latimes.com: For the loser, a sudden lonely silence

By Maria LaGanga/Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

(Los Angeles Times) -- Michael S. Dukakis does a good job of describing life on the wrong side of a presidential election: "You want to know about losing?" he asks in a recent interview. "It stinks. Winning is a lot better."

John B. Anderson, who ran as an independent in 1980, says the day after losing the race for the White House, it is as if "you are thrown over a cliff" into anonymity. "You are no longer a substantive, great and abiding interest."

George S. McGovern, who lost resoundingly to Richard Nixon in 1972, recalls the silence, the loneliness. "Where did all those voters go? Where were those huge crowds on election day?" he asks. "You have a huge sense that the country deserted you and left you alone."

On Wednesday Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore will both enter elite clubs. One will become the president-elect; the other will be the man who lost the final election of the 20th century. The world will hang on one man's every word; life, for the other, will get very quiet, very fast.

America is a culture that scorns losers, forgetting along the way that democracy demands them. Although the Oval Office seats but one, true political debate requires at least two voices. On Wednesday, only one will be heard.

In the winner-take-all world of politics, there isn't even much literature of losing. Memoirs--when they are written at all--tend to dwell on happier times. Biographers turn away. Supporters drift off. Your party starts to talk about rebuilding--usually without you.

"There are more jokes about losers than there are books about losers," says Nelson Warfield, press secretary for Bob Dole during the former Kansas senator's unsuccessful 1996 White House bid. "The most common volumes you see written about them are the bumper stickers during the next administration: Don't blame me; I voted for the loser."

Every unhappy presidential loser is unhappy in his own way; the emotion made singular by the circumstances of defeat. How much did he want it? What will he do next? Was the election close? And who beat him: A wildly popular former actor who would repudiate his legacy? The man who went on to become the most disgraced leader in modern American history? Or someone who would show a little grace in victory?

For McGovern, "to be defeated by Nixon was more painful to handle than if I had been defeated by [Dwight D.] Eisenhower or someone of that caliber," he said in an interview. The two men and their views of governance, Vietnam and public service were so wildly different that losing was a clear repudiation. Then Watergate broke. Within a year, polls started showing that the result would be far different if only the election were held again. After Watergate, McGovern said, he felt "clearly vindicated."

But vindication goes only so far. McGovern says he ran into Walter F. Mondale a few months after Mondale lost to Ronald Reagan in 1984. Mondale had one question of McGovern: How long does it take, after losing 49 states, to quit hurting?

"I said, 'I'll let you know after I get there,' " McGovern recounted. "I was joking. On the emotional front, I don't think it took longer than a year. But I still have a poignancy if someone mentions '72."

President Ford was luckier in defeat, if that's not too much of an oxymoron. Pardoning Nixon led to Ford's 1976 defeat by Jimmy Carter; that same action helped close a painful chapter in American history. And a gracious Carter helped close a painful chapter for the man he defeated. The two have since become fast friends.

"It was inauguration day out in front of the Capitol before President Carter was sworn in," Ford recalled recently. "His first remarks as he stood up--he said, 'On behalf of all the American people, we thank you for healing the land.' That was very thoughtful, and I deeply appreciated it."

Regardless of defeat's various shadings, historians, former candidates and psychiatrists say that Vice President Gore or Texas Gov. Bush can expect a few constants in the days and months beyond the 2000 campaign: Depression. A dose of self blame, or perhaps a feeling of betrayal. A body clock tossed out of whack by 18 months of time-zone confusion. Extreme fatigue. Guilt.

"A kind of malaise falls over you, and you realize you had the main chance and you blew it," says Douglas Brinkley, Carter's historian. "You start looking for scapegoats. It takes a while for [losing candidates] to look in the mirror and understand most of their shortcomings were their own."

And the loser is not the only one hurting. The pain of a presidential defeat ripples out to touch staffers, friends and family members, especially wives. Elizabeth Hanford Dole, say GOP sources, took her husband's loss harder than he did. So did Rosalynn Carter and Kitty Dukakis, to name but a few.

"There was no way I could understand our defeat," wrote Rosalynn Carter in a memoir penned with her husband. "I had to grieve over our loss before I could look to the future. Where could our lives possibly be as meaningful as they might have been in the White House?"

Jimmy Carter, in fact, is perhaps the best example of defeat's many faces--a bitter loss, a bright resurrection. Carter was beaten by a man he held in such contempt that, to this day, "mention Ronald Reagan and see the hair raise on [Carter's] neck," Brinkley says.

The former Georgia governor went home to a peanut warehouse that was $1 million in debt. The aides and servants who grease the way for the powerful were gone, and he was greeted in Plains, Ga., by a potluck casserole dinner and a band that turned "Dixie" into a dirge.

