“Gideon! I’m so sorry not to have called you until now,” said Bucky. “I’ve been busier than a one-legged Cajun in an . . .” No, he told himself, don’t use the “one-legged Cajun in an ass-kicking contest” joke with a man who calls himself “Reverend.” “Well, busier than all get-out. How are you? How’s everything?”
“Well, I’m fine now,” Gideon said. “I’m happy finally to hear from you, Bucky.”
“I know, I know. Huge apologies. Profound apologies. So, the commission seems to have worked out.”
“I would have preferred a more categorical denunciation. But I suppose in an imperfect world, ‘Further study is needed’ amounts to a kind of victory,” Gideon said.
“Off the record, we leaned on old Bascombe pretty hard. Don’t be surprised if he’s appointed to the Federal Reserve Board one of these days.”
“My, my, my,” Gideon said, “how very different are the workings of government from what we all read about in books as children. I wonder, do the Founders weep in heaven?”
“It’s good to hear your voice, Gideon. We’re going to need you in the coming months. We’ve got a tough road ahead of us.”
“So it would appear. I have seen the latest approval ratings. Thirty-one percent. My, my, my. Would that be a historical low for someone seeking a second term of office?”
Bucky cleared his throat. “No, no. But clearly, it’s not where we want to be. That’s why we’re counting on you so much to help get out our message.”
“Which message would that be, exactly?”
“I hardly need to tell you. Our message is your message. Vigorous moral leadership for troubled times.”
“Yes, well we certainly could use some of that. Couldn’t agree more. Which brings me to the purpose of my call. . ..”
Bucky groaned inwardly. Here it comes. Should I pretend that the president’s just buzzed me—
“The memorial.”
Shit, too late. “The president has already signaled his support for that, Gideon.”
“Yes. A very wispy signal. Reminded me of the smoke signals that the Indians in the cowboy movies used to send to one another. I had in mind something with a little more, shall we say, oom-pa-pah?”
“Gideon . . .”
“Bucky . . .”
“Have a heart. It’s an election year. We’re in the worst economic shape since 1929. Due to circumstances beyond the president’s control, of course. The economy’s flatter’n a pancake. The government’s hemorrhaging money. A memorial to forty-three million fetuses—pardon the expression—is just not”—he sighed—“at the top of anyone’s agenda right now. But I promise, right after the election, we will . . .make it happen . . .somehow.”
“All right, then, we’ll talk. Right after the election. In the meantime, I will convey to the forty-three million nonfetuses who constitute the pro-life portion of the American electorate that they are free to shop around for a candidate who shares their commitment to the inviolable sanctity of human life.”
“Gideon—”
“Good day to you, sir.” Gideon reflexively reached for his gold watch. Still not there.
Bucky shuffled into the Oval Office with all the alacrity of a sedated mental patient. The president looked at him with a long face.
“For crying out loud, we created a whole commission more or less just for him, and then made sure old candy-ass Bascombe would put everyone to sleep with the conclusion . . .what the hell’s he want now?”
“The memorial,” Bucky said. “I think he wants it next to the FDR Memorial.”
“Oh no. Uh-uh. No fucking way. No fetuses on the Mall. That is not how this presidency will be remembered. The pro-choicers and women’s groups would chew off my dick. You tell Gideon Payne-in-the-ass . . .Hell with it.” The president reached for the phone. “I’ll tell that fat little Bible-thumper myself!”
“Mr. President,” Bucky said, “please put down the phone. No good will come of yelling at a man who commands millions of voters.”
“I am sick and tired of being jerked around. Gimme gimme gimme. That’s all I hear. All day. Gimme gimme gimme. I’ll shove forty-three million fetuses up his ass! And I’ll bet there’s room for them!”
Bucky let the president huff and puff awhile longer, then shuffled out of the Oval Office and telephoned Gideon.
“I discussed your proposal with the president,” he said, “and he wholeheartedly agrees that we must have a memorial on the Mall.”
Bucky’s call, though prompt, had come just a few moments too late. After making his lovely little speech about how he would tell his followers to shop around for a candidate, Gideon had suddenly become enamored of the idea that he should run for president. Why not? Lesser men had—and heck, some of them had even won. He probably wouldn’t, but the experience might be entertaining. And it always seemed to have a salubrious effect on one’s lecture fees.
“Well,” Gideon said to Bucky, “I do appreciate that. You give the president my very best regards and tell him I look forward to our debate in the fall.”
“Debate?” Bucky said. “In the fall?”
Gideon said, “That is normally when they hold the presidential debates, is it not? Though I imagine we’ll be bumping into each other in New Hampshire and Iowa before then. I imagine it’s very cold in New Hampshire in February. Not my favorite climate. No, no. I am a creature of the South. But one must make sacrifices. I suppose I will need one of those puffy parka things from that Yankee store—what’s it called?—L. L. Bean? Good day to you again, sir.”
It was Cass’s idea to have Randy announce his candidacy outside the Social Security Administration in Washington. She and Terry wrote his speech.
