Jim was beautiful. He was so much more than the usual politician. His speech in Denver on uniting the rich and poor into a coalition that would solve the problems of the nation brought him as much attention for its style as its content. His position papers on R&D, the economy, tax reform, foreign trade, were all called “brilliant” and “pace-setting.” A crusty old economist from Yale, no less, told the press, “That man has the mind of an economist.” A compliment, from him. A half-dozen of Nader’s Raiders joined the Halliday staff because they felt, “He’s the only candidate who gives a damn about the average guy.”
A political campaign is really a means for the candidate to show himself to the people. And vice versa. He must get to know the people, all the people, their fears, their prides, their voices and touch and smell. If he can’t feel for them, can’t reach their pulse and match it with his own heartbeat, all the fancy legwork and lovely ghostwriting in the universe can’t help him.
Jim had it. He grew stronger every minute. He kept a backbreaking pace with such ease and charm that we would have wondered how he could do it, if we had had time enough to catch our own breaths. He was everywhere, smiling, confident, energetic, concerned. He identified with people and they identified with him. It was uncanny. He could be completely at ease with a Missouri farmer and a New York corporation chairman. And it wasn’t phony; he could feel for people.
And they felt for him.
And I fell for him; thoroughly, completely, hopelessly. He realized it. I was sure he did. There were times when the electric current flowed between us so strongly that I could barely stand it. He’d catch my eye and grin at me, and even though there were ninety other people in the room, for that instant everything else went blank.
But then an hour later, or the next day, he’d be completely cold. As if I didn’t exist. . . or worse yet, as if I was just another cog in his machine. He’d still smile, he’d say the same things and look exactly the same. But the spark between us just wouldn’t be there.
It was driving me crazy. I put it down to the pressures of the campaign. He couldn’t have any kind of private life in this uproar. I scolded myself, Stop acting like a dumb broad!
Corio’s thesis arrived three days before the California primary. I didn’t even get a chance to unwrap it.
Jim took California by such a huge margin that the TV commentators were worriedly looking for something signify cant to say by ten that evening. It was no contest at all.
As we packed up for the last eastern swing before the national convention, I hefted Corio’s bulky thesis. Still unopened. I was going to need a translator, I realized; his doctoral prose would be too technical for me to understand. We were heading for Washington, and there was a science reporter there that I knew would help me.
Besides, I needed to get away from Jim Halliday for a while, a day or so at least. I was on an emotional roller coaster, and I needed some time to straighten out my nerves.
The phone was ringing as the bellman put my bags down in my room at the Park Sheraton. It was Sheila. “How are you?” she asked.
She never calls for social chatter. “What do you want, Sheila?” I asked wearily. It had been a long, tiring flight from the coast, and I knew my time zones were going to be mixed up thoroughly.
“Have you found anything. . . clay feet, I mean?”
The bellman stood waiting expectantly beside me. I started fumbling with my purse while I wedged the phone against my shoulder.
“Listen, Marie,” Sheila was saying. “He’s too good to be true. Nobody can be a masterful politician and a brilliant economist and a hero to both the ghetto and the suburbs. It’s physically impossible.”
I popped a handful of change from my wallet and gave it over to the bellman. He glanced at the coins without smiling and left.
“He’s doing it,” I said into the phone. “He’s putting it all together.”
“Marie,” she said with great patience, as I flopped on the bed, “he’s a puppet. A robot that gets wound up every morning and goes out spouting whatever they tell him to say. Find out who’s running him, who’s making all those brilliant plans, who’s making his decisions for him.”
“He makes his own decisions,” I said, starting to feel a little desperate. If someone as intelligent as Sheila couldn’t believe in him, if politics had sunk so low in the minds of the people that they couldn’t recognize a knight in brilliant armor when he paraded across their view. . . then what would happen to this nation?
“Marie,” she said again, with her Momma-knows-best tone, “listen to me. Find out who’s running him. Break the story in Now, and you’ll come back on the staff as a full editor. With a raise. Promise.”
I hung up on her.
She was right in a way. Jim was superman. More than human. If only he weren’t running for President! If only we could—I shut off that line of thought. Fantasizing wasn’t going to help either one of us. Lying there on the hotel bed, I felt a shiver go through me. It wasn’t from the air-conditioning.
Even with translation into language I could understand, Corio’s thesis didn’t shed any light on anything. It was all about genetics and molecular manipulation. I didn’t get a chance to talk with the guy who had digested it for me. We met at National Airport, he sprinting for one plane and me for another.
My flight took me to San Francisco, where the national convention was due to open in less than a week.
The few days before a national convention opens are crazy in a way nothing else on Earth can match. It’s like knowing you’re going to have a nervous breakdown and doing everything you can to make sure it comes off on schedule. You go into a sort of masochistic training, staying up all night, collaring people for meetings and caucuses, yelling into phones, generally behaving like the world is going to come to an end within the week—and you’ve got to help make it happen.
Jim’s staff was scattered in a half-dozen hotels around San Francisco. I got placed in the St. Francis, my favorite. But there wasn’t any time for enjoying the view.
Jim had a picturephone network set up for the staff. For two solid days before the convention officially convened, I stayed in my hotel room and yet was in immediate face-to-face contact with everyone I had to work with. It was fantastic, and it sure beat trying to drive through those jammed, hilly streets.
Late on the eve of the convention’s opening gavel—it was morning, actually, about two-thirty—I was restless and wide awake. The idea wouldn’t have struck me, I suppose, if Sheila hadn’t needled me in Washington. But it did hit me, and I was foolish enough to act on the impulse.
None of Jim’s brain-trusters are here, I told myself. They’re all safe in their homes, far from this madhouse. But what happens if we need to pick at one of their mighty intellects at some godawful hour? Can we reach them?
If I hadn’t been alone and nervous and feeling sorry for myself, sitting in that hotel room with nothing but the picturephone to talk to, I wouldn’t have done it. I knew I was kidding myself as I punched out the number for Professor Marvin Carlton, down in La Jolla. I could hear Sheila’s listen to Momma inside my head.
To my surprise, Carlton’s image shaped up on the phone’s picture-screen.
“Yes?” he asked pleasantly. He was sitting in what looked like a den or study—lots of books and wood. There was a drink in his hand and a book in his lap.
“Professor. . .” I felt distinctly foolish. “I’m with Governor Halliday’s staff. . .”
“Obviously. No one else has the number for this TV phone he gave me.”
“Oh.”
“What can I do for you. . . or the governor? I was just about to retire for the night.”
Thinking with the speed of a dinosaur, I mumbled, “Oh well, we were just. . . urn, checking the phone connection. . . to make certain we can reach you when we have to. . .”
