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Richard stretched himself out on the floor over by the wet bar. Everyone else was in those ugly, low-backed Holiday Inn "comfortable" chairs, except for Howard Ferguson, who had pulled the desk chair over and was leaning forward, dangling copies of Manhattan magazine and The Wall Street Journal JerryRosen's column with Ozio's attack on Stanton, and the "Washington Wire" item--over the coffee table. Howard ran the show: "So: Orlando Ozio," he said, playing with the alliteration, making the whole thing seem trivial. He was wearing a wrinkled gray suit and burgundy cable-stitch pullover, with his trademark Liberty flower-print tie loosened a bit, as if he'd just come from the office. He was a very cool customer. "Anyone have any brilliant suggestions?"

"Take him on," said Arthur Kopp immediately, and to no one's surprise. Arthur was the founder and director of Moderate Democrats of America. He was short, chesty and brush-cut; he went through life with the bearing and subtlety of a noncommissioned officer from the Deep South, a corporal perhaps--a brilliant piece of theater on his part, since he was a rabbi's son from Minneapolis. No one liked him much, but MoDems had been a useful podium for the governor--he always gave a good speech at their national conference and made a splash with the national media. Kopp's presence now was a subtle, interesting call: he wasn't part of the inner circle--he wasn't a Stanton kind of guy; the chemistry wasn't there (with Susan, especially, who worked overtime to steer clear of him)--but if it was going to be war with Ozio, we'd need to mobilize the moderates in the party. Of course, if it didn't turn out to be war with Ozio, Kopp would be faded back into the chorus.

Stanton was quietly obsessed about whether it would be better or worse, long-terns, to run against Ozio. "Figure it this way," he'd said on one of our small-plane trips that fall. "If Ozio's in, we run straight up the middle--which makes it easier in the general election, if we beat him. And if we beat him, we'd be a monster, a giant killer--right, Henry? 'Course, we may not beat him. Though if we ran up the middle, and lost, he'd almost have to pick us for number two. 'Course, if he ever did pick us for number two, and we had the misfortune of winning, I'd spend the next four years pullin' stilettos out my back. I mean, whut's the word for pincushion in Italian?"

The question was modulation. How sharply to distinguish yourself from Ozio, how tough to run. These were issues that did not dent Arthur Kopp's consciousness. "This is a contest between the future and the past of this party, and Ozio ain't the future," he said. "If you take him on now, you can raise your profile, define yourself as the anti-Ozio, separate yourself from the crowd."

"You don't want to define yourself as too anti-Ozio," Arlen Sporken jumped in, the anti-Kopp. Sporken--Mr. Crisco, Richard called bins--would have been loath to draw too sharp a distinction even if his media consulting firm didn't represent some of the deepest, stiffest old-left interests in the party (who doubtless figured his all-American blond hair and soft Mississippi drawl gave them publi
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over, made them seem Middle American). "Remember, you're gonna want to have Democrats voting for you in these primaries. You're gonna want to lead this whole party, not just MoDems." "But you can't just let him take you apart like this," Kopp came back. "First, he cuts you up in Rosen's column. Then he has you beg-gin' him for a place on the ticket in the Journal."

"He's makin' me look like a wuss," Stanton agreed. "How's this playin' with the New York money, Fergie?"

"He may be overplaying his hand," Howard Ferguson replied. "I mean, why's he so interested in cutting you up? Makes you look a little stronger."

"You'd look stronger still if you took him on," said Arthur Kopp, relentless, artless, obnoxious. "You can make this thing into a two-man race right now. You take Orlando Ozio on and you'll see the world open up to you--the media, the money guys. I called Bill Price in Chicago, Len Sewell out in California--they're looking at you and Charlie Martin, they're waitin' to see who's going to come out of the gate as the real New Democrat. There are--
,
"No, no," the governor was shouting, "--throw it, throw it. Shit! You see that? You were saying?"

