Wag the Dog (13 page)

After about four hours of this damp news, he came to feel like he was standing under an awning, waiting for the rain to pass, with a slow leak above him and a drip that somehow always found the gap between his neck and his collar—plus, he had to urinate.

Which he did.

While he was gone, the fax that they had been waiting for finally arrived over the encrypted communications system. The first thing he saw as he walked out zipping his fly was the new data printing out. Moran had taken the high post beside the machine, watching the data possessively.

“What do we have, Kenny?” the president asked.

“I'm sorry, sir, but it looks down another quarter point.”

“Me? Me, personally?”

“Yes, sir. But it's just a quarter point.”

“But it's the trend. That's what counts. That's what you guys are always telling me. Isn't that what you always tell me? Watch the trend?”

“Yes, sir. I'm just the messenger.”

“You're more than that. You're the magician that reads the entrails.”

“Huh?”

The president threw himself down in his chair. “Out. Everybody out. I have to figure this out.” His aides knew he didn't mean it. They were at eighteen thousand feet.

A few minutes later he retired to the bedroom to change into a fresh shirt and suit for the fund-raiser. Transferring the contents of his pockets, he came across the memo. Partly because he didn't want to go back out and face more news that was neither good nor bad, just dreary, he unfolded it and read it again.

Maybe because it was a little more familiar, it didn't seem quite so insane this time.

And the dead Lee Atwater promised to do what no living person seemed able to do—he offered a way to slice through all the niggling bullshit, all the tedious nit-picking that was tearing him down in the polls in inexorable half- and quarter-point increments; he offered a way to change it all in one grand stroke.

The memo made reference to a specific person as the key agent to implement the plan. If there had been a conference about the matter, it might have been decided that “someone of that sort” was the point, not one individual and that individual only. It was a man that Atwater knew but that Bush had never met. Yet. Bush was scheduled to meet him, coincidentally, at the fund-raiser, in about—the president looked at his watch as he felt the 747 begin its descent—twenty, twenty-five minutes.

It is also possible to suppose that none of that really mattered. That the power was in the idea. And it was bound to make itself manifest no matter if the physical piece of paper it had been written on was shredded or lost or forgotten. The paper and the print were nothing—the power was in the idea.

 

 

 

¹⁷
It is all too easy to make fun of presidents, particularly since they have come to be judged by the standards by which we judge fictional characters who appear on our TV screens. It's ridiculous and it's unfair. TV characters appear in a show that lasts twenty-two minutes, once a week, twenty-six or thirty-nine times a year. The TV character gets retakes and his mistakes become outtakes. Jerry Ford bumps his head and he is defined as a bumbler for the rest of his life. Richard Nixon tries, and fails, to pry the cap off the aspirin bottle with his teeth one night and it becomes a character-revealing trait, implying an unimaginable depth of dysfunction. Jimmy Carter has a run-in with a rabbit and is forever after labeled boob and wimp.

Then there's the sex business. For example, there are persistent rumors that Bush has girlfriends. Remember that “power is the ultimate aphrodisiac,” look at Barbara, and there are three possibilities: George is a normal male attracted to younger women and he cheats; George chooses to have sex exclusively with a woman who looks like a Hallmark greeting card grandmother; George is a eunuch. Think about it—which George would you want running the country?

The only guy who could handle being “on-camera” every public minute and come out of it looking good was the guy who spent his life “on-camera,” Ronald Reagan.

If the experiment with Bill Clinton is no more satisfactory than those with Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Bush, then perhaps Reagan will turn out to be the harbinger of things to come and the practice of having someone “act” as president will be institutionalized.

¹⁸
It is common practice to employ campaign people in government posts. I have no specific knowledge that there was a pollster employed on a DOA line, and Kenny Moran is a fictitious name.

M
AGGIE WANTS ACTION
. I understand that. I want action too. But it's the one thing we can't do. At least that's what I think. As long as we appear to do nothing, they'll leave us alone. As soon as we appear to move, they'll react.

One of the ways I try to deal with my tension is to up the level of my workouts. In addition to the running and the simple calisthenics, I return to my training at the dojo. I go to a place down in Koreatown. It's in a typical two-story mini-mall: discount hardware, cards and tobacco, manicures and pedicures, a fish store. The dojo has a name, but all the regulars call it Sergeant Kim's.

I didn't know Kim in Vietnam. There are stories about him, many of which may be true. He can kill with a touch. We all can kill with our hands. I mean a lot of people who study martial arts or who are taught hand-to-hand combat—Green Berets, Seals, the Delta Force—even regular Marine training, they teach killing blows. Kim was involved with a recon team. They'd have some possible VC. Kim would come along and he wouldn't have to throw someone out of a Huey
¹⁹
to get the others to talk. Or shoot anyone. He would do it with his hand.

They would line up the prisoners. They'd see this hard little Korean, their own size, but thicker. He would walk up to the first prisoner. Touch him. Kill him. The others would start to talk. Soon there was a legend about him and he didn't always have to kill. Just be the sergeant with death in his fingertips.

I want to explain something here. I don't know how you could ever show it in a movie, because it's got to do with ideas. Also, I don't want you to get the wrong feeling about Kim. That he is a brutal or vicious man. He's not.

Most people were ashamed of Vietnam. So they turned their faces away. I went over gung ho. I stayed gung ho. I had good times there. I loved Vietnam. In many ways. Including combat. I liked trying to be a hero.

