Campaign Portrait

By Richard Stengel

Though he nearly won the Democratic nomination in 1984, former Colorado Senator Gary Hart remains an enigma to many. This is the second in a series of profiles exploring the personalities and characters of the major 1988 contenders.

Lost in thought, he fiddles with his fingers, rubbing his left hand with his right as though it were a kind of talisman. It is a nervous habit, something he does before nearly every public appearance. At 7:15 a.m., Gary Hart, his black cowboy boots burnished, his blue pinstripe suit neatly pressed, stands in the corner of the windowless waiting room at ABC before going on Good Morning America. He is there to promote The Strategies of Zeus, his recently published spy novel about arms talks in Geneva. Watching the monitor, he hears the announcer telling viewers what is ahead: ". . . and we'll be talking with Gary Hart about the presidential election of 1988." Hart groans, "Oh, no," and then smiles sheepishly, as if to say, What can one expect?

Hart winces at being depicted as a political animal; his manner can suggest that he would be more at home reading (or writing) a book. Yet as he leans against the doorway waiting to go on the air, the 1988 race is clearly on his mind. "What voters are tired of," he says earnestly, "is the ideological President." Presidents, he declares, should not be afraid of creative ideas, of searching for fresh approaches. "It's a state of mind. Kennedy had it. Roosevelt had it." Hart's Mount Rushmore face becomes very serious. "Voters," he says, "want competence. They want someone who knows Washington but is not a captive of it." Someone like Gary Hart? "Light bulb," Hart replies, a smile brightening his face as he strides into the artificial sunshine of the studio.

Gary Warren Hart, 50, the shy, jug-eared boy from Ottawa, Kansas, who graduated from Bethany Nazarene College in central Oklahoma and then from Yale's Divinity and Law Schools, the volunteer for both John and Robert Kennedy who engineered George McGovern's capture of the 1972 Democratic presidential nomination, portrayed himself in 1984 as the man who would move his party and the country into a new age. It almost worked. Now the self- described antipolitician is in the unaccustomed position of being the front runner for the Democratic nomination, and, for the moment, he is biding his time. Lean and efficient, Hart is the Voyager of American politics -- carefully designed, technically innovative and built for a long haul.

Ever since Walter Mondale deflated his 1984 campaign with a single question -- "Where's the beef?" -- Hart has been constructing an impressive fortress of ideas. He has delivered a series of scholarly speeches on foreign affairs and industrial policy. He opposes restrictions on trade like tariffs and quotas and advocates a restructuring of Third World debt. In a speech last month, Hart proposed an overhaul of the U.S. education system featuring stricter accountability for teachers and offering educational retraining for adults. To help finance this multibillion-dollar proposal, he would impose a $10-per-bbl. fee on imported oil and make cuts in military and agriculture programs. Although Hart had one of the most liberal voting records in the Senate, he has cast himself as a nonideological technocrat intent on steering the Democratic party away from traditional interest-group liberalism.

Yet in a curious way, Hart the man seems hidden behind the edifice of his ideas. He sometimes appears to wield his detailed understanding of issues as a kind of personal shield. He admits that Mondale's question probed deeper than policy particulars. "Fritz touched a nerve when he sort of questioned who I was," says Hart from behind the desk of his rather spartan Denver law office. "What he was really saying was, 'Is this guy well-grounded enough to govern this country?' " Hart can answer the question that stymies many other candidates: Why are you running for President? But he still seems uneasy with the question that bothers few others: Who are you?

Up close, Hart seems warmer, more natural than he was in 1984. While he still ticks away with an intensity that is sometimes scary, he no longer seems to regard a smile and a chuckle as a sign of superficiality. He will occasionally mention his two children, his parents, his upbringing in the strict Church of the Nazarene, things he shied away from before. Hart realizes that this time around, he must be as adept in talking about the messenger as the message.

