Primary Colors (32 page)

WHR
. C
-Charlotte, NC-Richard and Cheryl. WGUL-Charleston, SC-Brody and Kelly. WANB-Anniston, AL-Kelly and Chuck.

And so on.

He would do ten, twelve, seventeen at a shot. Five minutes each. Always the same. Always the same first question-and the same evasion: "Awww, Kelly-I don't think folks really care about that. They're concerned about the economy. About what's gonna happen down there in Charleston when the base closes." They were also concerned about what the government was going to do about crime, about education, about . . . It was awful. He would rip out the earpiece when it was over and stomp around. "Tell me, Laurene," he said one day, "what was it about America twenty years ago that caused every third woman, white and black, to name her daughter Kelly?" "I dunno," Laurene said. "Charlie's Angels?"

The governor was suffering from severe human-contact withdrawal. He would devour every employee in every television station, lingering over their personal stories and their problems, hungry for the sort of campaigning he'd done in New Hampshire. But there was very little of that now. He did three states a day, unless it was Florida or Texas, where he did three markets a day. The weather was better-it was spring-but he didn't experience it much. He experienced airports and hotel ballrooms and hotel rooms, and the plane.

The plane was as hermetic an experience as the rest of the campaign, only more intense. He could feel the presence of the traveling scorps in the rear; there was the appearance of interaction-he'd g
o b
ack once a day, just before takeoff, chat in the aisle, say nothing. Laurene and her people tried to keep the scorps occupied-a losing battle, since nothing was happening most days, at least nothing they could see or report. It was all fund-raising and local organizing, and five-minute noninterviews with local anchors. I was happy, for once, not to be too much a part of this. I traveled with the candidate several days a week, mostly weekends, when the bigger public events-debates, rallies-happened; the rest of the time I spent back in Mammoth Falls, working the phones, doing stuff.

I didn't hear anything more from Howard, or anyone else, about the McCollister situation, and I never asked. I let it slip into the black hole that was Howard Ferguson's portfolio: it was the campaign manager's job to worry about the unspeakable. But I was obsessed by it, pained by it. I'm pretty sure I dreamed about it-horrible dreams that lingered just beyond the edge of my consciousness. I was disgusted by what I had done. I was ashamed. I didn't want to think about what came next. I started running again. Daisy and I agreed to go see Terminator 2 simultaneously, in our respective cities-she, for the third time-and then talk about it. I was beginning to like action movies.

The campaign unfolded much as we expected. We lost Maine. We lost South Dakota-Bart Nilson won that, even though he'd already dropped out. The next day he endorsed us, and we put him on the plane with Stanton, hoping his prairie integrity would give us a boost in Colorado. We certainly needed one. Harris was all over the air, running a spot we called "Rocky Mountain Hiya," in which he stood in a mountain meadow wearing a plaid shirt and said, "Hello to you, Colorado. My name is Lawrence Harris and I'm running for president. I'm a college teacher, a former United States senator from New Hampshire, which is a state very much like yours-a beautiful state, a place where people really care about the environment, but a place that's suffering some tough economic times, just like Colorado. I think our government should do something about that. We can invest in the future, invest in environmental technology, create new jobs while building a cleaner future for our children." And again, as in New Hampshire, there was a rush of children into his arms. "And our . . ."-he was laughing now-"grandchildren."

"Shit, he's a pol," Richard said on the phone, after seeing a dub of the "Hiya" spot. "All of a sudden he wants to start spending fuckin' money on the fuckin' environment! Is pork a natural force?"

"Well, he never said he didn't want to spend money," I said. "He just said he wanted to raise taxes."

"Henri, coupla things about that spot got me worried," Richard said. "Notice how they have him saying college teacher instead of professor? And the way spending money on the environment flows naturally from his 'Natural Forces' bullshit. This guy Shaplen ain't bad." "But he's still stuck peddling Lawrence Harris."

