The Politician (6 page)

Most of the real business I did required me to steer questions to the right federal agency or untangle red tape. People who had seen campaign ads saying that Senator Edwards was going to Washington to use his trial lawyer experience to be an advocate for the little people called to seek clemency for relatives on death row. I did a lot of listening and a lot of sympathizing but could offer them very little concrete assistance.

I was so gung ho that I worked overtime almost every day and often left the old building so late that when I tried to take the elevator to the street level, it would get locked and I would be trapped inside. I’d use the emergency phone and call for help. The officers who responded probably thought I was crazy to work all alone so late into the night. In fact I was just a young, ambitious guy who saw a real opportunity in Edwards. At every chance I volunteered to do more, so when everyone else turned down the job of driving the senator when he came to town—picking him up at the airport, ferrying him around the state, bringing him back to the airport—I grabbed it.

Having been around politicians my whole life, I understood that when they travel, major political figures need an assistant—usually called the “body man”—who will be available during every waking hour. (You’ll know him when you see him because he’s the one who has to collect every gift or piece of paper handed to his boss and has a Sharpie marker at the ready for the hordes of autograph seekers.)

The person chosen for this job is granted a high level of trust and responsibility, and a good performance can lead to big opportunities. President Clinton’s body man Kris Engskov became head of public policy for Starbucks. Reggie Love, body man for Barack Obama, has become a genuine celebrity in his own right. Since trust brings with it a sense of duty and responsibility, the job also encourages a fierce kind of loyalty that is rarely
seen outside of families. The body man can develop a sense of mission and commitment that is practically fanatical, and his sense of duty, to a boss who may influence the fate of the world, could lead him to overlook, indulge, and even enable things he might not countenance in another person. For example, David Powers, who served President Kennedy, never uttered a word about JFK’s many relationships with women other than his wife. Likewise, many of the people who served Governor and then-President Clinton knew about his affairs and said nothing.

I wanted to set a new standard for body men. Whenever the senator was flying in, I would call the airline and arrange for an agent to meet him at the gate. (Since airlines have a lot of dealings with the federal government, they were eager to help.) The agent would escort the senator through the crowds to baggage claim and out the door, where I would be standing at the curb beside my white Chevy Suburban, which was running with either the heat or air-conditioning on. Inside, I’d have a cooler with cold Diet Cokes (he preferred cans) and snacks. National and local newspapers would be displayed for him to read, along with briefing pages. If it was dinnertime and he wasn’t going to be able to eat, I’d have a take-out meal and a chilled glass of Chardonnay. The menu would depend on whether he had made a request or was on the Atkins diet at the time. Diet meals generally involved salmon and a salad with ranch dressing and no croutons from the Glenwood Grille or 518 West. At other times it was ribs, or country fare from Cracker Barrel. He loved Cracker Barrel—once, he was so excited to see a new Cracker Barrel near his house that he almost made me crash.

Like many people who travel for work, the senator would complain about how much his life “sucked” because he was often away from home. Everyone on the staff did everything possible to make travel easier on him. We did it because our fate was tied to his. Every once in a while, he would notice one thing that I had forgotten and mention it. I would apologize, but he would quickly laugh it off, saying I so rarely forgot things that he was just giving me a hard time. It became like a game to me. My goal was to make things run as smoothly as possible for a man I believed was a future
president of the United States. For this reason, I didn’t talk unless he wanted to talk, and I learned how to say “Yes, sir” to every request he ever made. “No” wasn’t in my vocabulary.

I quickly became the senator’s “go-to guy,” whether the task was to obtain last-second tickets to Leno for a niece, retrieve his daughter Cate’s lost purse at Christmas (she’d left it on a flight), or borrow a private jet for some urgent flight in a few hours. John and Elizabeth Edwards both acted as if nothing were beyond my reach and tested me on it. I was proud when I passed their tests and proud to tell my parents and friends about my adventures.

