by Joe Klein
"You were presidential," Daisy said. "He wasn't."
"You think so? No kiddin'?" He fixed Daisy with paralytic intensity, sucking air out of the room. She nodded and he relented. "See, but it's not just him--the damn tax cut is killing me, too," he said, to her. He had said this to me a hundred times already. "Martin's setting me up for Harris. It's really him. He's Mr. Integrity. You think we should bag the tax cut?" He wasn't asking a question. "I never wanted that flicking tax cut. A children's exemption. We coulda got by with that."
I didn't dare look at Daisy. I wasn't looking at the governor, either. I was looking at the floor.
He went on. He went through the entire debate. He went through each of his answers. And then: "It's so unfair. So goddamn unfair, don't you think? You work so hard. . . . You know, I had it figured. I knew what could be done, could be said, how far you could go--and then this . . . professor. He makes me look a like a phony. A politician. He's got nothin' to lose, nowhere to go. He's not even trying. He's just there to hurt me. Did you see what he did to me on the environmental-tax thing? Made me seem like a bureaucrat, a regulator. You see what this is about, don't you? As if he'd get eight votes in the Senate for that fucking tax of his. I mean, how do we handle this?" He paused. Did he want a strategy? I began, "Maybe we could--" "See, the thing is, if you're not gonna go with a tax, you have to go with CAFE standards," He began to explain the history and intricacies of auto emission standards. He seemed to have lost all sense of time, of parameters, of the natural arc of conversation. "You can't go too far with CAFE standards because of Michigan. We've gotta think about Michigan--and he couldn't care less. He doesn't expect to be around for Michigan. His semester ends with New Hampshire." It went on like that. I had seen him wend his way through a complicated situation before, talking like this, talking for hours. But that was just the two of us, on the road; he was teaching me, I thought, showing me how his mind worked. It was an odd thing, a tic, compulsive in a way--and certainly intense--but not pathetic. This was, sort of. It was needy, in a frightening way. Weird. Daisy fell asleep on her bed, and Jack Stanton was still talking. But he hadn't been talking to her, and he hadn't been talking to me--and while he did talk about the war, he never mentioned Chicago.
Saturday, it was as if the strange scene in Daisy's room had never happened. We were still flying. The sun was shining. The papers all gave us the debate. He seemed presidential, they said. The Charlie Martin episode played our way: Stanton's response seemed forceful in print. Nobody--except The Washington Post--mentioned the laughter that preceded it (which had Stanton worried--the Post was always a beat ahead of the others when it came to nuance and minutiae). We were moving north from Concord, up the spine of the state toward Conway, and everything felt good and clean--blinding sun on snow, sharp cold, a slight breeze sending a fine spray of ice crystals into the air. We were doing a lunch thing--volunteer firemen's club at a church in Franklin--and I noticed that it was really getting crowded now back in the scorp zone. The reporters seemed dazed, balloony in their down jackets, an obscure clerical sect--they dressed up in Washington, but campaign scorpwear was less formal. They looked overloaded, distracted and clumsy, lugging satchels of paper and laptops about. They were easy to class.
"How many we got?" I asked Laurene.
"Twenty," she said. "They're really jammed into the vans, too. Had to blow off that woman from Phoenix, and a few others who didn't sign up until after the debate."
"You think we need a bus?"
"Maybe. But the immediate problem is, a lot of them want to go back to Manchester after Laconia. They don't want to go all the way up to Conway. The guy from the Chicago Trib is really pissed. He didn't know Stanton was flying back to Manchester--and none of them are too happy about the three-hour drive on a Saturday night. We don't have any seats on the plane, do we?"
"Absolutely not," I said. "But let's peel off one of the vans after Laconia for the ones who don't want to do Conway. You stay with the other one, keep them as happy as you can."
"Gee, thanks," she said. Laurene was cool, a real pro. She didn't feel the need to do the "Hey, bro--ain't these white debbils flicked up!" routine with me. Our thing--Laurene's and mine, I realized--was that we were above all that defensive shit. We were or uptown. "Who knows this place?" Laurene asked. "Maybe we can find a cute inn or something, land them there for dinner on the way back. But, Henry, we gotta start thinking this through better. We need someone who thinks scorp logistics days ahead, y'know?"
