As much as both sides might reject the idea, some reporters and some politicians actually like each other.
Both know how the game is played. Easier not to get too close to people who want to use you. Better to stay at arms length. And yet, friendships do happen. Take Governor Martin O’Malley’s decades-long friendship with the late Richard Ben Cramer, author of “What It Takes: The Road to the White House.”
They got together because Cramer was blessed with one indispensable gift: he could get in the door.
Oh, sure, he could write. But, at the end of the day, it was the talk: the gift of gab, some used to call it. If you couldn’t get the story, if the sources wouldn’t agree to tell you what they knew, you didn’t have anything to write.
Cramer could make you think he wanted the full story and that he would tell it fairly. He followed through enough that his subjects were willing to talk to him again. (Vice President Joe Biden, one of the characters in the book, spoke at Cramer’s memorial service in New York.)
O’Malley, who is contemplating his own run for president, saw Cramer’s talent up close and personal. When O’Malley was working for presidential candidate Gary Hart in 1988, Cramer needed Hart’s cooperation for a searching profile that would be featured in “What It Takes.”
But there was a problem. This was just after pictures emerged of the married Hart on a yacht called Monkey Business with an attractive young model, Donna Rice. Hart’s people, including O’Malley, weren’t speaking to reporters; not at all. They were hanging up on reporters, including the Pulitzer Prize winning Cramer.
O’Malley remembers hanging hung up twice on Cramer’s assistant. Then Cramer, famous for out-waiting reluctant sources, got on the case himself. He told O’Malley, then a 20-year-old law student, that he wanted to know how Hart thought – not who he went sailing with.
“I see you haven’t hung up,” O’Malley recalled Cramer saying. “He proceeded to say he didn’t think Hart had been fairly treated, that his story had not been fairly told. I think you owe it the guy to make sure his story is better told, more fairly told.”
Known for being one of the most devoted Hart staff members, O’Malley’s word had real importance, If he was sold, Hart should listen. He did and his story, told at length, became part of the book.
After that, O’Malley and Cramer spoke often: when O’Malley ran for the state senate, the Baltimore city council, mayor of Baltimore and then governor. “Richard was encouraging of me in every way. He was like an older brother in some respects...Richard was very savvy politically. He had a sense of where the larger conversation was,” O’Malley said in a recent conversation.
And now, O’Malley occasionally wonders what Cramer would say about the governor’s thoughts of running for president. Earlier, when O’Malley was running for governor, Cramer told him to talk less and write more.
“When Richard and I spoke, to the extent we spoke about the upcoming race (for president),” O’Malley said, “what Richard counseled and would counsel is that you have to be true to yourself and know what you stand for. That doesn’t happen simply by jumping on the gerbil wheel every day and going through the motions of a totally packed schedule.”
And what would Cramer say if Hilary Clinton runs as many expect she will? Think, O’Malley said, about why you’re running – if you do. Prepare, in other words. “The takeaway from the book (“What it Takes: The Road to the White House”) is the takeaway that I left the Hart campaign with having learned: the only thing wrong with politics is that not enough good people try.”