Fixers

by Michael M. Thomas

  We walked together to the lakeside theater (the Grove offers two theatrical presentations, “the High Jinks” and “the Low Jinks”), and after the show, over more drinks, I learned that he was planning to fly back to Chicago in two days, on Saturday the 21st. Commercial, of course, which meant driving through weekend traffic to Oakland to catch JetBlue.

  This was the opening I’d counted on. I was betting on the assumption that at this stage, OG’s campaign has to watch its pennies, and chartered jets aren’t an option for anyone except the candidate himself.

  “Look,” I told Orteig, “I have a consulting client who’s flying out here tomorrow night for some big wine hootenanny in Napa. I was just talking to him on the phone, and he told me the plane has to go back to New York on Saturday to pick up his wife. I need to get back, so I asked him if maybe I could snatch a free ride and he said fine. Let me check with him and see if it’ll be OK to drop you off in Chicago on the way to New York. I know he’s a fan of the candidate, which ought to cinch the deal. I’ll check with him just to make sure.”

  Show me an American male or female who’d turn down a freebie on a private jet and I’ll show you a freak of nature. I went off to a Wi-Fi zone, pretended to call, then returned and gave Orteig the thumbs-up. His smile let up the glade. Still, I had to figure that behind the beaming, grateful face, the political animal would be wondering if there’d be a quid pro quo, and if so, what it might be. In Orteig’s world, there’s no such thing as a favor without a price tag.

  First thing Saturday morning, a taxi ferried us over to Santa Rosa, where a spick-and-span Falcon awaited us on the runway. By eleven o’clock we were en route to White Plains by way of Chicago-Midway.

  The opportunity to start my pitch came about an hour into the flight, just after we tucked into the gourmet sandwiches provided by the French Laundry, the three-star Napa restaurant that I’d arranged to cater the flight home.

  Orteig looked across the table at me and said, “This is great chow.” Then he asked me: “You told me you do some consulting for various Wall Street firms?”

  I couldn’t have scripted it better. I’d figured he might take the initiative, if only to get a sense of what I might be looking for as a return favor—as well as to see whether I might have other uses. After all, I’d made him well aware by now that I routinely worked with some pretty rich people.

  “That’s right,” I replied. “A few. Hedge-fund people mostly. A couple of firms. My big investment banking client is Leon Mankoff at STST. You probably know who he is.” That “probably” was, I thought, a bit of an artful touch.

  Orteig nodded. “Who doesn’t?” He took a couple of thoughtful bites, then asked: “How do people like Mankoff see things shaping up politically for next year?”

  “At the moment, if you’re a betting man, you have to send it all in on Hillary. She’s hit the ground running, and she’s raised a ton of money. Still, people have reservations about her. Even people who say they support her. People just don’t trust the Clintons. If there’s a financial crisis, which Mankoff and others think is likely, given what Washington’s let the Street get away with—not to mention what the Street’s let itself get away with—there’s likely to be a lynch mob calling for the Street’s blood. And Hillary will be leading it. It doesn’t matter what she or her people have said or promised so far—if they see real political opportunity to do an ideological one-eighty, that’s the way they’ll go.

  “You say Mankoff thinks a financial crisis is likely? Any timing on that?”

  I shrugged. “Who can say? There’s going to be a point at which a lot of the bad stuff can no longer be swept under the carpet. Subprime credit, for example. And nobody really has a handle on what’s going on with derivatives. If any of this blows up at scale, you might be looking at a major convulsion. Still, these things always take longer than people expect. One of my clients is always quoting Keynes to the effect that the market can remain irrational much longer than you can remain solvent. Wall Street can fight the inevitable off for a while: borrow more money, uncover a fresh bunch of greater fools, pray for divine intervention. It’s all a function, really, of how much money how many people can invest in keeping the balloon afloat. Once they run out of money, or inclination, or blind courage, or trust, or stupidity—although there’s no way this country can ever run out of that—it’s finished. Once they’ve got no more skin left to put in the game: game over!”

  “And you think this will happen when?”

  I gave it the old “who knows” with the hands, then said, “The storm might hit tomorrow, but it equally might hold off until next year, which is how Mankoff’s betting. It’s really a function of how much bad money people are willing to throw after good.”

  I watched Orteig digest that, then added: “One sure thing—if there’s a crisis, the GOP is dead meat. The Democratic candidate will be a lock. Hillary won’t even have to campaign. She can just sit on her ass in Chappaqua and watch her husband fuck the help.”

  I gave him a minute or so to think about that while I munched on my sandwich, then added, “Too bad your guy got started so late. He’s an attractive candidate. Born to run. Great stage presence, impressive CV. Obviously very smart. People I know who’ve met him have been impressed. He has that ‘it” factor that Hillary lacks. But he’s got an awful lot of ground to make up. Speaking honestly, how do you think he’s doing? Really doing.”

  “We’re gaining momentum,” he said, trying to sound positive and only half-succeeding.

  “How much have you raised so far?”

  I knew it was a question he wouldn’t care to answer, and he didn’t. “We’re OK. Just starting to get traction.”

