Thanks, marie!!

Life of the Party?

By Chris Cillizza

Evan Bayh just may be the Democrats’ best hope in 2008—if he can convince America he’s for real.

In mid-May, Evan Bayh was leaving Washington’s ritzy St. Regis Hotel, which, with the exception of George W. Bush, has been visited by every American president since Calvin Coolidge, when a funny thing happened. Fresh from a speech to the Dow Jones board of directors, Bayh was stopped by a uniformed hotel employee. “You’re Evan Bayh!” the man said. “You need to run for president!”

So it goes, of late, for Indiana’s junior senator, who, in the 2008 presidential sweepstakes, has become the hottest commodity not named Hillary Clinton. As soon as John Kerry conceded last November, Bayh’s phone began ringing as supporters urged him to run. The Internet crowd has hoisted the banner as well—AmericansforBayh.blogspot.com promises “all Bayh news, all the time.” And in the nonstop conversations among D.C.’s chattering class—composed of consultants, lobbyists and party apparatchiks—Bayh is one of the first names offered as a 2008 contender, mentioned in the same breath as Clinton, Kerry and 2004 VP nominee John Edwards, and given an edge over Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold, Delaware Senator Joe Biden, and governors Mark Warner of Virginia, Bill Richardson of New Mexico and Tom Vilsack of Iowa.

To Democrats searching for a new start following Kerry’s devastating defeat, Bayh has become the empty vessel into which hope is being poured. Former Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle raves about Bayh’s “tremendous additional growth potential.” Observers more prone to speak English note simply that Bayh has attained the Democrats’ holy grail: winning—repeatedly—in a red state.

And as Bayh has begun to raise money, hire staff and speak in key states around the country—all the necessary steps to launch a successful presidential race—it’s become increasingly clear that 2008 represents his best chance to realize the political potential that has attended him almost since birth. Go for it and he quiets the naysayers who have long cast him as a blandly handsome politician with no heft. Lose and he can look forward to spooling out his days in the Senate, pondering what might have been. All of which is to say that for Evan Bayh—the political prodigy always among the great mentioned for president and vice president, elected statewide five times but still pegged as an “empty suit,” regarded as perfect on paper but too risk-averse to win the big one—the long-awaited someday is now.

EVEN TRUE-BLUE DEMOCRATS remain unbuoyed by John Kerry’s oft-quoted assertion that if half the average crowd at an Ohio State football game had switched their votes in 2004, the Dems would now control the White House. True, Bush won Ohio—and with it, a second term—by a paltry 120,000 votes. True, his failure to win Michigan and Pennsylvania meant that Kerry took half the Rust Belt. But in 2004’s mapping of Red and Blue America, Bush was a crimson tide engulfing the South, the Southwest and the Plains states, while his opponent merely lapped at the edges in New England, the West Coast and the Upper Midwest.

The scary truth for Democrats is that Kerry’s defeat wasn’t just about Kerry. It was about the party, and it revealed, or confirmed, problems that run far deeper than the ability to hustle 50,000 or 60,000 votes. Most party strategists see these problems as solvable, but there is consensus that they must be addressed—the sooner, the better—if the Democrats hope to regain the White House in 2008.

So what exactly are the problems? First, Democrats remain (complicitly) dogged by the increasingly dirty “L” word. On the war, taxes and every other wedge issue Republicans could exploit in 2004, Kerry and his “allies” were portrayed as dangerous, untrustworthy liberals. One of the final ads Bush ran featured a narrator saying, “John Kerry and liberal allies: higher taxes; voting to tax Social Security benefits; government-run healthcare; a record of slashing intelligence; and reckless defense cuts. Alone in the booth … why take the risk?” Exit polls conducted on Election Day showed the wisdom of the Bush strategy. Not surprisingly, those who described themselves as liberal voted overwhelmingly for Kerry, while those who called themselves conservative voted just as overwhelmingly for Bush. But the former accounted for only 21 percent of those polled, while the latter accounted for 34. And for that imbalance, you have to give the Republicans credit: For years, their rhetoric has sought to make “L” a scarlet letter, to redefine “liberal” as the opposite of “moral.” In this, the Democrats have cooperated nicely; as Howard Dean pointed out in June, Democrats have ceded ownership of the term “moral”—never mind that, according to exit polls, the most pressing concern for Americans who reelected Bush was moral values.

