As the camera panned to catch the audience reaction, the Mitterands could be seen looking horrified. The Reagans were laughing.
A week later the Supreme Court pronounced on Davis v. Bandemer and gave the Republican Party the ruling it had sought – that examples of partisan gerrymandering can be challenged through the courts. Mike, Mark Braden and their team celebrated the decision with champagne at RNC headquarters and Braden made a speech of congratulations.
‘Tonight,’ he said, ‘we have won a case that has the potential to alter the political landscape of our country. It was no easy struggle and many elements within the Republican family disliked our tactics. But we stuck to our guns like a band of brothers fighting for a cause we believe in. We have won a battle, but we have not won the war. Now we need to take this victory forward to undo the Democrats’ gerrymanders wherever we find them. The judicial process means the impact of our work will not be felt for another half-dozen years, but if we are successful, I do believe we could set ourselves a target of the 1994 mid-terms. So I give you a toast: to Republican control of the House in 1994 and for many years after!’
Mike raised his glass. Life was going well for him. The feeling of having been accepted into the most important establishment in America – the party that ran the country – was something he had yearned for. It was the palliative that could soothe his pain and silence the doubts that accompanied his existence, the insidious voices that whispered You are no good in the ear of the orphaned gay man. And having made it to the heart of the establishment, he was going to defend his position.
FOURTEEN
1986–9
It was a while since Mike had seen John Clarkson, his Texan friend from the Mark O’Connor days. John had been working for the Labor Union on civil liberties cases, but had moved out to California and had not been in DC for a year. Mike liked him and was pleased when he called at the end of October to say he was in town for a few days and would have time to meet for a drink.
They sat in the bar of the Hyatt Regency on New Jersey Avenue and ordered a pitcher of beer. John hadn’t changed much – a little fuller round the waist, but still with the same outspoken directness.
‘The West Coast is just way more friendly than here,’ he said. ‘More gay-friendly, anyway. But my God, there’s an epidemic going on! I don’t know whether it’s worse there than it is here, or whether you Washingtonians just don’t talk about AIDS, but back in San Francisco, man, I never saw anything like it.’
‘Tell me about it,’ Mike said. ‘Dark days we’re living in.’
John stabbed a finger down on a copy of the Washington Post that had been on their table when they arrived. ‘Did you see this, though?’ he said, pointing at a headline in the news section. ‘It’s taken the Reagan administration five years to publish its first report on the AIDS epidemic and now they’re trying to backtrack on it. It says the surgeon general’s report calling for AIDS education and the widespread use of condoms is being blocked by conservatives. Your guy, Gerry Hauer, he’s quoted as saying, “I don’t see why a third grader needs to know anything about condoms and I’m not going to give the go-ahead to the local school to talk to my daughter about sodomy.” What planet do these guys live on, Mike? Don’t they realize there’s a holocaust going on?’
Mike shifted on his seat
‘Yeah, it’s a tough call, John,’ he muttered. ‘They’re all politicians, you know, and they have lots of things to take into account . . .’
John had raised the issue partly as a test for Mike, and he was failing it.
‘Hey, you’re not defending those bigots, are you? You know they want compulsory AIDS testing for all gays, don’t you? And where’s that going to lead us – forcible quarantine? Leper colonies? William F. Buckley says he wants all men with HIV to have it forcibly branded on their buttocks, like some Auschwitz tattoo! And he’s one of Re agan’s closest friends. So what’s your president doing except sitting with the blinds down and hoping it’ll all go away?’
Mike was not quite prepared to back down.
‘You’re wrong to blame Reagan,’ he said. ‘He and Nancy are very gay-friendly: they even had their interior designer and his partner stay at the White—’
‘Oh, big deal!’ John laughed contemptuously. ‘So they have gay friends. And yet they let gay men die while their party blocks the funds for AIDS research. You know, I think that makes it even worse – worse than the cretinous rednecks who believe gays have horns and a tail because they’ve never met any and that’s what their preacher tells them.’
Mike was about to protest, but John was in full flow.
