The Brethren (26 page)

The setting of the debate was in Pennsylvania at a small Lutheran college with a cozy auditorium, good acoustics and light, a controllable crowd. Even the smallest of details were haggled over by the two camps, but because both sides now needed a debate agreements were eventually reached. The precise format had nearly caused fistfights, but once ironed out it gave everybody something. The media got three reporters on the stage to ask direct questions during one segment. The spectators got twenty minutes to ask about anything, with nothing screened. Tarry, a lawyer, wanted five minutes for opening remarks and a ten-minute closing statement. Lake wanted thirty minutes of one-on-one debate with Tarry, no holds barred, no one to referee, just the two of them slugging it out without rules. This had terrified the Tarry camp, and had almost broken the deal.

The moderator was a local public radio figure, and when he said, “Good evening, and welcome to the first and only debate between Governor Wendell Tarry and Congressman Aaron Lake,” an estimated 18 million people were watching.

Tarry wore a navy suit his wife had selected, with the standard blue shirt and the standard red and blue tie. Lake wore a dashing light brown suit, a white shirt with a spread collar, and a tie of red and maroon and a half-dozen other colors. The entire ensemble had been put together by a fashion consultant, and was designed
to complement the colors of the set. Lake’s hair had received a tinting. His teeth had been bleached. He’d spent four hours in a tanning bed. He looked thin and fresh, and anxious to be onstage.

Governor Tarry was himself a handsome man. Though he was only four years older than Lake, the campaign was taking a heavy toll. His eyes were tired and red. He’d gained a few pounds, especially in his face. When he began his opening remarks, beads of sweat popped up along his forehead and glistened in the lights.

Conventional wisdom held that Tarry had more to lose because he’d already lost so much. Early in January, he’d been declared, by prophets as prescient as
Time
magazine, to have the nomination within his grasp. He’d been running for three years. His campaign was built on grassroots support and shoe leather. Every precinct captain and poll worker in Iowa and New Hampshire had drunk coffee with him. His organization was impeccable.

Then came Lake with his slick ads and single-issue magic.

Tarry badly needed either a stunning performance by himself, or a major gaffe by Lake.

He got neither. By a flip of the coin, he was chosen to go first. He stumbled badly in his opening remarks as he moved stiffly around the stage, trying desperately to look at ease but forgetting what his notes said. Sure he’d once been a lawyer, but his specialty had been securities. As he forgot one point after another, he returned to his common theme—Mr. Lake here is trying to buy this election because he has nothing to
say. A nasty tone developed quickly. Lake smiled handsomely; water off a duck’s back.

Tarry’s weak beginning emboldened Lake, gave him a shot of confidence, and convinced him to stay behind the podium where it was safe and where his notes were. He began by saying that he wasn’t there to throw mud, that he had respect for Governor Tarry, but they had just listened to him speak for five minutes and eleven seconds and he’d said nothing positive.

He then ignored his opponent, and briefly covered three issues that needed to be discussed. Tax relief, welfare reform, and the trade deficit. Not a word about defense.

The first question from the panel of reporters was directed at Lake, and it dealt with the budget surplus. What should be done with the money? It was a soft pitch, lobbed by a friendly reporter, and Lake was all over it. Save Social Security, he answered, then in an impressive display of financial straight talk he outlined precisely how the money should be used. He gave figures and percentages and projections, all from memory.

Governor Tarry’s response was simply to cut taxes. Give the money back to the people who’d earned it.

Few points were scored during the questioning. Both candidates were well prepared. The surprise was that Lake, the man who wanted to own the Pentagon, was so well versed in all other issues.

The debate settled into the usual give and take. The questions from the spectators were thoroughly predictable. The fireworks began when the candidates were allowed to quiz one another. Tarry went first,
and, as expected, asked Lake if he was trying to buy the election.

“You weren’t concerned about money when you had more than everybody else,” Lake shot back, and the audience came to life.

“I didn’t have fifty million dollars,” Tarry said.

“Neither do I,” Lake said. “It’s more like sixty million, and it’s coming in faster than we can count it. It’s coming from working people and middle-income folks. Eighty-one percent of our contributors are people earning less than forty thousand dollars a year. Something wrong with those people, Governor Tarry?”

“There should be a limit on how much a candidate should spend.”

“I agree. And I’ve voted for limits eight different times in Congress. You, on the other hand, never mentioned limits until you ran out of money.”

Governor Tarry looked Quayle-like at the camera, the frozen stare of a deer in headlights. A few of Lake’s people in the audience laughed just loud enough to be heard.

The beads of sweat returned to the governor’s forehead as he shuffled his oversized notecards. He wasn’t actually a sitting governor, but he still preferred the title. In fact, it had been nine years since the voters of Indiana sent him packing, after only one term. Lake saved this ammo for a few minutes.

Tarry then asked why Lake had voted for fifty-four new taxes during his fourteen years in Congress.

“I don’t recall fifty-four taxes,” Lake said. “But a lot of them were on tobacco and alcohol and gambling. I
also voted against increases in personal income taxes, corporate income taxes, federal withholding taxes, and Social Security taxes. I’m not ashamed of that record. And speaking of taxes, Governor, during your four years in Indiana, how do you explain the fact that individual tax rates increased by an average of six percent?”

No quick response was forthcoming, so Lake plowed ahead. “You want to cut federal spending, yet in your four years in Indiana state spending increased eighteen percent. You want to cut corporate income taxes, yet during your four years in Indiana, corporate income taxes went up three percent. You want to end welfare, yet when you were governor forty thousand people were added to the welfare rolls in Indiana. How do you explain this?”

Each blow from Indiana drew blood, and Tarry was on the ropes. “I disagree with your figures, sir,” he managed to say. “We created jobs in Indiana.”

“Is that so?” Lake said sardonically. He pulled up a sheet of paper from his podium as if it were a federal indictment against Governor Tarry. “Maybe you did, but during your four years almost sixty thousand ex-workers signed up for unemployment,” he announced without looking at the paper.

Sure Tarry had had a bad four years as governor, but the economy had gone south on him. He had explained all this before and he’d love to do it again, but, gosh, he had only a few short minutes on national television. Surely he shouldn’t waste it splitting hairs about the past. “This race is not about Indiana,” he said, managing a smile. “It’s about all fifty states. It’s
about working people everywhere who’ll be expected to pay more taxes to finance your gold-plated defense projects, Mr. Lake. You can’t be serious about doubling the Pentagon’s budget.”

Lake looked hard at his opponent. “I’m very serious about it. And if you wanted a strong military, you’d be serious too.” He then rattled off a string of statistics that went on and on, each building on the other. It was conclusive proof of our military unreadiness, and when he finally finished our armed forces would’ve been hard-pressed to invade Bermuda.

But Tarry had a study to the contrary, a thick glossy manuscript produced by a think tank run by ex-admirals. He waved it for the cameras and argued such a buildup was unnecessary. The world was at peace, with the exception of a few civil and regional wars, disputes in which we had no national interest, and the United States was by far the only superpower left standing. The cold war was history. The Chinese were decades away from achieving anything remotely resembling parity. Why burden the taxpayers with tens of billions in new hardware?

They argued for a while about how to pay for it, and Tarry scored minor points. But they were on Lake’s turf, and as the issue dragged on it became evident that Lake knew far more than the governor.

Lake saved his best for last. During his ten-minute recap, he returned to Indiana and continued the miserable list of Tarry’s failures there during his sole term. The theme was simple, and very effective: If he can’t run Indiana, how can he run the entire nation?

“I’m not knocking the people of Indiana,” Lake said
at one point. “In fact, they had the wisdom to return Mr. Tarry to private life after only one term. They knew he was doing a terrible job. That’s why only thirty-eight percent of them voted for him when he asked for four more years. Thirty-eight percent! We should trust the people of Indiana. They know this man. They’ve seen him govern. They made a mistake, and they got rid of him. It would be sad if the rest of the country now made the same mistake.”

The instant polls gave a solid win to Lake. D-PAC called a thousand voters immediately after the debate. Almost 70 percent thought Lake was the better of the two.

On a late flight from Pittsburgh to Wichita, several bottles of champagne were opened on Air Lake and a small party began. The debate poll results were flowing in, each better than the last, and the mood was victorious.

Lake hadn’t banned alcohol on his Boeing, but he had discouraged it. If and when a member of his staff took a drink, it was always a quick one, and always on the sly. But some moments called for a little celebration. He enjoyed two glasses of champagne himself. Only his closest people were present. He thanked them and congratulated them, and just for fun they watched the highlights of the debate while another bottle was opened. They paused the video each time Governor Tarry looked particularly puzzled, and the laughs grew louder.

But the party was brief; fatigue hit hard. These were people who’d been sleeping five hours a night for
weeks. Most had slept even less the night before the debate. Lake himself was exhausted. He finished a third glass, the first time in many years he’d drunk that much, and settled into his massive leather recliner with a heavy quilt. Bodies sprawled everywhere in the darkness of the cabin.

He couldn’t sleep; he seldom did on airplanes. There were too many things to think and worry about. It was impossible not to savor the victory in the debate, and as he kicked around under the quilt Lake repeated his best lines of the night. He had been brilliant, something he’d never admit to anyone else.

The nomination was his. He would be showcased at the convention, then for four months he and the Vice President would slug it out in the grandest of American traditions.

He turned on the small overhead reading light. Someone else was reading down the aisle, near the flight deck. Another insomniac, with the only other light on in the cabin. People were actually snoring under their blankets, the sleep of hurried young people running on fumes.

Lake opened his briefcase and pulled out a small leather folder filled with his personal correspondence cards. They were four by six, heavy stock, off-white in color, and in light black Old English print had the name of “Aaron Lake” printed at the top. With a thick, antique Mont Blanc pen, Lake scribbled a brief word to his college roommate, now a professor of Latin at a small college in Texas. He wrote a thank-you to the moderator of the debate, and one to his Oregon coordinator. Lake loved Clancy novels. He’d just finished
the latest one, the thickest yet, and he wrote the author a complimentary note.

Sometimes his notes ran long, and for this reason he had plain cards, same size and color but without his name. He looked around to make sure everyone was sound asleep, and he quickly wrote:

Dear Ricky:

I think it’s best if we end our correspondence. I wish you well with your rehab.

Sincerely, Al

He addressed an unmarked envelope. The address of Aladdin North came from memory. Then he returned to his personalized cards and wrote a series of thank-you notes to serious contributors. He wrote twenty of them before fatigue finally settled in. With the cards still in front of him, and his reading light still on, he yielded to exhaustion and within minutes was napping.

He’d slept less than an hour when panicked voices awakened him. Lights were on, people were moving, and there was smoke in the cabin. A buzzer of some sort was ringing loudly from the cockpit, and once he got his bearings Lake realized the nose of the Boeing was pointed downward. Total panic set in quickly as the air masks dropped from above. After years of half-watching flight attendants give their routine demonstrations before takeoff, the damned masks were actually going to be used. Lake snapped his into place and inhaled mightily.

The pilot announced they were making an
emergency landing in St. Louis. The lights flickered, and someone actually screamed. Lake wanted to move about the cabin and reassure everyone, but the mask wouldn’t move with him. In the section behind him were two dozen reporters and about that many Secret Service people.

Maybe the air masks didn’t drop back there, he thought, then felt guilty.

The smoke got thicker, and the lights faded. After the onset of panic, Lake managed a rational thought or two, if only for a brief second. He quickly gathered the correspondence cards and envelopes. The one to Ricky got his attention just long enough to place it in the envelope to Aladdin North. He sealed it, and stuffed the folder back into his briefcase. The lights flickered again, then went out for good.

The smoke burned their eyes and warmed their faces. The plane was descending at a rapid pace. Warning bells and sirens shrieked from the flight deck.