The Politician (14 page)

As the story goes, Motley had begun a massive suit against the major tobacco companies (which at this point had never lost a case), alleging that the industry had knowingly hidden health risks associated with their products and a history of deceptive marketing. Recent changes in federal rules and regulations gave the litigants a fighting chance, but Motley needed $100,000 to keep his effort alive. Minor resisted at first but eventually gave him the money, although he hid the loan from his own wife. Years later, Motley called again. This time, it was the middle of the night and both of the Minors awakened as Motley was leaving a message about “that one hundred thousand dollars you gave me.”

The number brought both Mr. and Mrs. Minor fully awake. Anger flashed across her face as he grabbed the phone to hear his drunken friend report that the $100,000 would soon be repaid and followed by millions more. The case had been settled, he explained, and the attorneys for the plaintiffs were going to reap fees totaling billions of dollars. After he hung up the phone, Minor explained it all to his wife, who quickly forgave him for hiding the $100,000 loan, and they jumped on the bed like little kids.

Minor told the story with the kind of matter-of-fact pride you’d hear in the voice of a former high-school star recounting his best game twenty years after the event. But instead of being a local hero, he was one of the richest lawyers in the world and I was being let into his confidence. Many of the other people I met over the weekend could match Minor when it came to power and influence. Altogether, this group donated enough money to the Edwards campaign effort to put him over $3.5 million for the year. This was much more than the amount raised by his nearest competitors, and it signaled to the national party and pundits that he was a powerful candidate.

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T
he weekend at Musgrove gave me great stories to share with Cheri when I got home. She was entertained but never got as excited about high-flying politics as I did. She’s a practical person who lives in the moment and resists getting swept up in flash and show. For her, happiness was found mostly at home, and she was satisfied to have us together again, without the pressure we felt in Washington or the round-the-clock demands that came when the senator was in town.

In many ways, the summer of 2002 was the best season of my life. For the most part I worked normal hours, which meant that I was home for dinner every night and helped put Brody to bed. Cheri and I then relaxed on our back porch, listening to music and gazing at the lake. The schedule also allowed me to run every day, which meant that my body was fit and my mind was clear. When I run, I say my prayers and let myself dream. During this period, I kept a notebook and a pen in our mailbox, so after I ran laps in our neighborhood, I could write down any ideas or flashes of insight before going inside to shower. I was so excited about the impending arrival of our next child—by this time, we knew it was a girl—that most of my notes were about baby names.

My favorite name was Grace. Cheri’s favorite was Lauren. When our daughter was finally born on September 1, 2002, we named her Lauren Grace and called her by the nickname Gracie. A bit smaller and quieter than Brody, she had trouble breathing, and Cheri noticed that as she struggled to get air she made a high-pitched noise called stridor. Doctors told us the problem was not serious, but when it didn’t get better and she had trouble feeding, we took her to the hospital. Only two weeks old, she stayed for several days of tests that gave us no definitive diagnosis. Worn out from the stress, Cheri asked her mother to come care for the kids while she went with me for a long weekend—half work and half fun—at the famous Pinehurst Resort.

Set for the last three days of the summer, the Pinehurst event had been
the main focus of my work in the month of August. Like the event at Musgrove, the “retreat” was supposed to be an organizing and rallying point for about a hundred of the senator’s key supporters from around the country. Many were “big dogs” in the nation’s trial law profession, and we needed to offer some special amenities to draw them in. The resort is a golf mecca, where our guests would have eight courses to choose from, including Pinehurst #2, one of the best in the world. For those who didn’t golf (and those who did), we included a concert by the band Hootie & the Blowfish, who were Edwards supporters from South Carolina. The band members donated their services but sent a list of more than two dozen requirements that included transportation, suites, free rounds of golf, five cases of beer, three fifths of Jim Beam, and “orange juice (no pulp).”

