“We lost,” I said.
“So you think a gay person could be a good president of the United States?”
“Absolutely,” I said.
A caller on a radio talk show said to me, “You are misinformed.”
“No!” I barked. “You are misinformed!”
Anyone anywhere could ask me anything. No rope lines. No security. No team of advisers. No entourage. No airs. No pomp and circumstance. They didn’t know how to handle it. They couldn’t fathom I’d stay at the town hall meeting until every question was answered. They didn’t know how to react to the way I handled the meetings, either.
When a question was long and garbled, I said, “Come on, get to the point. Spit it out!”
When it was time to introduce local politicos, I said, “We have several Spanish-American War veterans here today.”
When I saw someone in the crowd who looked wacko or was dressed oddly, I invited them up on the stage and gave them the microphone.
Murphy, I noticed, was doing his rock and roll best on TV interviews, which often included Bush aides, to back me up.
“May I finish?” a Bush aide asked.
“No, you may not!” Murphy said.
“Don’t spin me,” Murphy told a Bush aide. “I’m in the racket.”
“You are the racket, man,” the Bush aide said.
My favorite was Murphy with Tim Russert and a Bush aide on Meet the Press.
“How do you beat Al Gore in the November election?” Russert asked.
“Well, it’ll be tough,” the Bush aide said.
“Nominate John McCain,” Murphy said.
He introduced me to a crowd by saying, “John McCain is the skunk at the garden party in Washington.”
And I responded by pointing to him and saying, “That’s what happens when you hire people from the prison release program.”
We had begun. I was running for the highest office in the land. I was telling people the truth as I saw it. This is what my life had been spared for: gawking strangers. I hadn’t had so much fun since I was firing rockets, dropping bombs, and shooting off guns.
I was nuts. That, at least, was what some of my colleagues in the Senate were whispering to the press off the record, while the word they chose for attribution was temper.
What got me wasn’t what they were saying. I am probably a little nuts, but not as nuts as Slew and Good Goddamn McCain were; or as nuts as my screw-loose brother Joe McKmart, a former newspaper reporter, who once wrote a fake story about Mickey Mouse divorcing Minnie Mouse; or as nuts as my mom, who’s eighty-seven years old and just bought a new car to drive to places like Outer Mongolia and Uzbekistan.
What got me was that they were saying I had been driven crazy by my five and a half years in captivity. So. I had been in prison for five and a half years for the love of my country, and now they were saying that the love of my country disqualified me for the presidency. Poor John had suffered too much. So he couldn’t be president. The reason poor John did all those town meetings, they said, was because, after all that time in caged solitary, poor John had a compulsive need to talk.
“Where do they get all this shit?” I said to Murphy one day, and he laughed and said, “Careful—temper!” That hippopotamus who’s the governor up in Michigan and wants to be the Crown Prince’s footstool so badly, Engler, farted that I was a “hot-tempered psycho.” Saturday Night Live did a skit saying I couldn’t eat without a blindfold. I wasn’t allowed to be angry, a reporter explained to me, but being tense or irritated was okay.
Irritated? Tense? Hell, I was so pissed off, I felt like going down to the Senate chamber and body-slamming and head-butting those chickenshit assholes.
Murphy and I started making fun of the whole thing.
“Well, you gotta be a little nuts to want to be president,” I said.
We allowed CBS to film our prep for the first debate, and Murphy stood there in a nauseatingly hideous Hawaiian shirt and said, “Senator, you killed a guy on the way here to the debate. You’re a screaming, hotheaded maniac. You’re exploding every minute. Do you have the temperament to be president of the United States?”
“Well,” I said. “You know, that really makes me mad.”
The other reason they thought I was crazy was the bus. We thought about calling it the Bullshit Express but settled on the Straight Talk Express instead.
We rode the bus up and down New Hampshire every day and we let the reporters (Murphy called them “the scrums”) ride with me all the time.
It had never been done in American politics before—full access all the time and nothing off the record. Since the media, to most Republicans, is the enemy, I was eating with the enemy, pissing with the enemy, snoring with the enemy almost twenty-four hours a day. So I had to be nuts!
