My life полностью

Eli laughed and came, becoming the campaign’s chief of staff in charge of the central office, finances, and the campaign plane. Early in the month, Ned McWherter, Brereton Jones, and Booth Gardner, respectively the governors of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Washington, endorsed me. Those who had already done so, including Dick Riley of South Carolina, Mike Sullivan of Wyoming, Bruce King of New Mexico, George Sinner of North Dakota, and Zell Miller of Georgia, reaffirmed their support. So did Senator Sam Nunn, with the caveat that he wanted to “wait and see” what further stories came out. A national poll said that 70 percent of the American people thought the press shouldn’t report on the private lives of public figures. In another, 80 percent of the Democrats said their votes wouldn’t be affected even if the Flowers story was true. That sounds good, but 20 percent is a lot to give up right off the bat. Nevertheless, the campaign picked up steam again, and it seemed that at least we could finish a strong second to Tsongas, which I thought would be good enough to get me to the southern primaries. Then, just as the campaign seemed to be recovering, there was another big shock when the draft story broke. On February 6, the Wall Street Journal ran a story on my draft experience and on my relationship with the ROTC program at the University of Arkansas in 1969. When the campaign began, I was unprepared for the draft questions, and I mistakenly said I had never had a draft deferment during my Oxford years; in fact, I did have one from August 7 through October 20, 1969. Even worse, Colonel Eugene Holmes, who had agreed to let me join the program, now claimed that I had misled him to get out of the draft. In 1978, when reporters asked him about the charge, he said he had dealt with hundreds of cases and didn’t recall anything specific about mine. Coupled with my own misstatement that I had never had a deferment, the story made it seem that I was misleading people about why I wasn’t drafted. That wasn’t true, but at the time I couldn’t prove it. I didn’t remember and didn’t find Jeff Dwire’s tape relaying his friendly conversation with Holmes in March 1970, after I was out of the ROTC program and back in the draft. Jeff was dead, as was Bill Armstrong, the head of my local draft board. And all draft records from that period had been destroyed.

Holmes’s attack surprised me, because it contradicted his earlier statements. It’s been suggested that Holmes may have had some help with his memory from his daughter Linda Burnett, a Republican activist who was working for President Bush’s reelection.

Closer to the election, on September 16, Holmes would issue a more detailed denunciation questioning my “patriotism and integrity” and saying again that I had deceived him. Apparently, the statement was drafted by his daughter, with “guidance” from the office of my old opponent, Congressman John Paul Hammerschmidt, and had been revised by several Bush campaign officials. A few days after the story broke, and just a week from election day in New Hampshire, Ted Koppel, anchor of ABC’s Nightline, called David Wilhelm and said that he had a copy of my now famous draft letter to Colonel Holmes, and that ABC would be doing a story about it. I had forgotten all about the letter, and ABC agreed to send us a copy, which they graciously did. When I read it, I could see why the Bush campaign was sure that the letter and Colonel Holmes’s revised account of the ROTC episode would sink me in New Hampshire.

That night Mickey Kantor, Bruce Lindsey, James Carville, Paul Begala, George Stephanopoulos, Hillary, and I met in one of our rooms at the Days Inn Motel in Manchester. We were getting killed in the press. Now there was a double-barreled attack on my character. All the television pundits said I was dead as a doornail. George was curled up on the floor, practically in tears. He asked if it wasn’t time to think about withdrawing. Carville paced the floor, waving the letter around and shouting, “Georgie!

Georgie! That’s crazy. This letter is our friend. Anyone who actually reads it will think he’s got character!” Though I loved his “never say die” attitude, I was calmer than he was. I knew that George’s only political experience had been in Washington, and that, unlike us, he might actually believe the press should decide who was worthy and who wasn’t. I asked, “George, do you still think I’d be a good President?” “Yes,” he said. “Then get up and go back to work. If the voters want to withdraw me, they’ll do it on election day. I’m going to let them decide.”