The Innocent Have Nothing to Fear (3 page)

On the other hand, if a woman named Sandra Juarez just happened to see me with the Indians up onstage looking like I had my act together in a big-time way, that was just fine by me. It had been a little over eighteen months since my very public meltdown, which had coincided with Sandra Juarez and me breaking up. No, that wasn't accurate: my very public meltdown that resulted from Sandra Juarez dumping me. I'd like to think I was over it, focused on the future, all those things you are supposed to do. But I still thought about her more than I liked to admit. Mostly I thought about how humiliated I had been after splitting in such a spectacularly public way, which had been my fault. But also I thought about—and this is what I really hated to admit—how much I had loved being with her, living together for that year and a half.

Sandra was one of the few really good print reporters who had made the transition from covering politics for
The Wall Street Journal
to working for television. She was first-generation Mexican-Cuban American, an unusual mix. Her Cuban mother was a doctor and her Mexican father was an auto dealer. It wasn't exactly the hardscrabble immigrant story, but still, when she looked in the camera and said, “As a first-generation Mexican-Cuban American, I understand…,” few people stopped to point out that she had gone to Groton and then Harvard. We had met when Sandra was covering the Florida governor's race. She had already moved from the Orlando market to CNN but was back in her home state covering the race. We met in the spin room after the first debate; a less romantic, tawdrier place for a first encounter would be hard to imagine. My candidate was a Cuban American woman running against a wealthy North Florida businessman, and I made the mistake of trying to play the Cuban-and-female card with Sandra. It didn't go well.

“Don't you think Florida would benefit from having a Cuban American female as governor?” I asked.

She smiled very nicely and then took my head off: “So the best case you can make for your candidate is what she achieved before she was born? That is probably the most pathetic defense I've ever heard.” Then she walked off. I did the only reasonable thing in this circumstance: I chased her and groveled. Not because she was beautiful and smart but because it was in my client's best interest. I told her I was an idiot and she was right and then spilled out all the policy reasons Roberta Bello was the best choice. She listened to all of it with a blank face, then said, “Thanks, not bad,” and left. Her post-debate coverage was okay, not great. I sent her an email telling her I thought it was fantastic and to get in touch if I could help with anything else. Nothing works with any kind of reporters like flattery, since mostly they just get the crap beat out of them, but she ignored it.

A week after Roberta won, I was at CNN doing an on-air hit about the elections. I'd won every race I'd worked on that cycle and was feeling fairly bulletproof. It was the standard setup, where you show up for five minutes or so and try to sound smart, which for five minutes is usually not that hard. I ran into Sandra in the greenroom and she asked me if I was going to work for Roberta's administration, or for any of the other clients I'd elected. “God no. I don't do government. I hate government.”

“Great,” she said. “So no conflicts. Want to get a drink?” We spent every night together for the next 418 days, at least the nights when I wasn't traveling for clients or she wasn't out on the road. Until I was standing in the Piggly Wiggly grocery store in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and saw the
National Enquirer
front-page story about her and That Actor Whose Name Shall Not Be Mentioned. It's one thing to get dumped by your girlfriend. It's another thing to get dumped by your girlfriend for a famous actor and hear about it standing in line at the Piggly Wiggly. I bought the
National Enquirer,
and when the nice lady behind the counter saw the photo, she said, “Lucky girl,” and then I left before I killed her and was the next candidate for the death penalty in Louisiana, a place that doesn't need Armstrong George's New Bill of Rights to get the job done.

God, it was awful. And two days later I was dumb enough not to cancel a scheduled slot on
Meet the Press
and ended up in a screaming match with some Democratic moron—a screaming match on
Meet the
goddamn
Press,
for crying out loud—and walked off the set, all live on national television. That was followed by an entire political cycle in which every candidate in America would have preferred to be photographed in a shirtless embrace with Vladimir Putin than hire me to run their campaigns. So yes, if playing part of a set with the Mardi Gras Indians the night before the Republican convention might make me look a little cool, or at least less pathetic, than the figure storming off
Meet the Press,
I was definitely willing to give it a go. In the back of my head I had a fantasy that Sandra would be sitting lonely in a hotel room and happen to tune in to some video clip of me and the Indians.