We continued north. It was like that all day. Normal. We brought local activists, one by one, into the van. We had Barry Gaultier, the minority leader of the state assembly and a real power, riding with us all the way. Barry was on the cusp of an endorsement, but he wanted us to guarantee him a job with the campaign after the primary. We were doing well enough that we didn't have to promise shit. We wanted Barry to see that. He was a former insurance salesman, had the terminal gray look. And you could almost see him troping closer and closer to Stanton with each stop. I hated this part of it--reminded me of the crap I had to do with Larkin: stroking, stroking, promising, praising. But, then, Barry Gaultier was a legislator. Stanton was right about that: they were a lesser breed.
Laconia: a town meeting in the high school gym. There were some empty seats, the first the governor had seen in a week or so--advance had miscalculated. Daylight was waning in the narrow windows at the top of the bleachers, cold and blue-gray. Several of the scorps stayed outside, in an echoey pea-green tile lobby with the unpolished trophies and faded ribbons in glass display cases, working their cellulars, calling the desk, seeing if they could blow off Conway--it would be right on deadline. The wires, looking particularly glum, knew they couldn't. They'd be coming with us all the way--and driving back all the way, while we flew. Bad staff work.
"Henry, you gotta fix this shit up," said Tommy Aldrenio from the Philadelphia paper. "You let the schedule drift, you don't think about filing time. This is the big step up now--you gonna step up and be real or is this gonna be a bush-league operation?"
"We're real, Tommy," I said. "You wrote it today."
"You're real by default," he said. "You're running against dogmeat. The big leagues gonna be harder than this. Don't get cocky."
"We'll work on it, Tommy," I said. "What's everybody writing?" "They're writing you," he said. "They hear Time has a Stanton cover coming Monday. They want to beat the call."
"No shit," I said. I had completely forgotten about Time. They'd been along, earlier in the week. They'd had two editors, their beat man and a bigfoot interviewing Stanton in a ratty Concord motel room on Tuesday. They'd shot him--forty-five minutes out of our schedule--on Wednesday. They'd said "maybe" a cover. It was either us or a new book about pet psychology."I assumed the latter, as the folks from Time seemed to, and then I'd let it slip--the debate, the guy from the LA Times, a hundred other worries. I do not absorb the possibility of good news very well, I guess.
"Excuse nie," I said to Tommy, and I went to the principal's office and used the phone to call Brad Lieberman, who had moved his operation to the Manchester storefront.
"You hear anything about Time?"
"You hear anything about Time?" Brad shouted to the room. Then: "Richard just got in. Hold on. Spork? Yeah? No shit. Spork has a kid over there, a researcher--did some summer stuff for him. He'll call over. Wait."
"Meanwhile, Brad--we need to get our scorp act together. They're tolerating us now because we're throwing heat and it's early. But we gotta get someone thinking strategically about this. We gotta think about buses, and planes--how many you need before we get a plane?" "We went through this in the war party, Henry," he said. "No plane until after New Hampshire. We don't do a big plane until we get the Service. Anyway, you don't need a fucking plane in New Hampshire."
"Yeah, but we've got that Southern swing week after next, and--" "Yeah." He was listening to someone talking. Then he said to me: "Time's closed already? No shit. Gotta be someone there. Spork's try
ing his guy at home."
We talked logistics some more. You can talk logistics forever and never talk logistics enough. Finally, Brad said, "Hold on," and then, really excited: "Spork found him at home. He's shootin' me a thumbs-up. He's jumpin' his fat ass up and down. We're happening, Henry! It's on."
I raced out of the room. Slowed down. Past the scorps in the lobby, into the gym, where Stanton was talking about shoe imports and the room was feeling kind of drowsy. I moved into his line of sight, locked in, gave him a cut sign. He went on. He took another question, about early education. Shit. That would be good for another ten minutes--and it was. As he wound down I said, pretty loud: "Last question, Governor."
