Campaign Journal "I Can't Take Another Day"

By Michael Riley/Des Moines

For Bruce Babbitt, a gnawing personal matter keeps reminding him how tough it is to run for President. It arose this time in Bloomfield, Iowa, over coffee and sweet rolls. "What about elderly health care?" a woman asked. Babbitt's mind rushed to thoughts about his father, who lies seriously ill in Flagstaff, Ariz. "He's 89 years old," Babbitt softly tells her, "and he doesn't have a lot of time left." Though Babbitt often returns to sit by his father's side, each departure rekindles the personal pangs. "It's a very poignant time in my life," he says. "It keeps me human."

The loneliness of a long-shot runner involves a constant struggle to retain a sense of humanity. Day after day, town after town, Babbitt trudges on in an electoral blur, answering endless questions and shaking an uncountable number of hands. One recent night in New York City, his wife Hattie arrived and crept / into bed while he was asleep. He awoke before dawn to catch a plane to Pittsburgh. All they shared was a tap on the shoulder."Some mornings," Babbitt concedes, "you wake up and say, 'I can't take another day of this.' "

So why does he? With his campaign running near empty, long on crisp ideas but woefully short of money and notice, he finds himself fueled by that blend of humor, optimism and righteousness peculiar to dark-horse crusaders. It helps him endure those indignities that now come with a campaign, such as confessing that he had used marijuana. It helps him endure the awkward difficulty of having to explain such admissions over the phone to his two young sons.

In Des Moines, Babbitt bypasses the Savery Hotel, the venerable political hot spot, and stays instead in the spartan Kirkwood, with its scuffed furniture and worn carpets. No luxury suites here. One night, when Hattie Babbitt settled into bed at the Kirkwood, she asked her husband, "Do I smell mildew?" But the odor was not the hotel linens. She laughed. "It was his T shirt."

With the failure of his campaign to catch fire, Babbitt remains trapped in the vicious vise of fund raising: meager popular support cuts donations to a trickle. These hard times call for unconventional tactics. Staffers are not above recycling empty soda cans and newspapers to pay for pens and pads at the Phoenix headquarters, tucked away in a shopping mall. Frequent-flyer miles are redeemed with gusto.

As the pauper of 1988, Babbitt has little to lose, so he can risk everything. He is betting that his brutal honesty about cutting the federal deficit -- by raising taxes and slashing middle-class entitlements -- will garner attention. It is the only strategy he can afford.

As Babbitt's van races through Iowa under a steely sky, he gazes out the window and sighs. For a moment there is a lingering wistfulness, a remote sadness, for all the missed meals and family separations. But no one is forcing him to continue. In the end, there is only one reason why he made the painful decision to miss for the first time going trick-or-treating with his sons. There was the distant hope, still visible to him on the Iowa horizon, that he would have to miss Halloween only one more time -- next year, as he heads into the general election.