Primary Colors (18 page)

Not even Harris, Mr. Classroom Exercise, was immune. His poll numbers had drifted down as ours moved up, but he remained respectable (about 20 percent); we assumed that he was serving as a familiar parking place while the New Hampshire Democrats watched the show and waited to see if we'd prove worthy. Now, though, you could see the first, faint glimmerings of aspiration. I imagined him shaving that morning, the thought drifting idly from deep brain to frontal lobe: Hmmm. If Stanton went down, who else would there be? His challenge had been deft, playful in the past. But now there was an edge to his skepticism when he came after us in the debate. And he used an interesting word: "moral." "It just isn't moral to play with our children's future," he said. It was used in passing, no special emphasis, but I saw Jack Stanton flinch. His head was down-he was taking notes-but he caught a breath and his shoulders tightened. Did anyone else notice?

We'd figured Harris wasn't just playing the game for fun. He was looking for work. The campaign was his application for the position of elder statesman. He would push us, push his ideas, win plaudits from the pundits, then warmly endorse us when it was over. And hope for-what? Treasury secretary? Something. That still might be his game, but the use of that one word-"moral"-seemed a scouting expedition, an exploration of the next level up. The purpose wa
s m
ostly self-exploratory, I guessed. He wanted to see how it might feel, coming after us, being a player. He wanted to feel the adrenaline rush; he wanted--literally--to feel it in his damaged heart, to see if he could handle it. The moment came and went too quickly, and I was too intent on my candidate, to read the reaction. But I took a certain satisfaction from having caught this nuance. This was, if you could stand back from it, a wonderfully intricate game.

Afterward, the spin room was eerie. There wasn't as much attention directed toward as as there'd been in the past. It was a barely noticeable diminution, but I sensed that the first rush of scorps--the heavy hitters--was toward the other candidates. This made sense. The other candidates hadn't been paid much attention for the last forty-eight hours. The scorps had been on our case, and this was the first opportunity to probe the other camps for Cashmere "react." Clearly, they weren't too interested in the debate. You could just sense it in the room. They had heard our react all day--the outraged stonewall--and figured that the news, if there was to be any, would come from the other candidates. I was kind of curious about that, too: Had any of the others made a decision to have a spokesman let something slip, move the story just a little bit closer to the center of the campaign? Again, the strange meteorology of New Hampshire: I was freezing and suffocating. I was catching whatever it was that Daisy had. erry Rosen drifted over, very solicitously. "How ya doin'?"

"Fine. He did great tonight, don't you think?"

"He did okay, considering."

"Considering what?"

"Well, he still hasn't really defined himself," Rosen said. ust what I needed.

"Oh, come on."

"I mean, what does he really stand for, what does he believe in?" "Oh, for Chrissakejerry, you've seen him work fifty times by now You know what he stands for."

"Tell me."

But there wasn't time. The second wave of scorps was heading my way now They would want a react to whatever the opposing spinners had laid down. And now they were all over me, and the questions--it was weird--were about process: How would we be able to soldier o
n w
ith the press all over us about Cashmere? How would we be able to get our message out? Wouldn't we just be on the defensive now? The press was asking this. It was surreal. I don't know what I said to them: nothing much. I looked to see what was happening to Laurene and Richard-also working the spin room for us. (Spork was preparing for Nightline.) But I couldn't, and I couldn't afford to look too hard. I was talking-wallpaper talk, nothing talk. And, meanwhile, thinking it through. The opposing spinners probably hadn't said anything about Cashmere. They'd talked about the feeding frenzy. "Gotta wonder how Jack's gonna get his message out with you assholes all over him." Something like that. And so the scorps, dumb animals, came with that: How you gonna get the message out with us all over you? It made perfect sense. Wonderful sense. Everyone was clean (except us). Everyone could shave tomorrow. They weren't scumbag gossip reporters, they were media analysts. The scorps weren't reporting the trash, but how we dealt with the trash. The story hadn't really broken yet-and already it was one step removed: the press was reporting about how the candidate would deal with how the press would report about the story.