On his first full day home, he bought 2-by-4s so he and Rosalynn could build a tongue-and-groove floor in the unfinished attic of their small home. They needed a place to store memories.

The Carters declined to be interviewed--in fact, although all major losing candidates who are still alive were contacted for this article, few called back. But in the couple's memoir, he described returning to Plains and waking up "to an altogether new, unwanted and potentially empty life."

"It was deeply discouraging for me to contemplate the unpredictable years ahead," he wrote.

Faith in God and a deep sense of purpose proved both solace and spur. After a year of "despair and drifting," Brinkley wrote in "The Unfinished Presidency: Jimmy Carter's Journey Beyond the White House," the former president went on to become a global elder statesman.

Carter, who was only 56 when he lost to Reagan, is proof of what Dr. Harvey L. Rich, a Washington psychoanalyst, reports about political losers a year or more after their defeat: Losing, they find, wasn't entirely bad.

"A politician's life is very narrow," says Rich. "Suddenly, they're freer. Those who don't feel broken end up with a real sense of liberation and freedom and down the road are very happy people."

Michael Dukakis, who lost to George Herbert Walker Bush in 1988, also counts himself among those ranks. Dukakis has probably retreated furthest from the limelight since his defeat. He now teaches public policy and government at UCLA and Northeastern University in Boston.

The day after the elder Bush beat Dukakis, the Massachusetts governor walked back into the statehouse to serve out the end of his term. Having a job waiting for him cushioned his landing, he said, but it still took months for the physical effects of the campaign to go away.

"Part of the problem is you've been going nonstop for 18 months," Dukakis recounted. "Your time clock is all screwed up. Walter Mondale told me for months after he lost to Reagan, he kept waking up at 2 a.m." The emotional toll lingered too, particularly because the Democrat's campaign stumbled so badly. Not only was Dukakis disappointed on his own behalf, he said, but "for thousands of people who worked their heads off for me. I felt I let them down."

A self-proclaimed "missionary for public service," Dukakis has some solace for whoever loses Tuesday. "There are an infinite number of things that person can do" if he wishes to continue serving the commonweal, says Dukakis, who is vice chairman of the Amtrak board. "What I'm doing with Amtrak, I like to think I'm making a significant contribution to this country and its future."

McGovern pulled out of his post-election funk by throwing himself into new projects. The first was to run for reelection for his South Dakota Senate seat. He won. His most recent has a broader scope.

In March 1998, McGovern was appointed U.S. ambassador to the U.N. agencies in Rome, which include the Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Food Program and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

At first, he said, he thought it would be a "dead-end appointment," but he has since turned it into a pulpit from which to fight world hunger, particularly among children.

"If I can pull this off, this will be the most important thing I do in my life," he said from Rome. "Nothing is more important than being elected to the presidency, but failing that, I can't think of anything more important than providing a good school lunch to every child in the world."

His advice to the man who will not be moving into 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.: Use your voice, your stature, to achieve some of the goals you fought for in the 2000 campaign.

Ford, who learned about loss in his athletic youth, would offer Bush and Gore similar advice--with a pragmatic twist.

"I would tell them you must look forward to new opportunities," he said. "There are great potentials down the road, and you don't gain anything by worrying and fretting about why you lost."

During the primary season a campaign lifetime ago, a New Hampshire child asked Bush how he would feel if he lost. First, the Texan expressed confidence about his chances. Then he leveled with the elementary school audience.

"I wouldn't like it for a period of time," he said. "I'm a competitive guy. I work hard. But I understand that sometimes you just don't get what you want in life."

Scholars and psychoanalysts posit that the more laid-back Bush would handle loss better than his aggressive opponent. Gore's parents groomed him to lead the nation, and he would be at loose ends come Jan. 20 if the biggest political prize eludes him.

"Both will feel humiliated," says Dr. Justin A. Frank, another Washington psychoanalyst. Losing is "a real blow to one's narcissism, which has been puffed up for the past year. . . . But I think Gore will be devastated, because he wants to be president really badly."

The Democrat himself denies such speculation and says he does not let the thought of losing enter his mind. "I don't need to win this victory for personal reasons," he said in a televised interview. "I feel fine. I'm doing this because I feel a sense of mission."

Whatever America's voters decide, don't weep too hard for the man who will lose the presidential election Tuesday. He's young. Long-term self esteem is not a problem; he still believes he should lead the free world.

He has endured months of grueling travel, lived through daily attacks from his opponents, the news media and a cottage industry of critics. Along the way, he's thrown a few punches of his own.

He will survive.

"Only tough guys get to run for president," says historian James MacGregor Burns. "Some of that toughness helps them when they lose."