Second, Democrats remain dogged by questions in voters’ minds about their ability and commitment to keep America safe. Kerry, the combat veteran and decorated war hero, seemed the perfect candidate to squelch those doubts, but 13 Swift Boat veterans later, everyone knows how that turned out. Bush repeatedly questioned his opponent’s ability to protect America, and in October was quoted in The Washington Post saying that Kerry “would weaken America and make the world more dangerous”—a debatable proposition at best. Yet according to exit polls, the second-most pressing concern for Americans who reelected Bush was the issue of terrorism and the war in Iraq.

Third, the Republicans’ registration and turnout operations are now killing the Democrats’. The GOP left few votes on the table last November, thanks to a massive voter identification and turnout effort that grew out of the party’s missteps in 2000. In that election, though polls showed Bush with a three-to-six-point lead in the days leading up to the vote, the margin was ultimately wiped out by a superior Democratic ground game built largely on the back of organized labor. Beginning with the 2002 midterm elections, Republicans began testing a turnout operation of their own known as the “72 Hour Program.” As the name suggests, it was designed to mobilize Republicans in the final three days before an election in an effort to nullify the traditional Democratic turnout edge. It worked. Republicans picked up seats in the House and Senate that year and spent the next two perfecting their system. The result? Kerry won more votes than any previous Democratic presidential candidate and still lost the popular vote by 3 million in 2004.

Fourth, America’s population continues to grow in areas where Republicans are strong and getting stronger. The 2004 election was a demographic disaster for Democrats, and long-term population trends are all in Republicans’ favor. Bush won 96 of the 100 fastest-growing counties in the country—the vast majority of which lie in Republican-friendly states like Georgia, Texas and Florida. For an example closer to home, look no further than Hamilton County. In the 16th-fastest-growing county in the country, 74 percent of voters chose Bush. In the spreading suburbia of Boone County, the margin was the same. It was in places like Zionsville, Fishers and Carmel that the last election was decided.

Fifth—and this is the Democrats’ most troubling problem, with the most elusive solution—the party continues to search, so far unsuccessfully, for a compelling, unified, resonant message. If Republicans have found richly fertile ground in the country’s expanding middle, it’s in large part because their mantra of free enterprise, values and keeping Americans safe resonates with young families—the pioneers of the outer suburbs. The pioneer spirit is one of opportunity and optimism, but Democrats have increasingly cast themselves as the party of “no”—no tax cuts, no adding a prescription drug benefit to Medicare, no war in Iraq (or at least a belated “no”)—with little in the way of positives to counterbalance the negativity.

To lead the search for solutions to these problems, party activists earlier this year turned to Howard Dean, who, during his 2004 presidential campaign, pledged to end the red/blue divide in favor of purple states where both parties could compete. He rode that pledge to victory in the battle for the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee (but only after promising that he wouldn’t run for president in ’08). And so, less than a year after November’s bitter defeat, the party’s two most public faces—Dean, who recently said he “hates” Republicans, and Hillary Clinton—happen to be the country’s most visible symbols of liberalism. With liberals’ voting power waning and Republicans energized by their success in ’04, Democrats need not just a new message but a new messenger. Only by connecting with the “demi-generation” (dubbed by former Clinton and current Bayh advisor Ron Klain) of young suburban families can the party hope to win.

ENTER EVAN BAYH: Midwesterner, moderate Democrat, former red-state governor, family man. Hoosiers are well-acquainted with his meteoric rise in politics. Just two years after being elected Indiana’s secretary of state, he became, at age 33, the youngest governor in the country. He easily won reelection in 1992 with 63 percent, even as then-President George H.W. Bush was carrying Indiana by six points. That win formalized Bayh as a rising star, an idea that gained momentum when he was named keynote speaker of the 1996 Democratic National Convention and got a chance to sound the positive, family-oriented themes that have come to form the bedrock of his political philosophy. “I come from here, the heartland, a place where values run deep, and love of family and country is strong,” Bayh told the Chicago convention crowd by way of introduction. “A place where the most important title a man can have is not governor but father, husband, son.”

