With his early wins, the fund-​raising tide also turned toward Kerry, as donors who were eager to be with the winner rushed to show their support prior to March 2-called Super Tuesday-when ten states from Vermont to California would hold primaries. In Raleigh, I juggled money to keep Edwards on the road, and the staff was pared back. The senator’s mood and the feeling in our offices turned dark as it seemed that barring some disaster, Kerry was going to run away with the nomination.

Although it’s wrong to wish bad fortune on someone else, a feeling of hope rippled through the campaign when the Internet site DrudgeReport.com-run by a mudslinger called Matt Drudge-posted a story suggesting Kerry had had an affair with a tall, twenty-​seven-​year-​old blond news reporter. We had heard similar rumors and innuendo for months and began following the story with so much intensity that another Web site measured the Internet traffic and announced that we had checked DrudgeReport.com a thousand times. When this got out, John Robinson went around the office telling people to cut it out. We were making ourselves look bad.

Soon after the supposed affair was reported, Alexandra Polier, who was supposedly Kerry’s paramour, stepped forward to say the story was a lie. I’d like to believe she told the truth, but in politics you never know. True or not, her statement killed the best chance we had at overcoming Kerry. In the last week before Super Tuesday, some commentators said the senator was keeping up the fight only to position himself to be the vice presidential candidate on a Kerry ticket and was therefore being too easy on him. Then Edwards took some swipes at the front-​runner, trying to depict him as a Washington insider. It didn’t work. Kerry won every Super Tuesday state, except for Dean’s Vermont, by big margins. To our credit, Edwards finished second in all nine of those states and grabbed 41 percent of the Democrats in Georgia, the one state in the Deep South.

The talk of Edwards joining a Kerry campaign as the vice presidential nominee, which began even before Super Tuesday, flared for a moment after he decided to withdraw from the presidential campaign. (One of our supporters actually waved a handmade Kerry-​Edwards sign at the gathering in Raleigh, where the senator announced his decision.) E. J. Dionne of The Washington Post said that Edwards had actually gained a great deal in his losing campaign and had positioned himself as a favorite in the veep sweepstakes. (Dionne complained, however, that Edwards had failed to challenge Kerry in a way that would toughen him up for the fight with Bush.) But while the pundits pointed to Edwards’s appeal and potential, not one of them mentioned the challenge the senator faced coming to terms with his loss-the first major defeat in his entire life-and figuring out what he would do next without an office to serve as his platform.

Six

After John Kerry had the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination wrapped up, the Dallas Morning News published an article citing all the reasons he should ask John Edwards to jo ^in the ticket. The arguments revolved around three main points. The first was that Edwards had proven himself in the primaries to be a disciplined and exciting campaigner. Second, “his private life, finances and pre-​political career [had] all have been vetted” when he was considered to be Al Gore’s partner in 2000. And third was his Southernness: He had the accent, the regional base, and the charm to balance Kerry’s persona, which was colder than a New England winter.

Although it’s generally bad form to be seen vying for the running mate’s spot, especially when you are still in contention in the primaries, Edwards had started sending signals that he was open to an offer even before Super Tuesday. Using go-​betweens like Bob Shrum, Harrison Hickman, and South Carolina congressman James Clyburn, he made sure Kerry understood his strength as a fund-​raiser, communicator, and effective campaigner. Polling showed he was far more popular than Dick Gephardt, who we believed was Kerry’s personal favorite, and no one looked better on television. As part of a charm offensive aimed at getting Kerry’s attention, Edwards agreed to be featured in the March 8 People magazine. The article highlighted a telling comment from a female voter who said, “He’s real, and he’s easy to look at.” (This comment was tame compared with the words women whispered in Edwards’s ears or wrote on notes they pressed into his hand at public appearances. I knew this because I had been with him in the past when he rebuffed advances from women and a few men, which seemed to come whenever we were in public.) Altogether, Edwards seemed to provide the perfect balance for Kerry. In fact, the only negative where a Kerry-​Edwards ticket was concerned was that the two guys didn’t like each other very much.

When we talked about him, the senator complained that Kerry, despite his long-​winded, professorial demeanor, “just wasn’t all that smart.” The man seemed well-​informed, he added, like someone “who had read The New York Times every day for twenty years,” but he wasn’t a creative person or even a good problem solver. He also found Kerry to be aloof and far too aristocratic in his bearing to succeed as the leader of a party that looks for major support from unions, African Americans, and people in big cities. During the primaries, Kerry had been the opponent our side most loved to hate. Our political strategist Jim Andrews, who I swore cussed and smoked in his sleep, used to bellow, “We just can’t let this mother-​fuckin’ blue blood get in the White House.”

The resentment toward Kerry had been heartfelt, and it had come from the top of our organization, but when it appeared that the two teams might join forces, my boss tried to see the advantages. When Edwards met with the head of Kerry’s search committee, Jim Johnson, he stressed how they had complementary strengths, and whenever we talked about it, he focused on the idea that we would both move our families into the vice president’s mansion and that after eight years as Kerry’s second, he would spend eight more in the White House. He talked often about our kids growing up together in Washington. (I liked this idea, too, and when Gus Gusler, lawyer for Hootie & the Blowfish, teased me and asked me what I charged for “delivering groceries,” I replied, “Sixteen years in the White House.” He laughed and said, “I would, too.”)

A comas Edwards saw it, Al Gore had squandered the opportunity Clinton had handed him. He said he wasn’t going to make the same mistake.

We had these conversations in my Suburban, at his home, and on the occasions when we took our kids out for some fun. During the spring of 2004, our two families grew as close as they would ever be. Jack and Emma Claire came to our house regularly, sometimes with their nanny, Heather North, and they would play for hours on end. Sometimes I’d take the whole gang out on the lake in our motorboat. I don’t think four kids ever had more fun.

In late spring, when the Edwardses were in Washington, they walked from their home to Kerry’s house for what could only be called job interviews. Kerry brought the senator to one part of the house, and his wife, billionaire heiress Teresa Heinz, took Elizabeth to another. (For political purposes, she called herself Teresa Heinz Kerry, but she never adopted this name legally.) As I heard it from Elizabeth and John, these meetings went terribly. Teresa asked Elizabeth if she would pursue any particular causes as the vice president’s wife. When she began to talk about education, Teresa cut her off and began talking about the education foundation she supported with millions of dollars. Elizabeth told me the same thing happened when she brought up a school computer lab the Edwardses established at Broughton High and Teresa acted like “she owned IBM.” They spent perhaps five or ten minutes together, and then Teresa left Elizabeth alone to search out her husband.