The senator and I quickly developed a routine where he would get in the Suburban, take a deep breath, and then reach over with his left hand, pat me on the shoulder, and say, “Andrew, it’s good to see you.” Often he needed to vent about the frustrations of working in the Senate, which is ruled by seniority, moves slowly, and is set up to promote compromise. He also complained about the volume of work dumped on him every day, especially the so-called briefing books prepared by his staff. These binders contained background materials on major issues ranging from domestic economic problems to foreign affairs. Smart people put many hours of effort into these books, and they were designed for quick study. To their frustration, the senator never seemed to get around to reading them. Even when he had time in the car, he preferred to talk with me about local politics or Carolina basketball or family. The conversation was easy because we had so much in common. We were both small-town Southern boys who enjoyed the same food, loved the same sports, and cared deeply about our families. Unlike almost everyone else in his life, I
never
asked him for anything.

When we got to the house and parked, I jumped out and grabbed the bags. I had a key (he always misplaced his) and would open the door and follow him inside. Mrs. Edwards would light up when he came home and give him a big hug. I had rarely seen two people who loved each other more. She was his most trusted adviser—on everything from politics to wardrobe—and he would ask for her input on every important decision.

As she got to know me as a reliable aide, Mrs. Edwards couldn’t have been friendlier. She was so at ease, in fact, that if it was late and she was already in bed, she told me to just come on into the bedroom and put the suitcases in the closet while her husband went to look in on the kids. “It’s all right, Andrew,” she would say. “You’re family.”

It was a warm but also surprising statement. I had worked for the senator for only a few months, and my direct contact with Mrs. Edwards couldn’t have added up to more than a few hours total time. But they were exceptional people, and being with them made you feel you were putting your time and energy into a noble cause. We
were
trying to make things better for people, to make the country and the world a better place. And because this kind of mission couldn’t be squeezed into a nine-to-five box, I saw the Edwards family in their home and at odd hours. If that didn’t make me family, it made me something more than an employee, and it felt pretty good.

Even so, I resisted when the Edwardses told me to address them by their first names. For some reason—maybe it was to remind myself that we would never be on equal footing or that he might be the next JFK—I would always call him “Senator” and her “Mrs. Edwards.” I did this even on the night I dropped the senator at his home and got an emergency phone call before I had reached my own house, asking me to come back right away.

When I got there, I found the senator and Mrs. Edwards dressed for bed and laughing. It turned out the kids had jumped into bed with them and the whole thing had crashed to the floor. They said they needed my help putting it back together. I tried to respect Mrs. Edwards’s privacy—her nightgown was a bit revealing—while helping her husband get the slats and rails in place, lift up the box spring, and seat the mattress. In my mind, it was an oddly intimate and personal chore, but there seemed to be almost no limit to what the Edwardses might ask of me or the degree to which they would let me into their lives.

B
orn off of East Africa in the middle of August 1999, Dennis wandered north and west to the Caribbean, where he flexed his muscles and became a full-blown hurricane. He reached the North Carolina coast on September 1, lashing the state with dangerous winds and heavy rains. The sense of relief that came with the return of the sun didn’t last very long, as the storm actually came back a week later to dump as much as eighteen inches on towns at the shore. Much of what wasn’t flooded the first time got washed away with the second pass, including our wedding cake.

The cake was at the Holiday Inn Resort at Wrightsville Beach, where Cheri and I held our wedding reception in a moment of quiet weather on September 11. Months of planning produced a nearly perfect ceremony and celebration. We were married in a historic church, surrounded by family and friends, and walked outside to fountains, a horse-drawn carriage, rice, and the sounds of the church bells. It was a beautiful day, but the true meaning of it all didn’t hit me until we were on our honeymoon in St. Lucia. Marrying Cheri made me happier than I had ever been. I had gotten the girl of my dreams, and my tumultuous past seemed far away.

