The Long View.(Brief Article)(Column)

The Candidates' Diaries

Installment 1: February 2002

From Dick Gephardt's diary:

. . . which I was supposed to get tweezed and bleached on Thursday, but the guy didn't come until after I did Hardball, so the week was all messed up. Greta called to ask me to do her new show on Fox next week, but I just felt that the whole eye-tuck situation (hers, not mine) would overshadow my core message, which I'm going to get this weekend after the focus-group results get crunched. Had a top-level briefing this morning: So far I've raised about $875,000, which isn't bad but isn't good, although it was fun to color almost all the way up to the $900,000 mark on the big thermometer poster I have in the office. I also learned that Daschle's negatives are now at almost 20, which may be enough to pre-empt his Iowa operation if I can get a few key endorsements next month . . .

From "Straight Talk: An American Hero Talks Straight" (self-titled John McCain diary):

. . . of my steely gaze. Then I broke out laughing. My gimlet eyes crinkled up in my familiar laughing squint, and my powerful body shook with mirth. "My God," the assembled journalists cried in unison, "Senator, you kill us! You absolutely kill us!" Then the room quieted. "I joke," I said, "not because I don't care, but because I care so very much. And I tell it to you straight. You know why?" The room was silent. "Because," I said, my raspy masculine voice low, "I don't give a rat's you-know-what." A collective moan swept over the assembly. There was a silence, as I basked in the warm love. Then, almost as one, the journalists started writing. The noise of pens scratching against paper was almost deafening to my ears, but I could hear a lone voice ask a question. It was a young journalist, barely 20, if a day. "But sir," he said, "on the one hand you say you don't give a rat's you- know-what, and on the other you say you care very deeply. So which is it? Or are you just sort of posturing and preening in order to . . ." But he never finished his question, poor lad. He was set on by the other reporters, his shirt torn, his notebook ripped and stepped on, and his glasses twisted into a pretzel. "Fellas, stop," I said, my gimlet eyes twinkling. "I think the young man here has had enough . . ."

From Joe Lieberman's diary: