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  By six o’clock, Cheri, who had worked until three-thirty, had somehow found something to wear, and she looked beautiful, although she was tired and a bit frustrated with me. I managed to get her in the car and down the road just as the Food Fairy truck whizzed past us. “I wonder where they’re going,” said Cheri. As she mused about the truck, I suddenly realized I needed to kill an hour so they could get things ready. I decided I’d drive to one of the city’s few venues for black-tie galas—the Sheraton Raleigh Capital Center—and use up half an hour or so figuring out that it was “the wrong place.”

  The ruse would have worked better if the lot and entrance at the Sheraton hadn’t been deserted, but as we drove up it was obvious that no one was having any kind of event there. Nevertheless, I had Cheri wait in the car while I ran inside to “check.” When I came back out to report it was the wrong place, Cheri pushed for me to call my boss for the proper address. I resisted her. Finally, I said I didn’t feel well and maybe we should go home. I don’t recall her exact words, but they were something like “You don’t ask me to get all dressed up like this on short notice and then just go home. Suck it up, buddy.”

  Since I needed to waste more time, I suggested we go to a McDonald’s, where I could get a Sprite to settle my stomach (which to a nurse was ridiculous). When the soft drink didn’t work—“I really feel bad; I think we should go home”—Cheri gave up on me and agreed to call it a night. She fumed on the ride home, though, and when we got to the house she got out of the car without saying a word. She was stomping mad, and I had to hustle to catch up with her at the front door. When I opened it she could smell our dinner cooking, hear the music, and see rose petals on the floor and a table set.

  That night we had a candlelight feast that included the juiciest steak I ever had, topped with a concoction of crab and lobster. Cheri’s dessert—a chocolate torte—came with whipped cream, raspberry drizzle, and her engagement ring. When I got down on my knees, my stomach didn’t hurt, but it was filled with butterflies as I said, “You are the woman of my dreams, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me?” She said yes. After dinner, we called our family and friends and gave them the news. (Her father wasn’t surprised. I had asked for his permission.) We soon set September 11 as the date for our wedding.

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  n the day Cheri and I were engaged, the United States Senate acquitted President Clinton in his impeachment trial, ending thirteen months of crisis over his sexual affair with Monica Lewinsky and his stupid, lying attempt to escape the truth. Senator Edwards played a role in the investigation, helping to preside over depositions of Lewinsky and Clinton’s friend Vernon Jordan. He also made his first speech to the full Senate during the closed-door impeachment trial, which was one of those rare moments when all one hundred members actually occupied the chamber. A lot of staff time and effort was put into preparing Edwards’s remarks, but when the time came he put away the text and spoke, as he said, “from the heart.” (He later authorized the release of a transcript of his remarks.)

  In considering the charge, Edwards said, “I think this president has shown a remarkable disrespect for his office, for the moral dimensions of leadership, for his friends, for his wife, for his precious daughter. It is breathtaking to me the level to which that disrespect has risen.” But he did not agree with those who thought Clinton acted with a criminal’s intent to avoid prosecution. Instead, he saw a politician’s instincts at work: “I suspect the first thing he thought about is, ‘I’m going to protect myself politically.’ He was worried about his family finding out. He was worried about the rest of the staff finding out. He was worried about the press finding out.”

  Urging the Senate to focus on the question of whether the evidence against Clinton exceeded the standard of “reasonable doubt,” Edwards said he had poured long hours into studying the case, often staying up till three in the morning. In the end, although he suspected Clinton might be guilty of “a lot that has not been proven,” he couldn’t join those who thought the president had committed perjury or obstructed justice.

  Considering John Edwards’s gift for courtroom drama, I’m certain he held the Senate’s attention with his explanation for his votes against the charges. But once I read the speech and thought about the clubby culture of the Senate, I realized that he probably won them over at the end, when he talked about how he had come to admire, respect, and even love his colleagues.

  “An extraordinary thing has happened to me in the last thirty days,” he told the one hundred senators. “I have watched you struggle, every one of you. I have watched you come to this podium. I have listened to what you have had to say. I talked to you informally; I watched you suffer. I believe in my heart that every single one of you wants to do the right thing. The result of that for me is a gift. And that gift is that I now have a boundless faith in you.”

  Edwards told me that after his address, he was practically bowled over by colleagues who wanted to congratulate him. Senator Edward “Ted” Kennedy, one of the great old lions, even wandered to the back of the chamber, where the newest members of the Senate were given their desks, to shake his hand. Kennedy saw almost unlimited potential in this young, energetic, well-spoken, and good-looking Southerner who shared his position on most issues. All the other freshmen in Edwards’s class were veteran politicians who could be seen as part of the “system” that needed fixing. At a time when the public was sick of partisan politics and business as usual, this “outsider” status made him even more attractive.