‘And what about the Republicans supporting the Georgia sodomy decision? Bowers v. Hardwick, right? These are two guys who just wanted to have sex in the privacy of their own bedroom – consenting adults, OK, just like you and me – and yet your party, your party, wants to make it a criminal act!’
‘Yeah, well, get real, John.’ Mike knew he was on shaky ground but made a lawyer’s fist of it. ‘You know these statutes have been on the books for centuries and they’re very rarely enforced. So what if some southern state wants to keep the Bible-thumpers happy with a show of puritanism – it doesn’t hurt anyone, does it? And you know I don’t think a lot of gay men do themselves any favours, especially out west in your neck of the woods – all those demonstrations and the Act Up crowd. Don’t you think they do more than anything to alienate politicians and the public? All this talk of outing people and shaming them in front of their friends and families and work col -leagues . . .’
‘God, Mike! I hope you don’t believe all that,’ John said. ‘I hope you’re only saying it because you’re a Republican and you have to say it – because you’re just obeying orders.’
At the beginning of March 1987 Robert Hampden called and asked Mike to meet him in the Irish Times bar on Capitol Hill. Robert was still the same witty gadfly, mocking the job with wry detachment even as he did it, but he had noticed a transformation in Mike: from the hesitant, self-effacing young official he had first met at the White House, he had grown into a committed and zealous Republican. It was as if the victories Mike had won for the party had bound him to it; as if he now shared the responsibility for making the party what it was and felt compelled to justify and defend it because it was too late to go back. Robert had laughed at Mike’s proselytizing zeal and called him a ‘soldier’, loyal and unshakeable. Today, though, it was Robert who sounded serious.
‘Hey, good to see you, Mike. I don’t know if you’ve heard but it looks like Deaver’s going down.’
Mike shook his head. He knew the guy had been under investigation, but no one had mentioned prison.
‘Yeah, and it could be bad. Looks like he could cop five to ten for perjury and corruption.’
Mike Deaver had stepped down as White House deputy chief of staff a year previously to set up his own lobbying firm, but it was no secret that he maintained close links with the president. Now he was accused of exploiting them for monetary gain. The Democrat-controlled Congress had run an investigation into how Deaver had won contracts for his clients to build America’s new B-1 bomber, and he had allegedly perjured himself during testimony to a federal grand jury.
‘I can tell you, there’s panic in high places,’ Robert said. ‘If Deaver goes to jail and this Iran–Contra contretemps gets out of hand, Ron’s going to be tarred with the same brush that did for Nixon. The irony is that the guy who spent years protecting Reagan’s image is now the Democrats’ best hope for tarnishing it.’
‘Jeez, Robert, that’s terrible,’ Mike said. ‘Does Deaver have a defence? And is Bush mixed up in it? It’d be a disaster for the party if he can’t run next year.’
Robert smiled at Mike’s earnestness.
‘Well, I’m pleased to see the pragmatist in you, Mike. No worries about morals and ethics or anything – a perfect Republican. Actually, Deaver’s defence – and it’s pretty slim – is that he was a victim of alcoholism, and that’s what made him perjure himself. C
ynical, but it may work. And Bush is in the clear, you’ll be pleased to hear. I think he’s already plotting his campaign for the presidency.’
Mike’s final encounter with Roger Allan Moore came in the fall of 1988 as America was gearing up for the first round of campaign debates between George Bush and Michael Dukakis. Roger had called him a couple of weeks earlier and asked if he would travel up to see him at his house in Boston. He didn’t say why, but Mike sensed urgency in his voice.
It was a sad meeting. In the vast old house on Beacon Hill, the house famed for its history and twelve fireplaces, Roger sat frail and white in the drawing room. He was wrapped in a tartan rug and despite the warmth of the late-September day a fire was blazing in the hearth.
‘My dear fellow, I’m, ahm, touched that you have come to see me.’ Roger’s voice had lost its resonant baritone and he spoke now with a painful rasp. He struggled for breath.