Maybe this is why I haven't turned my face away. I've spent a lot of time looking at what happened and thinking about it. We didn't understand Vietnam in exactly the same way that I'm afraid people won't understand a man like Kim. General Westmoreland used to say things like “The Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as does the westerner,” and “Life is plentiful, life is cheap in the Orient,” and “As the philosophy of the Orient expresses it, life is not important.”
²⁰

These were very stupid things to say. They might even be why we lost the war.

For Kim to kill face-to-face, looking into the eyes of the man who is going to die, that does not say that for Kim, life is
cheap. That says that Kim is ruthlessly honest. Westmoreland
²¹
measured the war in body counts. He created free-fire zones, which meant anything that moved—man, woman, child, water buffalo—was presumed to be the enemy and we were supposed to kill it; and he defoliated the forests and used high-altitude bombing. That says life is cheap, life is not important. I'm not saying we shouldn't have done those things. We were soldiers. We were there to kill the enemy. We killed as many as we could. But we shouldn't misunderstand who thinks life is cheap and who respects it.

The ground floor of the dojo is for the public at large. They teach tae kwan do, plus they have become very successful teaching classes in self-defense for women. From the locker room there's a stairway to the second floor. It has a sign on it:
ROK—MEMBERS ONLY.
There's a joke attached to that which I will explain later. It's sort of a private club that's not restricted to a single discipline and is combat-oriented.

When I find myself there for the third time in a week, I realize that I am thinking of asking Kim for advice.

I change into my gi and go upstairs.

When I find Kim, I bow. I ask to speak to him. I explain to him how I took the job with Maggie and why I think it is so serious that Ray lied about the LDs. Kim has one of those stoic, tough Korean faces. I can't read what he is thinking. So to convey to him how I feel I reach back to the shared experience: “You remember, in the jungle, when the birds stopped singing. That's what I hear—the big silence.”

“Why do you come to me?”

“Almost everyone I know who might help me, I have to assume that their first loyalty is to the other side. I can't use the telephone. I can't hire help. I can't go wire them. I can't move. I'm stuck.”

“Ahhhh,” he says, being very Oriental, “you come to me for sensei bullshit. OK, I can do that. You are deer who sees tiger.
Deer cannot move, movement will make tiger notice, tiger will strike. Deer cannot stay still, because soon or late, tiger will strike. Oh, Glasshopper Joe, you understand lesson? Lesson is that it is tough to be a deer in jungle. Better to be tiger. How's that for sensei shit. If you want, I whack you on back of head.” He laughs. He's having a good time. “Americans. See
Kung Fu
and
Karate Kid One, Two, Three,
think martial-arts teacher guide to life and dojo a twelve-step program. Hey, Joe, you know what I teach people—I teach people how to hit each other, that's all. You're a good guy, Joe. You want to go out for a drink? We go have a beer, eat some fish from my nephew's place. Very fresh, very good.”

“No, thanks, that's OK.”

“I find that I am drinking earlier in the day now. Just beer, of course.”

“I got to tell you something, Kim . . .”

“Come on, we go to the office.”

I follow him. I say, “I feel like I walked into an ambush. And it scares the fuck out of me. I should've known. When I was in Nam, I got so I always, always knew. You understand?”

He gestures me to a chair while he goes to a small refrigerator and takes out two bottles of Harp Lager. “Irish people. Make good beer. You drink with me, I give you good advice.” He opens them and hands me one. He waits and watches till I tilt it back and swallow.

“OK. I tell you Zen-type story.” He takes a pull and sighs with pleasure. “Irish people, best beer. One time I go study with Japanese martial-arts master. Very high, very famous. He tell samurai story. Samurai one night go out drinking. Get very happy. On way home bunch of bandits jump him in alley. Eight, ten of them. Samurai very great fighter. He react. Fight back. Kill seven, others run away. Next day he goes and brags to his teacher about it, how many he kill. Teacher say, ‘You stupid. Real samurai would have known about ambush and walked home by next alley.'

“I thought about this,” Kim says. “I hate Zen stories. Too Japanese. If I were that samurai, I would say, ‘Fuck you, sensei. I am samurai. I like to fight. I had a good time. And I am not
stupid, because having fights and beating odds of eight to one, baby, that's what it's all about.' ” He takes another swallow of beer. With great enjoyment. He stares at me until I drink some more. Then he says, “You lucky I am not Japanese.”

“Why?”

“If I am Japanese, I tell you go back to your company. Confess your error and become loyal again.” Kim laughs, very harshly. “I love Japanese.
Hai!
I am Toyota man. I let Toyota stick gearshift up my ass if it make better car. I am Hitachi man. Test big vibrator and hum company song. Fuck Japanese. Koreans better. Even Americans better. Every man for himself. Very interesting.”

I sigh. This is not the encounter I expected. Kim belches. He smiles at me. The top of his desk is stacked with papers. He pushes some aside and uncovers a large paperback.
The Art of Strategy: A New Translation of Sun Tzu's Classic, The Art of War.
He hands it to me. “Gift I give it to you,” he says. “New translation. Very pretty. Ideograms on one side. You like Oriental philosophy advice, Sun Tzu very good. The best. Chinese. Anywhere you look is a beginning. Here . . .” He opens the book, apparently at random and without looking puts his finger down on the page. He's pointing at a line that says,
A strategy of positioning evades Reality and confronts through Illusion.”
²²
He says again, “You take.”