Steve SchaleFor me, it started in September 2008.
Barack Obama had just selected Joe Biden as his running mate, and I was to staff the new vice presidential candidate in Tampa, at a rally at the University of South Florida.
Prior to that day, I had grown quite cynical about Washington, so I assumed the whole Biden thing was an act. Frankly, with the task of managing a 600-member staff, about the last thing I wanted to do was go to a rally with him that day.
During that campaign – and many before and after it, I’ve been lucky to live with my sister Colleen and her family in Tampa. As a result, I could spend a lot of time playing my favorite role in life: uncle. On thar day, I decided to give my then-13-year-old nephew Connor a day off from school to keep me company.
After getting to the Sun Dome early and doing the usual walk-throughs, we waited in a backstage hallway just outside a locker room where political types and donors were waiting for a photo-op. Soon Senator Biden walked in, sporting his trademark aviators. I reached out my hand to introduce myself, but he blew right past me and walked right up to Connor, put him in a headlock and gave him a noogie. Both Connor and Biden lit up.
In that split second, I realized I was wrong about the guy. He was the real deal.
During that campaign, I staffed him a few more times, seeing moments he’s surely forgotten but that I never will. Time and again, he showed an unusual sense of kindness and humanity. He would linger on the photo line to listen to a story, and when it came to members of the military or law enforcement he always had time for a handshake and a picture. In a business where so many look over the shoulder of the person they’re talking to, he was one of the rare ones who seemed oblivious to all but the person in front of him.
I always got the sense that Joe Biden, a kid from a rusting blue-collar town not unlike where I grew up, lived every moment almost with the sense of “I can’t believe I get to do this” (another thing that I relate to). I’ve never met a person who met him who didn’t like him, and even more so, everyone who ever worked for him would seemingly walk through fire for him. In 2012, I was honored to meet his son Beau, who was everything everyone said about him.
I was pretty sure I would sit out 2016, I was willing to do my part to help out the nominee, but after five consecutive statewide Florida cycles I was ready for a break. That changed for me in July and early August, though, when it became clear Biden was real thought to a run, I was a Joe Biden guy, and if he was even thinking about running I wanted to be there.
As more stories were written, I also grew tired of reading all the quotes from “unnamed” sources saying he should get in. While I get it that people sometimes have to talk background, this was one of those instances where I hated the D.C. way of doing things. It was time someone stood up and said, “Hey Joe, if you run, we are with you.”
So I did.
My friends, even those who privately wanted him to run, thought I was nuts. Frankly, I didn’t think anyone would care.
Nonetheless, I “made news” by telling Jonathan Martin of The New York Times, who had just written a Biden piece, that I would support him running. Martin wrote a little piece for the paper’s campaign blog. That led an old Florida friend, Carol Lee, now of The Wall Street Journal, to ask whether I would join the efforts to draft Biden into the race.
I said sure, honestly not too aware of what that meant. A few hours later, while having a beer with a GOP buddy of mine, State Rep. Ray Pilon, her story went live on the WSJ website. Within seconds, my phone nearly exploded with callers. Once MSNBC had “confirmed” my news, it got picked up by the Drudge Report and seemingly everyone else. Over the course of two – OK, maybe three – beers, this had turned into a full-fledged dumpster fire.
While Ray was totally entertained, I actually wondered what in the world had I done.
That started a chain reaction that plunged me, almost entirely by accident, into a somewhat unique journey. Funny enough, though, it almost ended right there for me.
The first morning my news blew up, I canceled every scheduled television interview and stopped returning calls much to the dismay to the Draft Biden folks. The last thing I wanted to do was do more harm than good. Through a friend, I got a nudge of encouragement. So I did two TV interviews that first day, which turned into three the next, four the day after. In fact, for 15 straight days after Carol’s piece, I appeared on national and regional television shows talking about the vice president. It was all a blur. I even got bumped off “Anderson Cooper 360” for Donald Trump; actually twice!
If you haven’t done remote TV, it isn’t exactly the world’s easiest medium. To try it at home, sit in a chair and pick out a light switch, maybe 15 or 20 feet away, and have a conversation with it, without losing eye contact. All the while look natural and relaxed. Complicating things, I wasn’t totally comfortable being thrust into a role as one of the movement’s unofficial spokesmen, and I was also still learning to be comfortable in that chair.
