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An excellent biographical article from June 2004, Indianapolis Monthly...
Will be posted in parts...
Evan Can Wait
Never mind if he’s not of the Democratic presidential ticket this year. Evan Bayh’s ambition for higher office isn’t going away.
By Andrew Putz
Indianapolis Monthly, June 2004
Bill Moreau was on the phone when he realized the senator had arrived. At 52, Birch Bayh looked like Hollywood’s version of a politician: rangy, handsome, with clear blue eyes and a jaw as square as a miter box. During his 18 years in the US Senate, Bayh had authored three constitutional amendments, fathered Title IX and tirelessly advocated his liberal vision for the country, championing civil rights and women’s rights, fighting for the elderly and the poor. He had won three elections, launched two bids for the White House, survived a plane crash and—less than two years earlier—endured the death of his wife to cancer. To the 28-year-old Moreau, who’d joined Bayh’s Senate staff right out of law school, he was nothing less than a hero.
But on this night, November 4, 1980, Moreau saw Birch Bayh as he’d never seen him before—in defeat. All summer and fall of that year, Bayh’s opponent in the Senate election, Dan Quayle, had tried to paint the incumbent as a man who’d spent too much time in Washington, who was out of touch with “mainstream” Hoosier values. Bayh had fended off such attacks in previous elections, against opponents who had seemed far more formidable. But this time, this year, it stuck. Riding an anti-incumbent tide that would sweep Ronald Reagan into the White House and help defeat other icons of the Senate—Idaho’s Frank Church, South Dakota’s George McGovern—Quayle buried Bayh. The contest wasn’t even close.
Moreau was incredulous, outraged that voters would kick someone like Birch Bayh out of office. And as Bayh made his way across the campaign’s cavernous 16th Street headquarters—a god-awful dump of a building that once had been a car dealership—Moreau looked up to catch the senator’s gaze. “That’s when I just lost it,” says Moreau, now and attorney with Barnes & Thornburg. “I can’t remember what I ate this morning, but I remember that—vividly. Those wounds remained fresh for years.”
Moreau would not be the only one who took away bitter lessons from the defeat. After the drubbing by Quayle, Birch Bayh told the New York Times that he thought his campaign chairman, his 25-year-old son Evan, had taken the loss even harder than he had. In the weeks and months after the election, Evan Bayh would later admit, he came “close to being disillusioned by the political process.”
Evan Bayh, of course, didn’t retreat from politics. He didn’t fall back in a job with a white-shoe law firm and a nice spread in Carmel. Instead, over the next several years, he and a group of loyal followers, many of whom had worked for his father, distilled a notion of how a Democrat could win, and govern, in a reliably Republican state: Run a lean campaign. Convince voters that they could trust you with their money. Don’t get cornered into debating culture wars. And, most importantly, keep close tabs on your constituents. It was a straightforward, pragmatic formula, both a reaction to his father’s defeat and a tacit rejection of the old man’s legacy. “There was a period toward the end of Birch’s final campaign when a lot of people said that he had begun to lose touch,” says Tom Koutsoumpas, a longtime friend of Evan Bayh who would on Birch’s Senate staff for 11 years. “I think it was more that he was swept away in the Reagan landslide, but it really reintroduced in Evan’s mind that the most important thing is politics was the people you represent. He picked that up very clearly, understands that and believes that.”
Bayh’s approach has made him among the most successful politicians in Indiana history. After 18 years in one public office or another, he has yet to lose an election. In 1996, after two terms as governor, he left office with a 79 percent approval rating. Two years later, in 1998, he won his father’s old seat in the US Senate by almost 30 points.
His success in Indiana made him a star within the Democratic Party, if not yet a politician with a national profile. In 1996, he gave the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. That same year, a former Clinton advisor called him “the future of the Democratic Party.” In 2000, less than 18 months into his first Senate term, he was one of four finalists for the VP spot on Al Gore’s ticket. And even before Senator John Kerry sewed up the Democratic nomination this year, Bayh was again being mentioned as a possible running mate.
Few politicians have risen so far, so fast, with so much ease. But for all his skill and promise, the 48-year-old Bayh remains the object of zealous indifference for most voters, even in Indiana. He inspires none of the passion behind Howard Dean, none of the loyalty or loathing toward George W. Bush. In an age of polarizing debate and 24/7 political coverage, he is a curious species: Our most successful, least fascinating public figure—Wonder Bread with a voting record. And yet no one who as paid any attention to his career doubts that the central question in Bayh’s future is when, not if, he’ll appear on a presidential ticket—and not as the No. 2.