  That was bullshit, and yet it wasn’t. My Internet research suggests that OG is doing better than Hillary in terms of current fund-raising, probably something around $40 million since the beginning of the year, but that’s not translating into good poll numbers. But those would shift overnight if Orteig had $75 million to put to work next week.

  “Who knows?” I said. “You still may have a shot.”

  I paused. Time to drag the fly under the trout’s nose.

  “From what I’m hearing,” I said, “there’s a lot of firepower out there that hasn’t committed. That’s still on the sidelines.”

  I watched him think carefully about his next move. Then he leaned forward until his face was practically up against mine and asked, in a low voice, almost if he feared the plane might be bugged: “You work with a lot of big-money people, Chauncey. If you were in our shoes, how would you reach out to them?”

  Bingo!

  I didn’t want to move things along too fast. “Well, I’m no political pro. But right now, I’d have to say, you need to hook up with one or two really big hitters. Dribs and drabs won’t get it done; I’m talking tens of millions. Just to take an example, how much do you figure that party at the Museum of Modern Art raised for your guy? That was a pretty fancy crowd. Still, you probably cleared what? A couple of million?” I knew the answer, but I was highballing him to set him up.

  “Half a million,” he replied. He looked disconsolate. Then he brightened and added, “But probably more to come. And we’ve been doing a lot better.” He didn’t sound confident.

  “When’s the convention?”

  “August 25 next year—in Denver. But before that, there are the primaries and caucuses, starting with Iowa in January.”

  “Not a lot of time. Your guy’s made a strong start. The books, the Lincoln connection, and the throwdown at Springfield: all good shit. Apparently the money’s coming in OK, but just. To get off the schneid, you’re going to need a quantum jump: money for the Internet, state volunteer organizations, advertising—a ton of very expensive infrastructure. They don’t give that stuff away.”

  I let that sink in, then set the hook: “Let me ask you this, Homer. Say you had an incremental $75 million—I’m just picking a number out of the air—that you knew you could count on right now. Money you co
uld start laying out next week. How big a difference would that make?”

  “You’re speaking theoretically, of course?” he asked.

  “Of course.”

  There was no need for me to wink. Orteig’s a pro. He got it. I watched his expression change, his features sharpen, eyes wake up. The smell of actual money does that to people. Greed, opportunism, the anticipation of real spending power, even a hint of potential victory: all were visible as I watched Orteig mentally translate $75 million into a powerful political database and its corollaries: websites, server costs, office space, thousands of volunteers and their care and feeding and deployment, call centers, TV time, chartered jets, Nielsen ratings points, audience share.

  And rising poll numbers.

  Finally, he said: “Chauncey, I’ll level with you. If we got an injection of $75 million right now—even half of that—we could win this darn thing! We’ve got the right candidate, we’ve got the right message: all we need to be able to do is get it out, to secure funding sufficient to build out the brand and the campaign organization. If you know where I can get that kind of money, the candidate will kiss your ass in a Macy’s window at high noon.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” I said, then decided it was time to bring out the net. “Homer,” I said, using a voice full of fellow feeling, “I have to come clean with you. Our bumping into each other at the Grove wasn’t entirely a matter of chance.”

  He grinned. “You know, I’m just starting to pick up on that. For someone who professes to disdain politics, you’re a pretty sharp operator.”

  “Flattery will get you everywhere,” I responded. “Now listen: there are people—wealthy people, influential people—who feel very strongly that if there’s a crisis, Mrs. Clinton’s not the person they want dealing with it. They’ve deputized me to come and talk to you.”

  “I don’t suppose you’re willing to disclose who these people might be?”

  My turn to grin. “You don’t suppose correctly,” I replied.

  “Why don’t you tell me exactly what you have in mind?” We were on the same wavelength.

  “Happily,” I said. “I’ve already described to you the crisis my people see coming. Some of them think it might even compare to 1929. You know those World War II documentaries on PBS that show people picking through the rubble of Berlin in 1945? Or London after the Blitz? That’s what they think this economy’s going to look like.”

  “Jesus.”

  “I agree. OK, let’s take as a given that the shit hits the fan sometime next year. If it happens before November ’08, the likeliest scenario, that’ll be on Bush’s watch, and this administration’s immediate problem. Coming on top of Iraq and Katrina, what this’ll do to Bush’s historical rating won’t bear thinking about. Buchanan’ll look like Lincoln next to Forty-Three. You with me?”

  He nodded. “Go on.”

  “Now: here’s the thing. You can bet they’ll act quickly, because the people who’ll be running the show from the Treasury are Wall Street types. You know: invest and then investigate. Which means they’ll try to resolve over a couple of weekends a disaster that’s been decades in the making. They don’t know how to think long-term, or in terms of the wider community, what you and I think of as Main Street. The first thing on their minds will be to save Wall Street from the consequences of its greed and folly—and Washington’s—so they’ll try to fix the mess by throwing the taxpayers’ money at it. They won’t do what they should do, which is to keep essential overnight credit flowing, and throw the rest of the subprime and other garbage into a kind of global cesspool and let the rats fight it out. They should close down or nationalize the busted banks after segregating insured deposits, fire their boards, and put the bums who brought us this mess in handcuffs, along with the CEOs who let them get away with it. Let the banks’ stockholders take the hit. But this isn’t what’ll happen, which is why the next president will have a problem.”

