41: Politics

Ira Glass

So what was it like after election day this week for the couple who live in the White House? Every morning, they got up, put on their robes, went downstairs, and jumped in the pool for a swim.

Ira Glass

The office in this case is not the Oval Office. No, she spends more time there. He drives into San Francisco where he has an office for his business in international finance. The couple who live in this house are named Norman Eckersley and Rosemary Ashley Eckersley. Neither is a member of the Democratic Party. Both have lots more money than the President of the United States. And the White House-- this one, anyway-- is about 15 miles south of San Francisco in a suburb called Hillsborough.

From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today on our program, surprising stories of American politics. We have campaign diaries from Michael Lewis, a new theory of politics and television from Henry Jenkins, the Mexican-American self-deportation movement, Joan Jett Black, and we start with Act One, Life in the White House.

Ira Glass

My tour guide at the Western White House-- this White House-- was the real estate agent who's trying to sell the thing, Ann Riley. And she began the tour with a packet of old photos and press clippings that she'd assembled.

Ira Glass

The house has been around for over half the life of the United States. And it's the kind of huge structure that reflects every prevailing fashion over time. It's been redesigned in the neoclassical style, the French Normandy style, as a massive Swiss chalet, as a Mediterranean home with a tile roof.

And finally, in 1930, George Hearst, the oldest son of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, bought this place and hired Julia Morgan, the architect who designed Hearst's castle-- San Simeon-- to turn this house into a facsimile of the White House. Why? Ann Riley says the best guess anybody has is this.

It's not an exact duplicate. Yes, there's an oval office. Yes, there's a rose garden. Yes, the columns in the window bays. the fireplace mantles, and the pediments above doors are modeled on those at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. But it's more of a kind of tribute to the White House than a copy. From the outside, it reminds you of the White House the way that Madonna resembles Ava Peron. They're shooting for the same effect. There's a strong resemblance. But the copy just doesn't have the gravitas of the original.

Ira Glass

The owners of this White House reflect the times just as clearly as the occupants of that other White House back East do. During the last century, they included one of the men who founded banks in California and financed the railroad's expansion through the West. And the owner of the shoe company that made Buster Browns. In 1972, it was rumored that John Lennon and Yoko Ono would be moving in.

As for the current owners, they made their money the way people do these days. He comes from the world of international banking, she from Hollywood. She was the wife of a studio vice president and the wife of a plastic surgeon before this marriage. When I meet her, she descends a staircase telling a slightly off-color and actually very funny joke. Before an hour's up, she's told me why Jean Harlow used to put ice on her breasts, why there are nude calendar girl paintings of herself over the beds in the house, and some story that Jane Russell told her the other night at dinner. I liked her.

Ira Glass

The house itself is a mix of high-brow and low-brow-- incredibly elegant rooms with beautiful furniture and expensive paintings, and here and there, paintings of doe-eyed girls, picked up at sidewalk art sales. The little embroidered pillows that say things like, "Murder, yes. Divorce, never" And "Screw the golden years, there's a safari room." In short, it's hard to imagine Bill Clinton living here. But it's a place that his mother-- Virginia Kelley-- would probably just love.

It is impossible to imagine an American building a house today as a duplicate of the White House as a way to lure the president over. People just do not view the presidency with the same respect as they did back in George Hearst's day. Witness Rosemary's response when I ask her this question about her home purchase.

Ira Glass

The asking price for this Western White House is $8.5 million. It has 27,000 square feet, 22 rooms. Coldwell Banker real estate agents recently put together an estimate of what the real White House would sell for if it were ever put on the open market. The real White House, by the way, has 43,000 square feet and 132 rooms. It sits on 18 acres of prime downtown real estate.

Estimate? $64 million. Actually, to qualify for the mortgage, you'd have to be able to make monthly payments $600,000 a month. $64 million. Of course, according to the FEC, candidates Clinton and Dole each spent far more than that for the privilege of just living in the place for four years.