Full access all the time . . . at a time when Clinton had never even answered one question about Juanita Broaddrick, when Lockhart tried to call only on his pals in the White House press room, when everybody still remembered Ronald Reagan cupping his ear and pretending not to hear questions about Iran-Contra. Most scrums were so cynical about politicians that, in the beginning of my campaign, they seemed almost insulted by “full access all the time.” I was being manipulative, they told me, by not manipulating them. Since most scrums were used to politicians lying, a politician who told the truth had to be lying by telling it.
They didn’t know whether to shit or go blind when they boarded the Straight Talk Express and realized they could ask me anything about anything and it was all on the record. I remember one day when a scrum got on for the first time. “Senator,” he said, “can I ask you a couple of questions?”
“We answer all questions on this bus,” I told him. “And sometimes we lie. Mike Murphy is one of the greatest liars anywhere.”
The scrum blinked his eyes. I looked at Murphy and said, “Aren’t you, Mike?”
Murphy grinned and nodded and I turned back to the scrum and said, “Murphy has spent his life trying to destroy political careers.”
Murphy said, “I’ll have yours destroyed by election day.”
The scrum was gaping at us, his jaw hanging.
Murphy said to him, “The problem with the media is, you’re obsessed with process, with how many left-handed, independent soccer moms are going to vote.”
“In other words,” I told the scrum, “you’re assholes.”
Like the gawking voters, the scrums were astounded by the truths I told them.
“Why are you running for president, Senator?”
“Because it’s mandatory for any senator not under indictment or in detox to lust for the presidency.”
“How do you feel about the media, Senator?”
“It’s the first opportunity that I’ve had to meet with card-carrying members of the Communist party.”
“What has your favorite day of the campaign been?”
“My favorite day of the campaign was that day we went over to New York and I saw all you guys pushing one another out of the way and slipping on the ice.”
“What was your life like as a naval aviator?”
“I drove a Corvette, dated a lot, spent all my free hours at bars and beach parties, and generally misused my good health and youth.”
I liked John F. Kennedy, Jr., a lot, and the final editorial he wrote for George magazine compared my candidacy to Luke Skywalker fighting the Death Star. So we started screwing around on the bus with light sabers and playing John Williams’s Star Wars theme on the loudspeaker.
One day, I clutched my chest melodramatically and told the scrums, “It’s the Death Star! They’re firing from all directions! Luke may not make it.”
We said our unofficial campaign slogan was “Burn it down!” in honor of Stokely Carmichael and black power, or “Eradicate evil!” in honor of George Lucas and Ronald Reagan.
Murphy told the scrums there was a line he wanted me to use in a debate with the Crown Prince. “When there’s a world hot spot, there’s no second c
hance.”
I told them I had come up with a line the Crown Prince could use in his campaign. “When the scouting reports come in to the Texas Rangers, there is only one lonely man in a dark office.”
“This campaign,” Murphy said, “is the amazing Wallendas!”
“Quick,” I said to him, “hand me a chair!”
“I’ll get your unicycle for you,” Murphy said.
After a while, the scrums realized that this was a movable circus and they started to enjoy themselves. Connie Stevens was on the bus with us one day, and I said to them, “I first met Connie at a USO dinner.” They all wrote it down. Then I said, “But I was with her vicariously several times.” They all wrote it down. Then I yelled, “I hate Eddie Fisher!” and they all stopped writing.
In a more serious vein, I told them that if I was ever elected president, I’d hold weekly press conferences like JFK and would also meet with ten members of Congress each week for a televised question and answer session.
“Couldn’t that be embarrassing?” one of the scrums asked, like he’d just found a revelation in the Torah.
“Absolutely,” I said.
Something wild was going on out there. I could feel it in the crowds, which were bigger and more gaga at each stop. I saw something in the way they wanted to touch me that put chills down my back. I saw something in their eyes when they looked at me that humbled me. “No more Clinton-Gore! No more Clinton-Gore!” they yelled when they saw me, yelling it like we’d yelled “Beat Army!” at the Naval Academy, their faces blazing, their voices hoarse.
