One of the tasks a politician had in any campaign was to make his answers look like he just thought of them that day, not that he’d rehearsed and rehearsed and rehearsed. The challenge was not unlike a movie star enduring the rigors of a press junket to promote a film. The difference was that they put the movie star in a hotel suite in L.A. and brought in a new reporter every fifteen minutes. The star could knock out thirty or forty of these interviews in a day. The trick was always to respond with a fresh, spontaneous smile when the reporter asked the same question the star had heard already sixty times that day. In whatever town the segment aired, it would be the first time the audience heard the answer. That was the task. Keep it fresh.
And Bill was so good at it that he could rattle off his answers while he carried on a conversation with himself behind his mask.
When he first hooked up with Tim—it happened quite by accident, something neither he nor Tim had planned or anticipated—he’d done a little research on previous Presidential sex scandals under the guise of having his staff bring him the research so he could “study” the records and polices of past presidents.
He went as far back as Warren G. Harding’s affairs in the 1920s. Franklin Roosevelt had died with his mistress in the same room with him at his retreat at Warm Springs, Georgia.
There were others, but in the modern era, there was Gary Hart’s monumentally arrogant blunder in Bimini on the Monkey Business with Donna Rice. Especially the part where he allowed his picture to be taken of the girl sitting on his lap while he wore a Monkey Business T-shirt.
And all the scandals that surrounded Bill Clinton.
And John Edwards actually having a child with his girlfriend. Dumaine was in the Senate with Edwards at the time Edwards ran for the nomination, and he could remember quite easily thinking: How stupid is that fucking asshole to cheat on his wife like that?
He’d even questioned the poor judgment of his now-dead wife Elizabeth—once she learned of the affair—to permit Edwards to continue the campaign.
Bill hadn’t thought so much about the morality of it—Hey, I am a politician, he thought with an inward wince—morals were—well, adaptable, subject to the circumstances of the moment.
No, he’d reflected on the Edwards case merely in terms of the candidate’s actions’ impact on his campaign for the nomination.
First, he cheated.
Second, he got caught.
Third, he (and his wife, even a bigger fool perhaps than Edwards himself) decided jointly to continue the campaign even after his wife found out about the infidelity.
He remembered quite well thinking at the time: How arrogant are these assholes? How in God’s name did they ever think they’d not be found out?
What if Edwards had won the nomination? Or even worse, been elected? Had they really expected no one to find out? Ever?
And yet, here he was, in much the same situation, but only a thousand times worse. He was sleeping with a man, for Jesus’ sake!
He thought back to the Edwards case and remembered thinking—very clearly at the time—that if he’d been in Edwards’s situation, he’d have simply withdrawn from the campaign before any more damage was done to him and his family.
His wife had cancer, he had young kids—for crying out loud, the idiot had every excuse.
And how in God’s name had Edwards ever thought rationally that he wouldn’t be found out? Not only did he have the affair, he had a child with the woman! And then tried to cover his tracks. Putting it mildly, a child could be a very sticky commodity.
If Edwards had had the good common sense to withdraw, when the shit hit the fan later, the fallout wouldn’t have been nearly as bad. He’d have reverted to the status of a “private person.” He remembered thinking how terrible Edwards’s “choices” had been.
Now that he was in the same boat as Edwards, he realized it wasn’t so easy, wasn’t so clear-cut.
Still, that was Edwards. At least Edwards had been sleeping with a woman. No comparison with him. He could just imagine the kind of firestorm that would engulf him if any of this business saw the light of day.
Bill Dumaine had to decide how he was going to handle Tim.
And he didn’t have an awful lot of time.
He hadn’t looked in a dictionary in a long time, but the first word he’d look up now was the word trapped.
* * *
CHAPTER 6
One thing President Sam Houston St. Clair liked about going to Camp David was the rope that kept the press corps well away from him as he made that famously photographed walk that all presidents make from the White House, across the lush green of the South Lawn, to Marine One, warmed up and waiting with its rotors fluttering.
He’d actually asked his chief of staff to move the rope back a little every couple of months, and it took some sharp reporter about six months to realize they were being pushed back farther and farther from the President. He wrote a story about it and the rope was returned to its original location.
St. Clair smiled at the thought of his little game with the press. But wasn’t there always a little game with the press?
This was an election year, and St. Clair was a one-term President looking for his second four-year stint. These days, when going to Camp David, he even wandered off course over to the rope to take questions.
“Mr. President, which of the eight candidates running for the Democratic nomination do you consider the greatest threat?” was the first one lobbed at him.
He was ready.
“None of them, really. I think that whoever the Democrats choose to run against me will have to confront the fact that the American people are happy with our progress my first four years in office and that they want more of what we brought here to Washington when we were first elected—a freshness, a new look, the reality that change is in the air, and that we’re the ones making it.”