Ira Glass

Act Two, Television Man. Throughout this election year, we've been bringing you the campaign diaries of Michael Lewis. He's been publishing these in The New Republic. And as I've said many times in introducing him, they are among the most surprising and interesting campaign reporting that anyone has done this year.

Michael Lewis has said in the past that one of the reasons for the dullness and mendacity in modern campaigns is that American politicians still have not adjusted to the presence of television cameras. He got a chance to see the effect of television cameras firsthand on the political process just last month when he momentarily left the unglamorous life of a print reporter for another higher calling.

Michael Lewis

October 1. The Dole campaign treats me so oddly when I arrive this morning for the trip to Cleveland that I find myself looking back over my shoulder to see if there's some other Michael they're talking to. That I have a name is itself unusual. Normally, I'm just checked off the cargo list as The New Republic i.e., another magazine writer who, together with his readership, can safely be ignored. But this morning, I am carrying my new Sony Digital Super SteadyShot Handycam DCR-VX1000 millimeter, a palmable grey box that crack technicians from ABC spent nearly an hour teaching me to use. It is festooned with various stickers that say ABC News.

Yesterday, I mentioned in passing to a Dole staffer that I might do some shooting for Nightline tomorrow, as if I were the sort of person who did shooting for Nightline all the time. Now, a Dole campaign worker named Charlie is standing over me like an old friend. "Hi, Michael," he says. "Good to see you again. You know, you're not allowed to film on the plane."

When I step onto the plane, a second Dole staffer tells me the same thing. As I take my seat across the coffee table from a radio lady, a third Dole worker stops by and stresses the point. Apparently, the place where the campaign television journalist spends the vast majority of his time is considered outside the bounds of television journalism.

Before all these warnings, it had never occurred to me to film on the Dole plane. Now it does. Just before takeoff, I stand up and take my first shot. A fat cameraman on his way to the toilet squeezes past a skinny stewardess, and I have him in my crosshairs. "You're not supposed to do that!" a voice shrieks out at me. It's the radio lady playing narc. Charlie appears beside my seat to remind me of "the rule." He does a nice job of not being upset.

The day unfolds uneventfully-- Dole gives a speech in a gym-- except for my peculiar new relationship with the Dole campaign staff. Normally, I have to set off a flare to get their attention. Today, Charlie takes the seat beside me on the bus and for the rest of the day never seems to be very far away. Whatever they think I might do, I don't. By the time the rally starts, I have busted the sound mechanism, lost the earplugs, and run out of batteries. I put the camera to one side. Charlie vanishes.

But then we head back to the plane and a fresh battery, which brings us to the episode of the shrimp.

Once we'd settled into our seats, I set about trying to fix all the parts of the camera I'd busted. In order not to offend the Dole people, I decide to test the thing on what I figure is a declassified object-- a large plate of cold, mottled shrimp that has been laid on the table between me and a pair of radio reporters.

I hunker right over the little buggers so that the ABC technicians will see I have absorbed what they've taught me about not giving in to the temptation of zoom. But the moment I'm in place, the radio woman shrieks out to the Dole staff and makes to cover the shrimp with a sheet of paper. "It's OK," I say gently. "I'm just seeing if this thing still works." I keep shooting for a good five seconds. Then I put the camera away.

Suddenly, a Dole lady is in my face, teeth gritted, breath blowing. "We told you seven times not to film on the plane," she shouts. "You don't know how serious this is."

"But it was just the shrimp," I begin to say before she cuts me off. "We told you." I want to protest that it's not my fault her guy is 20 points down the polls, and she's on the fast track to not being the next Dee Dee Myers. It's not worth the trouble.

I return to the New York Times where Dole's campaign manager, Scott Reed, is quoted as saying that some major event is about to transform public opinion. "We deserve a break, and we're going to have one," he explains. Asked to be more specific, he said, "Something. World affairs." It's hard to see how the shrimp fit into this scenario.