"No one knows who or what Lawrence Harris is," Richard said. "And no one's gonna know. He's gonna be in and out of this state by next Tuesday. All they gonna know is what they see on the tube. He could get up there and say, 'I'm Lawrence Harris and I used to play professional football,' and no one'd know any different, specially since we ain't telling them any different. You can't convince Jack to fire off one of our silver bullets?"

"No. He's positive negative'll boomerang," I said.

"How about comparative?" Richard said. "Hi, I'm Jack Stanton and I'm a human being. My opponent is Lawrence Harris, and he has a cork up his ass."

"Forget about it."

"So we're just sittin' out there doin' Fast Times at Bronx Science?" Which was what Richard called our main Colorado spot, which featured Jack Stanton speaking to high school kids-and giving a much less convincing version of the speech I'd seen him deliver at the union hall in Portsmouth: "No politician can promise you a secure future," he said, sitting on a school desk in a dark suit, a demographically correct display of acne-free teenagers in front of him. "We're going to have to compete hard against the rest of the world for the best jobs-I want you to have a leg up in that competition, and so I'll work overtime to make sure our schools and colleges are second to none. But we're all going to have to work harder."

"It's a fucking reversal of fortune is what it is," Richard said. "Harris is promising pork. We're promising hard times. And you know what? People still think we're the airhead. This ain't makin' it, Henri."

I knew that. I knew it even better after Harris clobbered us in the Colorado debate, the Saturday night before the primary in Denver. It was a strange evening. Susan wasn't there. I flew in last minute. There had been no real debate prep, just Stanton and Bart Nilson putting their heads together with the plane people-Ken Spiegelman, who was flying around with the candidate, keeping the governor's mind occupied, talking issues, and Laurene. None of the political folks were around. I caught up with the candidate just as the debate prep was breaking up, just as he was about to walk through the labyrinthine postmodern series of overhead walkways from the hotel, through some other building, into a generic concrete and cinder-block convention center. The debate would be held in a stark, overlit corner of a large, echoey warehouse of a room, empty except for two thin rows of spectators.

It didn't feel good. And it was strange to see Charlie Martin still there, waiting, when we arrived. I'd almost forgotten about him. He was out of money and out of the news but still hanging around in the race and onstage. It must have been painful for him: he was extraneous, the story had passed him by. He tried to attack both Harris and us, but no one paid him any attention, especially not after Harris lowered the boom on us.

Actually, Stanton walked right into it. He went after Harris playfully, as if he didn't quite take him seriously. "You say you want to improve the economy and the environment, and invest in the future-and yet you are proposing the stiffest gasoline tax increase in history," the governor said, with a not-very-convincing chuckle. "How you gonna improve the economy by taking money out of people's pockets?"

"Well, that's a difference between you and me, Governor Stanton," Harris said-insufferable, obnoxious. And lethal. "I tell the people how I'm going to pay for the things I want to do. You don't." "That's not true, Larry, and you know it," Stanton shouted-suddenly, stupidly, out of control. "I've proposed a tax increase for the wealthiest Americans."

"Which won't raise a quarter of what you'll need to keep all the extravagant promises you've made, Jack," Harris said. "You see, folks: this is politics as usual."

"Larry, for God's sake."

"This is what the American people are sick and tired of. This man will say just about anything to get elected."

The governor maintained his discipline admirably after it was over. He even chatted with scorps. He did not trash his room. He trashed mine. "Fuck all, Henry!" he said, barging in about midnight, as I was commiserating with Daisy on the phone. (The debate had looked as awful in Washington as in Colorado.) "Fuck all. We can't get it together to do even a half-assed prep?" He pounded his fist on my desk. "I-can't-fucking-believe it!" He swept the lamp off the desk, knocking it into the television cabinet, smashing the bulb. "So what the fuck was I supposed to say, 'No, Larry, I won't say just about anything to get elected-just a couple of things I don't quite believe'? What was I supposed to fucking say?"

"I don't know," I said.

He picked up the desk chair and smashed it down, cracking a leg. "Henry, this sucks." He sat down on my bed. "What do we do now?" "Stick with the plan," I said. "We'll win down home."