‘I promised I would be in touch to talk about the future, Michael, and for me that future is now. You will not see me again. No, the future I want to speak about is yours. I have followed your career since I departed and have been delighted to see the success you’ve achieved. In fact, I believe your star may be about to rise even higher.’ Roger managed a fleeting smile. ‘I have spoken to Mark Braden and I understand he will not be remaining at the RNC after these elections, so the post of chief counsel . . . But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. What I wanted to say is that the world of power is an alluring one, very easy to fall in love with, and it can confer a certain feeling of invincibility . . . Do you understand what I am saying?’
Mike nodded, but Roger looked dubious.
‘I think I mentioned the name of Chaim Rumkowski . . .’
Roger’s eyes fluttered and closed briefly, but he made an effort to stay awake.
‘It’s the morphine; I’m sorry. They give it to me with an hypodermic syringe . . . and it dulls the mind. But, ahm, power, Michael – a fickle mistress – and the lawyer’s defence of blindly serving the law is a thin one. If we lose sight of our actions as having a meaning in themselves, if we think only of winning, rather than the purpose of what we are doing, we can easily lose our way . . .’
Mike was beginning to feel Roger was accusing him of something.
‘But you always did your best to win, didn’t you, Roger? I mean, when you were a lawyer?’
Roger tugged the rug a little tighter round his shoulders.
‘Let me tell you about a movie, Mike – I doubt you’ve ever seen it or ever will do; it’s more my generation’s kind of thing – called Bridge on the River Kwai. Alec Guinness is a British colonel captured by the Japanese during the war. The Japs want their prisoners to build a bridge for them, and Guinness is the senior officer . . . His conscience tells him not to help the Japanese, but he gets so caught up in the act of building and the satisfaction of overcoming the problems he faces and the beauty of the thing he’s creating that he loses sight of the purpose it’s intended for and the consequences it will have.’
The speech had cost Roger an effort that seemed to leave him exhausted. He waved his hand and sank back into the armchair, where his eyelids drooped into sleep. Mike sat with him for a half-hour waiting to see if he would stir and, when he did not, let himself quietly out of the house to fly back to DC.
Roger was right. Mark Braden resigned from the Republican National Committee after George Bush’s election victory in November 1988 to set up his own law firm, and the post of chief counsel fell vacant. The new president knew the party’s legal staff from his time as VP and let it be known that he wanted Michael Hess to get the job. Mike inherited the large corner room with windows in two walls and a brass nameplate on its solid oak door. Now it was he who would lead the delegations that reported in the Oval Office; it was he who would control the party’s strategy to dismantle the Democrats’ electoral stranglehold; it was he who would represent the Republican case before the Supreme Court and the committees of Congress; and it was his name that would appear on the record of the party’s court battles across the nation.
Mike found George Bush a patrician Ivy League New Englander with a reserved and wooden demeanour; he was very different from the polished performer who had occupied the post before him and patently lacked the warmth Reagan had brought to his dealings with party staff and officials. Bush listened to the briefings on the RNC’s redistricting campaign but offered little advice or encouragement.
‘The guy’s a cold fish,’ Mike told Pete. ‘With Reagan, you felt he was interested in what you were doing, even if he didn’t always understand what it was. With Bush, you kind of feel he understands all the issues but doesn’t want you to know what he’s thinking. It’s unsettling and I don’t like it.’
The 1989 Easter vigil in Shepherdstown was one of the best attended in the five years it had been running; Mike’s new position had given him a status in Washington society that made people keen to know him. The late-March weather was warm and the music spilled into the garden for much of the night. After Mass on Easter Sunday those guests who had stayed the course played pool or lounged on the grass outside. Ben Kronfeld, who had split up with Mark O’Connor and was there on his own, stretched out on a blanket on the concrete cover of the old well behind the house. He dozed peacefully for an hour or so, then woke and stretched. As he rolled over sleepily onto his stomach, he was horrified to see a snake staring him in the face, black, four or five inches in diameter and around five feet long. He ran inside to tell Mike about it, and Mike winced. The snakes came with the house, he said, a slithering, unsettling presence in the cellar beneath – more than once he had climbed into bed to find one curled up waiting for him between the sheets.