October 6. On the streets outside the debate hall in Hartford, the Super SteadyShot wreaks havoc. Many hundreds of previously listless protesters leap into action at the sight of it. "Let's have some action for ABC," I shout. And the effect is distinctly more dramatic than if I'd said, "Let's have some action for The New Republic."

They rise as one and proclaim their causes. One moment, they are an undifferentiated jumble of people shivering in the cold. The next, they are the ardent supporters of Nader and Perot, pro-life and anti-vivisection, anti-deficit and pro-welfare. Of course, the SteadyShot is not permitted inside the Bushnell Theatre. It is too powerful a weapon to be permitted close to the candidates.

So after a brief altercation with a security guard, I retire to Spin Alley. Spin Alley is what the debate organizers have renamed the Hartford Civic Center until a few journalists start pointing out that only a few years ago, political hacks actually denied that they "spun" at all. The signs saying Spin Alley are then ripped down, which, when you think about it, is itself a form of spin.

At any rate, the Super SteadyShot penetrates Spin Alley, emanating its extraordinary forcefield. When she enters the frame, the comely Maureen Dowd dives behind her notepad, and who can blame her? Once you're in the camera's eye, you no longer have control of your soul. Truly, it is astonishing the way all of the important people cave in to the camera.

I point it at White House Spokesman Mike McCurry, then at Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, then at Labor Secretary Robert Reich. They answer questions that they might ignore if it were just me and mine eye. How do you feel as you stand there spinning me? If you truly felt that your candidate had lost, would you say as much?

They are not talking to me, of course, but to some notional audience-- the American people. And whatever they might be thinking, they treat the camera with deference. In the same way that ordinary people feel obliged to smile when they have their picture taken-- even when they are unhappy-- important people feel pressure to answer sincerely even when they are insincere.

I miss the debate entirely. I'm too busy taking pictures of people assessing the debate, which they do from the moment it starts. No matter. I'm able to track its effect between the lines of Scott Reed's quotes. Tomorrow in the New York Times, Reed will revise his mental picture of the campaign. "This is going to be a steady building process for the next 30 days," he will say. "There's not going to be an overnight shift." All of a sudden, it's looking as if every little shrimp might matter.

Ira Glass

Michael Lewis' campaign diaries will be collected in a book called Losers: Real Men Don't Become President Anymore. Stay with us, now. We will have another set of campaign diaries from Michael Lewis later in the program.

This section of our program on television continues. We have this argument about TV and politics from Henry Jenkins, director of film and media studies at MIT.

Ira Glass

I asked Henry Jenkins if he wasn't overstating his thesis a little, especially when it came to Bill Clinton. I wondered if Bill Clinton didn't know more about handling the network news when he took office than Jenkins gives him credit for. After all, in 1992, Bill Clinton made four or five cable appearances during the campaign. But he wasn't just running on cable. Every day of the campaign, there were staged events for the network news and there was the Clinton message of the day.

Ira Glass

Henry Jenkins is director of film and media studies at MIT and author of two books. The latest is called Science Fiction Adventures: Watching Star Trek and Doctor Who.

Ira Glass

It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose a theme and invite a wide range of writers and performers and documentary producers to contribute stories on that theme. Today's theme, of course, Post-Election Politics. We're at Act Three of our program, Losers. In this act, we have a story of an unsuccessful presidential candidate, and this story of a struggling political movement.

Ira Glass

Well, listeners to our program in California may be familiar with this advertisement and with the group Hispanics Against Liberal Takeover. They are a militant self-deportation movement encouraging all minorities to leave the United States. That's right, all minorities. Its founder, Daniel D. Portado, has appeared on Spanish-language TV. I actually saw a video of one of these appearances where basically, the entire Latino studio audience yelled at him nonstop for his entire appearance.

Mr. Portado says that he started his movement when he read newspaper accounts about Mexican-Americans who were in favor of California's Proposition 187. Prop 187 was the proposition that cut off social services to illegal immigrants. He thought these Mexican-Americans-- who were in favor of cutting off those services-- had the right idea but just did not go far enough. They just didn't take it to its logical conclusion, and he felt that self-deportation was the only real solution.