"We'll just take one or two more," he said. I rolled my eyes, so only he could see. He flashed me a smile: Let time work, he was saying. He had this sense about these things. He knew how and when an audience felt tapped out, listened to.
I went back out into the lobby. I called Manchester, asked for Richard. "Great, huh?" I said.
"You forget what I'm doing here, Henri?"
"We're on the cover of Time, man."
"Does he know yet?"
"No, he's in mega-explain mode. Doing shoe imports. Can't shut him up."
"Henri, we can't fuck this other thing up. We're gonna fuck it up--but we can't. Y'knowhattamean? We gotta get Susan on board. Hate to admit, ol' Daisy Mae got it right."
Stanton was moving now There was a shuffle from inside, the doors swung open, doors opening and closing, stuffy air from inside, cold air from outside. I moved toward Stanton, found my place near his elbow, watched the handshakes. An elderly woman hugged hint. "You remind me of Kennedy," she said breathlessly. "He was here. I saw him. He was thinner than you--but you're just as cute."
We moved him toward the van, into the van. Barry Gaultier was still with us--good. This news should do it. There was a knocking on the window. It was Bob O'Connell, from The Washington Post. He wanted to ask a question, he was moving along with the van as we were beginning to roll. "Hold it," I said, but Mitch was already moving and O'Connell had given up, with a very pissed-off look. What was that?
Anyway: "Governor, you're on the cover of Time magazine this Monday."
Stanton turned, looked at me--and then at Barry Gaultier. "What's the cover line?" he asked.
Shit. I didn't know. I could see he was pissed. But--saved by Barry Gaultier. (No time for temper now.) "Whatd'ya think, Barry?" Stanton asked. "Not bad, huh? This thing's got some flame under it now."
"Not bad at all," Barry said, fumbling--looking for his next move.
"Now, I know you've been thinking long and hard about this," Stanton said, fixing Barry Gaultier with an intensity that the poor man probably had never experienced before in his life. Stanton seemed to expand in the van--and he scented to have turned fully from the front seat, turned to face Gaultier directly. It was an amazing thing. I couldn't imagine what he'd done to his body. The air wasn't moving. There was no sound from outside. No wind. "And I know," Stanton continued, "that your endorsement means a lot--it's your word of honor, it's your bond--and that it would mean the world to me here in New Hampshire. You have it in your power to make the next president of the United States, and I know you don't take it lightly. I don't take it lightly. Everyone knows the respect that people have for you here. But listen, Barry: We are going to do great things. We are going to make history. You want to be part of that. You want to be part of it now--and next year in Washington, after we win. We'll make a place for you, an important place. I'm not the sort who forgets who brung him to the dance. We take care of our friends, Barry. You know what that means, right?"
"Right, but--"
"A tide. There's the matter of a title. How does strategic coordinator sound?"
"Great. It couldn't sound better. Of the whole campaign?" Gaultier asked.
"Strategic coordinator for the New England region."
"Ahhh." Barry almost choked.
"You'll be in on the highest councils of this effort," Jack Stanton said. "You'll be a part of the team."
I had been holding my breath, I realized. I exhaled.
And then inhaled again, sharply, at Conway. Rob Quiston of AP, a solid guy--a straight shooter, no bullshit, no games--opened the can door for Stanton and said, "Governor, we're going to need a reaction from you on this."
I jumped out behind him. Barry Gaultier was behind me.
"The Los Angeles Times is reporting that you were arrested in a radical demonstration before the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968."
"Yes, I know," Stanton said. "It was a mistake. I was detained, not arrested."
"And that you called a United States senator to get you out ofjail." "I . . . I don't . . ."
"And that he persuaded the mayor of Chicago to have your record expunged--"
"Well, I don't know about that part."
I noticed the movement had stopped behind me. Barry Gaultier wasn't getting out of the van.
"This is bullshit," Susan said. "It's just bullshitjack wasn't a radical." "It don' look great, ma'am," Richard said.
