Big Guns

by Steve Israel

  Sure enough, AFFFA had hit an unforeseen circumstance in Washington, the world capital of unforeseen circumstances.

  It was sex.

  Specifically, a militant pro-choice group called Uterus United had organized a nationwide movement urging women not to have sex unless their partner signed a “precoital agreement.” The agreement acknowledged the woman’s ultimate right to decide what she would do if sperm and egg happened to, well, caucus. In the heat of passion, signing a legal agreement to consummate the act was a slight inconvenience, but no greater than a rushed and fumbling search for a condom. In certain areas—namely large liberal cities—the agreements were signed, sealed, and delivered with gusto. In socially conservative areas, the agreements were causing a national backlog of fluid in the testicles of already angry Republican white men. Red states reported epidemic levels of blue balls. You could identify a pro-life male by his delicate steps, the wince upon standing and sitting, and the protective grasping of his groin. This concerned Republican leaders. At some point—mostly in bedrooms, backseats, or cheap motels—ideology would be surrendered for a good shtup. Millions would whip out pens to sign precoital agreements before whipping out other instruments. Suddenly the party would lose one of its galvanizing issues. Elections would be lost to erections.

  Uterus United had to be eliminated.

  Opportunity arose in northern New Jersey.

  At a Uterus United clinic in Newark, a poor and pregnant teen entered the building for a health screening. During the session, a Uterus United professional used the A-word, violating a federal law that women’s health centers could not perform abortions, refer to abortions, use the word abortion, or, for that matter, utter any word sounding like abortion (with the exception of abhor, abhorrence, or abhorrent). It turned out the young girl was an undercover intern for an outfit whose mission it was to infiltrate liberal organizations with tiny video cameras and reveal the truth about them with heavily doctored footage.

  This proof of Uterus United’s depravity quickly became a maleficent threat to America’s survival. It required immediate action from Congress. Select investigative committees were formed and gavels were clacked. Lawyers were hired, subpoenas issued, hearings held. The Congressional Caucus on Life (known as “the Lifers”) had its own plan. Its members drafted a new law to shut down Uterus United’s clinics and deport its executive director to Saudi Arabia, not exactly known for its warm embrace of family planning clinics. (The latter provision was removed after strenuous objections by, among others, the Saudi Embassy.) The caucus attempted to hitch the amendment to every passing legislative vehicle, annually threatening to shut down the entire federal government unless Uterus United was shut down first.

  Dirkey sat across the table from the chairwoman of the pro-life caucus, Sarah Backfury. He’d always been intrigued by the gentlewoman from Virginia. She was alluring, with shoulder-length blond hair and striking blue eyes. But her most prominent feature were her razor-thin lips, frozen in a viperous smile that conveyed the sheer, cold-blooded joy of snaring her opponents.

  Whip Stinson rapped his fists on the table and began the meeting. “We’re voting on AFFFA this week. Problem is the president is squishy on it. May even veeeeeto it.”

  Dirkey was encircled by soft grumbling about the gutless, godless, feckless, spineless president.

  “We need every vote on this. Pass it biiiiigggg. Send the president a message. You veeeeto this bill, we’ll override you. Override you biiiiigggg.”

  Backfury cleared her throat. “Mr. Whip?”

  “Saaaaaarah.”

  “You have my commitment that every member of the Lifers will vote for AFFFA!”

  Stinson nodded silently. Waiting for the “however.” There was always a “however.”

  “However . . . we want to attach a little amendment.”

  “Just hooow little?” asked Stinson.

  “Well, AFFFA is about the right to bear arms. What about the right to bear babies? AFFFA protects the lives of the born. We want to save the lives of the unborn. By eliminating the single greatest threat to life: Uterus United.”

  She described her amendment. Dirkey noticed that her lips never loosened. Like a ventriloquist, the words just slithered out, clipped and sparse.

  “We can’t support anything of the sort!” huffed Congressman Leonard Landover. Landover represented that tiny group of moderate Republicans called the Main Street Caucus, which wasn’t so much of a Main Street as a dark and lonely corner. They were known as “the Streeters.” “Attaching an antiabortion rider will anger female voters in our districts.”

  “Well,” hissed Backfury, “I thank the gentleman for educating me about women.”