Ira Glass

All across the country, losing politicians are licking their wounds and planning for tomorrow. And one presidential contender who did not win this year's general election is Joan Jett Black. Joan Jett Black first ran for mayor of Chicago in 1990 and this year, ran for president in drag. In a tasteful Chanel suit, Joan Jett Black gave speeches, made appearances, and lost. But she has not conceded despite President Clinton's overwhelming showing at the polls and vows she will fight on.

Ira Glass

Joan Jett Black, presidential candidate for the year 2000.

Ira Glass

Act Four, Inspiration. It is easy to feel dispirited by the way things went this election year. So we wanted to end our post-election show today with a story of some politics that would inspire us and not depress us, which brought us to this story. It was written in May by Michael Lewis. It's from his campaign diaries.

Michael Lewis

April 19. I leave my hotel earlier than I need to and walk down from the Washington Monument to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Even at 7:30 in the morning, the Mall is nearly deserted, the Lincoln Memorial empty. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial, on the other hand, is teeming with people who appear to have been up for hours, walking slowly along the length of the black marble slab bearing the names of the dead. For the next 20 minutes, I sit on a bench dodging bird droppings and waiting for Senator John McCain, who has agreed to meet me here.

In my attempts to spot him at a distance, I can't help but notice how differently ordinary people behave from politicians. Maybe 50 likely candidates pass through my line of vision, and not one of them could pass for a US senator at 100 paces. They comb their hair in public, scratch themselves, hold hands.

At 8:00 on the button, McCain appears at my side, looking very senatorial except for a pair of outrageously wide black aviator sunglasses with some undignified name-- Hobby? Hippo?-- stenciled on the earpiece. McCain is the Dole surrogate most in demand as a speaker around the country. And it's not hard to see why. What matters most to the people who wish to see McCain speak for Dole is the formative experience that the two senators ostensibly share. Both nearly died in a war. Both endured indescribable pain and suffering.

Dole's ordeal is at the center of his national campaign. To some extent, it is his campaign. McCain's trials are less known. On October 26, 1967, when he ejected out of his Navy jet and into a North Vietnamese mob, McCain suffered two broken arms, a shattered knee and shoulder, and bayonet wounds in his ankle and groin.

Robert Timberg's gripping book, The Nightingale's Song, depicts McCain two months later in his first prison cell. McCain weighed less than 100 pounds. His hair, flecked with gray since high school, was nearly snow white. Clots of food clung to his face, neck, hair and beard. His cheeks were sunken, his neck chicken-like, his legs atrophying.

McCain survived in captivity without medical treatment for the next five years, enduring torture so exquisite that even to read about it causes sweat to pop out on your brow. His captors would hang him by his broken arms from dangling ropes for hours on end, for instance. But the astonishing part of McCain's experience was its voluntary aspect.

McCain is the third generation of a distinguished military family. His father was an admiral during the Vietnam War. The North Vietnamese hoped that this famous prisoner of war would violate US military policy, which dictated that prisoners be returned in the order they arrived. If he accepted their offer of freedom, McCain would testify to the demoralization of the American troops. For five and a half years, his captors tried to torture him into going home. For five and a half years, he refused to go.

We walk alongside the black granite slab against the oncoming traffic, then back again. The Park Service says that the memorial has become the second most frequently visited site in Washington after the Capitol. McCain admits that at first, he found it depressing and even faintly antagonistic. But one day, he was passing through on his own-- he visits often by himself-- and discovered a couple of veterans running their hands across the inscribed names. Clearly, the two men had never met before, but they had fallen into conversation, swapped war stories, and in a few minutes were clutching each other and weeping. If that kind of healing goes on, says McCain, well, then it's a good thing.