“Mr. President?”
He let them pepper him with a few more questions, and then begged off, reminding them that he wasn’t going to Camp David to relax, but to meet in an informal atmosphere with top railroad management and labor negotiators so he could broker a deal that would prevent a workers’ strike. The last thing he needed with election season coming up was a strike by the rail workers. Even though his internal pollsters told him about seventy percent of the workers would vote Democratic anyway, it was still important to minimize and if possible eliminate the threat of a strike. The President had the power to force the workers back to their jobs, but it was not politically wise to have to use that power. Truman almost lost his reelection bid when he forced the coal miners back to work when they struck.
St. Clair saluted the female Marine standing at the foot of the gangway, looking at her closely. (They never looked back, always looked straight ahead. He liked to play a little game by looking at them, testing them to see if they’d ever look back, but in four years, none of the Marines had shifted their gaze toward him.)
Female Marines!
What next?
Although he could never say it to anyone, including his wife, he could never understand why any woman would want to be a Marine, for God’s sake. And not just a Marine. To be in a combat position in any of the branches. What perverted sense of “belonging” ever twisted itself in their addled minds to think anything good could ever come of having women on the front lines in a war. He just couldn’t picture women charging out of a trench and fighting hand-to-hand combat with some crazy enemy soldier. Whenever he thought of females in the military, he had a good-natured internal laugh at the thought of women marching toward Union positions at Gettysburg. He had an image of women fighting against Napoleon’s troops. Of women marching thousands of miles to Moscow in the winter. Of women trying to fight against Alexander’s barbaric Macedonians.
Well, President St. Clair knew these thoughts were a relic of the past. That he, really, was a relic of the past.
He just couldn’t let the voters know that. And, over the next few months, he had to do
everything in his power to demonize both of the two men he knew were odds-on favorites to win the Democratic nomination: Mowbray or Dumaine.
* * *
CHAPTER 7
As President St. Clair soared over the Potomac toward the Catochin Mountains and Camp David, Bill Dumaine was still taking his shots from staffers bombarding him with policy questions.
“What’s your position on the increase in Russian sales of nuclear know-how and materials to Iran?” asked one of his aides.
“At this stage, we’re relying on Russia to police their nuclear arsenal. We’re putting all our emphasis on working bilaterally with Moscow to stop these sales, at whatever the cost. There are U.N. sanctions in place that Russia chooses to ignore. But the threat, not only to our security, but to the rest of the world as well, is too great to turn a blind eye. We must stop these sales—whatever the cost.”
“No, not ‘whatever the cost.’ That goes too far,” said Phil.
“Wait just a minute. I know you all disagree with me, but I feel very strongly about this. I’ve got kids I want to live full lives without the threat of some rogue nation’s leadership controlling the bomb. This is the way I feel.”
Dumaine rolled up his shirtsleeves and sipped from a can of Diet Pepsi that Tim reached over and handed him.
“How about if you say, ‘to stop these sales,’ period?” Phil threw in.
“No,” said Bill. “The threat is too great. Leave it the way I had it—the stronger version.”
“If that’s the way you want it,” said Phil.
“That’s the way I want it.”
“What about Governor Mowbray’s proposal to reduce our military might by fifty thousand soldiers?” came another question.
“We’ve always supported reducing the number of our armed forces without reducing the quality of their service. But we don’t think Mowbray’s proposal strikes at the heart of the matter. We want to see all the branches combined into one service. There are too many overlapping functions, duplications, fiefdoms that have to be eliminated. President St. Clair doesn’t have the courage to pursue this path, and neither does Governor Mowbray.”
Tim was busy making notes.
“Good, good,” he mumbled.
Cornelia Strate spoke up:
“Do you think a President should have a line-item veto?”
Dumaine smiled.
“In the Senate, I voted against it. As President, I would insist on it.”
They all laughed.
Just then, Tim interrupted.
“Okay, everybody, let’s let the candidate get a little shut-eye. We’ll be in Hartford in about forty-five minutes.”
Thuris and the others scattered, filing quickly out of the small stateroom and into the main cabin up front.
Tim was left alone with Dumaine, whose back was facing the door.
“Mowbray’s very popular in New York, and with me being from Massachusetts, I just wish we could be sure of New York.”
“Well, I’m sure of you, Bill,” Tim said, patting him gently on the shoulder; he looked up and saw Bianca’s head looking through the door, and recovered himself. “I’m sure you’ll absolutely take New York.”
Bill picked up instantly the subtle change in Tim’s manner.
“You’re God damn right we’re gonna take New York!”
Bianca came into the room and hugged Dumaine as he turned to put his arms around her. She kissed him.
“Of course we’ll win New York. Now, why don’t you get a little rest, dear?”