  Dirkey felt queasy. Where was Sunny when he needed her?

  Stinson puffed his reddened cheeks like a blowfish and exhaled hard enough to be felt at the far end of the table. Backfury locked onto him, her lips clenched. Dirkey thought he detected a tiny pellet of foam at both corners of her mouth and a low snarl.

  Stinson said, “Saaaarah.”

  “Frrrrrreeeeed.”

  “Give me a few hours. To see what I can do.”

  “Of course. Take your time, Mr. Whip.”

  Truce.

  *

  In a venerable old room with a concave ceiling, tucked a floor above the House chamber, hidden from the flashing cameras and the plodding feet of tourists, was the most obscure but powerful committee in Congress.

  The Committee on Rules.

  Here a handful of Members of Congress labored in Talmudic fashion over the most arcane verses in parliamentary procedure. They decided if, how, and when a bill became a law; which amendments lived and which died; how many would pass and how many would perish.

  The chairman of the rules committee, Ernest F. Chandler of Kentucky, was known as “Maestro.” His job was to orchestrate every motion and minute on the floor. This required Chandler to have an unusual expertise in the minutiae of House procedure. The man was an idiot savant. Ask him who won the Nationals game the previous night and his eyes would fall into a catatonic glaze under bushy white eyebrows. Ask him what to do when “a Member moved the previous question and whether that question should be put” and his eyes would sharpen, his eyebrows would dance, and he’d belt out Section XXXIV of the Rules of the House of Representatives, as adopted. Chairman Chandler wasn’t a whole lot of fun at parties. Which is why he spent most nights at his Watergate condo overlooking the Potomac.

  That night, Chandler wrapped himself in a satin robe and settled into his favorite Queen Anne chair with his favorite Kentucky bourbon and James H. Billington’s classic Who Was Robert, Anyway? The Man Behind “Robert’s Rules of Order.” It was a thick and musty edition procured from the Library of Congress. His phone rang. It was the Whip.

  “Mr. Chairman, I have a little situaaation.”

  “Proceed.”

  “I must have a unanimous vote on AFFFA and can’t get one.” Chandler felt his parliamentary juices begin to flow.

  “The Lifer caucus is just insiiiiiisting on attaching its damned Uterus United amendment. If I give it to them we lose the Main Street Caucus. If I satisfy the Main Streeters, I lose the Lifers.” “Why is this a problem?” asked Chandler.

  “Well, I don’t see how we can saaaatisfy both.”

  Chandler thought, My dear Whip. We can do anything. We are the Rules Committee.

  *

  That night, Roy Dirkey sulked alone in his Capitol Hill apartment. As congressional residences went, this was more shack than swank. It was a tiny basement studio furnished in modern garage sale decor. A kitchenette featured a slow-dripping faucet. Bare walls were pocked with holes where previous tenants had hung decorations. In Roy’s case, there was a single picture of his army unit in Afghanistan. They stood in their fatigues, combat boots planted on a rocky field of hard caked mud and withered weeds, pointing their M4 rifles toward a harsh, overcast sky, mugging for the camera from behind Oakley sunglasses. Now, Roy was sprawled on
a sleeper sofa he was too tired to unfold. His shirt spilled out of his pants and his tie had been slung across the couch. Outside a narrow window it was dark—the long days of summer were over.

  A television sat on a wobbly metal stand. Fox News was reporting on the latest yapping of the Chicago mayor—something about a trade by the Chicago Cubs. Basically, the team had traded . . . itself. It was headed to safer pastures in a suburb near the Iowa border, well out of the line of gunfire. The mayor had tried desperately to keep them in his city. Lighting Wrigley Field was one thing. But a bulletproof domed stadium was entirely out of the question.

  Dirkey fumbled for the remote. Clicked onto SOSNews.

  There was Megan Slattery and the latest panel of experts on the Asabogue election, writhing in orgasmic punditry.

  “The Quinnipiac poll has this in a dead heat!” whooped pundit number one.

  “Siena shows undecided voters breaking almost evenly!” howled pundit number two.

  “It’s a horse race!” bellowed pundit number three.

  Oh, and there was drought in California and famine in Africa and Russia was opening a tropical waterfront resort where some Arctic glacier used to be. But these developments tended to annoy SOS viewers. They didn’t like liberal preaching about bad science.

