All Too Human: A Political Education Read Online Free PDF Page B

convention keynote was even better. Here was a politician who could use words like
love
and
compassion
without seeming like a wimp, who talked about the “mosaic of America” and called on the country to replace Reagan's “social Darwinism” with “the idea of family.” Cuomo was saying everything I believed, in a way that made people want to fight. Pacing the floor of my place on Capitol Hill, I screamed at my TV and hoped the convention would get carried away and nominate him from the floor. Mario immediately became the great liberal hope — our Ronald Reagan. If only he would run. But by the summer of 1991, Cuomo still wasn't running — at least not yet.
    Bob Kerrey was glamorous. A Medal of Honor-winning senator from mainstream America, he was irony personified, balancing a dark side with whimsy and intellectual conviction in a way that would play well at the Georgetown, Manhattan, and Hollywood cocktail parties where campaign funds were raised and fashionable opinions congealed into conventional wisdom.
    Kerrey would also make the Republicans squirm. They couldn't do to him what they did to Dukakis, pillory him as a soft-on-defense, hate-America-first Democrat. A war hero is a patriot by definition, so Kerrey could pull off feats few other Democrats would dare, like when he had transformed the fight against a constitutional amendment banning flag burning into a winning political battle. Kerrey had the charisma of a Kennedy without the baggage — and he didn't share Cuomo's ambivalence. The day I heard he was running, I let his staff know I was interested in signing up.
    Paul Tsongas, a Greek American, was my intended. Joining his campaign would have felt like accepting an arranged marriage. He had been a good senator, and I had once sent him a fan letter after reading his book about his struggle with cancer. But Tsongas had no charisma, and his economic plan read more like a corporate report than a populist manifesto. He was for cutting capital gain taxes and cutting Medicare spending, precisely the policies I'd been working against. And after 1988, there was no way the Democrats would nominate another cerebral Greek from Massachusetts.
    Which put me in a bind. But for the fact that he was Greek, I wouldn't have even considered working for Tsongas. Because he was Greek, I had to explain to my extended family why I wouldn't. In my community, ethnicity still trumps ideology. Although Greek Americans generally vote Republican, they support Democrats who are Greek. They would line up behind Tsongas just as they had for Dukakis — and expect me to do the same.
    Bill Clinton wasn't my type. He was a Southern conservative; I was a Northern liberal. He was a governor; I was a creature of Congress. I hadn't met him, and I had heard him speak only once: at the 1988 Democratic convention, where his droning nomination of Dukakis drew sustained applause only for the words “In conclusion …”
    But friends of mine who knew him well insisted I would like him. Mark Gearan, the Dukakis spokesman who was then heading the Democratic Governors' Association, said Clinton was more liberal and less boring than I thought. My Gephardt colleague David Dreyer said Clinton's philosophy of personal responsibility would appeal to me, and he introduced me to John Holum, George Mc-Govern's former issues director, who was collecting resumes for Clinton. If they all liked this guy, he must have been better than I thought. And any Democrat beat four more years of Bush. Maybe Clinton's more conservative side would make him more appealing. Maybe it was time for the party to sacrifice ideological purity for electoral potential.
    Not all of my friends thought it was wise for me to join a campaign. Kirk O'Donnell took me to breakfast in the House dining room to talk me out of it. We were surrounded by the world I knew. The white-coated waiters had saved my regular table. Members came by to ask for a favor or pass a message to the leader. I was a