And a place, he might have added, that likes to rough up Democrats. “Five times, in what is a challenging environment for Democrats, I have been entrusted with leadership by the people of Indiana,” Bayh says today, adding that he can be a “unifying force” not just for Democrats but also independents and “reasonable Republicans.” From where party operatives sit, Bayh’s reach to Indiana’s “reasonable Republicans” (picture a young mom who supports abortion rights, wants to keep more of her tax dollars and worries about her kids being safe from terrorism) is his best selling point. He lured these voters with a mix of fiscal pragmatism (during his eight years as governor, he never raised taxes) and a very public home life that appealed to even the liveliest partisans.

It was this crossover appeal that landed Bayh in the pool of potential VP candidates for Kerry in 2004; he was eliminated when Kerry decided against making a geographical pick who could help him carry a state. Instead, of course, Kerry tapped the gregarious, charming John Edwards and went on to handily lose both Indiana and North Carolina. With the South seemingly shut off to them for the foreseeable future, Democrats have no choice but to wrest the Midwest back from the GOP’s clutches. Bayh, the thinking goes, could become the first Democrat to carry the Hoosier State since Lyndon Johnson in 1964. As Anita Dunn, the senator’s media consultant, argues, “he could certainly put his own state into contention in a way that no one else can” if he is leading the ticket.

Bayh’s team believes his voting record will shield him from Republican cries of “weak on defense” and “liberal.” He supported the Iraq war and the $86.5 billion Bush sought to finance it. More recently, though—and with more relevance to the primaries—the guy who’s long been regarded as an elephant in donkey’s clothing has been getting in touch with his inner Democrat: voting no to Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state, blocking the confirmation of a new U.S. Trade Representative in order to force a vote on a bill seeking to tighten trade regulations with China, opposing Priscilla Owen for a seat on the federal bench.

Bayh says his voting record—sometimes with his party, sometimes not—reflects his conviction that Washington’s ideological divides ill-serve the American public. His longstanding effort to distance himself from D.C. politics-as-usual is, in the wake of last year’s elections, reemerging as a call to unity. In Bayh’s worldview, us-against-them isn’t a matter of red state vs. blue state; it’s about Washington vs. the real life of America. He often refers to the capital as a foreign country. He omits, on his official biography, any reference to having graduated from St. Albans School, the most insidery of D.C. prep schools. He laments the disconnect between Washington and the great “out there.” He decries the “cacophony of the Beltway” and speaks rhapsodically of “the real desires of most Americans out in the heartland.” (With that heartland—and the Iowa caucuses—in mind, he’s stepped up his advocacy for the use of ethanol, the corn-based alternative fuel.)

What Bayh’s supporters see in their man is a new kind of Democrat who understands the needs and concerns of folks living in the country’s vast middle because he shares them. The senator, who turns 50 this year, his wife, Susan, and their 9-year-old twins, Beau and Nick, are a picture-perfect foursome to offer up to voters in the outer ’burbs. The family will be front-and-center during the run-up to the presidential race and an integral part of campaign messaging once Bayh formally announces. At a recent speech in Colorado (a potential ’08 swing state), he tried to paint for his audience the family portrait that Hoosier voters got to see firsthand. Calling the birth of his boys “a big deal in our state,” he said, “I was the first governor since 1830 to have kids while in office, so you want to talk about the loss of privacy in public life—try sitting there in the maternity room watching the 6 o’clock news where live—live—they were reporting how often my wife was having contractions.”