  I thought I got that little rehearsed speech out very glibly. You would have even thought I’d written it myself, although the words were Mankoff’s. Orteig seemed impressed. “I think you’d better explain,” he said.

  “It’s very simple. People on the Street will tell you that it takes roughly twice as long to get out of a crisis than to get into one. This means whoever gets elected a year from now is still going to have to deal with the problem. Whatever the GOP puts in place will be hard to get out of. But what will still be possible is for whoever enters the White House in 2009 to take it out of Wall Street’s hide the way FDR did back in ’33. That’s when we got Glass-Steagall and all the other protective regulation that Phil Gramm and his patrons got rid of under Clinton.”

  “I see.”

  “And that brings me to your candidate. Let’s start with your guy’s declaration that he’s the candidate of change. Change Washington, change the way the country functions, and so on. And change equals reform, agreed?”

  Orteig nodded.

  “The question, then, is: what kind of reform? Or, to put it another way, reform of what?”

  “Wall Street, I should think.”

  “That’s our guess. But reform needs to be implemented coolly and thoughtfully, not against a background chorus of ‘off with their heads!’ with lynch mobs gathering on Capitol Hill and tumbrels rolling down Wall Street—but when the next president is inaugurated, he or she will be under pressure to set policy simply to satisfy the mob’s or the media’s call for necks for the guillotine. But lynch mobs, guillotines, and heads on pikestaffs are hardly what the economy’s going to need at that point.”

  “I take your point, but if there’s a crisis, you can hardly expect a candidate not to exploit it politically.”

  “Of course. The people I’m speaking for don’t much care what the candidates think and say about Wall Street up to the election. You tell the girl what she wants to hear in order to get her into bed, but that’s not the same as a marriage proposal. What musn’t happen is that we end up with a president-elect and a bunch of advisers who try to put an anti–Wall Street, anti-business campaign rhetoric into actual practice. That would be a disaster for the country. For a new administration to take office with a policy based on retribution and punishment would be a terrible mistake. Bad for Wall Sure, to be sure, but worse for the country. It’d be a case of starving the patient just when he needs to be fattened back to health. The people won’t see it that way, of course, but off the evidence of the past twenty years they haven’t exactly shown themselves to be capable stewards of their own best interests.”

  “The public won’t stand to see Wall Street bailed out.”

  I grinned. “What if they have no say in the matter? Besides, hanging Wall Street out to dry shouldn’t be at the top of any serious president’s policy want-list. There’s health care. There’s Iraq and Afghanistan. The Main Street economy will require a bit of lip service, and maybe even some real money. There’s China, Latin America, the drug war, other big stuff. More pressing and painful issues than putting a few people in Armani into minimumsecurity prisons. Your man is an inspirational type. If he captures the electorate’s fancy and gets elected, they’ll cut him some slack, no matter what he may have promised during the campaign. And what you and I are really here to discuss is how to make sure there is a campaign in which he can make promises.”

  “What about the media?”

  “The media? Come on! The last time the media made a real difference in the way things get done in Washington was Watergate, and that was what—almost forty years ago?”

  He pondered that. I decided to switch to sympathy mode.

  “Look, Homer. I’m no fan of a lot of the stuff I see going down on Wall Street. But I do appreciate that if there’s a crisis it’s important that the markets see the prospect of stability for as long as the big banks need to get their houses back in order. If a new administration comes in having made all sorts of wild reform promises about throwing the passengers in the Bush lifeboat to the sharks—and then
keeps those promises—the result could be chaos.”

  Orteig smiled and shook his head as if laughing at some inner joke. “I see,” he said. “God help me if I ever find myself pitted against you in an election.”

  “You flatter me,” I said. “Here’s the thinking of the people who sent me to talk with you. If they could be privately—and I emphasize ‘privately’—assured by you that in the eventuality your man is elected, his economic team will consist of men and women who understand the importance of functioning capital markets and banking institutions to the overall welfare of the nation, they’re prepared to commit up to $75 million to the campaign.”

  He whistled softly, then nodded to himself. Then he fixed his gaze on mine and asked, “And what if he doesn’t get the nomination?”

  “If he doesn’t get the nomination, obviously the money’s down the drain. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

  “I see. As far as an economic team, I trust you have certain people in mind?”

  “I do.” No more playing around, I thought. I reached into my jacket pocket and took out an index card similar to the one Mankoff had shown me at Three Guys, on which I’d printed four names.

  Orteig reached for it, but I held it back, and said, “Before I show it to you, one thing must be understood. The people whose names are on this card have zero knowledge of what I’m proposing to you, and it has to stay that way. We’re making a Pavlovian bet here. Ring the right ideological bell, and these animals can be counted to salivate, if you get my meaning. A sort of conspiracy by reflex.”

  Then I handed him the card.

  He studied it, then looked up. “These names aren’t going to go down very well with our base,” he said. “Especially Harley Winters. He’s a living symbol of crony capitalism.”