While we were in the Caribbean, North Carolina went through a nightmare as another hurricane, Floyd, slammed into the coast near Cape Fear
on September 16 at three in the morning. Floyd packed winds over a hundred miles an hour and brought a ten-foot ocean surge that flooded towns up and down the coast. He dumped so much rain that rivers across the state overflowed their banks and flooded thousands of homes. Fifty-three people would die from storm-related causes, and the state would suffer more than $3.7 billion in property damage. More flooding came as a series of lesser storms swept through, and by the end of the month there was hardly a dry spot in the eastern part of the state. Cheri and I watched in horror from our honeymoon paradise as CNN showed footage of the steeple of the church where we were married being blown off.

As the news reports showed, Princeville, famous as the first community established by freed slaves after the Civil War, was hit the hardest. Every building in the town was flooded, and every citizen had to be evacuated. But it wasn’t Princeville’s displaced people and damaged structures that stuck in your mind after you visited, it was the coffins. The powerful floodwaters had undermined graves and lifted caskets out of the ground. The water was so deep that as it receded, some of the coffins actually got lodged in trees. Others were scattered in muddy yards and on streets that were strewn with debris. It was a ghastly sight, and something that no witness ever forgot.

I saw the destruction in Princeville and other communities as I drove the senator around the state in the aftermath of the storm, meeting with disaster officials and offering whatever solace we could. Floyd was such an intense storm, and the destruction was so widespread, that President Clinton visited two days after the rain stopped to assure people that federal help was on the way and to soak up some national media attention as he played comforter in chief. “We’re going to stand with you,” he told people in Tarboro, “until you get back on your feet again, as long as it takes.”

Clinton would be followed by a host of other officials, none of whom could change much of anything on the ground. Disaster agencies, charities, and communities were already digging out and cleaning up, and unless he was willing to grab a shovel or a hammer, all a politician could do was offer
symbolic support. Edwards, who was always aware of press opportunities, spent lots of time in the disaster area and got his share of attention from TV and print reporters, but he wasn’t the only elected official looking for the limelight. A few days after the storm, while I was helping to shovel out a church filled with mud and debris, Congresswoman Eva Clayton scurried inside, noticed the Edwards staff T-shirt I wore, looked at the mask I was wearing to protect myself from fungus, and said, “Young man, gimme that thing, here come the TV cameras.” She took it so she could look as though she had been working. As soon as the news crews left, I got it back.

Fortunately, my boss wasn’t quite so brazen when it came to playing to the cameras. He knew they were there, but he also went out of his way to connect with the people who had lost homes and even loved ones in the storm. Almost every time we arrived at a site—church, school, or firehouse—he acknowledged the various dignitaries and VIPs but also made a point of heading for the back rooms and kitchens where the work was being done by folks most politicians overlook.

Given his interest in working people, I was a little surprised by Senator Edwards’s reluctance to roll up his sleeves and get a little dirty himself. Instead of picking up a hammer and driving some nails with Habitat for Humanity or throwing around some cut branches with a road-clearing crew, he would say something about his tight schedule and depart without risking a blister. I thought this was a politically tone-deaf choice that opened the door to people who might say he was too much style and too little substance. Eventually, I learned that while he wasn’t afraid of breaking a sweat, he was afraid of looking silly and wanted to avoid doing things that reminded him too much of the people he called “rednecks” that he grew up around in Robbins.

As I got to know the senator, I came to understand his ambivalence about his background. As a smart and sensitive young man, he had worked very hard to get an education, build a career, and separate himself from the rougher elements of the small-town South. He was proud of being one of Robbins’s favorite sons, along with the astronaut Charles E. Brady, who
was pictured on a mural in town. (Brady would commit suicide in 2006.) And when he ran for office, the senator harkened back to his humble beginnings with real affection. But while he may have still loved Robbins, or the
idea
of a place like Robbins, he didn’t want to go back to being the boy who once lived there, even for a moment.