The Politician (5 page)

In fact, Julianna Smoot had called me at the last minute, asking if I could drive to the Edwards house in posh Country Club Hills (a rich Republican neighborhood he had failed to carry in the election) and take the Christmas photo because she had something else demanding her attention. Julianna had remembered sending me over on election day to put campaign signs in their yard. The picture had to be taken immediately, because the family had waited until the last minute and needed to place their order for cards. I happily agreed to do it because I had already applied for a job on Edwards’s staff, and it couldn’t hurt to spend some time with the senator-elect and to meet his wife, who everyone knew was his best friend and most important adviser.

Though small in stature—she’s about five feet two—Mrs. Edwards was known as a powerful person in her own right. She graduated near the top of her class at the University of North Carolina Law School (just behind the senator) and had had a successful legal career under her maiden
name, Elizabeth Anania. After their son Wade was killed, she retired and underwent fertility treatments and gave birth to Emma Claire when she was forty-eight years old. She changed her name to Elizabeth Edwards when her husband entered politics. When I saw her on photo day, she had been through an incredible couple of years that included losing a child, guiding her husband’s election, and having a baby. (Another child, a boy named Jack, would come in the year 2000.) She wanted a perfect picture, and it didn’t seem to be working out.

Part of the problem was the camera, or rather the guy working it. Mrs. Edwards had a fancy digital setup with a telephoto lens, and it took me some effort to learn how to work it. But the whole operation was also affected by the time pressure—we needed a great photo
now
—and Mrs. Edwards’s desire for every detail to be perfect. I also thought that Mrs. Edwards, who looked like a normal woman of forty-nine—pretty but a bit overweight—was self-conscious about getting her picture taken with her husband, who was very youthful and photogenic. Finally, there was the pressure that surrounds every big politician’s Christmas card. These cards are more than mere messages of good tidings. They promote the family’s image, communicate Christian values, and signal who is favored by the powerful and who is not. People left off the list never forget it. People on the list feel honored, show off their cards to friends as status symbols, and keep them as historical mementos.

With so much riding on the photo, I had to struggle to stay cool as I snapped away and Elizabeth came over to check the images in the viewer on the back of the camera. She hated the way she looked in almost every frame, but in the end she had to accept one for the card. I had no idea whether anyone actually liked the picture. All I knew for sure was that it had not been the best time to get to know the Edwards family, and I hoped I’d get a second chance.

W
hile I waited to see how my professional future might work out, I had no doubts about my personal life. Cheri and I had bought a house, and we
moved in with my dog, a boxer named Meebo (a mash-up of My Boy), and a pair of cats named Pepper and Granny. We all got along so well that in January 1999 I ordered an engagement ring, which the jeweler told me would take several weeks to make. On the morning of Friday, February 12, a clerk at the store called to say the ring had been finished early and was ready to be picked up. I hadn’t planned to pop the question so soon, but I was suddenly filled with inspiration and set about creating a night Cheri would never forget.

Fortunately for me, everyone, including the caterers I called—a company called the Food Fairy—loves a romantic. They agreed to go to our house at a little after five o’clock, find a key I would hide for them, and prepare both the meal and a beautiful table—china, crystal, flowers—and put Stan Getz on the stereo. (I wanted a violinist but couldn’t find one who was available.) At about three o’clock, I called Cheri and said my boss had suddenly assigned me—which meant us—to attend a black-tie event that evening. She didn’t like the idea of racing around to find something to wear and getting ready on such short notice, but when I told her that the governor would be there and it was important for me to attend, she agreed to do it.

By six o’clock, Cheri, who had worked until three-thirty, had somehow found something to wear, and she looked beautiful, although she was tired and a bit frustrated with me. I managed to get her in the car and down the road just as the Food Fairy truck whizzed past us. “I wonder where they’re going,” said Cheri. As she mused about the truck, I suddenly realized I needed to kill an hour so they could get things ready. I decided I’d drive to one of the city’s few venues for black-tie galas—the Sheraton Raleigh Capital Center—and use up half an hour or so figuring out that it was “the wrong place.”