There were people with signs saying VEGETARIANS FOR MCCAIN! HIPPIES FOR MCCAIN! CARNIVORES FOR MCCAIN! There were signs that said CINDY IS A BABE! One day, I saw a mob of people come tramping through a muddy construction site just to get a look at me. My book was a big best-seller by now, and they came to the town hall meetings and rallies, holding it close to their hearts. A mother told us she had been at a Bush rally and had left because her three-year-old kept asking to see me.
I kept telling them the same thing: “I won’t lie to you! I won’t embarrass you! We have to reform this government!”
I said, “I’m going to beat Al Gore like a drum!” and the crowds went crazy.
I said, “This is the beginning of the end of the truth-twisting politics of Bill Clinton and Al Gore,” and they screamed, “No more Clinton-Gore! No more Clinton-Gore! No more Clinton-Gore!”
Our rallies ended in pandemonium. Star Wars blasting. Confetti guns showering the air. The deejay we’d hired with the five earrings, who’d just come off tour with the Foo Fighters and Nine Inch Nails, spinning Fat Boy Slim. A tape of Dick Vitale yelling, “Let’s do it, baby! Let’s do it!”
We took a day away from New Hampshire and spent it in New York, and I saw the same electric zip in the crowds there, like they’d eaten the wrong Arizona mushrooms. The Crown Prince and his rubber-mouthed governor pal, Pataki, another footstool volunteer, were trying to keep me off the ballot. Murphy suggested we hold a press conference across the street from the Russian embassy. “In Russia, there will be more than one name on the ballot,” I said. “In New York, unless something happens, there will be only one name on the ballot—George W. Bush!” The crowds kept screaming, “No more Clinton-Gore! No more Clinton-Gore!”
We weren’t prepared for what happened on election night in New Hampshire. Nineteen points! The Crown Prince was humiliated. He didn’t even want to call me. He tried to have an aide call one of my aides, and only when my aide told him to stuff it did the Crown Prince make his obligatory call. Nineteen points! The biggest primary turnout in New Hampshire’s history! The biggest new voter turnout in New Hampshire’s history! The biggest young voter turnout in New Hampshire’s history!
Oh, what a great ride! We got the covers of all three Communist news magazines. Red Army commandant Mike Wallace said he was considering taking a leave from 60 Minutes to become my press secretary. Commissar Jay Leno was faxing us jokes to use on the stump. We raised $5 million on the Internet in the next week. They were talking about “the McCain Mutiny.” There were people out there who called themselves “McCainiacs.” An aide to Al Gore said, “McCain’s not just a man. He’s become an idea. The idea that he’s not just politics as usual. It’s powerful stuff.” The latest poll showed me dead even with the Crown Prince in South Carolina, our next primary stop, where I’d been twenty-seven points behind last week.
The Crown Prince looked like he’d peed himself in public. His highness fled back to Austin amid stories that he traveled with his own fluffy pillow.
“I think you’re going to be nominated,” Murphy said to me, “and then you’re going to be president.”
And then Murphistopheles, who had no business saying this, added, “You poor devil.”
We knew South Carolina was a major part of the Crown Prince’s attempt to rig the game—the redneck and fundamentalist fire wall erected to keep him safe from any damage those crazy Yankees might have done. It was the primary purposely scheduled immediately after New Hampshire for that reason, an attempt to get the Bible-thumping populace to whitewash whatever graffiti may have been sprayed on the Crown Prince’s royal carriage.
But we thought we could beat Bush at his own game. There were more veterans in South Carolina than in any other state, and when we arrived, at three in the morning, we were greeted by a crowd of cheering kids. Our bus was pulled over by an inbred Highway Patrolman, who stopped us because he wanted to meet me. Still, it was a state where T-shirts were being sold with Lincoln’s picture and the words SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS—“thus ever to tyrants”—which that other androgynous wimp actor had shouted before he shot Lincoln.