  Of course, you didn’t need to be a Kennedy to see something in John Edwards. All you needed was a subscription to Capital Style magazine, which put him alone on the cover of its February issue with the cover line building the perfect senator. The article, titled “Senator Perfect,” presented Edwards as an almost accidental politician. The author noted that Edwards had failed to vote in six different elections and couldn’t recall if he registered first as a Republican or a Democrat, but also argued that this inexperience was balanced by Edwards’s many obvious gifts. Quoting the political analyst Stuart Rothenberg, the magazine said of Edwards, “He may well be Clinton without the baggage. That’s what we’re watch-ing and waiting to find out.” At a time when the Republicans and Karl Rove looked unstoppable, the Democrats needed someone like John Edwards. This is why Time called him “The Democrats’ New Golden Boy.” Senator Edwards loved all the attention but was also wary of it. “Andrew,” he told me, “they just build you up so they can tear you down.”

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  ashington seemed to love Edwards, and from the beginning he attracted attention from the kingmakers in his party. But he was still burdened with the ordinary chores that come with joining the world’s most exclusive club. He had to get up to speed for his committees—Small Business; Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions; Intelligence; and Judiciary—and hire staff for his Washington office on the second floor of the Dirksen Senate Office Building and for outposts around the state. To keep in touch with his constituents, he began holding weekly events called Tar Heel Tuesdays, which were open to the public. In D.C., he gave key jobs to his top campaign aides, Josh and Julianna, and then hired dozens more. In North Carolina, he tapped a mix of political pros and old friends and neighbors.

  I first asked for a job with Edwards on the day after the election, but as time passed I started to worry that his staff was overwhelmed with applicants and might overlook me. I didn’t have a strong personal connection to the senator, but Wade Byrd, Edwards’s friend and top donor, had told me to call him if I ever needed help. I drove down Interstate 40 to I-95 South and found the stately Victorian house where he kept his offices. He brought me into his private study, sat behind his desk, and talked about his friend “Johnny” Edwards and how he’d helped plot his candidacy. At the end of our talk, he promised to call Johnny on my behalf. He followed through, and in July I joined the Edwards team in Raleigh.

  We worked out of space on the third floor of the historic Cent
ury Post Office, which was the first federal building constructed in North Carolina after the Civil War. Mr. and Mrs. Edwards picked the building for its architectural character and because it was some distance from where North Carolina’s other senator, archconservative Jesse Helms, kept his office. Equipped with used federal chairs and desks (I found old Helms papers in mine), the place was furnished in a drab government style except for the personal items people added to the décor. I put up a framed tourism poster from the 1930s that showed the U.S. Capitol and declared, “Your National Capital Beckons You.” Some of the people in the office worked every day on constituent issues like passports and Social Security concerns. My job involved working with state and local governments and helping citizens with complicated issues.

  Everything you can imagine flows through a senator’s local office, from immigration appeals to reports about unidentified flying objects. One lady left rambling messages about her sexual fantasies—all of them involved Senator Edwards—on the office answering machine every night. Agents of the Office of the U.S. Marshal eventually paid a visit to her trailer and asked her to stop making these calls. She didn’t. We heard almost as often from a federal inmate who wrote the senator on ten-foot stretches of toilet paper. Every sheet was filled with his carefully penciled grievances about the government. Each time one of these communiqués arrived, I got a kick out of watching an intern try to use an official stamp to record receipt of the letter without tearing it.

  Most of the real business I did required me to steer questions to the right federal agency or untangle red tape. People who had seen campaign ads saying that Senator Edwards was going to Washington to use his trial lawyer experience to be an advocate for the little people called to seek clemency for relatives on death row. I did a lot of listening and a lot of sympathizing but could offer them very little concrete assistance.

  I was so gung ho that I worked overtime almost every day and often left the old building so late that when I tried to take the elevator to the street level, it would get locked and I would be trapped inside. I’d use the emergency phone and call for help. The officers who responded probably thought I was crazy to work all alone so late into the night. In fact I was just a young, ambitious guy who saw a real opportunity in Edwards. At every chance I volunteered to do more, so when everyone else turned down the job of driving the senator when he came to town—picking him up at the airport, ferrying him around the state, bringing him back to the airport—I grabbed it.

  Having been around politicians my whole life, I understood that when they travel, major political figures need an assistant—usually called the “body man”—who will be available during every waking hour. (You’ll know him when you see him because he’s the one who has to collect every gift or piece of paper handed to his boss and has a Sharpie marker at the ready for the hordes of autograph seekers.)

  The person chosen for this job is granted a high level of trust and responsibility, and a good performance can lead to big opportunities. President Clinton’s body man Kris Engskov became head of public policy for Starbucks. Reggie Love, body man for Barack Obama, has become a genuine celebrity in his own right. Since trust brings with it a sense of duty and responsibility, the job also encourages a fierce kind of loyalty that is rarely seen outside of families. The body man can develop a sense of mission and commitment that is practically fanatical, and his sense of duty, to a boss who may influence the fate of the world, could lead him to overlook, indulge, and even enable things he might not countenance in another person. For example, David Powers, who served President Kennedy, never uttered a word about JFK’s many relationships with women other than his wife. Likewise, many of the people who served Governor and then-President Clinton knew about his affairs and said nothing.