FIFTEEN
1989–91
The four years of the Bush presidency were more restrained than those of the Reagan era: fewer Hollywood stars came and went at the White House and the balls and parties were less extravagant. But as chief counsel Mike was invited to receptions and dinners, and he revelled in the feeling that he was there by right, that his admission to the inner circle was the result of his own qualities and efforts. He regretted that he was unable to take Pete to social events connected with his job – it irked him that Pete could not see at first hand the success he was making of his life – but he accepted it and Pete did too. They had been together for eight years now and had promised to have no secrets.
For the most part, Mike’s work was going well. The Bandemer decision had given him the ammunition the RNC needed to bring suits in states around the country, and there was a sense their efforts were tilting the electoral map in the Republicans’ direction. But the key case – the one with most at stake – was California, and as the months went by and the RNC lost in the district court, the signs were becoming increasingly discouraging. Mike and his team were convinced the Democrats’ gerrymandering was so outrageous and so manifestly contrary to the constitution that the Supreme Court would surely strike it down. They celebrated when they succeeded in getting the case referred, but were shocked when the Court threw it out without comment.
On the evening the decision was announced, Mike came home in a state of nervous agitation.
‘God, I can’t believe it,’ he said as soon as he came through the door. ‘Justice has not had a good day today.’
He was angry and on edge; Pete recognized the telltale signs.
‘Is it the California thing, Mike? I heard on the radio that it got turned down. It sounds a little unfair to—’
‘Unfair? It’s a goddam scandal! The Democrats upped their majority from one to eleven seats by redrawing those district lines, and the court has just turned a blind eye! And what really gets me is that I heard nothing at all from Bush’s guys when we were winning cases for them and now suddenly, as soon as we lose, I get this pissy message saying, “How come we lost?” and making out like we did it on purpose or something.’
Mike was pacing up and down and looked ready to strike at anyone or anything that got in his w
ay. Pete had seen him like this before. He knew it was a portent of blackness and rage but he tried to contain it.
‘Hey, Mike, how about we take a time out? We’re not going to fix this thing tonight, and if we sit and fret it’ll just seem worse than it is. Let’s get a cab and drive up to Glen Echo or somewhere by the river. We could eat at the Old Angler’s and share a bottle of red.’
Mike dismissed that. ‘I can’t relax, Pete. This thing’s got me too wound up, and anyway I need to . . .’
A frown flitted over Mike’s face, followed by a look that hovered somewhere between cunning and guilt. ‘Let’s go to the Eagle,’ he said. ‘I’ll put on my biker gear. We don’t have to do anything, OK? You can sit with me and we can get drunk . . . Or I can. It’s what I need right now .’
He was justifying the idea to Pete, and maybe to himself. The prospect of the dark grimy bar with its sexual charge and promise of delicious guilt made him feel light-headed.
Pete hated leather bars and hated the thought of what went on in their upstairs rooms and private cubicles, but he could see Mike was stressed and uptight, and he figured that if he didn’t agree, Mike would go on his own.
‘OK, Mike, let’s do it. But we go, and then we come home, right? We both have work in the morning.’
Mike nodded and went through to the bedroom. They had a closet each, and at the back of his Mike kept a large black case, buckled shut. He lifted it onto the bed.
When he returned, he was wearing tight black leather pants and a leather vest with studs and chains over a bare chest.
The Eagle Bar on New York Avenue near Mount Vernon Square did not seem busy. The large downstairs room had a dozen customers, most of them dressed like Mike, cans of beer in their hands, listening to very loud country music on the sound system. They glowered at the new arrivals with a show of stagey aggression. Pete, in his smart jacket and chinos, felt out of place. Mike sat him down at a corner table and ordered some nachos and pizza slices. After an hour and a few drinks, Mike ’s fearsome eruption of nervous anxiety had transmuted into fast-talking excitement. One of his feet tapped rapidly on the floor and his fingers drummed on the table.
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