Fixers

by Michael M. Thomas

  But if you have the right-size story—and what could be bigger than fixing a presidential election?—then the Internet and its offspring can be unbelievably powerful when it comes to setting off a pandemic of anger and retribution.

  So that’s my scheme.

  I realize this represents a 180-degree swivel from where I started, and you probably want to know how this has come about—this radical change of heart and intention.

  To answer the question, I fear I’m going to have to give you some sense of what I’ve been up to since we parted company four years ago.

  As I’ve said, the best part of the last few years has been my life with B and her family, but there have been some professional high points, too. None higher than the Shakespeare opera series underwritten by my client Leonard King, who just sold his Zephyr family of hedge funds to a Qatari bank for a cool $10 billion. The series has been a huge success. I’ve attended the openings in Paris, Shanghai, New York, and Vienna, and all went well—especially Vienna, where the Adès Tempest was a huge success: ten curtain calls, standing ovations, and Leonard clapped onstage and presented with a huge bouquet of roses.

  He’s setting up a foundation that he wants me to be the CEO of. I’m not sure how I’ll respond. I relish my independence. My business is fine: I have all the clients I can possibly handle, and my senior people are taking on more of the workload—clients originally mine with whom they’ve worked are calling them first. I like my new offices off Columbus Circle, although I do miss the old gang at San Calisto (I’ve kept in touch with Scaramouche). Still, a salary of $3 million a year isn’t to be sniffed at.

  So everything was pretty hunky-dory until just ten days ago, when B called me from a chartered jet on her way to Boston. She had devastating news: while in London to see friends, her mother had been run over and killed. Looked left when she should have looked right while navigating Berkeley Square, and was struck by a lorry and killed instantly. Could I come up to help out, since her father is a wreck and her brother has gone to London to fetch his mother’s ashes?

  I rushed through the day’s remaining business, threw together a suitcase, and headed for LaGuardia. B had invited me to stay at the family house in Brookline, but there are times when it’s better to be nearby and available, but not underfoot. I checked in at the Hotel Charles, where I usually put up when I have business in Cambridge, and cabbed it to Brookline, arriving two hours after B.

  It was weird being back in a house where, only a fortnight earlier, over Thanksgiving, I had stayed with the family under completely different emotional circumstances. But I swallowed my feelings and did my best to be helpful: ran errands, answered the phone, shook a great many hands, uttered the odd piety, and made myself useful—functionally and, I hope, spiritually.

  Claudio returned from London on Thursday the 18th. The memorial service was held this past Saturday the 20th in Harvard’s Memorial Church.

  It was both moving and classy. The readings and music were well chosen and delivered with art and eloquence, and unlike most upper-class funerals, the eulogists didn’t talk mostly about themselves. One felt this service was really about the Marjorie I’d known. The church felt truly suffused with love. After the instrumental interlude following the sermon—the slow movement of Beethoven’s “Spring” sonata marked Adagio molto espressivo, performed by a violin-piano duo from the Harvard music school—I doubt there was a dry eye in the house.

  The final reading was the zinger. After the final strains of “I Was Glad,” the congregation resumed its seats. A tall figure dressed in designer black appeared from behind the sanctuary, stopped at the front pew to embrace Thayer and his children, and made her way to the lectern. A rising murmur ran through the congregation as people realized who it was: the First Lady of the United States—FLOTUS, as the media and Secret Service shorthand her—Marjorie’s devoted former law school pupil and mentee.

  I couldn’t help thinking immediately how tired Mrs. OG looked. What I saw in her face I’ve seen written in the features of other women, an expression peculiar to those married to men whom the world admires and praises and sucks up to, but men who are difficult to be married to, for any of a thousand reasons. When I reflect on OG’s marriage, I always find myself thinking of the Clintons—and the FDRs. Couples whose marriages were more in the nature of the deal I’d cut with Orteig seven years ago than an exchange of sacred vows and a mutual true love. There are frames in the terrific Ken Burns documentary about FDR when Mrs. Roosevelt had that look. It must be terribly draining, to live with someone like that. And FDR was a great man. Destiny’s jury is still out on OG.