Will be posted in parts...
Evan Can Wait
Never mind if he’s not of the Democratic presidential ticket this year. Evan Bayh’s ambition for higher office isn’t going away.
By Andrew Putz
Indianapolis Monthly, June 2004
Bill Moreau was on the phone when he realized the senator had arrived. At 52, Birch Bayh looked like Hollywood’s version of a politician: rangy, handsome, with clear blue eyes and a jaw as square as a miter box. During his 18 years in the US Senate, Bayh had authored three constitutional amendments, fathered Title IX and tirelessly advocated his liberal vision for the country, championing civil rights and women’s rights, fighting for the elderly and the poor. He had won three elections, launched two bids for the White House, survived a plane crash and—less than two years earlier—endured the death of his wife to cancer. To the 28-year-old Moreau, who’d joined Bayh’s Senate staff right out of law school, he was nothing less than a hero.
But on this night, November 4, 1980, Moreau saw Birch Bayh as he’d never seen him before—in defeat. All summer and fall of that year, Bayh’s opponent in the Senate election, Dan Quayle, had tried to paint the incumbent as a man who’d spent too much time in Washington, who was out of touch with “mainstream” Hoosier values. Bayh had fended off such attacks in previous elections, against opponents who had seemed far more formidable. But this time, this year, it stuck. Riding an anti-incumbent tide that would sweep Ronald Reagan into the White House and help defeat other icons of the Senate—Idaho’s Frank Church, South Dakota’s George McGovern—Quayle buried Bayh. The contest wasn’t even close.
Moreau was incredulous, outraged that voters would kick someone like Birch Bayh out of office. And as Bayh made his way across the campaign’s cavernous 16th Street headquarters—a god-awful dump of a building that once had been a car dealership—Moreau looked up to catch the senator’s gaze. “That’s when I just lost it,” says Moreau, now and attorney with Barnes & Thornburg. “I can’t remember what I ate this morning, but I remember that—vividly. Those wounds remained fresh for years.”
Moreau would not be the only one who took away bitter lessons from the defeat. After the drubbing by Quayle, Birch Bayh told the New York Times that he thought his campaign chairman, his 25-year-old son Evan, had taken the loss even harder than he had. In the weeks and months after the election, Evan Bayh would later admit, he came “close to being disillusioned by the political process.”
Evan Bayh, of course, didn’t retreat from politics. He didn’t fall back in a job with a white-shoe law firm and a nice spread in Carmel. Instead, over the next several years, he and a group of loyal followers, many of whom had worked for his father, distilled a notion of how a Democrat could win, and govern, in a reliably Republican state: Run a lean campaign. Convince voters that they could trust you with their money. Don’t get cornered into debating culture wars. And, most importantly, keep close tabs on your constituents. It was a straightforward, pragmatic formula, both a reaction to his father’s defeat and a tacit rejection of the old man’s legacy. “There was a period toward the end of Birch’s final campaign when a lot of people said that he had begun to lose touch,” says Tom Koutsoumpas, a longtime friend of Evan Bayh who would on Birch’s Senate staff for 11 years. “I think it was more that he was swept away in the Reagan landslide, but it really reintroduced in Evan’s mind that the most important thing is politics was the people you represent. He picked that up very clearly, understands that and believes that.”
Bayh’s approach has made him among the most successful politicians in Indiana history. After 18 years in one public office or another, he has yet to lose an election. In 1996, after two terms as governor, he left office with a 79 percent approval rating. Two years later, in 1998, he won his father’s old seat in the US Senate by almost 30 points.
His success in Indiana made him a star within the Democratic Party, if not yet a politician with a national profile. In 1996, he gave the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. That same year, a former Clinton advisor called him “the future of the Democratic Party.” In 2000, less than 18 months into his first Senate term, he was one of four finalists for the VP spot on Al Gore’s ticket. And even before Senator John Kerry sewed up the Democratic nomination this year, Bayh was again being mentioned as a possible running mate.
Few politicians have risen so far, so fast, with so much ease. But for all his skill and promise, the 48-year-old Bayh remains the object of zealous indifference for most voters, even in Indiana. He inspires none of the passion behind Howard Dean, none of the loyalty or loathing toward George W. Bush. In an age of polarizing debate and 24/7 political coverage, he is a curious species: Our most successful, least fascinating public figure—Wonder Bread with a voting record. And yet no one who as paid any attention to his career doubts that the central question in Bayh’s future is when, not if, he’ll appear on a presidential ticket—and not as the No. 2.
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