“I will. Hey, has somebody got the kids coming down for the Today Show we’re doing in New York?”
“Phil told me he’d seen to it—”
Tim cleared his throat.
“Yeah, Bianca, I’ve already seen to it for Phil. We’re bringing in Jennifer and Allison this evening for the segment we’re doing tomorrow before Bill leaves on his California swing.”
“I feel like hell—we haven’t spent any time at all with the girls,” said Bianca.
“Well, none of what we’re doing is exactly about family life, is it?” Bianca said a little more cynically than she had to, thought Tim.
“Funny, you’d think with all the talk I do around the country about family values, we don’t seem to have many ourselves. It’s just—well, all about winning. Something not right about it,” said Bill.
“It’s politics. We knew what we were getting into, right?”
She glanced at Tim.
“Yah,” he said, looking at Bill. “We all knew what we were getting into.”
“I can still miss my little girls, can’t I?”
“Of course you can,” Bianca said, rubbing Bill’s shirtsleeve.
“Well, speaking for everybody on the campaign,” said Tim, “this is the most exciting time of my life. Everybody feels the same way.”
Bianca laughed.
“Tim, you’re too much. It’s great to have you on board. And I’m glad that you jog.”
“So am I,” said Bill with a smile.
“That makes three of us. You should get out there with us, Bianca.”
“No sports for me, kiddo.”
“The only sport you like is politics,” said Bill.
“There’s just something about blood sports,” she laughed.
There was a slight pause, just slight enough to be awkward. Tim gathered his things as Bianca looked at him.
“Uh, Tim, do you mind?”
“Oh, sure—not at all.”
As Tim moved past Bianca to exit the cabin, she touched his arm and stopped him, then took him by the shoulders and gave him a kiss on the cheek.
“Tim, you’re the best.”
Tim looked at her straight in the eyes.
“Hey, I’ve never been happier. I do my best—” here he looked at Bill—“for both of you.”
Just then Thuris stuck his head back in.
“Will you guys—both of you—leave Bill alone to rest? He’s only got thirty minutes. Bianca, I need you out here. It’s that fucking bitch from Vogue with the piece about your home life.”
Bianca looked at Bill in a sad but determined, steel-willed way.
“Sure, that won’t take long. I’ve always been good at making things up.”
Bill tilted his head to the side, sadly.
“Bianca...”
Thuris interrupted.
“Let’s get to it. The bitch has been waiting an hour.”
“She’s lucky we let her on the plane,” said Bianca.
Thuris could feel the tension.
“Folks, this is what we do, right?”
“I know, I know,” said Bianca.
“I’ll have everybody remember when we started this campaign a year and a half ago that we used to beg her—and people like her—to ride with us. And there was no plane. It was in cars and vans and buses. Remember?”
“We remember. Let’s go, Phil,” said Bianca.
* * *
CHAPTER 8
It was hot and steamy in Sarasota when Bill Dumaine and his staff walked down the ramp into the golden but still harsh afternoon sun to confront a waiting battalion of media people.
Dumaine walked up to the rope holding back the media as members of his security detail crowded around him.
“What do you hope to accomplish in Sarasota, Senator?” called out one reporter.
“I hope to win the Florida primary—on the way to the White House.”
“What’s your strategy, Senator?” yelled another one.
“I thought I’d just smile and use that natural New England charm that’s worked so well with all the nice people in the media.”
The whole press corps broke out in laughter. It was obvious to Tim they (like him) had been pulled in by Bill’s mesmerizing personality, not that he’d planned on falling in love with the man. But that was another story, the weird way in which they happened to end up falling into each other’s arms that night a few months ago.
“You’re in the East now, Sen
ator, but how do you think you’ll do in the West if you are the nominee?”
“I think that’s a bunch of malarkey,” Dumaine scoffed. “Listen. Americans in the East are still Americans, same as they are in the West. Governor Mowbray hasn’t got a chance.”
“A lot of people think Governor Mowbray—because of his age and distinguished career—and because he’s running as an outsider taking on Washington—that he would do better in the West.”
“We’re in this to win every state, east or west of the Rockies, after we achieve the nomination.”
“What’s your position on the Russians and other countries selling nuclear technology and supplies to Iran, giving them the capability to manufacture nuclear weapons?”
“At this stage, we’re relying on Russia to police their nuclear arsenal, whether in their country or their former satellites, which are now independent republics. But while we’ve been trying to work bilaterally with Moscow to stop such sales, we haven’t made much progress. I would change the policy to permit the U.S. to move unilaterally, whatever the cost. The threat to our security is too great to turn a blind eye. Let me put it this way: I will take the Bush Doctrine to a new extreme—”
The Running Mate (A Jack Houston St. Clair Thriller) Page 3