Saving Graces - Elizabeth Edwards [108]
I would like to say that I made everyone sing. But you can’t actually make people sing, just like you can’t actually make children sleep. You can put the children in bed, and you can hand the staff member, supporter, reporter, or whomever a copy of the songbook and hope you will get cooperation. So that’s what I did. And we sang our way across Iowa, and then across New Hampshire. When Cate joined the bus trip a few days late, she looked at the stack of songbooks and said, “Oh my goodness, she’s doing it to you, too.” On family trips I was always the last one in the car. I would step in and then reach down and pull the songbook to my lap. “Not the songbook,” Wade and Cate would wail, and I would always say, “It’ll be fun. Where shall we start?” It was alphabetized. “How about J for John?”
And that’s what I did on the bus. I handed staffer Josh Brumberger the songbook, and good-naturedly—he is monumentally good-natured—he sang “How’d You Like To Spoon with Me?” though the boy was born in 1979 and the song was written in 1905. Hunter Pruette, who traveled with John, recording his speeches and getting his sodas, used his cell phone’s camera to secretly record Josh crooning, “Sit beneath an oak tree large and shady, call me little tootsy-wootsy baby.” Miles Lackey, who plays concert piano and reads three biographies of historical figures rather than one so his opinion will not be skewed by a single biographer’s point of view, could usually be convinced to sing only if we sang “Lemon Tree,” the old folk song. He had held the songbook in his lap through dozens of songs, but after we sang “Lemon Tree,” which has a limited range, he decided that would be the one we would sing. I couldn’t complain; I couldn’t get David Ginsberg to relent for even a single song. David, who had been with us longer than anyone, would simply sit there, his laptop propped on his knees, studying whatever it is that campaign staff study. John would constantly pick at him, teasing him, saying David’s strategies were the reason that John hadn’t surged in Iowa, and John gave him the nickname “Surge Protector,” which we use still whenever David is taking things too seriously.
John Wagner and Robert Willett, from our hometown paper, were the most agreeable members of the press when handed a songbook—although I think John mouthed more than he sang. Even mouthing, I gave him credit. Adam Nagourney of the New York Times wouldn’t even take the book. His interview with John was over; was “Good Night, Sweetheart, Well, It’s Time To Go” going to ruin his journalistic impartiality? A little aside here about the press. I liked the journalists. I admired what they did. They seemed to be a lot like me, so I did what I always do when I like someone—I would seek them out. Once in Des Moines, Jennifer Palmieri, our press secretary, organized a casual get-together. I sat at a table lined with reporters from television and newspapers and wire services. When the conversation died for a minute or two, I asked everyone what they would do if they had to do something other than what they were presently doing. It sounds like a Miss America question, right? Well, no one balked. Ron Fournier would be a policeman like his father. Dan Balz would be an architect. So, by the way, would I. I remember that late afternoon as one of the most