"I'M Not a Fool"

By Robert Ajemian, with Hart

His legs stretched out in a restaurant booth, Gary Hart looked tired but pleased with himself. He had found private life for seven months unbearable, he said. Now he felt whole again. Nearby, his wife and son sat with half a dozen political volunteers. Hart leaned over the table to spoon some chicken noodle soup from a bowl.

Practicing law and giving lectures, Hart felt discredited and abandoned. He found it an ordeal, he confided, even to drive to work each Monday morning. "You go crazy," he said, "if you're trained to be a quarterback and then sit on the sidelines." Even the indignity of renewed personal scrutiny would be better than that. "Life holds no terrors for me anymore," he said.

& Last weekend the Harts sat and talked. They had often discussed the kinds of personal questions they might expect from the press. Now Lee told her husband she was afraid that he might be hurt badly, but in the end she could not be the one to stand in his way. Both their children wanted him to get back in. They felt he had looked weak by withdrawing. By the end of the weekend the decision was made.

Hart, who has been on the lecture circuit, noticed that audiences rarely raised questions about his personal life. When they did, his pleas for a certain privacy usually set off loud applause. "People are not mean," he said in a grateful tone. "There's a goodness out there." The hostile questions came from journalists. "There's something wrong," he said, "when journalists ask one set of questions, and the public another."

As he spoke, his hurt and anger became visible. "What is this need to destroy me?" he asked. For all his detachment, Hart remains vulnerable. He is determined not to speak about his personal life, but the subject is never far from his mind. He wants his reputation back. "Let's talk about character," he said. "I'm not an immoral man. I can't believe that even press people think I'm an immoral man."

Hart started to ask a question, but suddenly his lips began to tremble. He tried again, but no words came. Quickly his eyes filled with tears. He was overcome with emotion. He stared down at the table, and the tears ran down his cheeks. "I'm sorry," he said as he found his voice. "I don't like to do that." It was a rare show of emotion for the cool and distant Hart. Somewhat defensively, he pulled himself together. "I don't weep for myself," he said. "I weep for this country."

Now Hart started the question again. "Why is it," he asked, "that the people of this country understand what is really important, but the politicians and the press do not?" Then he sounded a familiar theme. "The political process in this country is destroying its leadership," he said.

He knew, Hart said, that many politicians would view his candidacy as uncontrollable ego. "But I'm not a fool," he said. It is an expression Hart uses often these days. He wants badly to alter his reputation for poor judgment. "Look," said Hart, "if I'm a joke, let the people say that. I'm willing to submit myself to that jury. I am not an unstable person. I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't think there was something serious out there for me."

The only Democrat who continues to reach out and tap the minds of the country's best thinkers, said Hart, is Bill Bradley. That kind of broader thinking, he observed, cannot be acquired during frantic election campaigns. "You can't run for President," he said, "if you don't already know what you think."

Hart was sure about his own thinking. He knew the exact date of the next candidate debate. He will be aggressive there. When he speaks about the deficit, for example, he doesn't mince words about new taxes: the country needs them. "By Jan. 1," he said, "I'll have a piece of paper with numbers on it."

How would he pay the bills for his campaign? Hart reached into his pocket and held up a black wallet. He had driven around New Hampshire that day in a friend's white van, holding route directions in his hand and pointing out signs to a volunteer driver. That night he would sleep at a former staffer's house in Concord. Hart said that to help finance his 1984 presidential campaign he was forced to take a mortgage on his home. "Never again," he said firmly. He believed enough money would come in for a couple of months' campaigning. After 60 days, Hart said, he would know if he was dead or alive.

It will be difficult for Hart to reinvent himself now. He still obtusely sees his past behavior and dreadful judgment as tactical errors. If somehow he had been able openly to accept his errors for what they were, his comeback might seem more plausible. But there was one happy glint. His personal problems, Hart observed, had brought him a dividend he never imagined. "For a lot of people," he said, "I've become more human. I was always seen as a one-dimensional figure. Now people walk up to me differently. They see me as a person who's suffered. They see me as one of them."