“People have a much more personal connection to Evan in Indiana than they do [in Washington],” says Klain, a native Hoosier. “People saw him emerge as a family man and as a father.” When I asked Bayh about the twins’ impact on his life, he said, “I have been increasingly referencing my children and appealing to other people to think about theirs in addressing the challenges that face our country. One of the great things about our country is that each generation has always been willing to make the difficult decisions necessary to ensure that those who follow will have a better life. Now is the time for our generation to do the same.” Do it for the kids: a good—if, in Bayh’s hands, painfully stilted—message, made better by the fact that he really means it. He isn’t talking specifics yet, and he may not have to. Unlike running for governor or senator, running for president is less about policy proposals than striking a chord. “I still believe in a place called Hope” might sound hokey now, but for Bill Clinton it was political gold. At his core, Bayh believes in a Democratic Party defined by its desire to protect the American family—from terrorist attacks at home and abroad, from the creeping moral decay represented by absentee fathers and high divorce rates. The trick is to situate that family in his own version of a place called Hope—if one exists.

ALTHOUGH TALK OF BAYH’S presidential ambitions is all the rage in the D.C. gossip chamber, he remains a blank slate to American voters. In any poll testing the Democratic candidates mentioned for 2008, he is an asterisk—an afterthought next to giants like Clinton and Kerry and even the second fiddle to 2004’s second fiddle, Edwards. As a result, he’ll have to spend millions simply to introduce himself to an electorate already acquainted with his rivals. National polling suggests that no more than 1 percent of voters feel strongly enough about Bayh to say they’d support him in 2008. Others may have heard the name but know nothing about him. (Let alone his family. In a national race Bayh won’t have the resources to make sure every voter is up to speed on Susan, Beau and Nick. Nor will he have a monopoly on a telegenic clan. Edwards’ youngest children—5-year-old Emma Claire and 3-year-old Jack—were the darlings of last year’s campaign and will still be usefully cute in three years’ time.)

Of course, this early in the game, low name recognition is par for the course for a politician who’s never run a national campaign, and it’s hardly a sign of doom. Howard Dean went from “who?” in 2003 to frontrunner in ’04, and Bill Clinton went from nowhere to the White House. In presidential races, momentum is everything, and it’s harder to thrill voters when most of them already know you—harder still when they know you and don’t like you. This explains why Bayh supporters spin his asterisk status as an asset: He won’t be toting the political baggage of his better-known opponents. Robin Winston, a former Indiana Democratic Party chair and now an Indianapolis-based consultant, believes Bayh’s anonymity will be a good thing once the presidential race begins in earnest. In an implicit reference to Clinton—beloved by her allies, detested by her foes—he says, “I don’t think people will be lined up around a building for hours to be against Evan Bayh.”

But primaries are about giving voters a reason to vote for you, not against the other guy (or the other Clinton). And in order to win, Bayh must develop an appeal based on something beyond simply being the least-offensive Democratic candidate in the field. Bayh backers should be alarmed to know that when I asked Louisiana senator Mary Landrieu, a Bayh ally, about his strengths as a presidential candidate, she said earnestly: “He is not anathema to the South, the Midwest or the Northeast.” There’s a bumper sticker for you: Bayh! He’s not anathema!

In Indiana, of course, despite his membership in a smiling family, Bayh is known as blah, wooden, aloof. Like Kerry, he’s a son of privilege; like Kerry, he lacks the charisma of the politician who is also a self-made man (though perhaps Bayh’s bland is a step up from Kerry’s dour). In Bayh’s defense, however, it must be considered that he rose so far, so fast that, like the kid who grows a mustache in order to pass as older, he almost had to cloak himself in a sober personality. Assessing his style of governance, which might politely be called cautious, he told me, “I felt a need to prove I was serious enough to be entrusted with important public leadership.”

