Primary Colors

by Joe Klein

  O'Brien sipped his tea, leaned forward, elbows on the desk. "Anyway, here's what puzzles me about you: You are very good at this. That is abundantly clear. The thing that makes you so good is, you really do like them-the folks-don't you? You seem to enjoy yourself with them. That's important-they'll cut you some slack if they think you like them. You give a nice speech, too. But I have never seen a politician carry so much trouble around with him. You're like that cartoon character-what's his name, Dov?"

  "Pigpen."

  O'Brien chuckled. "Pigpen. A permanent cloud of dirt follows him around. It worries me, Jack. A cloud like that doesn't happen by accident. I know, this latest thing-Larry's coronary-isn't really your fault, though the way they keep playing that Izzy Whatchamacallit tape on the news, over and over, doesn't help any. And I know that it's not the way it used to be-everyone gets taken apart these days. We all suffer. They have an eighteen-minute report on Eye-to-Eye, or whatever they call that show, about me, playing golf in the Bahamas with the insurance industry-it doesn't look good. So there's no such thing as security anymore. No more safe seats. It's hard for us to legislate confidently if we're all walking on tiptoe, if you know what I mean. Everyone feels the heat. But what I wonder about you is, do you need the heat? Are you one of those boyos who like danger-a skydiver?-or . . ."

  Stanton started to respond, but stopped-intelligently-realizing there was nothing to be said here. "The other Jack-Kennedy-he was like that," O'Brien continued. "A perfect skydiver. He was like one of those Greek heroes who forgets he isn't a god. He was a Mick who forgot he wasn't a WASP. It's okay for the gods to live dangerously. They can come down, rape and pillage, run off with our daughters, turn our sons into sparrows. But if a man mistakes himself for a god, they will find a way to humiliate you. They will have their revenge. Discipline is how we show them reverence. But youjack, seem to enjoy tempting them."

  "I've made mistakes," Stanton said.

  "Perhaps one too many," O'Brien said.

  "Perhaps," the governor said. "But I've learned from them. And I've survived. You may not be thrilled by it-but I'm still here, and I'm not going away. If someone wants this nomination, they will have to come in and take it from me."

  "A big if," O'Brien said. "You've driven the stock down, unfortunately. There may be no takers. Not from here, anyway. Larkin-I can tell you what he's thinking. He has made his calculations. It's too late for him to get into many of the primaries-a couple, maybe."

  "California," Dov said.

  "He won't come in just for California," O'Brien said. "He is a cautious man-right, Henry? He'd want to test his act on a smaller stage first. He likes sure things. Henry used to be his balls." He looked over at me, curious. "This fellow doesn't need those," he said, nodding at Stanton. "So what are you giving him? You loaning him your conscience, Henry?"

  Stanton shifted in his seat but stayed calm. "You know, Jack, I don't know if William Larkin would take the nomination if we handed it to him at this point," O'Brien said. "The president is likely to be reelected, whoever runs against him. That would leave Bill looking to be a university president next December. Lousy work. More fundraising than here, and you don't get to cut deals." O'Brien looked for a laugh; Stanton obliged with a chuckle. Donny wrinkled his brow, tossed a dismissive hand. "No, the Lark won't take that chance. He's been here--how long, Henry? Twenty years. Made an elegant move to the leadership-took you by surprise, didn't it?" he said, to me again. "Anyway, we've all been living with Republican presidents for a long time--some real stinkers, too. Another four years of it won't kill us. But we don't want to be embarrassed, either, if you know what I mean, Jack. You make a fool of this party, we could lose some seats in November-might even lose the Senate again. I wouldn't be pleased by that. Have to move all my stuff across the hall."

  O'Brien leaned back in his chair, stared up at Fiona. He had said his piece.

  "I can win the nomination and beat the president," Stanton said forcefully. I'd been hoping for something more puckish, more clever-Donny was testing him now-but the governor had decided not to take any chances. His toughness was the issue, and he would play this as tough as he could.

  O'Brien laughed. "Dov, incumbent presidents beaten this century?"

  "Taft, Hoover, Carter."

