by Laura Hayden
When she did step into the spotlight, the noise generated by the crowd must have outshone that of any other individual who ever graced a stage at the Pepsi Center—be it pop star, athlete, or any other type of performer.
After the thunder of applause finally abated, Emily mesmerized the audience with a speech that both clarified her positions and reflected a unified party line. The enormous crowd erupted once again when “Benton/Bochner ’08” campaign signs unfurled behind her.
Kate watched from a discreet place in the wings as the last vestiges of her earlier panic faded into excitement tinged with well-deserved relief. Sandwiched between Dozier and Emily’s uncle Bill, she watched Emily expose a side of herself that she usually kept in check. It reminded Kate of her friend’s younger, more idealistic self, before she’d developed some of her sharper edges.
This was the Emily Benton that Kate wanted to—expected to—see sitting behind the big desk in the Oval Office. This was the person who would keep a great nation great. Maybe even make it greater. . . .
“You look almost like a proud momma right after her first child’s been born,” Dozier Marsh whispered to Kate, slipping a grandfatherly arm around Kate’s shoulders.
“I feel like that.”
He reached in the breast pocket of his coat and pulled out a cigar with a pink “It’s a girl” band on its cellophane wrapper. “Congratulations, Mom,” he said, offering her the cigar. “It’s a president.”
It was a whole new ball game.
Because the other party’s convention started four days after theirs ended, Charles Talbot was home in Cincinnati, busy preparing for his part of the tradition. Even shoo-in candidates had to craft the perfect speech and then deal with the pomp and circumstance of the proceedings. That meant he wouldn’t be on the road for at least a week, leaving everything wide open for Emily to chip away at his support in those areas that were teetering either way. Swing states, Kate thought. Gotta love them swing states.
“Every time the press mentions the other convention, I want them to mention me as well,” Emily demanded. “Put me in the most visible places you can find where I can generate the most news coverage and take the best advantage of the other party while they’re distracted.”
And that’s exactly what Kate did.
The “V4M: Coast-to-Coast” bus tour started in Washington, D.C., and over the course of two weeks took Emily and Burl to thirty-seven cities across the United States from the East Coast to the West. Emily excelled in the larger metropolitan areas, whereas Burl’s down-home qualities played well in the more rural areas.
At the end of the tour, Emily and Burl had developed a good rapport but not necessarily a great friendship. Then again, a president and vice president didn’t necessarily have to be best buddies. It was almost traditional for that relationship to be strained. John Nance Garner, FDR’s veep for eight years, had framed the dilemma of the vice president’s job perfectly when he’d famously stated, “The vice presidency ain’t worth a pitcher of warm spit.” Not surprisingly, considering his choice of language, Garner hailed from Texas. Like Truman, another of FDR’s veeps and the one who assumed the presidency after FDR’s death, Garner was never particularly close to the president. He was just added on to the ticket to beef up the chance of pulling in the Southern vote after being FDR’s strongest competition in the primary.
Given that running mates were traditionally picked out of political expediency rather than true friendship—more to round out a ticket with strengths the main candidate didn’t have than to forge a political partnership—the process almost guaranteed that the president and his VP were polar opposites in temperament, upbringing, and political constituency. Close relationships, like the one shared by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, were the exception in presidential politics, not the rule. Rumor had it that JFK couldn’t stand LBJ and that Al Gore wasn’t on the Clinton invite list for intimate gatherings.
But Burl was proving to be an asset.
Kate flew out several times during the two weeks, catching up with them in some of the larger cities. She watched the change in dynamics between the two of them. Emily finally started to relax around Burl when he revealed that beneath his choirboy good looks, he had a wicked sense of humor and an occasional weakness for Belgian beers.
After the tour, Emily took a few days to recuperate from two solid weeks on the road. Unlike Kate, Emily’s childhood had not included spending a lot of time riding the American interstate system. Even in those days, the Bentons flew on their private jet; the Rosens drove in their Chevy station wagon.
“I feel like everything is moving—the floor, the chair, the bed,” Emily complained the first night back on terra firma.
“You’ll get over it. Trust me.”
Although Emily had two days off to recharge, Kate couldn’t afford to shirk her duties for two hours, much less two days. Their goal now was to garner organizational support—to court various groups to get their official endorsements or at least platforms from which to speak to their particular needs.
In some cases, invitations were automatically extended to Emily. In other cases, Kate had to play the “We would like to be invited” game. In either situation, the end result was the same—whether it was presenting her immigration program before the Congressional Hispanic Caucus or affirming her ironclad support of women’s rights to a national gathering of Girl Scouts or speaking about her support of affirmative action to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation.
Emily spoke, people listened, and then they applauded.
Simple as that.
At least that’s how it appeared from the outside looking in. In reality, Emily had become more demanding about her schedule, requesting changes that had Kate, Miriam, and the staff scrambling to accommodate. Kate figured M’s uncharacteristic insistence on second-guessing the schedule was a product of her anxiety over the upcoming debates with Charles Talbot.
“We need to cram, like in college. I need a few days of peace and quiet,” Emily said, “in a place where I can really concentrate.” They all understood that a poor performance against Talbot would mean losing all the ground Emily had made up in the last two weeks. However, this was the first instance that Kate could ever recall where Emily suffered from pangs of doubt that lasted for more than ten minutes. No matter what, at the end of the day, Emily had complete and total faith in her own abilities to succeed.
But now that faith seemed to be wavering, and Emily’s way of coping these days was to find small faults in those around her. Kate hated it, but she knew that Emily was struggling with fears that she’d fail. That brittle insecurity made life at M Central resemble a walk through a land-mine field, as they all coped with her short temper. Loretta, Emily’s traveling assistant, was the first victim of her growing discontent.
“We need to replace her,” Emily told Kate. “She actually tried to get me to wear an off-the-rack number she’d picked up in some back road bargain barn. And did you see the footage of me at the veterans’ meeting? My makeup made me look like I’d gotten stuck in the tanning bed for an hour too long. I was Bob Barker orange.”
“Have you said anything to her?”
“That’s not my job. It’s yours. Find me someone else. Preferably someone with better taste.”
Kate bit her tongue and figured she’d try to dissuade Emily from following through later.
She didn’t have to. By the next morning, the storm clouds had passed and Emily swore she couldn’t imagine life on the road without Loretta. Her faithful Loretta who unpacked every bag so that Emily walked into an air of familiarity no matter where in the world her hotel room was. Loretta who knew not to speak to Emily in the mornings until after handing her boss a cup of scalding black coffee and a New York Times with key articles flagged with color-coded adhesive markers: red for Republican items, blue for Democratic, pink for women’s issues, yellow for medical news, and green for those articles that could provide humorous fodder for the upcoming day’s conversation
s and speeches.
It’d been a tradition since Emily’s first day on the road. Of course, what Emily didn’t know was that Kate told Loretta which articles to flag.
Now Emily was in a good mood. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t still demanding.
“Okay, here’s the deal,” Emily said. “I know we planned to spend my debate prep time at the house, but I don’t think that’s wise.”
Kate knew asking “How come?” would be an exercise in futility. Besides, she’d planned for this. She had lined up three potential locations to offer—any of which could provide Emily the privacy she craved, the structure to accommodate her staff, and the security to keep her safe.
Maybe a last-minute change in locale wasn’t a bad idea. The number of anonymous and not-so-anonymous threats Emily received had increased since the convention. Kate didn’t like to think about it, but assassination was a constant threat, even for a potential presidential candidate. Four presidents had been killed while in office—Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and JFK, and eleven more had faced serious attempts on their lives. Every president since Richard Nixon had had to deal with an attack.
It made the whack-job threats and notes she and Emily were getting all more unsettling to Kate.
Neither Kate nor Emily was taking any chances on reducing security, no matter how much Emily wanted a quiet break from the road.
Kate figured that a sudden location change, if they picked the right location, might throw off attackers, so she went to work determined to pull off the move seamlessly for Emily.
As usual, Emily was more concerned with seeing results from her request, not with the workload required to make it happen. Kate reminded her of the chaos she was causing. “I want you to appreciate how hard it is to find suitable places that are available on such short notice. There are a lot of folks in the office who will have to stop what they’re doing to restructure this for you.”
“Yeah, yeah, I appreciate your hard work and all that.” Emily grinned. “And I’m such a pain in the rump. But you’re brilliant. You know you’ve had this covered for weeks. Now quit stalling and tell me my choices.”
“What makes you think I’ve come up with more than one possibility?”
“Because you’re an overachiever. C’mon. Spill the beans.”
Kate did just that. First was an exclusive private ski club in Winter Park, Colorado—off-season, of course. Second was a four-bedroom cottage on the grounds of the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island. The third choice was a full floor containing two of the most elegant suites in the Marriott Wardman Park in the District, thanks to pure luck in timing and a campaign volunteer who knew a friend who knew a friend who knew the hotel’s manager.
The Michigan site was in Mark Henderson territory, and it wouldn’t hurt to spend a little extra time in his backyard to charm the constituency that he hadn’t felt compelled to push in Emily’s direction.
So as Kate had expected, Emily chose the Grand Hotel. But Emily surprised her. She told Kate she’d picked it as much as a treat to the advisers who would be flown out to grill and rehearse Emily as for herself.
“After all, don’t you folks deserve a few perks?” she asked. “I’m going to be too busy to enjoy it, but you guys should have fun.”
With Emily in a better mood, the campaign efforts ran smoother despite the sudden chaos. Kate personally contacted the special advisers for the session with Emily. All agreed to the location and date change except one.
Marjorie Redding refused.
“Look, Kate,” she’d said, “it’s not that I don’t want to help, but my only granddaughter is getting married that weekend. I simply can’t make it. But I can send you the next best thing.”
Kate couldn’t wait to see what Marjorie had up her sleeve this time.
MARJORIE’S NEXT BEST THING turned out to be her assistant and protégé, a woman named Maia Bari, a woman so exotically beautiful that she literally stopped all conversations when she walked into a room. Kate figured that if Maia came with Marjorie’s highest recommendation, it didn’t matter what she looked like. It simply meant she was the best.
