, over the years, no work of reportage is flawless. Where sources have inadvertently led me astray, or where I may have mischaracterized or overlooked the accounts of others, I alone am responsible.

I am deeply indebted to Gary and Lee Hart, without whose immense courage and kindness this book could not have been written. Senator Hart is as sincere, patriotic, and thoughtful a man as I have encountered in American politics, and I hope this book causes others to reevaluate his legacy. He deserves that.

Many of those who worked for Hart or wrote about him in the 1980s took time to share their thoughts and memories. A few deserve special mention. Doug Wilson was the one who first encouraged me to think differently about Hart’s undoing when we met back in 2002, and he has been a constant source of encouragement ever since. Billy Shore answered countless queries with the same patience and consideration that endeared him to an earlier generation of campaign reporters. Bill Dixon and Kevin Sweeney shared their invaluable personal archives with me, and Kevin very kindly critiqued some early chapters for accuracy’s sake.

Many people went out of their way to track down long-lost primary sources or other leads for me, among them Andrea Owen of ABC News, Max Culhane (formerly of ABC), Valerie Komor and Monika Mathur of the Associated Press, Betsy Fischer of NBC News, Joshua Glasser, Neal McAliley, Tyler Bridges, the helpful folks at Carson Entertainment Group, and the outstanding staff of the Library of
Congress. I am grateful, too, to Keith Wessel and Andrea Modica for so graciously making their beautiful photographs available.

I could not have finished writing without the critical and timely support of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, under the leadership of Jane Harman, Robert Litwak, and Michael Van Dusen. The Wilson Center is a beacon of intellectual integrity in a city riven by ideological extremes, and I am honored to count myself among its extended family. The Hoover Institution at Stanford generously hosted me for a week during the earliest phase of my research, as well.

Several terrific researchers contributed mightily to this book. The historian and writer Jack Bohrer offered excellent material and thoughts on the history of presidents and their personal lives. Brock Groesbeck, my research assistant at the Wilson Center, insisted he knew nothing of politics, but if that’s true, he’s an awfully fast learner. Janet Spikes in the Wilson Center’s library dazzled me with her database wizardry. Kitty Bennett of
The New York Times
made time to assist me in tracking down elusive sources. And my friend Lucy Shackelford, the very best in the business, expertly scoured the manuscript for factual errors.

Two of the most gifted nonfiction writers in America today, Paul Tough and Neil Swidey, read finished drafts of the manuscript and helped me improve it. So did Joan Cramer, who honored me with her incisive notes and avid support at a time when she had far more pressing concerns. Richard Ehrenberg very patiently walked me through the section on electronic newsgathering. Several deep thinkers who lived through the events of 1987 let me bounce ideas off them early in the process, including David Kennedy, Evan Thomas, Mike McCurry, Gina Glantz, Robert Reich, and Anita Dunn.

I am in awe of Jonathan Segal, my sharp and sure-handed editor at Alfred A. Knopf. Jonathan rightly made me earn his trust by pressing me to refine my vision for the book, and then he stood by it fiercely and made it better at every turn. I’m grateful, too, to the legendary Sonny Mehta, as well as to Meghan Houser, Paul Bogaards, Erinn Hartman, Sara Eagle, Anne-Lise Spitzer, Loriel Olivier, Kim
Thornton, Peter Mendelsund, and the rest of the all-star team at Knopf, which really is everything a book publisher ought to be.

I never would have pursued this project, or not for long anyway, without the unwavering conviction of my agent, Sarah Chalfant, at the Wylie Agency. She is a friend, an ally, and a fellow believer in the power of words. That Andrew Wylie weighed in with encouragement meant a lot, too; when Andrew tells you to go write a book already, you write one, and you don’t ask why.

As it turned out, I completed this book during the last of my eleven years at
The New York Times Magazine
, a publication of which I will always be enormously proud. I owe a huge debt to the fabulous editors and researchers who were my partners over the years, among them Paul Tough, Gerry Marzorati, Joel Lovell, Ilena Silverman, Vera Titunik, Alex Star, Chris Suellentrop, Kathy Ryan, Aaron Retica, Ann Clarke, Sarah Smith, William Lin, Renee Michael, and Charles Wilson. I also benefited from the support and wisdom of such incredible fellow writers as Jonathan Mahler, Michael Sokolove, Sara Corbett, Peter Baker, and Adam Nagourney. Hugo Lindgren and Jill Abramson granted me time to write the book without a moment’s complaint. Megan Liberman brilliantly and indefatigably edited my online columns for both the magazine and the newspaper, and then offered me the irresistible chance to begin a whole new adventure with her at
Yahoo News
, which is trying to reimagine political coverage for a new generation.

Thinking back on my career to this point reminded me of how grateful I am to the editors who have given me extraordinary opportunities along the way: Matt Storin, Ann McDaniel, Adam Moss, Bill Keller, and especially my friend and mentor Gerry Marzorati. They are giants of the craft, and I hope I have justified their faith.

It would be impossible to mention all the friends and relatives who sustained this project, starting with my mother, Rhea Bai, and my sisters, Dina and Caroline. None gave more of themselves, or have given more to my writing over the years, than Jon Cowan, who is both a fearless thinker and a naturally gifted editor. Our great friends Debra Rosenberg and David Lipscomb read drafts and
offered wise suggestions, and Ilana and Jonathan Drimmer tormented me until I came up with a title they liked. My screenwriting partner Jay Carson inspired me with his unflagging enthusiasm, and Gina Cooper kept me going with homemade jam and wine. John and Ali Lapp and David Durman responded within seconds to my pleas for 1980s cultural references. Mary Grace Gatmaitan walled off my writing space from invading Pokemons and princesses, as she has for the last eight years.

Finally, and above all, there is the amazing Ellen Uchimiya, whose passion infuses every page of this book, including some that she bravely insisted I rip up and rewrite. If our beautiful children, Ichiro and Allegra, inherit half of Ellen’s curiosity, compassion, and blazing intellect, they’ll do just fine. That they’ve inherited her easy laughter is enough for me.

Matt Bai is the national political columnist for
Yahoo News
. Before that, he was the chief political correspondent for
The New York Times Magazine
, where he covered three presidential campaigns, and a columnist for the
Times
. His first book,
The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers, and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics
, was named a
New York Times
Notable Book for 2007. He lives in Bethesda, Maryland. For more, visit
mattbai.com
or follow
@mattbai
on Twitter.