  It’s almost as if the psychological history of her husband’s presidency is written in her eyes and the corners of her mouth. I found myself wondering whether she too, like all those millions of other adherents, had been disappointed in her husband’s conduct of his office. Was it Marjorie who once told me that that FLOTUS could have had a big public career on her own, but chose to put her own prospects to one side and commit her abilities 100 percent to her husband?

  When the First Lady spoke, however, it was in a strong, clear voice that belied her drawn appearance. It surely left no one in the congregation in doubt that this is a very formidable person.

  “I’m going to read a few passages from a book Marjorie held dear,” she began. “The book is called The American Democrat. It’s by James Fenimore Cooper. It was a favorite book of Marjorie’s and she made it a favorite book of my husband’s and mine. You might say Marjorie regarded it as a kind of secular catechism, but since the principles it enumerates are what any good Christian or person of faith—and certainly any good American—would hold dear, even though many of these seem lost to the present day, I have no hesitation in reading them here in church.”

  “The copy I’m reading from was Marjorie’s own copy,” FLOTUS continued. “She gave it to me when I graduated from law school, and I will cherish it forever. The passages I’ll be reading are passages she marked. I’ve heard her quote one or two from memory; she obviously took to heart what she knew by heart.

  “First, let me tell you just a bit about this book. The American Democrat was published in 1836, when Cooper had returned to his native land after seven years in Paris. It was written at the same time as de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, so it gives us the opportunity to compare what a long-descended American—these are the same Coopers who founded Cooperstown—thought of his country as opposed to a French aristocrat. Without going into too much background, I’ll just say that Cooper didn’t like much of what he saw when he returned to his native land. Much of what he complained of will seem especially resonant today.

  “Now, let’s start with this:

  “Whenever the enlightened, wealthy, and spirited of an affluent and great country seriously conspire to subvert democratical institutions, their leisure, money, intelligence, and means of combining will be found too powerful for the ill-directed and conflicting efforts of the mass. It is therefore all important to enlist a portion of this class, at least, in the cause of freedom, since its power at all times renders it a dangerous enemy.”

  Hearing this, my first thought was, well, nothing changes, does it. “Leisure, money, intelligence, and means of combining.” Hello, Dreck brothers.

  The First Lady read for perhaps another ten minutes. I paid close attention. Cooper was a Yale man, and if Bones had been around when he was on the Old Campus, I like to think we’d have tapped him.

  Clearly, Cooper favored what I guess you could call a “moral aristocracy.” He was more than a bit of a snob, and yet at the end of the day his message is compelling, a point emphasized by the passage with which the First Lady concluded her reading:

  “It is peculiarly graceful in the American, whom the accidents of life have raised above the mass of the nation, to show himself conscious of his duties … (as a guardian of the liberties of his fellow citizens) … by asserting at all times the true principles of government, avoiding, equally, the cant
of demagoguism with the impracticable theories of visionaries, and the narrow and selfish dogmas of those who would limit power by castes. They who do not see and feel the importance of possessing a class of such men in a community, to give it tone, a high and far sighted policy, and lofty views in general, can know little of history and have not reflected on the inevitable consequences of admitted causes.”

  With that, FLOTUS closed the book, looked out over the congregation for just a moment, as if to say, “You’ve heard what to do, now go do it,” then bowed her head, murmured briefly to herself—presumably a prayer for Marjorie—and stepped down from the lectern. She paused again to embrace Thayer and the twins, and took a seat beside him in the family pew, with her bodyguards lingering discreetly off to one side.

  I was impressed. Marjorie had often spoken to me of Cooper’s book and had promised to get me a copy. About the only promise she hadn’t kept. The passages that had been read reflected Marjorie right down to the last atom of DNA, I thought. True noblesse oblige—the real thing—mated to uncommon common sense; faith coupled with reason and spiced with decency. Courage. Moral knitting stuck to. Codes of behavior and consideration observed. Compassion.