Right.

But the big moment, the magic one, would come if we could just get a half-dozen more delegates and pull Hilda Smith back from the dead. Then, at least for a few days, I'd be a genius. For a few days, I could forget about the horror show of Sandra. And on the side, I could finish cutting my deal to have my own political show. That was the plan: make this my last campaign and get famous as a pundit. After months of work, it was all lined up, if I could just pull off this come-from-behind miracle. All I had to do was beat back the forces of darkness and vanquish Armstrong George. Even if we lost to Democratic senator Tommy Aldrich in the general election, at least I would be hailed for doing what no one expected—saving Hilda Smith. The show was going on the new Amazon Channel, and since I'd gone to them with the idea, all neatly packaged, I'd been able to keep partial ownership of the show. That meant quasi-serious dollars if the show worked and we found an audience. The deal was already signed, but they had an out clause if Hilda lost the nomination.

But we wouldn't lose. I wouldn't let us lose.

The dance floor of Tip's was a mass of soaking-wet humanity bouncing up and down to the irresistible funk of the Indians. Except for Lisa Henderson, who stood on the side with a cool, detached look, too attractive to be a wallflower but definitely not of this crowd. She was dressed in the same dark suit she had been wearing all day and she looked like a corporate lawyer, which was what she had been before she was chief of staff to Hilda Smith, first as governor of Vermont and now as vice president. She had been a law student of Professor Smith's, and there when Hilda made her first run for the state house of representatives. And she had been by her side when she was sworn in as vice president, picked by the president after his first vice president became the first veep to resign since Spiro Agnew. Lisa hated me, and I didn't blame her a bit. She had been Smith's campaign manager until they came in third in Iowa and I'd made my move, knocking on the candidate's door in New Hampshire and convincing her she would lose if she didn't throw over her best friend and campaign manager. She was just terrified enough to do it, and when we won New Hampshire, I was back.

It was probably a very bad thing I had done, knocking on Hilda Smith's door. She was exhausted and beaten down in a way you only felt when your chance to become president of the United States was slipping away, but that was how I'd wanted her. Vulnerable. She said she'd give me a half hour, and that was all it took. Me and Eddie Basha—the best field operative in America, in my book—had laid out exactly what she should do to win the New Hampshire primary. We had a simple strategy; it was amazing that Smith hadn't tried it before. For months Armstrong George had put her on the defensive and she'd responded by trying to prove she could match him in toughness without going down the crazy train of his wacky New Bill of Rights or the bundle of “anti-terror” legislation he was supporting called “Protect the Homeland.” It had been and always would be a losing game. Those who wanted what Armstrong George was selling would never be satisfied with Hilda Smith being a more polite version of George. For once I could tell a client what she wanted to hear and still give the right political advice: she needed to stand and fight Armstrong George.

There was one more debate in New Hampshire before the primary, at WMUR, the posh TV station built with the fortunes spent on presidential dreams. “No matter what the first question is,” I said to the vice president, while her husband looked quietly on, “you should say, ‘I'll answer that in a minute. But first I have something to say to my opponent. Governor George, you are a disgrace. You have played to the worst instincts of our politics and tried to bully your way to the Oval Office. Tonight it stops. New Hampshire is better than Armstrong George. America is better than Armstrong George. Now I'll answer that question.' ”

Hilda Smith had looked at me like a dying patient wondering if she'd been promised a miracle cure. “You think it will really work?” she asked.

“I don't know,” I said. “I think it will. But if it doesn't, wouldn't you rather die with dignity?”

That was it. She hired Eddie and me on the spot. By that evening, every news outlet in America was carrying the story that Lisa Henderson had been dumped and J. D. Callahan, the controversial campaign strategist, had been tapped to take over Hilda Smith's campaign. And damned if it didn't turn things around in New Hampshire and a bunch of states that followed. Eddie still gives me a hard time about that line: “Wouldn't you rather die with dignity?” But hey, I thought it was pretty good.