For attendees, the per-person cost for the three days, including accommodations at the Victorian-era Carolina Hotel, was about $1,200, which was hardly a consideration for the people we invited. In fact, the hotel didn’t have enough fancy suites to satisfy this crowd. Almost everyone we asked agreed to come, and we had a full house for the pig roast/reception on Friday night and the lunchtime meetings held on Saturday and Sunday. At these two sessions, our backers heard from the senator and a group of experts, including two of Bill Clinton’s closest advisers, Doug Sosnik and Gene Sperling. A high-energy person, Sosnik talked urgently about the public’s hunger for a likable candidate who shared their values, and naturally he thought Edwards was that guy.

Sperling began with a self-deprecating story about delivering his first major policy program—for jobs creation—to Bill Clinton. In the moments before being ushered in to see the boss, he had chewed on his pen, which leaked ink all over his mouth and chin. When Sperling entered the Oval Office, President Clinton asked, “Whatcha been eatin’, boy?” and political consultant James Carville, who was in the room, grinned and cackled, “What a Maalox moment, your big day, meeting the leader of the free world. What an idiot!” It was the perfect story to grab the attention of those people,
who were daydreaming about helping to create the next “Bubba” like Bill Clinton.

After winning the crowd over, Sperling spoke about Edwards as a progressive whose values and Southern roots could appeal to moderates and independents. He acknowledged President Bush’s strengths coming out of the September 11 attacks but noted that Bush’s father had been popular after the first Iraq war and led Clinton in many early public opinion polls. The right Democrat would have a very good chance to make Bush II another one-termer, and Edwards was the right Democrat.

By the time the senator spoke, the participants had been primed to consider him presidential material, and I saw a more serious and less relaxed man than I had known before. He was clearly acting in a more careful and deliberate way, and so was Mrs. Edwards. I noticed, too, that they brought Emma Claire, who was four, and Jack, now two, into meetings and as usual allowed them to run around among the adults. Like any other little kids, they were adorable some of the time, but even when they got a bit cranky and the nanny volunteered to take them to the pool, the senator and his wife insisted they stay around. They said having the kids around would be appealing to the donors—that no president in recent times had young kids. I realized the kids were being used as props to show that the family was young and lively like, say, the Kennedys circa 1962, when Caroline was five and John Junior was two.

Of course, all politicians calculate and scheme and send messages in the way they dress and the settings they occupy. During an energy crisis, Jimmy Carter turned the heat down at the White House and put on a cardigan. In order to appear as outdoorsmen, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush cleared brush on their ranches as though they couldn’t afford to hire someone else to do it. At a time when Bill Clinton’s extramarital affairs had stirred public outrage, John and Elizabeth Edwards intentionally presented themselves as a blissfully married couple and their family as a close-knit and rambunctious bunch. If it wasn’t the whole truth, it was true enough,
as far as I knew. And considering the fact that we were at Pinehurst to make an impression, the sight of Jack and Emma Claire running around was just one of many details in the picture.

For me, the best Pinehurst moment came late on the night of the concert, when Cheri and I were invited to hang out with the band in the complex of suites they had been given at the hotel. I walked the senator in for a brief appearance, but like most of the others who stopped by, he departed early. Eventually, it was just Cheri and me, drinking beers and trying to stump the lead singer, Darius Rucker, by naming a song he didn’t know how to sing. We couldn’t do it. And let me tell you, hanging out with a guy who has won two Grammy Awards while he sang and another member of the band played drums on the coffee table for a few hours was an amazing experience.

Even as it was happening, I understood that Cheri and I were privileged to have this experience, and I had the feeling of being both an insider and an outsider simultaneously. I mean, my association with the senator was the only reason we were there, rubbing elbows with powerful political figures by day and partying with Darius Rucker and the rest of the band at night. This thought made me feel grateful, but also very dependent. I knew that all of it was contingent on my continuing to do a good job for both Senator Edwards and his family.

My success at Pinehurst that weekend was confirmed by the pledges of support that were offered by the wealthy supporters who attended, their enthusiasm for the senator’s candidacy, and their willingness to commit to serving as advisers and fund-raisers as we moved forward. I also got credit from the senator for making sure that every request made by a guest was promptly satisfied, whether it involved a room upgrade, a tee time, or something that required more discreet attention. At one big event the senator held during this period, I was summoned by one of the more powerful men in the room, who happened to be there with his wife. He asked me to come to his table partway through the meal and call him to the telephone. There would be no call, he explained, but he wanted me to act as if something urgent had come up.