The primaries will give Bayh a chance to introduce a more compelling version of himself to America. But if his keynote address during the 1996 Democratic convention was any indication of what’s to come, wish him luck. That night—the night most Americans first laid eyes on Bayh—he was the victim of his own preternatural wariness; the speech remains his most public failure to date and was widely panned locally and nationally. The South Bend Tribune opined: “If a keynote speech is designed to light a fire in the belly of convention delegates, then Bayh was working with wet matches.” (He was also a victim of circumstances that night. First lady Hillary Clinton spoke before him, eating up valuable minutes of primetime TV news coverage. And Bayh may have been distracted by behind-the-scenes jousting with Clinton adviser Dick Morris, who wanted him to attack GOP nominee Bob Dole. Bayh refused, a decision backed by President Bill Clinton. Does this mean he won’t play dirty in a presidential campaign? Hard to say. But given his ambition, it seems unlikely that he’d let opponents savage him without throwing a few haymakers of his own. His singling out of “reasonable Republicans” may suggest he’s reserving the right to deal differently with their unreasonable counterparts.)

Sitting relaxedly in his Senate office with an arm draped over the back of a chair, Bayh—all too aware of his cardboard image—pooh-poohs the notion that he’s nothing more than a casting-call politician. “I get up in the morning, get out of bed, take off my suit, then take a shower,” he deadpans, recounting a response he once gave an Indiana reporter when asked to describe a typical day.

“There is a side of him that is very fun and engaging and great to be around,” says Richard Gordon, a longtime confidante and close friend. “I’ve had times with him where I couldn’t stop laughing.” When I asked for an example, Gordon told me that he first met Bayh in 1976, while stumping for Birch; Evan went to the Granite State to campaign, and Gordon met him at the airport. Twenty-four years later, Bayh was asked by Al Gore to campaign for him in New Hampshire, and Bayh invited Gordon along. When the senator deplaned, Gordon was waiting at the gate. “He walked up to me and said: ‘Haven’t I seen you here before?’” Hmmm.

Even his closest advisers admit that Bayh must work on letting his inner fire out. Ron Klain, while noting that Bayh is “genuine,” acknowledges that he’s “not the most knock-’em-dead speaker.” Indianapolis attorney Bill Moreau, who was Bayh’s chief of staff in his gubernatorial days and is now part of the inner circle looking ahead to 2008, suggests that it’s a matter of setting, noting that Bayh is “much more compelling” in a Q&A session than in formal remarks: “He listens carefully, challenges people and gets inside their questions.” In Moreau’s mind, this will serve Bayh well in Iowa and New Hampshire, where voters view it as their birthright to get up close and personal with politicians. But I was up close and personal when I asked Bayh what the Democrats need to do in the next three years, and all I got was an eye-glazing, incomprehensible tangle of policy jargon. Bayh told me: “We need to translate the taxpayers’ resources into the results they have a right to expect. In recent years we have become good at judging ourselves by inputs when what really matters is outcomes.” Huh?

If Bayh is smart—and those who know him well say he is, to an awesome degree—he’ll learn to converse, to emote, to “flirt” with reporters covering the presidential race. John McCain’s 2000 candidacy was fueled by a media enchanted with a politician who treated them as equals and didn’t speak in sound bites. The Dean phenomenon followed a similar blueprint (though Dean’s media lovefest was built less around an effervescent personality than a tendency to make impolitic comments; to this day, reporters swap Dean stories from the ’04 campaign—stories that usually end in “He said what?”). While Bayh will never be this sort of un-politician, he must show a bit more leg to the press corps if he hopes to emerge from the pack. “I’ve got some things I feel passionate about and am willing to fight to try to achieve,” he told me. “What I need to do is better articulate what I feel strongly about and why.” Or, what he needs to do is remember that articulated issues eventually bore voters and reporters, many of whom would rather know that when Bayh ran a marathon this year—California’s Big Sur—he got to the finish line and chugged down a beer.

Still, if Bayh lacks the sparkle of some of his colleagues, he possesses important attributes they lack—attributes he’ll highlight over the next few years. Of the five Senate Democrats now eyeing the White House, he’s the only one who represents a state carried by Bush in ’04, and the only one who’s served as a chief executive. (In addition to the five Democratic senators, six Republican senators are potential candidates in ’08, never mind that a sitting senator hasn’t ascended to the Oval Office since John F. Kennedy in 1960. In the past 45 years, a who’s who of Senate titans has fallen short, including Bob Dole, Hubert Humphrey and George McGovern, all three of whom won their party’s nomination but lost the election). The consensus among Democrats is that—with the possible exception of Hillary Clinton—gubernatorial experience is a must for their next national candidate. By 2008, Bayh will be 12 years removed from the governor’s mansion; regardless, he’ll draw heavily on his time there. As voters grow less and less trusting of D.C. politics, his two terms as governor give him, if not immunity from, a defense against, accusations of “Potomac fever” or “going Washington.” And as Bush proved, actions, not amendments, are the way to voters’ hearts.