"Yeah, but it's not important. People don't care about this kind of thing."
It was late Sunday morning. Brunch in the Stanton suite at the downtown Holiday Inn in Manchester. There was a good-sized dining room table in this one. We had shoved stacks of newspapers and briefing papers down one end of the table. There were bagels and Danish pastries, and a platter of sorry-looking scrambled eggs and cardboard bacon that no one touched, except Daisy, who broke off and nibbled tiny pieces of it. Lucille Kauffman, who was there when we arrived--much to our dismay--carefully monitored everything everyone was eating. The governor was off, working churches.
"They might care about it," I said. "It's early. We don't know what they care about yet, for sure."
"Nobody cares about this stuff except the press," Lucille said. "It's microscopic, meaningless. They're pigs and we should never forget that. Treat them like the pigs they are. I know you like them, Henry--and I know they've . . . mythologized you, Richard. But they're scum. They're the enemy--they're what's standing between us and victory" Was this necessary? Everyone in the room knew who the scorps were and what they did. Lucille was performing for Susan, it seemed. I found myself wanting to be able to look at Daisy: to see her eyes, to feel her reaction, but she was sitting next to me, down the table from Susan, who was at the head. Richard and Lucille sat across from us, in front of the plate-glass balcony window. Cold, windy Manchester was behind and below them. I wanted to get up, take a look at it, see if there were any clues out there.
"Okay, Lucille, let's say you're right," Richard said, his eyes opaque behind thick lenses. He was being careful. "They are scum. They are shitbird reptiles." Then he had a thought and because Richard again, up like a shot and pacing around the table: "Say you're out in the woods, takin' a shit, and a wild boar comes chargin' at you. Do you pull up your pants and run? Or do you try to pull up your pants and grab those doves you just shot, and then try to run, all at the same time? You forget the fucking doves, right?" He began to giggle, and swallow his words. He was all tangled up in it now and, incredibly, he wouldn't give up. He was a stubborn sonofabitch: it got worse. He seemed to be imploring Susan. "You pull up your pants and run. Y'knowhattamean? You'd grab your gun before you took the goddamn doves. And you'd pull up your pants rather'n shoot the boar, 'cause you don' have time to aim and button your fly. And, if you miss, you don't want to die with your dick hangin' out. So, hah, hah, yeah. I guess that's right. Y'might even leave your gun if the boar's runnin' fast enough. Y'knowhattamean? Might even forget your gun and save your ass."
"Richard," Lucille said. "I can assure you that none of us has a clue what you're talking about."
"You leave the doves for the boar," he said. "You gotta feed the beast."
"I think what Richard is saying," Daisy said, "is that this is the game we have--it's the only game in town--and we're not in complete control of the rules. There are o
ther players. We have to think about them, and react to them."
"That's what I was saying," Lucille said. "He was killing birds and taking a--"
"Daisy," Susan said, cutting Lucille off. "So what do we do? How would you deal with them?"
"I have to go to the ladies' room," Lucille announced.
Richard stirred, about to say something, thought better of it. He let Daisy take the lead. He had sensed she could talk to Susan better than either of us could--and she was doing it, with a quiet confidence. "We need to beat them at their own game," Daisy said. "We need to know more than they do, and anticipate what they're up to. We need to be prepared when a story like this one turns up, be able to strike back--with the truth."
"How can you know what kind of garbage they're going to come up with?" Susan asked, cutting to the chase.
"Well," Daisy said, "We have to-- We need an operation to do research. Y'know? We need someone who can--"
"Investigate ourselves?" Susan asked. She seemed to settle in her chair. She knew what it was about now. "Our lives?"
Lucille came back. She walked into the silence but had no sense of it--remarkable: a woman without intuition or antennae. "This is all ridiculous," she said. "We don't play their game. We're playing the people's game. We say to them: The media and the Republicans want the election to be about trash. We want it to be about your future. People will understand. They won't swallow this hogwash. We don't shoot doves in this campaign, Richard. We protect them."