When the time came, I performed as requested, bustling over to the man’s table and whispering in his ear. He walked out of the room with me and explained that he was going to go back to the table and tell his wife that an emergency had arisen with one of his clients. She would stay for the rest of the weekend, he added. I would take him to the airport.

The ruse went off without a hitch. I brought my car around and whisked the big dog off to the nearby airport, which was about five miles from the hotel. Once we got there I took him out to his private jet, which was parked on the tarmac. Three young women, each of them wearing a great deal of makeup and very little fabric, waited for him in the plane.

“We’re goin’ someplace fun,” he said, adding, “Wanna come?”

I said, “No thanks,” and wished him a good trip. I knew there was nothing to be gained—by me, the senator, or anyone else—by my uttering a word about what I had seen. In fact, I decided that it would be best if I put it out of my mind completely. I got some help with this task as soon as our life took another dramatic turn.

I
n the three days we had been away, Gracie had given Cheri’s mother constant worries. Despite reassurance from doctors who said her condition was not serious, she had been unable to feed well and her breathing was still labored. If anything, the high-pitched wheezing sound she made as she struggled for air was louder and more constant, and listening to it just about broke your heart. Cheri contacted a specialist she knew from work, who agreed to review the imaging done the previous week. He quickly found something the others had missed.

It turned out that a fairly large artery—it comes directly from the heart and supplies blood to the head as well as the right shoulder and arm—had developed in the wrong place and was pressing on her trachea. Between the direct pressure and the irritation of the nerves and tissues in her throat, the innominate artery was making it very difficult for her to swallow and breathe. And based on its position, this problem wasn’t going to go away on its own. It was serious and life-threatening. However, we were told that
surgery could correct the problem and help Gracie grow and develop normally. Like every parent faced with this kind of news, we were happy to have the medical mystery resolved but terrified by the idea of authorizing major surgery on our one-month-old daughter. But we had no choice, so on October 4 they took Gracie into the operating room and made the repair. It was by far the hardest day of my life.

As a nurse who had worked in every corner of a hospital, including the pediatric intensive care unit, Cheri knew what to expect during Gracie’s recovery. As a mother, she was fiercely protective, which meant we were bound for a confrontation when we were allowed into the PICU and found alarms going off. Despite our daughter screaming out in pain, her chest sutures bulging, and her drain hanging out, no nurse was coming to help her. We found the one assigned to Gracie gabbing about movies with other nurses on her shift, and she said, “Oh yeah, I’ll get some pain medicine and be right there.” Twelve minutes later—yes, we counted them—she finally arrived, and as she helped Gracie settle down, she agreed that, yes, our daughter seemed to be in some distress.

The state of our health care system is a topic for another book, so it’s enough to say here that I was grateful to be married to a professional who could watch over Gracie’s recovery. This was especially true when she developed postoperative complications that the staff didn’t want to recognize. While everyone else was marveling at the weight Gracie gained, Cheri kept asking why her heart and respiratory rates were climbing, why she hadn’t passed any urine, and why she looked so puff y. They brushed her off as a nervous mother—“Oh, Mrs. Young, little Gracie is fine”—until her cardiologist and surgeon finally discovered the next day that fluid was collecting around both of Gracie’s lungs. (This was the weight she was gaining.) They took Gracie to the ICU to drain some of this fluid and then sent someone from the “Risk Management Office” to calm as down. We endured scores of incidents like this that only a trained nurse like Cheri would recognize as incompetence. But after the surgery, we were thinking only about our daughter and making sure she would survive the hospital and
come home to heal. (Just a few months later, the entire nation would focus on the doctor and unit that made so many critical mistakes with Gracie. A young woman named Jésica Santillán, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, died because our doctor mistakenly gave her a heart and lung transplant from a donor with an incompatible blood type.)