ALTHOUGH HE CONTINUES to insist he hasn’t made a final decision about running, Bayh has been arguably the most active of the would-be candidates in building the massive machinery necessary to make a campaign possible—traveling to Wisconsin, Ohio, Colorado and New Hampshire to raise his profile among party activists, assembling a political team and seeding a national fundraising apparatus. This, on top of a career that has long struck observers as eminently strategic: From chairing the Democratic Governors Association and the Democratic Leadership Council to giving the keynote speech at the ’96 Convention and serving on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Bayh has given the impression of a man who goes home at night and checks off the stops along his meticulously planned political roadmap.

Since the 2004 election, he has hired pollster Paul Maslin, who was Dean’s man in ’04 and is therefore the pollster among the party’s liberal left (though a tell-all he wrote for Atlantic Monthly detailing the failures of the campaign left him crosswise with some of the truest Deaniacs). On Bayh’s team, Maslin replaced Mark Penn, who in previous elections had also polled for Bill and Hillary Clinton. Forced to choose, Penn went with the favorite.

Maslin immediately made waves when news broke that he’d conducted a focus group in Iowa on the viability of a Bayh-like candidate in a race against Clinton, Kerry and Edwards. Fifteen participants were shown Bayh videotapes. Allegedly, they worked. After initially voting 8–7 to support one of the three better-known candidates, all 15 said, post-video, that they’d at least consider a candidate like Bayh.

But for now, more important than polling is fundraising—the first real litmus test of any presidential hopeful. Everyone running is a proven star on the rubber-chicken circuit in his or her region, but not all will be able to broaden that appeal. For 2008, the price of entry for a serious candidate will be $20 million to $30 million. Given that Clinton raised better than $40 million for her 2000 Senate campaign and is almost guaranteed to raise between $80 million and $100 million in her bid for the White House, the really serious candidates must be prepared to raise that or more.

With money in mind, Bayh has brought on seasoned political operative Steve Bouchard (a New Hampshire native, no less) to head up his political action committee, All America PAC. For the foreseeable future, the PAC will serve as the center of the potential Bayh 2008 campaign, raising dollars for and currying favor with aspiring candidates for state and federal office as well as financing Bayh’s travels outside of Indiana. Although he has close to $7 million in a campaign account—one of the largest cash stashes in the Senate—Bayh has been busy hustling for more dollars to prove he can compete with the big guns.

These early moves have improved his odds in the ever-evolving betting line on which candidates are judged to be trending upward or falling downward by the setters of conventional wisdom, a group whose members range from citizens of the emerging blogosphere to traditional party pundits like Paul Begala and James Carville. In Bayh’s favor is also the “I told you so” factor that smart-alecky politicos love: He’s just unknown enough that if he wins and you picked him early, you end up looking like a savant. Right now his name is part of the chatter, and he’s doing his damnedest to keep it up.

When asked to explain the meaning of his staff additions, his increased fundraising and his speeches in battleground states, Bayh is almost apologetic. “I haven’t made a decision one way or another, but unfortunately the way the process works is you have to do some things at an early stage just to keep the option open.”

His courting of a national audience has so far done little to hurt his support at home. A poll conducted in March for The Indianapolis Star and WTHR showed that 49 percent of those tested would back him on the ’08 ticket; only 33 percent said they would likely vote for someone else. Sixty-seven percent thought he had the “personal qualities needed to be a good president.” Democratic pollster Fred Yang, who has worked extensively in Indiana, calls Bayh’s home-state popularity an anomaly in a country where partisan politics rule. “Republicans like him,” Yang says. “He is a Democrat they can be comfortable with.”