  There was one word in particular word that several of the speakers used to describe Marjorie, an adjective that they never would use to describe, say, the merely-although-obscenely-rich like the Dreck brothers, who are trying to buy the last remnants of civil democracy out from under its citizens, or a boastful loudmouth like Donald Trump. That word is “patrician.” Marjorie was a perfect exemplar of the species. They’re hard to find now, because the qualities that make up an authentic patriciate have effectively disappeared.

  Ten minutes later, after a rousing rendition of “Oh God, Our Help in Ages Past” and a final benediction by the Harvard chaplain, the service ended.

  The congregation walked across the Yard toward Quincy Street and the Faculty Club. The First Lady led the way arm-in-arm with Thayer and B. The rest of us trooped along behind.

  It was then that I decided I needed to make my diary public.

  Thinking back, I’m tempted to regard this short stroll as my personal road to Damascus. It was as if I heard a voice—Marjorie’s voice—speaking to me out of a thunderclap heard only by me. I found myself thinking that I had somehow betrayed Marjorie. Ridiculous, I know. I had no idea she existed, she or her family, when I carried out my business with Orteig. And how responsible am I for what’s happened? There have been shortcomings in OG’s administration—serious, grievous shortcomings—and these have continued into his second term, when you’d think he’d be bidding hard and talking tough to reclaim his historical legacy. But would Hillary have been preferable, with her husband running wild peddling influence and access? Or John McCain? A legitimate hero, sure, but with Sarah Palin a heartbeat away? That the governance of this great nation has become even more of a moral cesspool than in 2007 can’t be laid at my door; if you want to blame someone, blame Congress. Still, the feeling materialized and wouldn’t go away—it was like a pebble lodged in a shoe—that I owed amends for my role in this state of affairs. Amends to the traditions I was raised in; amends to Marjorie and what she represented; amends for betraying so much of what I had been brought up to believe, values that I had allowed to slip away the deeper and further I ventured into fixing and manipulating.

  But if amends were due from me or anyone, what form might they take? That’s when I thought of making my diary public. It could change things. Change them big-time.

  That’s a great and probably completely unrealistic expectation, I told myself even as I probed the notion. What, realistically, are the chances of firing up an electorate self-disenfranchised by selfishness and greed and by an appalling ignorance of history and civics? How does one undo a political system totally corrupted by the wealth of plutocrats and the venality of legislators? Ask any rational observer and the answer has to be that the odds stink.

  Still, you have to go with what you’ve got, and what I have still seems pretty potent, I thought as I entered the Faculty Club.

  For the next hour I carried out the duties that go with being the designated boyfriend of the decedent’s daughter: making sure elderly guests got seats and drinks and well-chosen plates from the buffet, rescuing So-and-So from You-Know-Who, trying to remember names and salutations. I did, briefly, get to shake hands with FLOTUS; the way she looked at me suggested she knew in a general way of my role in the Longstreth scheme of things and was inclined, at first sight, to tolerate me. How she might have felt had she known my role in putting her in the life she now led wasn’t a matter I cared to conjecture.

  She left after about an hour. B saw her out a side door and they chatted briefly before FLOTUS’s limo took her to Soldier Field where her chopper awaited. When B came back, she led me off into a side parlor.

  “You’re going to kill me,” she said.

  “Really? Why, pray tell? At the moment I lack both means and motive.”

  “You know how I’m planning to get Daddy settled at Boca Grande and then come up to spend New Year’s and most of the next week with you?”

  I nodded. Boca Grande is an island off Florida’s west coast, a sort of Leeward Harbor with palm trees. A lot of old Wilmington-Philadelphia-Baltimore money winters there, along with a sprinkling of Boston and Hartford. Marjorie and Thayer have been going there ever since the Brookline nest emptied and the big empty house became too much to deal with at Christmas. Boca’s like most places of its kind: grown today to about three times the size that suited it best, everything bigger, fancier, faster, and more costly, but still shot through with agreeable reminders of the way upper-class Florida resort life used to be.

