Rarely have so few
had so much fun in so short a time under so much pressure (Mondale was behind,
but with presidential debates ahead, anything could happen -- unless the vice presidential debate was a Democratic disaster). And, of course, this was because Gerry Ferraro was a tough, smart,
savvy, fearless, funny woman who was totally authentic -- there was no
difference between the public person and the private person. She knew she was carrying the hopes of women
everywhere, and she thrived on the
chance to make a powerful statement.
My first encounter
with the candidate was on a Sunday
afternoon about two weeks before the debate when Bob Barnett and I lugged two
huge briefing books to her home in Queens. The debate team had vacuumed the universe on
all imaginable issues, and we had
produced enough indigestible material to
choke a PhD candidate preparing for oral exams. Gerry was watching a Jets game, calling out for her husband John to bring us coffee and petting her dog
(which as I recall, though I could be wrong, was a large black lab). She greeted us warmly but regarded our briefing
materials with appropriate disdain -- a
view shared by the dog which, with tail
wagging, put his head on our
multi-tabbed work product to have his ears rubbed and slobbered all over
them. "Perhaps you could reduce
this to essential points and responses," the candidate said with an equable smile as we slunk out the door, lugging our rejected
offerings.
When serious trial
debates began a short while later, Gerry Ferraro showed a remarkable ability to assimilate information on a wide variety of subjects and then
to articulate her position in a concise
form in her own common sense way. She needed grist for her mill, but she didn't
need handlers. With each session, we
could see her appetite was whetted and that she was savoring the chance to go
up against the vice president.
But just as memorable
as the honing of positions was the bantering, self-deprecating atmosphere. One of Gerry Ferraro's wonderful qualities was to keep everyone
loose and not take herself too seriously (even as she knew the importance of
the coming confrontation in the Philadelphia Civic Center).
Bob Barnett, who
played Bush in the mock debates, showed up with a colored cloth preppy
wristband for his watch. Ferraro
developed her own outrageous mock answers which she would slip
into serious practice sessions. She
told her team that she planned to walk on stage, kiss the vice president on the
lips and call him "Poppy." And
during the run-up to the debates, when it came out that the Ferraros had
substantial net worth and several houses, Barbara Bush remarked that Geraldine Ferraro was a "four million
dollar.... I won't say it but it rhymes with rich." Mrs. Bush later "clarified" that she meant "witch."
Inside the studio, Ms. Ferraro did a
number of riffs about herself (and others who shall go unnamed) on words that
also rhymed with rich, always with
great good humor.