  "Beaten by Wilson, Roosevelt and Reagan," O'Brien said. "So you are telling me, ack, that the incumbent is in a class with the former and you are in a class with the latter?" He laughed again and shook his head. "Tell me another one."

  "If not Larkin, who'll take it from me?" Stanton said.

  "I don't know," O'Brien said. "But we can always work out something . . . respectable. And we will, if you don't pull this together. I can promise you that. If you come out of California with one delegate less than a majority, you will find yourself back in Mammoth Falls, cutting ribbons and distributing highway contracts, by the end of July."

  "And if I do pull it together?"

  "I will admire your perseverance," O'Brien said. "In fact, I already admire your perseverance. There are worse qualities a politician can have."

  "1E1 pull it together," Stanton asked, "will you place my name in nomination?"

  "Not very smart politics, Governor-an old fart like me, doing that. I play golf with the insurance industry, a sin apparently even more troublesome to Americans than diddling a hairdresser, if that's what you did. No, I won't place your name in nomination, Jack," O'Brien said, rising; ending it. "But I will do what I won't do today. I will stand on the steps outside with you, and have my picture taken."

  Which was about as good as it got that week. Not bad, in fact: O'Brien's was an entirely reasonable position. Few others were ready to give us that much. The meeting with Larkin, which followed immediately-a cloud of scorps trailing us from one end of the capitol to the other-was surreal by comparison. The Lark would not deign to discuss politics with Stanton. He reminisced about the last time he and Marianne had had dinner with Jack and Susan. He asked about young Jackie; he talked about his own kids. He became passionate, and very detailed, about the intransigence of the Japanese in trade negotiations. Stanton showed he could be equally passionate, and even more detailed, on the same subject-and, in the process, sent the message that if Larkin wanted to challenge him, he would give no quarter. I thought it was an impressive performance. Larkin looked over at me from time to time, coolly, not unpleasantly, bland lashless eyes unblinking; I unblinked back at him. Stanton walked out of there furious, disdainful. "Please, God, I want that gelding," he whispered.

  We gave the press some time then, in the statuary hall outside the House chamber. We couldn't not. "Governor Stanton, what if anything do you think you accomplished here today?" A mousy woman from AP asked.

  "Had a chance to sit down with our congressional leaders, get to know each other better," he said casually.

  "Did either of them ask you to withdraw?"

  "Absolutely not."

  "Have you read A. P. Caulley's piece in the Times? Do you have a reaction?" Caulley, who always tapped the purest-if not quite the freshest-vein of conventional wisdom in Washington, had called three former Democratic Parry chairs who expressed alarm, though not directly for attribution, that a man of Jack Stanton's character seemed destined to win the nomination.

  "No," Stanton lied. "What's he say?"

  "Well, that a lot of leading Democrats think you don't have the character to be president."

  "Well, look," he said. "I'm mostly interested in what the people think. If they think I should go home, my guess is they'll figure out a way to get the message across."

  "Will Bill Larkin challenge you?"

  "You'll have to ask him that. Fine with me if he does. Our party should have its strongest possible candidate next fall. Any of these folks can prove they're stronger than me, I'll support 'em."

  "Have you talked yet with Mrs. Harris?" A young woman from The Boston Globe asked. "Have you apologized?"

  "For what?" Stanton glared at her. It was a smart, controlled
flash of anger. None of the reporters would have the guts to say, "For baiting him into a massive heart attack."

  "Look, we have a serious situation here," Stanton said, turning instantaneously sober. "I have suspended campaigning. I know it's hard, but maybe we should all show a little restraint for the next few days-till we know more about Senator Harris's condition. Thanks."

  one: it was the first time I ever saw Daisy in a skirt. It was a kilt, to be precise, of a heathery plaid-and much shorter than the kilts I remembered from school; she was also wearing a black blazer, a sky-blue turtleneck, dangly enamel earrings, black stockings-and heels. She looked spectacular. We met at a restaurant near the White House that was deep in mortal trendiness at that moment, offering Washington its first haute, high-concept, hyperdesigned, if not quite distinguished, Tex-Mex cuisine.

  "My God, look at you," I said. I was standing at the bar, watching the door. I hadn't recognized her at first. "Do you do this often?" "Get dressed?" she asked. "Only when I'm depressed. It's okay?" "It's fabulous," I said. "You're depressed?"