It had been humiliating for Lisa, and I was a guy who had come to understand a thing or two about humiliation. That she had moved back into her position as chief of staff to Vice President Hilda Smith was hardly consoling. The paths to greater glory were rarely paved with chiefs of staff to vice presidents. Lisa Henderson had cried the night we won New Hampshire. Three hundred and twenty votes, but it was a win. I've often asked myself if she was crying because we had won, or crying because we hadn't lost and she knew I'd been proved right. And now we were only a handful of delegates short. If we won and Hilda Smith went on to become president, I didn't know if Lisa would forgive me or just hate me more.

From the stage, I could see the tall Secret Service agent whispering in Lisa Henderson's ear. The agent's name was Ernie Hawkins and I knew him well. He was a fanatical triathlete and liked to ask my advice on bicycle equipment and technique. Like most serious bike racers, I was convinced that triathletes were a bunch of idiots when it came to bikes, an opinion I didn't hesitate to share with him. Ernie was off duty and had come to Tipitina's to hear the Mardi Gras Indians and pick up women. That wouldn't be hard for him. Women loved Ernie—a certain kind of woman, at least. The kind who liked a guy who knew several exotic ways to kill people and had enough firepower lying around his apartment in Alexandria, Virginia, to start a small war.

Lisa Henderson scowled as Ernie whispered in her ear. Typical Lisa. Every other woman in New Orleans would be smiling like crazy if Ernie was that close but not Lisa. It was a subject of some speculation among staffers in the vice president's office that she had a secret life as a dominatrix. I hoped like hell it was true. Anything to make her seem more human. A guy could like a dominatrix. But liking Lisa, that was harder.

Then Ginny Tran appeared at the edge of the stage, looking rattled. I'd worked with Ginny since those first days in New Hampshire and couldn't remember ever seeing her look like this, even when every political expert in America thought we were running an expensive funeral and not a campaign. Something had to be bad wrong. Christ. I wondered if maybe Hilda had finally blown up at a reporter asking the same questions over and over. It wasn't easy being just a few delegates shy of winning a nomination, and the idea that you might lose to an idiot like Armstrong George didn't help. In the years I'd spent working with candidates, the one overwhelming lesson I'd learned was that even the best still had moments of terrible vulnerability. And waiting for a bunch of whack-job delegates to decide your fate was a pretty good definition of vulnerability.

None of the Indians noticed me sliding offstage, but they were so much into their own drug-enhanced world, they probably wouldn't have known it if their feet caught on fire. Which actually was one of their favorite closing-number tricks, something they did with the help of New Orleans's expansive fireworks industry. Ginny pulled me into the cramped wings. For a half second I wondered how she got backstage. At the convention, where everybody was crazed about security and prestige, access was everything. For a brief few days, who had what passes to what areas was more important than how much you made or how many years you had played in the NFL. CEOs were known to offer five thousand dollars cash to junior staffers for the passes hanging around their necks. But that's how it was in the bubble of the convention.

“We've got a problem.” Ginny started right in. She was shouting over the sound of the Indians.

“Houston, a problem?” It was an inside campaign joke. Right after our tracking showed us coming in second to Armstrong George in New Hampshire with only four days to go, second being as bad as fourth after coming in third in Iowa, I'd had a late-night screening at our Manchester headquarters of
Apollo
13
. We were all giddy and exhausted, laughing and crying all the way through the movie, and came out with a screw-the-world game face that helped turn it around those last four days. That and Hilda Smith's kick-ass debate performance when she had finally shamed Armstrong George into going on the defensive. It showed us what Hilda Smith might be able to do, and the debate was like a light shining down a path to lead us out of the maze. That was also the night, right after
Apollo
13
,
that Ginny and I slept together for the first time. It had all been her doing, too, which made it all the better. “I knew I wanted you before the campaign was over,” she'd said that night, standing in the snow outside the Quality Inn that we all called the Low Quality End, “and since this campaign might be over in three days, I'd better get with it.”