When time came for Emily to go into IDP—Isolated Debate Prep—mode, Kate arrived a day early at the hotel to oversee the advance troops. The island offered several complications in logistics beyond the well-known “no motorized traffic” rule, which seemed to impact the Secret Service more than anyone else. But Agent Perkins assured Kate that they would be able to maintain security despite that challenge.
Emily arrived in a fine mood, mentioning at least four times that she much preferred flying to driving around in “some decommissioned rock-star bus.”
Once she was settled in on the second floor of the cottage, she began meeting one by one with her advisers, there to grill her, instruct her, inform her, support her, and in the case of Maia Bari, dress her.
Francesca Reardon, Emily’s policy adviser, had the first session, and when the woman finally came downstairs, Kate couldn’t read anything from Francesca’s usual expression. No matter the situation, no one did “quiet dignity” quite as well as Francesca Reardon.
“So, how’s it going up there?”
Fran tilted her head and spoke in the measured tones of an elocution teacher. “If she keeps focused, she’ll be splendid in the debate.” She lowered herself to the chair next to Kate.
“She’s not focused?”
“Not as much as I’d like. Then again, she has to prepare herself to cover a wide variety of areas. Every four years, the number of topics a candidate has to master expands almost geometrically. Twenty years ago, no one asked questions about stem cell research. Now every candidate has to have enough understanding to write a doctorate. Plus there’s end-of-life care, geopolitical history, global warming, environmental science, alternate energy sources, social issues, education, and a thousand other subjects. I feel as if I’m prepping some kid for an Ivy League grad school exam. In the old days, they stuck to politics. Must’ve been nice.”
“We have a medical/technology adviser coming in tomorrow morning.”
Fran sighed. “I know we do. I just think I’m getting a little . . .” She glanced through the window to the porch beyond, where Dozier was enjoying a cigar and holding court with Chip McWilliamson. “I was going to say a little long in the tooth, but standing there is proof that there is no age limit in our particular field.”
Kate smiled. “Sharp as a tack, our Dozier is.”
Fran’s face creased with a smile. “Yes, he’ll be wheeling and dealing beyond the grave.”
Kate studied the two men. Dozier was making wide swooping gestures with his lit cigar. Chip stood perfectly still, wearing a respectful but slightly forced smile.
Fran rose. “I’ll go rescue the young man. Dozier is probably lecturing him about people the boy’s never even heard of.” She headed for the porch.
Moments later, Chip stepped into the living room, waving away the cloud of cigar smoke that still clung to him.
“I wanted to talk to you about . . .” Kate watched his attention go elsewhere and his face grow slack. That could mean only one thing.
Maia Bari had walked in.
Sure enough, when Kate turned around, she saw Maia gliding into the room. Kate was sure the woman had left thousands of gaping men in her wake.
“Miss Rosen?” she said. “I don’t know if you remember me, but I’m Maia Bari.”
“Please, call me Kate. I’m so glad you could come help with the campaign on such short notice.”
“It’s my pleasure. I’ve been hoping for a chance to meet Miss Benton for some time now. To work with her is quite a coup.”
Her English was flawless, with a touch of an upper-crust British accent. “I took the liberty of bringing some clothes and accessories for the candidate with me. You also have outfits that Miss Benton is contemplating for the debate?”
“We don’t stand on formality here. It’s Emily. And yes, she brought four suits with her—three new and one she’s worn
before and particularly likes. You can go on upstairs, if you like. She’s free right now. First room on the right at the top.”
“Excellent. Thank you.”
After that, she walked gracefully up the stairs.
Had Kate not elbowed him in the ribs, Chip probably would have stood at the bottom of the stairs, staring after the woman for another hour.
“Get a grip, Chip!” she whispered.
He shook himself and had the decency to blush. “Sorry, Kate. It’s just that she’s . . .” Words failed him, and he glanced toward the stairs.
“Stunning? Gorgeous?” Kate supplied. “A goddess stepped down from Mount Olympus?”
“Something like that.”
“Just remember: Our Hera? She doesn’t share.”
He looked at her perplexed. Evidently his undergraduate education hadn’t included the classics, nor reruns of Hercules or Xena. Kate sighed. Time to make the landscape crystal clear.
“Roll your tongue back into your head. You’re here to work for Emily. Maia’s here to work for Emily. That’s the only thing you two should have in common—Emily. Not each other.”
His blush deepened, which Kate took as a signal that he’d understood her meaning. Good thing too. If he did anything to upset the status quo—to turn any amount of affection away from Emily and toward Maia—heads would roll.
Starting with his.
The rest of the scheduled review times went well. Emily came out of the tête-à-tête with Maia raving about the girl’s insight and how her skills might actually exceed that of her mentor, Marjorie.
Kate found that hard to believe but appreciated the young woman’s hard work and dedication. Her efforts really shone on the third day of debate prep, when Kate, Dave Dickens, Dozier, the rest of the advisers, and a handful of staffers created their own rehearsal debate.