  "Aren't you?" She snaked an arm around my waist and whispered in my ear. "Let's drink margaritas, go home and get laid."

  "Sounds good to me," I said. But something was up. She was pressing. "Here comes Richard."

  It took him a while to reach us. This was Washington. Everyone knew Richard-knew all of us, more or less-and he took his time, working his way along the bar, shaking hands, slapping backs and chatting, his honks and bleats overwhelming even this incredibly noisy restaurant. Unlike Daisy, Richard looked the same here as in America: blue blazer, white shirt, no tie; and his signature, pressed, too-tight, too-short jeans-and white socks and running shoes. "Assholes in megavulture mode tonight, y'knowhattamean?" He greeted us. "Let's get a table."

  "Smoking, okay?" Daisy said.

  "'Sweird, Daisy Mae. I always forget you smoke. I used to smoke-you know that?"

  "I'll bet you did," she said, as we were led to a corner table in a nearly depopulated room. "Never underestimate the pariah factor: smoking'll get you a quiet table, and fast too."

  "You know how 1 stopped?" Richard said. "I smoked two hundred cigarettes-ten packs-in a single day. I decided to gorge myself on 'em, y'knowhattamean? My throat was killing me, thought I was gonna die by lunchtime. So you know what I did? I switched to Luckies, then to Pall-fucking-Mall, the strongest, harshest worst damn things I could find. It was the most disgusting thing I ever did that didn't involve sex or politics. By nightfall, I needed an iron lung, I needed to be fumigated, or sterilized or some fucking thing. I surrounded myself with ashtrays, full of those stale, disgusting pieces of shit-put 'em all around my bed that night. Next morning, I woke up, blew lunch, could barely talk-my throat was killing me so much-and I never touched another damn one of those things again. You should try it, Daize."

  "Don't think so," she said. "Only smoke four or five a day, no big deal. Reminds my friends I'm not an absolutely perfect person-right, Henry?"

  "That, and your taste in movies," I said.

  "So?" she said. "Tell us."

  "Boy, it is weird being back here, doing the same old shit," I said, "being a supplicant in Donny O'Brien's office, feeling the Lark's cool breeze, seeing all these tactical people-reminds me why I left town." "But you love it, too," Daisy said, always the unambiguous junkie (but a little worried now that I might not be). "It's what you do." "It's what I did," I said. "Y'know, I can't remember the last time I was here. But it didn't take a nanosecond to remember the feel of the place: everybody's so on top of everything. The guy at the dry cleaner's has an opinion about the emissions-trading provisions of the Clean Air Act, the Ethiopian cabbie wants to know if Donny's gonna block cloture on capital gains. It's like being trapped inside talk radio: a city full of crank callers with nothing else in their lives, nothing better to do. It's why the rest of the country thinks we're nuts."

  "Blah, blah, blah," Richard said, appropriately. Trashing Washington is one of the world's most gratuitous pastimes. "What happened up on the hill today? And where's a waitress? Or is this place too trendy to have help? Hey, YOU."

  A very hip young woman wearing black lipstick and black combat boots ambled over. We ordered drinks. Daisy had a frozen margarita with a double shot; I tried one too. Richard had a Diet Coke.

  "It wasn't a disaster," I said, when the waitress wandered off. "The candidate was fine. I think he scared the shit out of the Lark, outtalked him on Japanese trade policy. But it was just . . . weird. I kept thinking: Is this the prize? Is this what we've been running to win?"

  "We win, it changes," Daisy said.

  "Guys, I wouldn't go 'round worrying too damn much about winning this week," Richard said. "You hear what Marshall Gordon's gonna say on Sunday? We should 'step aside' because of all the shit that's gone down."

  Marshall Gordon, who'd been writing a column in the Post since before forever, was the unimpeachable voice of moderate sanity in Washington.

  "Step aside for what?" Daisy asked.