The ruse would have worked better if the lot and entrance at the Sheraton hadn’t been deserted, but as we drove up it was obvious that no one was having any kind of event there. Nevertheless, I had Cheri wait in the car while I ran inside to “check.” When I came back out to report it was the wrong place, Cheri pushed for me to call my boss for the proper address. I
resisted her. Finally, I said I didn’t feel well and maybe we should go home. I don’t recall her exact words, but they were something like “You don’t ask me to get all dressed up like this on short notice and then just go home. Suck it up, buddy.”

Since I needed to waste more time, I suggested we go to a McDonald’s, where I could get a Sprite to settle my stomach (which to a nurse was ridiculous). When the soft drink didn’t work—“I really feel bad; I think we should go home”—Cheri gave up on me and agreed to call it a night. She fumed on the ride home, though, and when we got to the house she got out of the car without saying a word. She was stomping mad, and I had to hustle to catch up with her at the front door. When I opened it she could smell our dinner cooking, hear the music, and see rose petals on the floor and a table set.

That night we had a candlelight feast that included the juiciest steak I ever had, topped with a concoction of crab and lobster. Cheri’s dessert—a chocolate torte—came with whipped cream, raspberry drizzle, and her engagement ring. When I got down on my knees, my stomach didn’t hurt, but it was filled with butterflies as I said, “You are the woman of my dreams, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me?” She said yes. After dinner, we called our family and friends and gave them the news. (Her father wasn’t surprised. I had asked for his permission.) We soon set September 11 as the date for our wedding.

O
n the day Cheri and I were engaged, the United States Senate acquitted President Clinton in his impeachment trial, ending thirteen months of crisis over his sexual affair with Monica Lewinsky and his stupid, lying attempt to escape the truth. Senator Edwards played a role in the investigation, helping to preside over depositions of Lewinsky and Clinton’s friend Vernon Jordan. He also made his first speech to the full Senate during the closed-door impeachment trial, which was one of those rare moments when all one hundred members actually occupied the chamber. A lot of staff time and effort was put into preparing Edwards’s remarks, but when the time
came he put away the text and spoke, as he said, “from the heart.” (He later authorized the release of a transcript of his remarks.)

In considering the charge, Edwards said, “I think this president has shown a remarkable disrespect for his office, for the moral dimensions of leadership, for his friends, for his wife, for his precious daughter. It is breathtaking to me the level to which that disrespect has risen.” But he did not agree with those who thought Clinton acted with a criminal’s intent to avoid prosecution. Instead, he saw a politician’s instincts at work: “I suspect the first thing he thought about is, ‘I’m going to protect myself politically.’ He was worried about his family finding out. He was worried about the rest of the staff finding out. He was worried about the press finding out.”

Urging the Senate to focus on the question of whether the evidence against Clinton exceeded the standard of “reasonable doubt,” Edwards said he had poured long hours into studying the case, often staying up till three in the morning. In the end, although he suspected Clinton might be guilty of “a lot that has not been proven,” he couldn’t join those who thought the president had committed perjury or obstructed justice.

Considering John Edwards’s gift for courtroom drama, I’m certain he held the Senate’s attention with his explanation for his votes against the charges. But once I read the speech and thought about the clubby culture of the Senate, I realized that he probably won them over at the end, when he talked about how he had come to admire, respect, and even love his colleagues.

“An extraordinary thing has happened to me in the last thirty days,” he told the one hundred senators. “I have watched you struggle, every one of you. I have watched you come to this podium. I have listened to what you have had to say. I talked to you informally; I watched you suffer. I believe in my heart that every single one of you wants to do the right thing. The result of that for me is a gift. And that gift is that I now have a boundless faith in you.”