Someone once said that an explanation is where the mind comes to rest. There is a feeling about McCain-- one that seems lacking in Dole-- that he has somehow explained his own experience to himself. He has assimilated his trauma differently than the candidate he's behind. He says, "This is the McCain theory, and I think it's valid. I was an adult when I was shot down. 31 years old. I'd had a whole life. He was 19. What were you like when you were 19? I believe that everything Bob Dole has done since the war was dictated by that experience."

The Vietnam veteran has achieved a kind of equanimity that is supposed to be reserved only for veterans of good wars. When Clinton arrived at the White House, for instance, McCain sent him a note saying that any time the president wished to walk down to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the senator from Arizona would be glad to walk alongside him. Clinton sent back a nice note. Recalling this exchange causes McCain to break his rhythm. We were walking back towards the bench, and McCain is limping slightly, like a high school football star. Hi is remembering something else.

"I don't know if you want to write about this," he begins. "Back in the mid-'80s, a guy who protested the war came into my office. He said his name was David Ifshin."

In December 1970, David Ifshin had led a group of American students to Hanoi, where he delivered an antiwar radio address to American soldiers engaged in attacks on North Vietnam. Like other anti-American propaganda, his program was piped into McCain's prison cell from 6:00 in the morning until 9:00 at night. But McCain, who can generate anger in a heartbeat, shows not the faintest trace of resentment. He explains, "Ifshin stood in my office and he says, 'I came here to tell you I made a mistake. I was wrong, and I'm sorry.' And I said to him, 'Look, I accept your apology. We'll be friends. But more importantly, I want you to forget it. Go on with your life. You cannot look back.'"

Here he pauses, and I figure he's finished. But he's groping behind his aviator sunglasses for the point of his anecdote, that forgiveness is ultimately less self-destructive than the bitter desire for revenge. Or perhaps that there is no such thing as revenge. Five months ago, David Ifshin was diagnosed with cancer. The cancer has proved untreatable and has spread rapidly. David Ifshin is now dying. He's 47 years old and has a wife and three young children. Says McCain, "When I heard about it, it did pass through my mind. Suppose I had told David Ifshin to get the hell out of my office. How would I feel about myself now?"

April 23. I'm walking out the door of my Washington apartment on my way to find David Ifshin when John McCain calls. I've made the mistake of telling his press secretary what I'm up to, and she's passed it along to the senator, who is seriously concerned. He says, "Look, I don't mean to insult you, but be careful with this. If you wrote anything that hurt David or Gail or the kids, I'd never forgive myself. I'd forgive you, but I wouldn't forgive myself."

It's a half-hour drive out of Washington to the Ifshin's house in the Maryland suburbs, where I find a gaunt, bearded man stretched out on a patio lounge chair, attended by his wife, Gail. This afternoon he's tired, and his voice is barely audible as he sketches his political career. The cover of Life magazine of April 23, 1971 shows David Ifshin, age 22, at a war rally, wearing a collegiate goatee. He's standing directly behind Jane Fonda, who has her fist raised. After his war protests, he worked on a kibbutz.

But when he returned to America, he also returned to national politics. He went on to work on the Mondale campaign and, to a storm of protest, was even tapped to head the Dukakis transition team. He spent 10 years as general counsel to AIPAC, the Israeli lobby. He had met Clinton briefly in 1972. 20 years later, when Clinton ran for president, Ifshin became general counsel for his campaign. Before he accepted the job, however, he told Clinton he'd been attacked for his war record each time he'd joined a presidential campaign.

He says, "I brought it up with Clinton deliberately. And he said he knew what I'd done, and he admired it then. And that he still admired it now."

These days, Clinton calls Ifshin two or three times each week, even when he's traveling. A few months ago, the Ifshin family spent the night in the Lincoln bedroom. In the pictures of Clinton playing with the Ifshin children, the president's ruddy good health seems almost obscene besides Ifshin's drawn face. Yet, when I called him, David Ifshin did not hesitate to rise to the occasion. He says, "I'm very proud of this story, and it's never been written," I ask him about his feelings towards McCain. He says, "One of our true political heroes. He's a giant."

