Turning Point
After nearly everyone had written him off, John Kerry turned a limping campaign into a force that couldn't be beat. Here's How
Here he is describing the most common of events in Iowa, running into someone from an opposing campaign, who asks a socially conventional question: "They always ask, 'How you doing?' " Whouley complained. "I just didn't want to engage, you know? 'How you doing?' My attitude was, 'None of your business, how I'm doing! 'We're doing fine, you know? We're just going to do our frigging thing!"
Which is Michael Whouley in full campaign mode. (And he used a word other than "frigging." Though he does not use the "F" word in inappropriate circles or circumstances, it is so much part of his conversational style that it is impossible to render an accurate portrait of him without quoting it. In a tape-recorded interview with U.S. News that lasted several hours and produced a 40-page, single-spaced transcript, Whouley used the "F" word in all its forms exactly 45 times.) When you have Whouley on your side you have him body and soul, and he is unconcerned with what others think of him. "I'm old-fashioned," he said. "If my candidate wins, I'll be fine. I don't need anything else."
On the night Kerry won the Iowa caucuses, he gathered a small group of reporters in Room 1014 of the Hotel Fort Des Moines and coined the phrase "the magical Michael Whouley." Later that night, as Kerry took a planeload of staff and press to New Hampshire to begin his victory march to Boston and the nomination, Whouley was nowhere to be seen. He didn't get on the plane, which carried virtually all of Kerry's top aides, because he didn't want to risk overshadowing the candidate at his moment of victory. Instead, Whouley drove the 306 miles to Chicago (if you drive, you don't bump into reporters in airports or on planes), ate ribs at the Fireplace Inn, drank three beers, and went to bed. When he got up, he flew to Boston and refused to set foot in New Hampshire because it was time for others on the Kerry campaign to get the attention. "These guys had to eat s - - - sandwiches for a year because of Howard Dean, and now it was their moment in the sun," Whouley said. "I didn't want the press to pay attention to me; I wanted them to pay attention to these guys."
Whouley and Kerry's other key operatives had built their organization quietly and steadily, and strict orders were given that if asked by reporters, the prowess of the campaign was to be underplayed. "We low-balled to the very end," Whouley said proudly. "We had a simple strategy: We put one foot in front of the other."
The foundation of any statewide campaign, Whouley believes, is to build a strong network of precinct captains who know their communities and know their neighbors and are extremely disciplined in the counting of Ones and Twos. Whouley emphasized over and over to the members of the field staff that if they fooled around with the counting of supporters, they were fooling only themselves. Whouley knew the Kerry campaign was being helped by Dean's fumbles, but he also had a healthy respect for the quality of some Dean staffers in Iowa. "They had people who understood this stuff," Whouley said. "But somehow nobody wanted to [take a close] look and say, 'Is it really there? Is the support really there?' "
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