“This building behind me, once a symbol of a compact between the people and their government, now stands as a symbol of betrayal of the people by their government, a veritable warehouse of shame and empty promises. For Americans under thirty, it might as well be the New Bastille—the prison where all their hopes of a bright future go to die.”
For the climax, Randy handed to a group of twenty-somethings (chosen, frankly, for their wholesome good looks) an enormous piece of paper with huge lettering that said:
INVOICE
TO: AMERICANS UNDER 30
FROM: BABY BOOM GENERATION
FOR: OUR RETIREMENT BENEFITS
AMOUNT: $77 TRILLION
PAYABLE ON DEMAND
— U.S. Government
Randy was very excited by it all. He had wanted to insert the line “Boomer retirement is costing your generation an arm and a leg.” And then reach down, detach his prosthesis, raise it over his head, and say, “American policies cost me a leg, so I know how you feel!”
He, Cass, and Terry had a heated discussion about whether it was “presidential” to wave artificial limbs over one’s head during speeches. Cass and Terry finally said they’d resign if he did. Randy backed down. After he left the room, Terry said to Cass, “I’m going to Super Glue that thing to his stump for the duration of this campaign.”
For their campaign slogan, they’d come up with “Jepperson—No Worse Than The Others.”
It was not without risk, but there was logic to it. Cass’s idea was to target the under-thirty voters, to convince them that Social Security was a form of indentured servitude; that they’d been economically disenfranchised by the previous generations. All the polling showed that the under-thirties were, in the words of one pollster, “the most cynical generation in American history.” Most of them got all their political information from late-night TV comics. That being the case, Cass argued, there was no point in a slogan trumpeting Randolph Jepperson as an improvement over any other candidate. She called it “the ‘whatever’ factor.” The idea was to say, “Here’s our candidate. He might make things better. He probably won’t, but at least we’re not claiming he will. So why not vote for him? At least we’re honest.” A Mobius strip of persuasion.
It was a hard sell on the candidate, who saw himself as some
kind of latter-day JFK.
Randy stared at the poster with his handsome face in profile and the slogan.
“Can’t you come up with something a little more positive? This makes me sound like something on a menu that you’re not sure you want.”
“That’s the whole point,” Cass said. “That’s why they’ll go for it. We focus-grouped it. They loved it. Anyway, we’re not doing traditional TV and radio advertising.”
“We’re not? Who signed off on that?”
“I did. We’re putting all the money into podcasts and social networks. We’re making major buys on Google, Facebook, and MySpace.”
Randy looked uncomfortable. “Shouldn’t we be appealing to more than just . . .kids?”
Terry said, “There are twenty-five million voters under thirty. There may be as many as seven or eight candidates on the ballot in November. There may be as many as three or four new independent parties. Our old friend Gideon Payne is gathering signatures for his SPERM party. It’s going to be a crowded field. If we throw everything we’ve got at the under-thirties, we might pull it off.”
“How do we even know they’ll vote?” Randy said. “They never do. They’re too busy shrugging and putting out, what do you call it, attitude.”
“Because we’re going to scare the shit out of them. We’re going to convince them that if they don’t vote this time—for you, the ‘No Worse Than The Others’ candidate—they’re not going to be able to afford iPods and Mocha Frappuccinos. They’ll be too busy paying for bedpans for Boomers.”
“Hm . . .,” Randy mused. “Not a bad line. But for the slogan, what about . . .‘Jepperson, Leading the Way’?”
“What, into minefields?” Cass said. “Forget it. You do demagoguery, I’ll do message.”
“Hold on a mo. Who’s paying whom here?” Randy grumbled.
And so Randolph Jepperson became the most formally modest candidate ever to seek the office of president of the United States.
The Establishment commentators, the punditariat, were initially appalled by the slogan. They felt insulted. Pundits expect, even demand, a certain minimal level of pretension in political candidates. This gives them something to deplore in order to affirm their own superiority. Randy’s shrug of a slogan denied them this moral high ground. But they recovered quickly, and they were soon going after him for other than just his shamelessly modest campaign slogan. They attacked him for his scorched-earth Senate campaign against poor old Senator Bradley Smithers; his wealth; his affair with the Tegucigalpa Tamale; his embrace of legal suicide as a means of solving the Social Security impasse; even the Bosnian incident. There had been a lot of new wink-winking about that one on the talk shows.
“Let’s face it,” Cass said to Randy and Terry one day after a particularly nasty press conference, “we’re going to have to deal with the were-they-or-weren’t-they-doing-it-in-the-minefield thing.”
Terry interjected, “Before you two go rushing out to put myths to rest, I had a focus group on that.”
“A focus group?” Randy said.
“Yup. Doing a lot of I-d-I’s these days. All under-thirty. In this one, a majority of them didn’t even know about the minefield. So we told them about it. Then we fed them two scenarios. One where you two were screwing—”
“Aw, Jeez, Terry,” Cass said.
“Hold your horses. The other scenario we gave them, you weren’t banging each other. Then we asked them how they felt in the event scenario number one was true and how they’d feel if number two was the case. Want to hear the results?”
“Not really,” said Cass.