During the 1984 campaign, Hart was pricked by questions about discrepancies in accounts of his age (he was born in 1936, not 1937 as one official resume said) and the shortening of his name from Hartpence. The points grew in significance when Hart faltered in explaining them. His aides recently persuaded him to write an autobiographical article, "One Man's Luck," that would answer those lingering questions and dispel the sense that he was detached from his own roots. The article, which has not been published, reveals much about Hart's boyhood and his early hopes and dreams but offers only the most cursory explanation of his failure to recall the year of his birth. In recent appearances, Hart has routinely made self-deprecating jokes about his age. Yet when a reporter brings up the age issue during a relaxed dinner at a Florida restaurant, Hart turns wintry and abrupt. Pronouncing each word slowly, frostily, he says, "People . . . just . . . don't . . . care."

Arms control brings passion to Hart's voice like no other issue. Frank Connaughton, the sympathetic protagonist in his new novel, is a rangy, rugged arms-control negotiator from Montana who risks his career and reputation to get an agreement in Geneva. In his farewell speech to the Senate, Hart offered his own arms-control policy: a 50% reduction in U.S. and Soviet nuclear arsenals, a nuclear test ban and a moratorium on the development of cruise missiles. His foreign policy views are almost the opposite of Ronald Reagan's. The underlying problem in Central America, Hart argues, is poverty, not the threat of Soviet influence. He advocates what he calls "enlightened engagement," a policy that relies primarily on economic and diplomatic initiatives rather than the threat of military force.

Hart is good in small groups. One recent afternoon in Nashua, N.H., two dozen local residents gather in the living room of Fred and Beth Yochum. Hart enters the room a bit diffidently, like the new boy at school going to his first class. Soon he is chatting easily and naturally. He is friendly but formal: an inner calculus determines the precise space to put between himself and each person. His wife Lee is more the natural politician, laughing deeply at a joke, putting her hand on someone's elbow. The two have had marital difficulties and have separated on two occasions. At large gatherings, Hart seems almost to ignore her. But during more intimate occasions such as this, he will often whisper something in her ear, sometimes slip an arm around her waist.

Standing in front of the Yochum's fireplace, a cup of coffee balanced in his right hand, Hart looks reed-thin, slightly vulnerable. He talks quietly about trade policy, military reform, education, reducing unemployment. No slogans, no catchy phrases. He takes a curious pride in his ability to sidestep applause lines, as if trying to evoke an emotional response would somehow demean the seriousness of his message. "You'll be hearing from a lot of different people," he tells the group. "Some of them are very good at giving very moving speeches. I wish I was." Not really. Emotional oratory and % soaring symbols are for men like Mario Cuomo and Joe Biden.

Hart has what he calls an "Oriental philosophy" about politics. "Our strength is our weakness," he says. "What is appealing to people about a person in politics is often the thing that is their weakness as well." Strength and weakness. He is low-keyed and under control; he seems to lack emotion and compassion. He has experience in running for President; he is no longer a fresh face.

What some see as weakness, Hart typically regards as strength. "It takes people twice to run for President," he says while sitting high above the clouds in a plane flying to Florida, where he is scheduled to lecture. "You really need that period of exposure so people begin to form not just a series of snapshots but a mosaic. That's when they begin to feel comfortable with you."

Yet there are many voters who still feel uncomfortable with Hart, because they sense he feels uncomfortable with himself. His cerebral style, his insistence on engaging people intellectually rather than emotionally, make him seem elusive and distant. Such observations frustrate him; he is irked by those who think there is an unknown man behind a familiar mask. "What I mean," he explains, "is that I'm not a good, traditional politician in baring a real or imagined soul, or talking about my mother, or saying, 'Yesterday my daughter said to me such and such.' "

Hart is confident that he can reach voters' hearts through their heads. But Hart, the rational man of ideas, can sound almost mystical in trying to explain his place on the political horizon. "There's a certain politics of antipolitics. I don't think I'm here by accident," he says, looking out the window as the plane begins its descent. "I think there is a desire in this country for people who are not traditional politicians. I can't be a traditional politician. You just don't tamper with who you are."