  Roy watched B-roll from the campaign trail. There was Jack Steele strolling down Main Street, greeting voters, signing autographs, drawing people like a magnet. Then, Lois walking door-to-door with a small band of volunteers.

  Roy sprang up.There was Sunny, just behind her mother. She disappeared when she realized she was on camera. Still, there was that split second of eye contact.

  His cell phone rang.

  A young voice croaked, “Hold on for the Whip.”

  Then, “Roy, it’s aaaall worked out. AFFFA will pass tomorrow. Our caucus is unaaaanimous!”

  “What about the Uterus United amendment?” Dirkey asked. “It’s in.”

  “But won’t the moderates vote against us?”

  “We took it out.”

  Dirkey was confused. “So . . . It’s not in the bill? Or it is?” “Correct.”

  “It’s not?”

  “Not if you ask the Main Streeters.”

  “And if you ask the Lifers?”

  “It’s right there. In black and white.” Stinson chuckled.

  “So there’ll be a vote on Uterus United—”

  “And there won’t. Got it?”

  “No.”

  “Look. Chandler’s calling it a self-executing motion on the previous question deemed as having passed without requiring an actual vote on the base bill. Or some such gobbledygook. That clear it up?”

  “Ummm. Yes.”

  “Good. Me too!”

  But from the sound of his voice, Fred Stinson seemed as befuddled as Roy Dirkey. That was the thing about this Congress. It seemed to get the most done when no one knew what they were doing.

  35

  Asabogue High School was built in the early 1900s, when Theodore Roosevelt was president. It was a quaint brick affair featuring a cupola and a clock with rusted green Roman numerals that hadn’t been accurate since, well, Theodore Roosevelt was president. Weather-beaten shutters framed the windows of the twenty classrooms inside. A large white marquee on the front lawn said GO ASABOGUE CHIEFS!!! in black magnetic letters. It also advertised upcoming meetings of the PTA, Board of Education, school plays, and various student bake sales and car washes. Behind the school was a modest though well-tended football field, with slightly drooping bleachers and a massive scoreboard. The scoreboard was dominated by a glowering Indian chief in full headdress and war paint. In fact, the Asa-bogues, historically speaking, were a docile tribe known for their love of trading (which may explain the concentration of retail strip malls on Long Island). Sadly, they were around only long enough to name their little village before their own tribal name was changed by the federal bureaucracy. During the Coolidge administration, the Bureau of Indian Affairs decided to consolidate minor tribes. On Long Island, the Asabogues were merged with the better known Shinnecocks. The new name—the Asacocks—caused some squeamishness in an administration not known for its ribald humor. So the Asabogues simply became the Shinnecocks, leaving their former name for the village, the high school, and the football team.

  All major community events in Asabogue were held at the high school. During the Battle of the Bluff, the citizenry of Asabogue assembled there, in the Rockwellian spirit of the American town meeting, to shriek, froth, spit, jeer, throw punches, and announce lawsuits against each other. This is where Sidney Schwartzman announced that, in exchange for permission to erect Taj Too, he would replace the high school football field with a climate-controlled domed stadium. His offer might have tempted the citizenry had it not not included a small print provision requiring that the Asabogue Chiefs would henceforth be called the Asabogue Schwartzmans.

  The largest room in the high school was the “Cafetorium.” On one side was a kitchen, outfitted with stainless-steel ovens and a sliding rack for school lunch trays heaped with the usual school lunch fare: pizza, deli sandwiches, chicken nuggets, and watery mac and cheese. On the other was an elevated stage behind heavy red curtains for student plays. The stage smelled like thick varnish; the kitchen smelled of a century of spaghetti sauce and stale milk. The blend was pungent.

  The Asabogue League of Women Voters held its annual Meet the Candidates Debate in the Cafetorium. Once a thriving organization, the Asabogue LWV had shrunk to a few frail survivors. Its mayoral debates were respectful, even genteel. Residents wrote their questions on index cards. The president—Patsy Hardameyer for the past twenty years—carefully read the questions into a microphone with the soothing enunciation of a host on National Public Radio. Candidates sat at a folding table on the stage, offering somnolent orations on the weighty matters of state, mainly helicopter noise and stop signs. A few partisans from either side clapped politely, and everyone celebrated by going to the other side of the Cafetorium for coffee and cake.