  "For the Wi i i i se Men to uncork the magic bottle at the convention," Richard said, shimmering his hands like a hoodoo man. "All them geniuses who've been doin' so well by the party-doin' well by doin' good, y'knowhattamean?-they gonna haul their twothousand-dollar suits into a room and restore sanity to the process." He flipped a bird then. "Fuck them. And then when it happens, when they've picked the pope and vice pope, they'll leak it to of Marshall Gordon. It sure beats Navin' an election. It's this week's parlor game: What's the real ticket, who's in the room when it gets decided?" "My guess," Daisy said, "is their guess is something like Ozio-Larkin, right?"

  "The real question is, which of us winds up on the Today show Monday morning to respond to Gordon's column," I said, not wanting to play the What If game. "Who goes on Nigh tline Monday night? Why is it that every other week we've got a new miniwave of crap to wade through?"

  "Send Libby," Daisy said. "Fuck 'em all."

  "Fuck 'em all is right," I said. "This is bullshit. No one's gonna do anything, no one's gonna come out and stop us. You could see Jack sensed that today-he paid his respects and was tough as nails. You sit in the same room as him and the Lark, and you realize what a flimsy contraption the Lark is: he'd get blown away if he ever actually walked out into the street and came after us. These guys are moles. They live in that building, they go rummaging around after each other through piles of mole shit. They don't do sunlight."

  "Don't have much sunlight right now, Henri," Richard said, as the drinks came. He took one long, nearly obscene gulp and said to the waitress, "Honey, you think you could bestir yourself to bring me another." He smiled at her sneer, then turned back to us: "Check it out:

  We're stacked up in the clouds, circling the runway. We're all sitting around, scratching our balls-"

  "Mixed-metaphor alert," Daisy said.

  "Well, shit, Daisy Mae," Richard said. "They are having fucking elections in Michigan and Illinois-got more delegates coming out of Chicago than we spent a year driving ourselves crazy over in New Hampshire. And we're not out there, working it. No one is. Y'ask me, we should just fuck all this humble respectful shit and send him out, do some town meetings, win those suckers, shut these assholes up." "He won't do it," I said. "Not yet."

  "He better soon," Richard said. "This is America. It may not be the brandy-and-bullshit crowd, but someone's gonna come after us. It's drivin' me nuts, trying to figure out who. I checked down the road, see whether Charlie Martin could get back in, or even Nilson." "He won't," I said. "He's with us."

  "When's the last time you saw him around?" Richard said, stopping me. Richard, as usual, was thinking through worst-case scenarios-all of which had come true so far, though that hadn't done us much good in preparing for them. "Henri, use your fucking head: someone is gonna come after us. We're heading to New York. Ozio? Could Ozio use Harris's line? Y'know, drop a hint-if you vote for the vegetable, you can still stop Stanton? Ozio can still get on in California, though he's gonna have to mov
e his butt."

  "He won't," Daisy said. "He'll do some body language. He'll do what he can to fuck us in New York, but he's not going to make an overt move. Overt isn't in his racial memory."

  "Someone is coming after us," Richard said, then began to peruse the menu. "What is this, one of those places where you can build your own pineapple-guacamole chimichanga?"

  Everything about sex is banal except the anticipation. The act itself, though undeniably satisfying, is memorable no more than a handful of times in the course of a life-and imperfect more often than not. I can remember every twitch, glance, touch, hint-the way my hair felt-the afternoon Daisy and I first made love in Mammoth Falls. With Susan Stanton, though, there had been no anticipation, no expectation. (Okay: a stray thought, occasionally-but she was Susan Stanton, the world's most fortified bunker; it wasn't anything you could think about in broad daylight.) But it happened. It happened in a semi-numb realm of physical experience, a reflexive part of the brain and body-it happened too quickly to engage the imagination. She even smelled distant and formal, all soap and hair spray. I'd never, I realized, made love before to a woman who used hair spray. It made her hair feel stiff, and it preoccupied me. I found myself thinking about the stiffness of her hair rather than what our bodies were doing. When her body finished what it was doing, she made a barely audible grunt, a door closing. She gathered her clothes in the dark. She didn't say anything, or do anything, or touch me or kiss me good-bye. I saw her silhouette as she moved, brusquely, through the amber crime-light crack between the curtains of my hotel room; that was all I saw. She didn't call the next day, or the days after, which was a relief, but a tiny, guilty disappointment, too.