Ifshin's version of their story differs from McCain's in its important details and in its spirit. The way McCain tells it, Ifshin is the hero. He decided he'd made a mistake and bravely took responsibility for his actions. The way Ifshin tells it, McCain is the hero. As I listened to him, I realized that this is the reverse of the usual Washington investigation in which the reporter visits each interested party to collect the dirt on the adversary. Here is a case where each is needed to explain the other's nobility of spirit. I have never heard two political allies-- much less two political opponents-- cast each other in a more flattering light.

Ifshin begins, "I had always wanted to apologize, but didn't know who to apologize to." His moment to act, he decided, came at an AIPAC meeting around 1986 at the Washington Hilton. Ifshin spotted Senator John McCain at a distance and decided that he was the man who deserved the apology. Ifshin says, "I hoisted up my courage and went over to him. And before I could get a word out, McCain says, 'I owe you an apology.'"

A couple of years earlier, during the 1984 presidential campaign, McCain had given a speech in which he attacked Ifshin's war record. "Basically, someone had handed him a script," says Ifshin, "and he read it. He was sorry he did it, and said he wouldn't do that kind of thing again. Then he asked me to stop by his office, which I did, and normally wouldn't do. It was blind fate, I told him at that time. I said, 'I owed you an apology, and you robbed me of the chance to make it.' And he was characteristically modest and humble about it." Later that year, McCain and Ifshin, together with a Vietnamese emigre named Doan Van Toai, established the Institute for Democracy in Vietnam.

Ifshin shifts painfully in his chair and stops to catch his breath. It was at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial that what he calls "the second half of the story" with McCain began. On Memorial Day of 1993, Bill Clinton spoke at the site. Both McCain and Ifshin were present. Clinton was cheered loudly. He was also heckled. And one of the hecklers waved a sign that said "tell us about Ifshin."

Four weeks later, Ifshin found himself on a flight to Washington with McCain, who motioned for him to take the seat beside him. Ifshin says, "He asked why I hadn't taken a job in the administration. I said this and that. We played 20 questions until finally he said, 'It's because of that stupid sign, isn't it?' And I said, "Yes, partly it was.' And he said, 'Come to my office tomorrow morning and we'll settle this thing once and for all.'"

The next day, June 30, 1993, David Ifshin turned up in John McCain's office in the Russell Senate Office Building to find that the senator had drafted a letter which he entered later that day in the Congressional Record. It began by praising Clinton's Memorial Day address on behalf of Vietnam's veterans. The veterans, McCain wrote, "were very impressed by Clinton's determination to offer an eloquent tribute to their service when it would have been far easier for him to avoid the event altogether. McCain decried the behavior of the protesters. Then he moved on.

"Among the demonstrators that day, one individual held a sign which asked the president to explain his association with a person known to many of our colleagues, Mr. David Ifshin. 'Tell us about Ifshin,' it read. My other purpose in speaking today is to do just that. I want to talk about David Ifshin. David Ifshin is my friend. This declaration may come as a shock to those people whose perception of David--"

Ira Glass

Well, in the weeks after that was published-- it was published in May, by the way, not written in May-- David Ifshin died, and John McCain became a leading vice presidential contender after Jack Kemp. It was John McCain who nominated Bob Dole, gave the speech for that at the Republican National Convention. And Michael Lewis ran into McCain on Election Day.

Ira Glass

Michael Lewis.

Ira Glass

Our program was produced today by Alix Spiegel and myself with Peter Clowney and Nancy Updike, contributing editors Paul Tough, Jack Hitt, and Margy Rochlin.

[ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS]

Music help from John Connors, Travis Stancil, and Steve Cushing. Thanks to public radio stations WBUR, KPCC, and KQED. If you'd like a copy of this program, it only costs $10. Call us at WBEZ in Chicago. 312-832-3380.

[FUNDING CREDITS]

WBEZ management oversight by Torey Malatia. I'm Ira Glass, back next week with more stories of This American Life.