Edwards told me that after his address, he was practically bowled over
by colleagues who wanted to congratulate him. Senator Edward “Ted” Kennedy, one of the great old lions, even wandered to the back of the chamber, where the newest members of the Senate were given their desks, to shake his hand. Kennedy saw almost unlimited potential in this young, energetic, well-spoken, and good-looking Southerner who shared his position on most issues. All the other freshmen in Edwards’s class were veteran politicians who could be seen as part of the “system” that needed fixing. At a time when the public was sick of partisan politics and business as usual, this “outsider” status made him even more attractive.

Of course, you didn’t need to be a Kennedy to see something in John Edwards. All you needed was a subscription to
Capital Style
magazine, which put him alone on the cover of its February issue with the cover line building the perfect senator. The article, titled “Senator Perfect,” presented Edwards as an almost accidental politician. The author noted that Edwards had failed to vote in six different elections and couldn’t recall if he registered first as a Republican or a Democrat, but also argued that this inexperience was balanced by Edwards’s many obvious gifts. Quoting the political analyst Stuart Rothenberg, the magazine said of Edwards, “He may well be Clinton without the baggage. That’s what we’re watch-ing and waiting to find out.” At a time when the Republicans and Karl Rove looked unstoppable, the Democrats needed someone like John Edwards. This is why
Time
called him “The Democrats’ New Golden Boy.” Senator Edwards loved all the attention but was also wary of it. “Andrew,” he told me, “they just build you up so they can tear you down.”

W
ashington seemed to love Edwards, and from the beginning he attracted attention from the kingmakers in his party. But he was still burdened with the ordinary chores that come with joining the world’s most exclusive club. He had to get up to speed for his committees—Small Business; Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions; Intelligence; and Judiciary—and hire staff for his Washington office on the second floor of the Dirksen Senate Office Building and for outposts around the state. To keep in touch
with his constituents, he began holding weekly events called Tar Heel Tuesdays, which were open to the public. In D.C., he gave key jobs to his top campaign aides, Josh and Julianna, and then hired dozens more. In North Carolina, he tapped a mix of political pros and old friends and neighbors.

I first asked for a job with Edwards on the day after the election, but as time passed I started to worry that his staff was overwhelmed with applicants and might overlook me. I didn’t have a strong personal connection to the senator, but Wade Byrd, Edwards’s friend and top donor, had told me to call him if I ever needed help. I drove down Interstate 40 to I-95 South and found the stately Victorian house where he kept his offices. He brought me into his private study, sat behind his desk, and talked about his friend “Johnny” Edwards and how he’d helped plot his candidacy. At the end of our talk, he promised to call Johnny on my behalf. He followed through, and in July I joined the Edwards team in Raleigh.

We worked out of space on the third floor of the historic Century Post Office, which was the first federal building constructed in North Carolina after the Civil War. Mr. and Mrs. Edwards picked the building for its architectural character and because it was some distance from where North Carolina’s other senator, archconservative Jesse Helms, kept his office. Equipped with used federal chairs and desks (I found old Helms papers in mine), the place was furnished in a drab government style except for the personal items people added to the décor. I put up a framed tourism poster from the 1930s that showed the U.S. Capitol and declared, “Your National Capital Beckons You.” Some of the people in the office worked every day on constituent issues like passports and Social Security concerns. My job involved working with state and local governments and helping citizens with complicated issues.

Everything you can imagine flows through a senator’s local office, from immigration appeals to reports about unidentified flying objects. One lady left rambling messages about her sexual fantasies—all of them involved Senator Edwards—on the office answering machine every night. Agents of the Office of the U.S. Marshal eventually paid a visit to her trailer and asked her to stop making these calls. She didn’t. We heard almost as often
from a federal inmate who wrote the senator on ten-foot stretches of toilet paper. Every sheet was filled with his carefully penciled grievances about the government. Each time one of these communiqués arrived, I got a kick out of watching an intern try to use an official stamp to record receipt of the letter without tearing it.