Gephardt’s National Stature Came Full Circle in Iowa

Rep. Dick Gephardt’s likely withdrawal from the Democratic presidential campaign will mark the end not just of a presidential bid, but probably of a political career that reached across a generation of politics and left lasting fingerprints on national policy, his party and Congress.

Gephardt -- who came to Congress when Jimmy Carter was president, served as House Democratic leader under President Clinton and led his party’s opposition to President Bush on most issues -- has said he would not run for reelection to the House. A top aide said Gephardt, 62, had no interest in running for the Senate. Gephardt has spent most of his adult life in politics, having won election as a St. Louis alderman in 1970.

Monday’s crushing fourth-place finish in the Iowa caucuses is particularly poignant for Gephardt because Iowa helped make him a national politician: His first presidential campaign in 1988 would be no more than a footnote in history if he had not won a resounding and surprising victory in Iowa, catapulting the then-obscure Missouri congressman into national prominence.

But Gephardt’s lofty role in Congress may also have hemmed him in. His colleagues praised him for his unflagging patience and easygoing diligence in building consensus among clashing congressional egos. But while that insider’s skill may have given him enormous clout and standing in Congress, it never translated into the political pizazz it takes to catch fire as a national candidate.

In fact, it may have made it harder for him to cut his own profile above and beyond the views of his mostly liberal Democratic colleagues in the House.

Gephardt quit the 1988 campaign within a month of his Iowa caucus triumph, suffering from a lack of funds and weak campaign organization in other states. But at 47, Gephardt still seemed a rising star in Democratic politics -- and he never really stopped running for president from that day forward.

He was helped -- and in some ways hurt -- by a quirk of fate that sent him unexpectedly to heights of power in Congress. Even as he was planning a new run for president, Gephardt in 1989 was thrust into the House Democratic leadership after House Speaker Jim Wright and Majority Whip Tony Coelho resigned under the cloud of ethics investigations. Gephardt’s colleagues looked to him to help fill the vacuum and made him House Democratic Leader, a job he held for more that a decade.

At first Democrats were in the majority, but mid-decade Gephardt had the unpleasant job of leading the party when Democrats in 1994 lost control of the House for the first time in 40 years. He spent the next six years helping Democrats struggle with their minority status.

It was a job that helped him spread his wings and become a broader national leader than he had been when he ran for president in 1988. He aided Clinton in passing a landmark budget bill that proponents say helped put the federal budget on the path to being balanced in the late 1990s. But he fought Clinton’s North American Free Trade Agreement, cementing his position as a commanding leader of the Democratic Party’s protectionist wing.

“What makes you a good leader in the House makes it hard to win the presidency,” said a Democratic strategist. “You have to appeal to the lowest common denominator of the House Democratic Caucus, which is often not where the American people are.”

Indeed, the House is such a feeble springboard to the presidency that no member has been elected to the White House since James Garfield won in 1880.

Gephardt seemed to be reaching to a broader audience after he shed his House leadership responsibilities in 2002. He became more animated with voters, more self-confident as a candidate, more willing to share emotional experiences like the story of his son’s triumph over cancer when he was a toddler.

And while Gephardt had focused his 1988 campaign on his signature issue of trade -- warning against the threat to U.S. jobs by unbridled free trade -- Gephardt this year painted his platform on on a broader canvas. His plan to expand health insurance coverage set the pace for the field of Democratic candidates.

But the writing was on the wall Monday night that his campaign was about to end when spokesman Erik Smith told reporters that Gephardt had canceled a scheduled flight to New Hampshire and would instead fly to his hometown of St. Louis.

The Missouri congressman had banked on victory in Iowa to fuel his campaign with money and momentum at a critical point in the battle for the Democratic nomination. Instead, he finished fourth, with barely 11% of delegates statewide.

After Iowa, it was clear that Gephardt could not keep up with his rivals in next Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary or in an expensive seven-state match Feb. 3.

Gephardt secluded himself with his family in a hotel room here as the results were coming in. When he emerged to speak, he thanked his family, focused attention on his wife, Jane, and alluded to the struggle when their son battled cancer.

“I’ve been through tougher fights in my life,” he said to a crowd. “Life will go on because this campaign was never about me. It was about all of us.”

Since he entered the race a year ago, Gephardt had said that winning in Iowa was vital to his strategy. But polls showed his support ebbing in recent days.

Monday morning, Gephardt veered slightly from his confident line. He told an NBC reporter that he faced the same test in Iowa as his rivals: “Do well or win.” He failed decisively on both counts.

The state would seem to have been tailor-made for a candidate who has fought to overcome the perception that he is old news. Gephardt’s 1988 win in Iowa gave him high hopes that he could repeat. In addition, he had a geographic edge: He hails from a neighboring state, as does his wife, who is from Nebraska.

What’s more, the intricate caucus format in Iowa, which depends heavily on organizational muscle, should have played to Gephardt’s strength: the turnout skills of the industrial labor unions that back him.

On the campaign trail, Gephardt acknowledged frequently that he was not the “flavor of the month,” offering himself instead as a leader with experience at the highest levels of government.

As its centerpiece, his campaign offered a plan to repeal Bush’s tax cuts to finance universal health care through government tax credits. Gephardt’s proposal was a trend-setter. His major rivals all followed with their own health-care plans.

A longtime backer of organized labor, Gephardt also used his candidacy to attack NAFTA and other trade accords. He was influential in steering the Democratic debate away from free-trade policies advocated by Clinton and Bush.