More of the same on Nightline. The show opened with shots of Gary Hart overwhelmed by reporters in 1987, and then a question, very precise, very efficiently put by Koppel, in his austere, authoritative way: Is this the sort of feeding frenzy that Jack Stanton will be facing now? Is it possible for any candidate to survive this sort of treatment? Is it fair? "We'll be joined by a top adviser to Governor Stanton, and also by a professor who has studied this phenomenon and written a book titled Feeding Frenzy, and the media critic for The New Yorker" Poor Arlen. He sweated, stumbled, fell. He looked like a regulation American, but he was far too nice, and not nearly quick enough, for this sort of duty. We watched him, horrified-a group of us, in Richard's room at the hotel-as he actually analyzed the difference between the Hart case and ours. "Well, Ted, Hart appeared to be caught in the act in 1987, but there's no evidence this time that . . ." Blah, blah, blab.

"WORK FOR US, YOU DORK," Richard screamed.

"He should be outraged," Daisy said quietly, stricken, watching her boss destroy himself. "He should be calling out Koppel for th
e p
hony he is. The guy is legitimizing this fucking thing--a boughtand-paid-for supermarket tabloid story--and Arlen is letting him get away with it."

The worst came at the end when Koppel asked the professor what the prognosis for Jack Stanton was. "Does anyone ever survive one of these feeding frenzies?"

"Well, Clarence Thomas did, but at this level . . ."

The asshole from The New Yorker--tweedy, supercilious--jumped in: "Ted, ifJack Stanton had been around for twenty years, was a well-known figure in American life--someone like Governor Ozio, or Donald O'Brien, the Senate majority leader--and some . . . floozy appeared with a story, well, it would be dismissed out of hand. The burden of proof would be on her. But most people don't know who Jack Stanton is. This is the first thing they'll hear about him. You've got to figure this will be a crushing blow. You've got to figure he's history."

No one said anything. Richard kicked over a chair. One of the muffins, a college kid named Alicia, was in tears. I walked down the hall to the Stanton suite. Uncle Charlie answered. "He's over at Dunkin' Donuts."

"When did he go?"

"After Arlen began to sweat."

"Say anything?"

"Broke a few things."

"Charlie, could you do me a favor? You go get him tonight. I'm just wiped. I need some sleep."

It was 2:28, digital time, glowing red in the achy exhaustion of the night, when Daisy knocked on my door. "You want to catch my cold?" she asked.

We made love, slowly, carefully, very much aware of the fragility of the moment, intent on not causing discomfort of any sort. It was not particularly passionate or transcendent, but it wasn't campaign sex, either. The kindness of it was memorable, and touching. She sniffled afterward, and coughed a bit. I felt a dampness on my chest: tears.

"Are we flicked, Henry?"

"I don't know," I said. "But we were wrong about Cashmere. The crucial variable isn't her. It's us. People don't know him. They look at him and see another pol--another overambitious trimmer who thinks he can get away with anything. They don't know how smart he is. They don't know he cares. We've gotta find a way to get that out, to let them know"

She was hot, feverish, on me; she shuddered--chills. I held her closer. "You got any Sudafed?" she asked.

I don't remember much of Saturday. Another bad day. The frenzy intensified. I saw it on the news that night--it had penetrated the weekend network news. (Not much else was happening in the world; the weekend anchors didn't have the stature of the regulars, so they could dive in where Dan and Tom and Peter feared to tread.) I saw it in Jack Stanton's eyes, when he came in that night: he couldn't quite believe what he was experiencing, the dream of a lifetime had dissolved into . . . this. He seemed crushed, his eyes dead. He didn't want to see anyone; he watched basketball on the tube alone. (Susan was out at a women's college--a fabulous event, I later learned; she was sharp, aggressive, funny. Her strength in the face of this embarrassment was strange. She was drawing attention to her perfection, which only served to remind people of her husband's imperfection--it was, I realized, a vengeful act.)

I walked back to my room, lay down on my bed, stared at the ceiling. Richard marched in right behind me, lay down next to me, stared at the ceiling. "So," he said, "he figured he was God. He figured that Cashmere McLeod would be so fucking honored, so fucking thrilled, so breathless at the prospect of sucking the governor's dick, that she would never betray the secret. She would carry it with her, in her heart, to the grave, hoping that he would secretly put a rose there from time to time, or at least send over Tommy in the Bronco to make sure the grass was trimmed."