After the vice president’s remarkable interview with Stephen Colbert, our work on the Draft Biden side went to a new level. It became clear overnight we were in the middle of something bigger than all of us, and with it came a heightened sense of responsibility. We all felt that the man who gave that interview was different from any other politician in modern times, and it now fell on our shoulders to give him every chance to succeed if he chose to run. We all had to up our game.
The more he talked openly about his own process, the more emotionally invested we all became in our mission. I could hardly think of anything else. We just kept leaning forward, arguing with the skeptics, and lining up more supporters. Many days started at 5:30 a.m. for morning shows and ended well after midnight. Along the road, I kept using the word “surreal” to describe it, though frankly, I’m not sure that gave it justice.
With each passing day, I felt a growing sense of obligation to represent him well. While admittedly I was having a blast, I worked to get better at my job because as the folks on the team knew, I never felt comfortable with, nor did I feel worthy of the role I ended up playing. I was terrified I would say something that would diminish the vice president or do something that would fail to honor his public service. I would spend hours rehearsing in quiet by myself, visualizing every question.
My friends sometimes said in particularly critical moments of that 10-week journey, they could see the stress on my face. They were right. Here I was making the public case for a man who had been in public life for 42 years, who had endured a very public tragedy for the second time in his life, and whom I had not spoken with in three years.
I was just a hack from Florida, one who despite meeting him several times he probably couldn’t pick out of a line-up. I was pretty sure I was one of the last people on the planet they would have picked for the role I was playing. I definitely felt the weight of that.
Until someone told me to stop, though, I wasn’t going to quit, even as time was starting to run out. In the three days after the debate, I did 18 or 19 TV interviews, and talked to probably another 50 print reporters. Like everyone, I was exhausted, and hoped he would decide soon. But we had to run through the tape.
Fortunately the vice president also knew what we all knew: It was time. The airplane needed to land.
That last morning, I got a little heads-up: A text said, “Turn on a TV.” I had known in my gut since Monday morning where the plane would land.
While the selfish part of me that has long dreamed of helping a man like Joe Biden complete his dream of being elected president hoped my gut was wrong, I went ahead and texted “He’s not running – find a TV” to a few friends. Then I switched on my own TV and waited the five or 10 minutes until he walked out into the Rose Garden. I ignored my telephone as it buzzed constantly from the calls, texts and emails from people and press trying to find out the latest.
Biden stepped up to the mic and got it right out of the way. Then he gave an inspiring speech that showed why so many of us felt so strongly about his potential as a candidate. He laid out a strong justification for running, and talked about things that really bother me these days: That in politics today we’ve forgotten about friendships and respect. In the end, though, we weren’t going to be making that case.
It was over.
I stood alone in my living room, watching him remind the American people why he’s one of the finest public servants our country has ever seen. I wasn’t sad he took a pass. Frankly – in spite of all my selfish ambition – given that we had reached late October, he made the right decision. As he finished, I collapsed into a chair completely spent, and cried for longer than I want to admit. It wasn’t from sadness; it was final relief of all that pressure I’d put on myself. I knew at the end that I personally didn’t have anything left.
The silence that follows the end of any campaign is always shocking. I’ve never really gotten used to it, but over the years I’ve grown to use it for reflection. As I wrote on my Facebook page the day after his decision, the whole thing was both physically and emotionally grueling, but because of who Joe Biden is – and for the kind of politics he represents – I woke up every morning excited and ready to do my little part.
Looking back on the last two months, nothing seems real. Trust me, the idea that I would end up in that chair, day after day, as one of the guys making the case for someone like the U.S. vice president was as patently absurd to me as it was to many observers.
I am grateful for the friendships I made along the way, guys such as Josh Alcorn and Brad Bauman, two people I met for the first time three weeks after this all started, and whom today are brothers. I’m thankful for Sarah Ford, who essentially managed me for two months in spite of the fact we’ve never actually met, as well as the many others who worked on that effort who would rather me not identify them.
Three months ago, I accepted an invitation to lead a delegation of young political leaders to Sub-Saharan Africa for about two weeks in late October and early November, a place I’ve longed to visit since I was a teenager.
I’ve spent most of the past two months wondering how I would actually be able to take the trip if Biden got in the race. However, after spending decades looking at a globe, reading countless books and imagining visiting there, I was going to go regardless. In the end, as if ordained by Providence, this trip starting Thursday will be a perfect transition back to my day job.
I leave for Africa full of pride, though, knowing that for 10 weeks of my life, largely by accident I got to stand in front of millions of Americans and honor Joe Biden.
That really was living the dream.