  I wanted to set a new standard for body men. Whenever the senator was flying in, I would call the airline and arrange for an agent to meet him at the gate. (Since airlines have a lot of dealings with the federal government, they were eager to help.) The agent would escort the senator through the crowds to baggage claim and out the door, where I would be standing at the curb beside my white Chevy Suburban, which was running with either the heat or air-conditioning on. Inside, I’d have a cooler with cold Diet Cokes (he preferred cans) and snacks. National and local newspapers would be displayed for him to read, along with briefing pages. If it was dinnertime and he wasn’t going to be able to eat, I’d have a take-out meal and a chilled glass of Chardonnay. The menu would depend on whether he had made a request or was on the Atkins diet at the time. Diet meals generally involved salmon and a salad with ranch dressing and no croutons from the Glenwood Grille or 518 West. At other times it was ribs, or country fare from Cracker Barrel. He loved Cracker Barrel—once, he was so excited to see a new Cracker Barrel near his house that he almost made me crash.

  Like many people who travel for work, the senator would complain about how much his life “sucked” because he was often away from home. Everyone on the staff did everything possible to make travel easier on him. We did it because our fate was tied to his. Every once in a while, he would notice one thing that I had forgotten and mention it. I would apologize, but he would quickly laugh it off, saying I so rarely forgot things that he was just giving me a hard time. It became like a game to me. My goal was to make things run as smoothly as possible for a man I believed was a future president of the United States. For this reason, I didn’t talk unless he wanted to talk, and I learned how to say “Yes, sir” to every request he ever made. “No” wasn’t in my vocabulary.

  I quickly became the senator’s “go-to guy,” whether the task was to obtain last-second tickets to Leno for a niece, retrieve his daughter Cate’s lost purse at Christmas (she’d left it on a flight), or borrow a private jet for some urgent flight in a few hours. John and Elizabeth Edwards both acted as if nothing were beyond my reach and tested me on it. I was proud when I passed their tests and proud to tell my parents and friends about my adventures.

  The senator and I quickly developed a routine where he would get in the Suburban, take a deep breath, and then reach over with his left hand, pat me on the shoulder, and say, “Andrew, it’s good to see you.” Often he needed to vent about the frustrations of working in the Senate, which is ruled by seniority, moves slowly, and is set up to promote compromise. He also complained about the volume of work dumped on him every day, especially the so-called briefing books prepared by his staff. These binders contained background materials on major issues ranging from domestic economic problems to foreign affairs. Smart people put many hours of effort into these books, and they were designed for quick study. To their frustration, the senator never seemed to get around to reading them. Even when he had time in the car, he preferred to talk with me about local politics or Carolina basketball or family. The conversation was easy because we had so much in common. We were both small-town Southern boys who enjoyed the same food, loved the same sports, and cared deeply about our families. Unlike almost everyone else in his life, I never asked him for anything.

  When we got to the house and parked, I jumped out and grabbed the bags. I had a key (he always misplaced his) and would open the door and follow him inside. Mrs. Edwards would light up when he came home and give him a big hug. I had rarely seen two people who loved each other more. She was his most trusted adviser—on everything from politics to wardrobe—and he would ask for her input on every important decision.

  As she got to know me as a reliable aide, Mrs. Edwards couldn’t have been friendlier. She was so at ease, in fact, that if it was late and she was already in bed, she told me to just come on into the bedroom and put the suitcases in the closet while her husband went to look in on the kids. “It’s all right, Andrew,” she would say. “You’re family.”

  It was a warm but also surprising statement. I had worked for the senator for only a few months, and my direct contact with Mrs. Edwards couldn’t have added up to more than a few hours total time. But they were exceptional people, and being with them ma
de you feel you were putting your time and energy into a noble cause. We were trying to make things better for people, to make the country and the world a better place. And because this kind of mission couldn’t be squeezed into a nine-to-five box, I saw the Edwards family in their home and at odd hours. If that didn’t make me family, it made me something more than an employee, and it felt pretty good.

  Even so, I resisted when the Edwardses told me to address them by their first names. For some reason—maybe it was to remind myself that we would never be on equal footing or that he might be the next JFK—I would always call him “Senator” and her “Mrs. Edwards.” I did this even on the night I dropped the senator at his home and got an emergency phone call before I had reached my own house, asking me to come back right away.

  When I got there, I found the senator and Mrs. Edwards dressed for bed and laughing. It turned out the kids had jumped into bed with them and the whole thing had crashed to the floor. They said they needed my help putting it back together. I tried to respect Mrs. Edwards’s privacy—her nightgown was a bit revealing—while helping her husband get the slats and rails in place, lift up the box spring, and seat the mattress. In my mind, it was an oddly intimate and personal chore, but there seemed to be almost no limit to what the Edwardses might ask of me or the degree to which they would let me into their lives.

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  INSTANT SUCCESS