"No, it's not that," I said. "He's not so good at seeing ulterior motives."

"Henry, he is a fucking politician."

"That's different-that's the arena," I said. "He catches everything in the arena. You see him when Harris used the word 'moral' last night? I never even talked to him about it afterwards-didn't have to. I just knew he caught the nuance."

"Yeah, of Natural Forces is road-testin' ambition."

"So where are we now?" I asked.

"A place I've never been before."

"I can't believe it's over," I said. "The whole thing just seems like a mirage. It's not really happening, y'know?"

"It's happening."

"But I get the feeling we're gonna pull through," I said. "I don't know how."

"What do you mean, he's not good at seeing ulterior motives?" Richard asked.

"He wants to think the best about all his friends," I said. "He's desperate to think the best. You know what Momma says, he was always like that. The Sunshine Kid."

"Except for the thunderstorms."

"They pass," I said.

"We haven't even had time to prep them for Brinkley," he said. "I just can't wait to hear George Will utter the words 'Cashmere McLeod.' That should knock us down a couple of points right there." "He won't. Not his style. He'll do Chicago."

"So who does Cashmere?"

"Cokie-or Sans Donaldson. Susan figures Cokie. Remember she asked about her at the meeting yesterday?"

We worked through it. We did the entire interview. It was reassuring. In our version of Brinkley, we lived to fight another day. "Y'know," Richard said finally, "we just take these things. Think 'em through like we would normal stuff, like a debate or an issue or a week. We might even pretend our way into thinking we got a normal campaign here." "It's like you're taking a shit in the woods," I said, "and this wild boar makes a rush at you . . ."

"Fuck you. Your tight little black ass never saw no woods. Face it, Henry: the toughest thing about this campaign for you is they ain't got Au Bon Pain in New Hampshire."

We lay there, not saying anything for a moment. "Cashmere McLeod," Richard said. "Cashmere Fucking McLeod. Can you imagine? One thing you can say about Jack Stanton: he ain't proud. Our governor is not afflicted by the sin of pride. Y'knowhattamean?"

"BUMNIMMMMMMERRARRRR! BUMMMMMERRRRR!" "Good morning, Libby," I said. It was just after six on Sunday morning. "Is this my wakeup call?"

"What a fucking BUMMMMMMERRRRRR!"

"What, Libby?"

"She's got tapes."

"Who's got-"

"Cashmere, the hairslut. The cunt's got tapes."

"Of?"

"Who do you think? Mario Lanza? It's our Jackie. She's got luuuuuuuuve tapes."

"How could she?"

"Who the fuck knows. The Dustbuster SUSPECTS, but who the fuck knows?"

"Suspects?"

"Yeah. Henry, you get your ass down here fast as you can. You tell Jackie and Sue, then move your ass down here. I'm gonna show you the south side of Mammoth Falls."

"What's she going to do with the tapes?"

"Play them at her press conference tomorrow, you MORON. I do not have TIME for INEPTITUDE. I will tell you precisely what to do: One. Get out of bed. Two. Pee in the potty. Three. Wash yourself. Four. Go down the hall and wake up the Stantons. Five. Tell them the cunt's got tapes."

"You think they should know before Brinkley?" I asked, knowing the answer.

"JESUS H. PENNYPACKER, you just can't get GOOD HELP these days. Henry, you want Sam Donaldson to tell 'em? Get the fuck out of bed. Pee. Clean yourself. Tell them. Get on a plane. Come to Mama-I'm gonna show you somethin'."

I knocked on their door at seven. They already had their game faces on. Susan was wearing a tweed suit, a Chanel scarf; she hadn't put on her shoes yet. She was sitting at the table with the Times, the "Week in Review" section, drinking tea. The governor was standing, holding three ties, trying to decide. He was moving toward her. He was saying, "Hon, which d'ya think?" She was standing now, examining. It felt like the quiet scene just before the monster comes.