When the Crown Prince made his first appearance in the state at Bob Jones University, the musk of his New Hampshire pee still in his pores, we knew how scared he was. Bob Jones didn’t permit interracial dating, didn’t permit gay alumni to visit, considered Catholicism a satanic cult and the Pope the Antichrist. Bob Jones was the symbol of the old-time, racist, lynching South, the Eagle’s Nest of the cross and pitchfork Nazis. George and Laura Bush were introduced there as “sweet spirits who love the Lord.” By appearing there, the Crown Prince came out of the Compassionate Conservative closet and was sending a frantic SOS to the South Carolina Reich to save him because he was one of them.
When I first saw the Crown Prince in South Carolina, I thought he was trying to impersonate me. He had a big sign behind him that said he was now the Reformer. He, who had spent much of his life within the shadow of the White House, was now the Outsider. He had a bus now. He was doing his best to string entire paragraphs together. He moved his private security detail out of camera range. He suddenly attended town hall meetings and what he called “media avails.” He had stolen whatever had worked for us, even our chant. His people walked through crowds yelling, “No more Clinton-Gore! No more Clinton-Gore!” And now they had their own confetti guns, their red-white-and-blue Nixon balloons stashed somewhere in an Austin castle.
I was pissed. “This stuff isn’t going to work,” I said to Murphy, “it’s transparent.”
“You’ve got to remember,” Murphy said, “Republicans are the Stupid party.”
When Dan Quayle became the first prominent Republican to fly into the state to endorse the Crown Prince, I saw how right Murphy was. With David Letterman and others saying George W. Bush was “the next Dan Quayle,” they brought Quayle in to endorse him? What was this? A ritualistic passing on of dunce hats? Final proof of the genetic enervation of the aristocracy? A piece of wicked political sabotage Murphistopheles had pulled off?
Then the Crown Prince stood there smirking next to that clown who attacked me for “forgetting about veterans once he returned from Hanoi.” This was slashing at the place in my heart where I live and breathe! Nothing is more sacred to me than veterans’ benefits and rights.
We couldn’t let it go. It hurt too much. Bush had stood there simpering while that crotch rot told his sordid lie. “We will
run a tough campaign,” Murphy said. “Like McCain said, we’re ready to punch back. We’re not Bill Bradley.”
Murphy wrote an ad saying the Crown Prince “twists the truth like Bill Clinton.” The Crown Prince ran around in circles, shrieking. It was like I’d pissed into the fountain of holy water at St. Peter’s. Comparing George W. Bush to Bill Clinton? It was a burn-at-the-stake offense! After beheading and dismemberment! The crosses and the pitchforks in the farm fields of the South Carolina Reich were raised to the sky!
Oberführer Pat Robertson attacked my campaign chairman, Warren Rudman, as a “vicious bigot” in taped phone calls all over the state. This was like Bill Clinton calling George Washington a liar. Chris Matthews of Hardball saw it for what it was: “They went after Warren Rudman because he is Jewish. They were playing that card.” Of course they were. The card was part of the Bob Jones hand. Get the crosses and the pitchforks out to support the Crown Prince against the niggers, the Catlicks, the kikes, the faggots, the dykes, and John McCain.
Trying to say that he didn’t know about the Robertson tape was another transparent Crown Prince lie. Sitting right at George W. Bush’s table as a paid campaign consultant, part of his official team, was Babyface Ralph Reed, the former head of the Christian Coalition, which was founded by Robertson. Storm trooper Reed was Oberführer Robertson’s pet ferret.
I went on a talk show in South Carolina one day and a caller asked me, “Did you ever commit adultery with prostitutes in Subic Bay?”
. . .
That was nothing, though, compared to what I discovered was going on . . . in E-mails, faxes, leaflets, talk shows, and telephone “push polls” organized by the crosses and the pitchforks as the Crown Prince smirked, turned away, and held his nose. This is what they were saying about me and my family:
I wasn’t tortured during the war. I had sex with another POW and several of my captors. I had ratted out other POWs in Hanoi. Cindy was a drug addict, unfit for the White House. Cindy had to have a hysterectomy because I’d given her a venereal disease. Cindy’s dad had ties to a murder. Cindy had a deformed uterus and that’s why I was cheating on her. I was having an affair with Connie Stevens. I helped arrange the murder of a man who was going to expose us. I had black illegitimate children. My adopted Bangladeshi daughter, Bridget, was one of them, her mother a black prostitute.
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