  This year was different. Given the national obsession with the Asabogue mayoral campaign, the debate between Jack Steele and Lois Liebowitz promised to be a television blockbuster. The cable news networks hyped it as if it were an ESPN boxing match, with split-screen graphics of Jack and Lois glaring at each other. Actually, Jack glared and Lois looked bemused. The networks deployed to Asabogue High School rigs, technicians, news correspondents, pundits, and spools of black cable that snaked through the building like overgrown vines.

  Debate negotiations were intense. Sam Gergala represented the Liebowitz camp. The Steele campaign retained a woman whose business card read DEBATE CONSULTANT. She was very short and very round; her black hair sprouted harshly from her scalp, and her voice sounded like the low rumbling of thunder on the beach and, when she was angry, the crackle of lightning. The negotiations commenced a week before the debate in a neutral spot demanded by the debate consultant: the Cafetorium. Patsy Har-dameyer presided. The first order of business by the consultant was announcing the suspension of all negotiations because Patsy was not an “impartial adjudicator.” Her fingerprints were on every Liebowitz lawn sign. Literally.

  “But I’ll be fair,” insisted Patsy, who looked genuinely wounded at the assault on her integrity.

  The consultant, who had represented four Republican presidential candidates in debate negotiations, was unmoved. The meeting was adjourned. An emergency call was made to the LWV New York State headquarters. They called the LWV national headquarters. There it was decided to send to Asabogue the national president, Shelly Pettigrew, to moderate both the debate over the debate and the actual debate.

  A week later President Pettigrew convened a new round of negotiations in the Cafetorium. She instantly established how she rose to the zenith of LWV power. The woman was no pushover. Decades of moderating LWV debates at every level of government had thickened her skin, dried out of her any sap of favoritism, and instilled a zealous adherence to fairness, impartiali
ty, and punctuality. She commandeered a twelve-foot-long Cafetorium table. She placed in front of her a yellow legal pad, four freshly sharpened No. 2 pencils, a copy of Face-to-Face: The League of Women Voters Guide to Candidate Debates, and a four-inch brushed nickel call bell. She wore an austere black suit and pinned her hair in a bun, adopting the visage of a Supreme Court justice. She ordered Sam and the debate consultant to sit opposite her.

  The consultant began by proposing that both podiums be exactly four and a half feet high. Sam chewed on this and said, “That doesn’t seem fair. Jack’s over six feet. Lois is barely five. All you’ll see of her is the top of her head.”

  President Pettigrew ruled that the podiums would be of equal height at four and six inches, but Lois would have a four-inch platform. The debate consultant’s vociferous protest was met by a sharp ding of the call bell.

  Next was the matter of Q&A. The debate consultant knew that Jack was a disciplined script reader, but fairly weak on the ad lib. So she insisted on written questions, preapproved by representatives of both campaigns.

  “Preapproved questions?” Sam huffed. “Geez, this is Asabogue. People oughta be able to ask what they want.”

  With a clever grin, the debate consultant said, “So you want anyone to be able to stand up and shout out whatever the hell they want?”

  “I didn’t say that—”

  “Sure you did. We want a debate. You want some kind of . . . chaos!”

  President Pettigrew seemed troubled. The prospect of a democracy where anyone could just ask anything without prescribed time limits or three-by-five index cards was, in her view, a brief layover in anarchy en route to a barbarian state. “Questions will be submitted in writing on preapproved LWV cards. Each campaign will be able to disqualify a maximum of two questions.”

  Ding!

  They argued over who would call heads or tails in the coin toss to establish speaking orders; they dickered over opening statements, closing statements, response times, rebuttals, stage positioning, debate attire. Each decision was punctuated by Mrs. Pettigrew’s long and well-practiced index finger landing precisely on the call bell and a ding that echoed symphonically in the vast Cafetorium. When there was nothing left to negotiate, President Pettigrew adjourned the session with a final ding. The exhausted parties shook hands. Sam and the debate consultant exchanged polite small talk as they exited through the dark halls of Asabogue High into a cool evening.