  I thoroughly approved of the twins’ plan to park their father in Boca for the winter: he’ll be among solicitous friends, and there may even be an alluring widow or two to hold his hand. (In my view, men who’ve had blissful marriages tend to find new love pretty quickly. No scars to get in the way.) Just to make certain he’s well taken care of, B and Claudio will do ten days on, ten days off through the winter. A week or two before Easter, whichever one of them is on duty will bring him back north and reinstall him in Brookline.

  “Well,” she said, sounding genuinely unhappy, “it seems I’m going to have to leave you the day after New Year’s. Orders from on high.” She went on to explain. FLOTUS has asked B to join her and the First Daughters at Camp David for New Year’s and a few days afterward. “I think she’s lonely, she wants company. Mother dying has hit her hard.”

  “It’s hit all of us hard.” I remarked, perhaps a little harshly. I’d been looking forward to our time together. “Where’s the Great Man?” I added. “Off playing golf? Screwing up foreign policy?”

  B ignored that. She remains a true believer, and OG’s presidency is a matter she and I never discuss. “It’s just not the sort of invitation I can refuse,” she said. “You see that, don’t you?”

  Of course I had to. Being bid to hang out at Camp David is akin to an invitation from royalty or the pope. There was no point in arguing. Might as well surrender gracefully.

  B nodded. “I’ll make it up to you, I promise. I have to go to L.A. after Camp David to sign up this new production deal with Carousel, but I’m heading back to Boca for Martin Luther King weekend with Daddy. Why don’t you join me then?”

  The idea was appealing. Second-best but plenty good enough, so I assented. “But you will come up for New Year’s Eve, even if it’s only for the night?”

  “Of course,” she replied. “I’m really sorry about this, but …”

  I could tell she had a lot on her mind. “Look, what will be will be,” I said and made a small production of looking at my watch. “You know,” I said, “I really need to get going if I’m going to make the 3:10 Acela. You and Claudio have a lot to do—and frankly so do I. The last thing you need underfoot is me.”

  She hugged me. I could sense her relief at getting rid of me. Even between couples who love each oth
er desperately there are moments like these.

  “Thanks for everything, darling. You’ve been a huge help. I’ll see you on the thirty-first. I’ll get to you by noon even if I have to charter something.” We kissed and I rushed off to catch the train.

  Which is where I am now, rattling south in an Amtrak “quiet car.” I have with me the bound galleys of a book I’ve naturally been anxious to read: Hope and Change: A Political Pilgrimage. It’s a memoir by Homer Orteig, to be published next March. I’ve skimmed the book rapidly, looking for names and dates that might jump out at me. So far I’ve only found this:

  I was livid when I found out that Holloway and Harley Winters had quietly lobbied against an amendment to the stimulus that would have restricted the payment of bonuses at firms that received bailout funds. Those bonuses had become a huge political sore point for the administration, but the finance guys argued that retroactive steps to claw back the money would have violated existing contracts.

  “This will be the end of capitalism as we know it,” Holloway told me, to which I responded: “I hate to break the news, Mr. Secretary, but capitalism isn’t trading very high right now.”

  He goes on to relate that the president’s chief economic advisers often went directly against the expressed wishes of their boss.

  My first, cynical reaction was: so this is what $75 million worth of “livid” looks like. Here was Orteig pretending to have been the victim of ideological forces he himself had conspired with me to unleash. Then an amusing thought struck me: how great my diary would look reposing next to Orteig’s on a front table at Barnes & Noble. Possibly even packaged together at an attractive discount.

  A bit later on, Orteig’s memoir relates something that explains much. He admits that by late 2010, he had ceased to be considered a White House insider. He doesn’t point the finger at Winters and Holloway as principal agents in his fall from grace, but I can well imagine those two had a hand in it. What an irony! That November, OG took a bad hit in the midterm elections; not quite as bad as what befell him a month ago, but definitely a portent of bad political weather on the horizon. Would he have done better with Orteig still calling signals? Hard to say.