“They preferred scenario number one. By four to one. They thought it was quote-unquote aces, whatever that means. They actually prefer a guy who’ll risk getting his leg blown off trying to get laid in a war zone to one who just bumbled into it. So—you sure you want to go issuing Shermanesque statements about how you weren’t playing hide-the-salami in the minefield?”
“What manner of planet do we inhabit?” Randy said, rubbing his temples.
Chapter 33
Gideon Payne, candidate of the SPERM party, was grappling with a similar problem. His press secretary, an old Washington hand named Teeley, had raised the subject as delicately as he could: “We, uh, probably ought to figure out a position on the, uh, matter of”—cough—“Mrs. Payne?”
Gideon was beyond embarrassment on the point. He said, “You’re saying that the voters might want to know if it’s true that I killed Mother?”
Teeley shrugged. “Something . . .along those lines. Basically. Yeah.”
“Well,” Gideon said, making a steeple of his fingers. How he missed his watch. “How shall we address that dismal business?”
“Tragic accident,” Teeley said. “Painful subject. These things happen. . ..”
“Yes,” Gideon said. “Mothers go off cliffs all the time. Happens all the time. Well, it is tragic, certainly. Painful, no question. But there are people back in Payne County with mischievous tongues that wag, wag, wag all day in the noon sun. I’m surprised they don’t burn up. And when the national press goes a-calling on them, they will cluck and say, ‘Oh yes, he killed the poor old dear. Terrible affair. He left not long after, you know, head hung in shame.’” Gideon considered. “There does exist a medical record. A few weeks before the incident, her doctors had informed her that she had a tumor. A tumor of the brain. She didn’t have long to live.”
“So,” said Teeley, “she would have died anyway.”
Gideon said, “Um . . .I suppose that doesn’t quite solve the question of whether or not I sent her plunging to her death, does it? An unusual problem in a presidential campaign, I should think. Or have some of your other clients been under suspicion of murdering their mothers?”
“There was one whose uncle turned out to have been on Hitler’s staff during World War Two. Pretty high up, too. But no matricides that I can think of offhand.”
“Hm . . .Well, it may just be an intractable problem. We’ll just have to work around it. I have dedicated my entire career to the preservation of life. The unborn, the halt, the lame, the brain afflicted, the elderly. We’ll just have to run on that. There is the unfortunate Arthur Clumm business, but we’re paying off the families—I must say, most of them seem quite happy to have the money—so I shouldn’t think that will trouble us. It ought to be more of a problem for the Jepperson campaign, I should think. Ms. Devine on his staff was the inspiration for Mr. Clumm’s serial murdering. I do look forward to the debates.” He shrugged. “Perhaps some voters might even be attracted to someone who sent his mother off a cliff, though I don’t suppose we should adopt that as our platform. Now let’s have a look at those television spots your people have devised.”
In his office at the papal nunciature on Massachusetts Avenue, opposite the residence of the vice president, Monsignor Massimo Montefeltro was confronting his own incipient media problem.
When the Transitioning commission issued its “further study” report, the monsignor sighed with relief and offered a prayer of thanks to Our Lady of Prompt Succor. Now, with the issue losing steam, surely Rome would calm down and not demand that he go on television and denounce Transitioning, exposing him to further harassment from the Russian putanas and the gruesome enforcer Ivan the Terrible.
But then that idiot Jepperson leapt in and declared he was running for president, with Transitioning as its centerpiece. Porca miseria. Within hours, Cardinal Restempopo-Bandolini was on the phone again, demanding, “When will you unleash our attack on this abomination, Massimo? The holy father grows impatient.”
“Please tell the holy father I am a . . .gathering storm. The moment is not yet.”
This Vatican idea of threatening excommunication—did they really think it was the sixteenth century again? He could just imagine how well that would go down with Americans. Being bullied by a pope in Rome. And not even a particularly popular pope with Americans to begin with. It didn’t help that he was French.
Massi
mo seriously considered faking a heart attack. Certainly his high blood pressure didn’t need faking.
That fool Geedeon. It was all his fault. And now he was running for president. What a country, America. A lunatic asylum, without enough attendants or tranquilizers.
What to do? He looked up at the statue of Our Lady of Prompt Succor. She smiled back at him, as if to say, Massimo, Massimo, Massimo, be reasonable—not even I can get you out of this.
The phone rang. His blood pressure spiked. He had developed a morbid fear of telephones, something of a disability for the Vatican’s number two man in Washington, soon to be number one. Assuming he lived.
“Monsignor, it’s someone named Ivan calling. He won’t give a last name. He says he knows you. Do you want to speak to him?”
Monsignor Montefeltro suppressed a groan.
“Yes, yes.” He picked up. “What do you want? I gave you the money.”
“Am calling on behalf of charity organization.”
“What?”
“For orphans of war in Chechnya. Do you wish to make donation?”
“No,” said Monsignor Montefeltro. “I do not wish. I wish you to go to Chechnya.”
Silence. “Pity. It’s good cause. And Catholic Church is so rich. You have big office on Massachusetts Avenue.”
“How did you find me here?”
“I follow you to work!” Ivan the Terrible sounded pleased with himself.
“All right, all right. I will make a donation to this charity.”
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