Longtime state Republican activist Brose McVey acknowledges his party’s healthy respect for—if not fear of—Bayh. “Anytime you get a good-looking, intelligent, conservative Democrat, you’ve got yourself a dangerous weapon,” says McVey. “We don’t take Senator Bayh lightly.”

Of course, as Bayh spends more time outside Indiana, his popularity at home will inevitably suffer. Once the initial pride of having a native son seeking the nation’s top office wears off, voters resent being ignored by a politician who would, after all, be nowhere without their votes. In May and then again in June, Bayh traveled to New York City to raise money and chat up would-be donors, and as time passes, he’ll go back to New York—and Los Angeles, and Chicago—more and more. That means less time and attention for Indiana. And in order to be competitive in the Democratic primary, he’ll be forced to take more liberal positions on divisive issues—positions that will alienate some of his previous Hoosier supporters. Beware the spectre of home-state erosion and the ghost of Al Gore.

But while Bayh has begun to play to the liberal left, he’s unlikely to abandon his centrist credentials. If he decides to run for president, he says, he’ll be the same guy Indiana voters know and largely like: “If you try to be something other than who you are, it doesn’t work very well—people figure it out pretty quickly. I am comfortable being who I am.”

And therein lies the tantalizing possibility of Evan Bayh: the possibility that everyone who thinks they have him pegged—who reduces him to the transparency of his ambition or the opacity of his character—might just be surprised. Bill Moreau ran the Big Sur marathon with Bayh and says the senator mapped out a logical, lucid race: slow and steady pacing, 10-minute miles, a negative split. For 25 miles, he ran as planned. And then, at the end, in mile 26, he pulled it out, poured it on and finished with a sub-8-minute mile. If that was a taste of the race to come, he’s ready to run.


http://www.indianapolismonthly.com/articles.html#sweating

Evan essence

Tuesday night in downtown Des Moines. I spent it at the beautiful restaurant, “Centro,” along with several other people. The group had dinner and drinks with Senator Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) who, apparently, is thinking of running for President.

I liked him. First off, I must say Senator Bayh is the only presidential candidate in history, ever, to be early for an event. Yes, that’s right: dinner was set for 7:30, I walked in at 7:25 sharp, and he was already there. So, he had me at hello.

Other positive surprises: his familarity with Zoolander; his apparently encyclopaedic knowledge of trade issues (including very specific information about our trading relationship with China); his overall charm; his hair really was perfect; and he found time to jog that afternoon, although it was about 150 degrees and terribly humid. Also, I am sure Iowa Democrats all appreciate him coming to help Congressman Boswell, and also the congressional candidates in the 1st District. Wonderful!

Senator Bayh is spending three days in Iowa, which implies a certian seriousness. Another sign of seriousness: he brought charts to dinner. In particular, he brought two colored maps of Indiana – one covered almost entirely in red, the other covered almost completely in blue. The red-colored map showed the Indiana counties President Bush won in 2004; the blue map was almost the exact reverse – it showed all the Indiana counties Senator Bayh had won, in his re election, the same year. The point of these maps is as obvious as it is important. Senator Bayh has proven he can win in Red State America. Not just win, but win big. And, I might hasten to add, Indiana’s 12 electoral votes are nothing to sneeze at.

As dinner was breaking up after a lively, fun, and interesting discussion, Senator Bayh asked me if there was anything else I wanted to know, specifically for my blog. After a moments’ hesitation, I asked his favourite all-time book and movie. For his favourite book, he chose Shelby Foote’s history of the Civil War. For his favourite movie, he said, a bit too predictably, Hoosiers. When I pressed him to name another movie, he mentioned recently watching Chariots of Fire again, this time with his boys. Everyone loved the film, he said.

I haven’t seen Chariots of Fire for years, but as I recall, it involves a runner, unscrupulous and religious, a very squeaky clean guy, with terrific endurance. The runner is tremendously popular. Come to think of it, it might have been a movie about Evan Bayh.


http://www.iowatrueblue.com/2005/08/evan-essence.html