The senator from Texas treats the Conways as archetypes - a Typical MiddleĪmerican Family. Within five minutes the Conways are guests in their own home. Gramm arrives beneath a handsome camel-hair coat and stomps the snow from his shiny black wing tips onto the carpet. Before Gramm turns up in the flesh, Matt tells the assembled journalists, "We are a typical Middle American Ozzie and Harriet family we reallyĪre." This is a fortunate coincidence, since the Gramm campaign is advertising the meeting as a chance for Phil Gramm to demonstrate his commitment to a balanced budget to "a typical Middle American family." Fifteen reporters, along with Gramm'sĬampaign staffers, cram into the pleasant powder-blue living room to document the event. He sells hockey equipment she is a "housewife or homemaker or whatever the correct term is," as he puts it. The victims are a couple in their late thirties named Matt and Kate Conway. This evening's event is an hour passed with a family of undecided voters in a nearby town called Salem, and if you want to know why Americans change the channel when a politician appears on the screen, you need look no farther than this encounter. If you insist, they will fetch you at your hotel and drive you halfway across the state. Very much who you are or where you are from just as long as you agree to play your role and whip up some public attention. By eleven I am booked to travel with Gramm, Pat Buchanan, Bobĭole, Lamar Alexander, and Steve Forbes with a bit more planning I would have bagged the rest of the nine-man field - Dick Lugar, Robert "B-1 Bob" Dornan, Alan Keyes, and Morry Taylor. Two hours later I discover that all you need to do to become a campaign journalist is call the campaign headquarters, find out where the candidate is going, and say you want to come along. That's what it's like in a presidential run - it's like taking your family to the Mosquito Coast.") I mean, this guy's sort of a charming nut, and he
(Bennett went on to say, "I thought of that movie The Mosquito Coast. Think of anything I'd rather do less," said William Bennett, explaining his decision not to run. "When Phil Gramm said to me, 'I'm going off to do three hundred receptions in the next forty days,' I couldn't Quayle and former education secretary William Bennett, who failed to keep pace with Gramm's fund-raising. The main result has been to frighten off serious contenders like former vice president Dan I roll over and go back toĪlready the Texas senator has spent $20 million of other people's money to persuade voters that he is more fiscally responsible than anyone else in the race. The first rule of life is that you never accept the first offer in a new and uncertain market.
I may be new to the campaign trail, but I'm not new at life. He says, with a hopefulness that gives him away. It's another eager Gramm aide wanting to know if I would like to attend a breakfast at eight o'clock at which Gramm is speaking. The phone rings at seven o'clock the next morning. Tomorrow Gramm is coming to New Hampshire. Instead of just handing me Gramm's schedule, he sits down and laboriously copies out by hand Happily, the young man seems almost to be expecting me. See up close what it looks like to spend $20 million trying to become president. I knock and do my best to explain my business, even though I am not exactly sure what that is. A young man toils behind a desk at the back of the office. Then in the distance I spot a light: Phil Gramm's campaign headquarters. Alongside the front-page endorsement of Pat Buchanan a reader writes, "May God in heaven help our country if Clinton gets another four years in Immediately in front of the store a vending machineĭisplays the front page of the Manchester Union Leader, the state's largest paper. Here lies the first hint of the presidential politics to come. The footprints end at the front door of a porn-video store called Forbidden Fruit. I follow on the assumption that if there is only one place Without even knowing it, they are building a trail.
Snow, and the only signs of life are several dark stooped figures on foot, all making soundless tracks in the same direction. When I arrive at eight in the evening the streets are buried beneath a foot of It is hard to believe that the race for the Republican nomination, or any other race for that matter, could begin in Manchester, New Hampshire. Spin Doctors, Rented Strangers, Thumb Wrestlers, Toe Suckers, Grizzly Bears, and Other Creatures on the Road to the White House