A Moment Alone with Hart

By David Beckwith

The long-haul campaign day (Connecticut to Maryland to Louisiana to Washington, D.C.) had been grueling. Everyone on Gary Hart's chartered 727 was pooped, the candidate most of all. He was in a mood to relax, to be himself. Ambling through the press section, Hart settled into a seat, sipped a drink and spoke freely about his campaign.

Hart believes the news media have not given his candidacy an altogether fair shake. It was suggested to him that more spontaneous chats with journalists might make for a more sympathetic press. "I can't do that," Hart said. "I can't approach you people because then you'll think I'm pandering, trying to co-opt you." He seemed sincerely frustrated. "Sometimes I think I'm living in two different worlds--what I do and what I read I do." Why had the day's news reports, he asked, not mentioned the remarkable size of the crowd the day before in Harrisburg? How about his creditable performance before a tough Jewish organization? Why is the press so willfully skeptical, so predisposed to declare Gary Hart a passing fancy?

He wondered why there were not more stories in which his supporters explain their enthusiasm. One reason, he was told, is that many of his new adherents are vague on the subject of Hart: his "freshness" is often the only explanation offered. "But you can't expect people to be as articulate on the issues as you are," he said. "People didn't know the details of Kennedy's foreign policy or Ike's farm policy."

Reporters' dogged questions about his marital separations and his age change, it seems, merely nettle him. What really burns him up, he said, are the press portrayals of his late mother. "They're making her out to be some sort of religious nut, a kook. She was a normal, hardworking, Godfearing woman, and she gave us the best upbringing she could." Nina Hart, who died in 1972, was a member of the Church of the Nazarene. Some stories have depicted her as severe and neurasthenic and have dwelt on her habit of moving the family frequently. Hart noted emphatically that his family had been poor; fixing up and reselling modest houses in their home town of Ottawa, Kans., he insisted, was a way of making ends meet. "My parents," he went on, "were mainly interested in loving us, in giving us the best start they could, in letting us be whatever we could be."

Hart used to complain about reporters' rote descriptions of him as "cool and aloof." But amid the evening hush, as his 727 headed for Washington, he confessed that he is uneasy with street campaigning. He manages the jolly handshaking and baby kissing. But he is ambivalent, at least, about the surging excitement of the crowds, the yearning he sees in hundreds of anonymous faces every day. "Those people are obviously looking for somebody to believe in, someone they can trust." That palpable emotional investment, Hart says, is awesome, even frightening. No matter who the candidate, he says, the crowds are bound to be disappointed. "Sooner or later, they'll be let down."

It was night when the jet made its approach to Washington National Airport. Next morning at 10:30, Hart showed up chipper and smiling in Lexington, Ky. He had to meet voters, shake hands, work the crowd. --By David Beckwith