"The scorps have already discounted that," he said. "It won't mean anything, except in delegate count, especially not after tonight. You know half of Washington was watching this damn thing. That's all they do up there, watch C-SPAN. They break up dinner parties, they hold the dessert. The hostess says, 'We'll have baked Alaska in an hour, but first let's watch Stanton and Harris mess each other up.' And then they congratulate themselves on how much better they would've done. What did Daisy say?"

"A bunch of nasty things about Lawrence Harris."

"Great. Just fucking fabulous." He was calmer now "Henry, I think this is the worst it's been. New Hampshire was bad there, for a few weeks, but I always felt I could do something about it. I could work, go to a mall, stand out on a street corner, whatever. But, you know what? This is one big empty country. You stand on a street corner and the cars whizz by. I don't know how you do politics if you can't see the folks. Dunno if I want to do politics if you can't see the folks. I was born too late. I would've loved torchlight parades, whistle-stop tours. You know?"

He stood up. Thought a moment. Sat down again. "You think we're gonna get a Washington candidate? Larkin?"

"I don't think so," I said.

"He'd be good," Stanton said. "He'd come out, work hard, stay on message. He's clean."

"He's sterile."

"Henry, my man," he said, standing again. "Sterile is what's happening. Larry's the next thing to sterile-he's smart, he smells of chalk and erasers. You can trust a fella like that. Not so sure you want to vote for him: he might assign homework. But you can trust him. Good thing he doesn't understand Stanton's Third Rule: You don't want to go around campaigning for office and acting too smart. Certainly not book-smart. The only kind of smart that folks in this country'll tolerate is country-smart. See, if it's just me and Lawrence, I may have a shot-if I can make him look prideful and preachy and cold and pointy-headed. But I can't attack him frontally. I know Richard and all of them are itchy to drop the big one. But it's too damn dangerous, given how people think of me." *

"But can you just let him keep on hammering you, the may he did tonight?"

He shook his head, as if to say no. "Damnedest thing," he said. "I watch elections all the time, study 'ens, love 'em. Usually I can figure out what each guy should do, doesn't make a difference if they're Democrat or Republican-there's always something. But I can't crack this one. I can't figure it out. Probably just too close to it-that's why you hire hired guns, I guess." He moved toward the door, opened it, then turned: "It's also why, I gotta tell you, Henry, if I'm a God-fearing Democrat sitting in Washington tonight, or maybe even someplace else, and I've ever had an itch to be president of the United States, I may be scratching just a little."

Two things happened the next Monday that changed Jack Stanton's mind about going negative, and set us on the strange path that led to the third candidate he was dreading. The first was a scary Leon poll from Florida. We were ahead, but not convincingly-35 to 21, with a lot undecided and Stanton's negatives at 45, and 62 percent sayin
g t
hey'd like to see another candidate in the race. "You know what it looks like?" the governor said. "It looks like New Hampshire in reverse. If we can't do better in Florida than he did in New Hampshire, we may be mortally fucked."

The other thing was that Lawrence Harris-or, more likely, Paul Shaplen-made a mistake. They went negative on us in Colorado. It was a strange ad. It started with drums and deep horns and pictures of the war in Vietnam, the flag waving, and then scruffy protesters marching in the streets. "When our country was at war, Jack Stanton didn't just opt out-he used pull to get himself out." A jail door slid open with a rusty squeak. "Now our country is facing another crisis." And there was Lawrence Harris, back in the damn meadow: "It's a silent crisis. A fiscal crisis. An economic crisis. I'll face that crisis. I won't run away."

"Have you seen it?" I asked Richard by phone. Stanton had asked me to stay with him after the debate. We were trying to make sure we held our base in Georgia, which would be voting the same day as Colorado. We were in Macon, at one of those rare events the governor actually enjoyed-a town meeting at a local high school. It was probably a waste of time, but I'd argued for it with Lucille, who was now doing scheduling: "It's like vitamins," I said. "It keeps him pumped the rest of the day"