"The money guys don't vote in primaries," Sporken said. The governor's football interruption had worked, subtly, against Kopp, whose passion for MoDem money was clashing, spiritually, with the governor's African rooting interests. It was one of Stanton's more endearing qualities: he always, reflexively, pulled for the brothers. "Governor," Sporken continued, "you've spent all this time working the teachers, the geezers, the party's natural base--they like you, but they love Ozio. You don't want to risk that. You've got the Mods, you need to solidify the base. And what if Ozio doesn't get in? You want to get into a pissing match with him now, when you may need him later?" Kopp and Sporken went on, fiercely: two unsubtle fat boys, whipping each other, while the rest of us watched them the way the governor watched sports--following it, but not too closely, waiting for the next thing to happen. Sporken, I realized, was getting the worst of it, hurting himself merely by engaging Kopp, marginalizing himself--becoming a spokesman for one wing of the party, just as Kopp was. In a situation like this, you wanted someone with perspective as you
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edia guy, someone who could make a case without becoming it: the inner circle had to transcend all arguments. I realized then, with some reFef, that Sporken might not have all the wheels and gears necessary for his role. He might have to be . . . augmented, or paved over, before it was done. (I had a sudden, slightly orgasmic tingle: Was this the way Stanton was seeing it? Was I really beginning to think like him?) I looked over at Richard. He had snagged some couch pillows and was lying flat out, head on the pillows, arms crossed behind his head, deeply into his opaque mode, eyes closed behind his thick glasses. He hated them both, of course--Sporken and Kopp. He hated Sporken's buttery glad-handing; he hated Kopp's lack of irony and grace. At that moment he probably was hating Kopp a bit more, because he knew he was going to have to agree with him, and he couldn't stand the idea of having to side with anyone so unsubtle.

Howard Ferguson was sitting back, a slight smile on his face, not doing all that much to control this, perhaps figuring--although you could never really be sure with Howard--that if Sporken and Kopp killed each other off, we'd be rid of both. The governor hadn't raised any objections. (It was a pretty good football game.) But it was getting late and nothing was happening. Susan, finally, took the next step: "You with us, Richard?" She asked. "Or is it past your bedtime?" "Ma'am?" Richard asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Your thoughts, Richard?"

"Pollster!" Richard said, up on an elbow, addressing Leon Birnbaum, who had been sitting quietly, a thick looseleaf on his lap. Birnbaum was a little guy with curly blond hair; he had worked on Stanton campaigns for a decade and was absolutely crucial. Leon visited the Mansion from time to time and would sit with the governor late into the night, going through the cross-tabs, road-testing phrases (rather than ideas), showing him what worked and what didn't. Everything Leon said in these late-night sessions seemed insidious, conspiratorial. He spoke soft, barely audible deep Bronx: "See--`responsibility' is great when you're talkin' about welfare. 'Fair share'--awesome. Great for fat cats, too. Works both ways: Rich-and-poor! 'Do their fair share.' 'Give their fair share.' Same difference, y'know? You match 'em up: righteous us against piggy them. Rich-and-poor! See? You don't need to get too specific. The folks will extrapolate--`responsibility' sound
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oth tough and moral, without being primitive, y'know? Y'see?" He'd giggle: heh-heh, heh-heh. "You want to use value words. You connect midbrain, subcortical--you want to hit them down under, in their lizard brains, access their personal reptiles . . . heh-heh . . . where they don't think--where they just, y'know, react--with value words." Stanton loved that stuff. Leon was another one who was a lot more talkative one-on-one with the governor than in groups. In fact, this was the first time I'd seen him in a group and he hadn't said anything yet.

"What say you, pollster?" Richard asked.

"'Bout what?"

"We are where in New Hampshire?"

"Four." Leon smiled devilishly. He sensed where Richard was going.

"And Governor Ozio?"

"Twenty-eight, heh-heh, heh-heh."

"And Governor Ozio is willing to acknowledge our presence in this race? He has to be the stupidest fucking Eye-talian since Richard Burton fell for Cleopatra." Richard crossed his arms behind his head again and closed his eyes.

"Meaning what, Richard?" Susan asked.

"Meaning you take him on," Kopp said. "You define this thing right now."

"But you have to do it carefully," Sporken said, folding his hand. "Hold the fucking mayo, Arlen," Richard said.

"Well, how would you do it, Richard?" Susan asked.

"Drop something into a speech. Make sure Rosen and a few others--that slug at the Post, what'shername--know it's cumin'. Doesn't have to be huge. Just get Ozio's attention, let him know we came to play. Let the scorps know the governor'i got some hide on him, too." Richard called reporters scorpions--scorps for short. "Let's see where Ozio wants to take this. I'm kinds gettin' bored waitin' for that sadassed old dog to make his intentions known."

"And if he escalates?" Sporken asked.

"He's even stupider than I think he is," Richard said. "He tells America he's more concerned about a governor no one ever heard of than he is about the flicking president of the United States." "Henry?" It was the governor. "You have any thoughts about where and when?"

So it was done.

We tried to make it as classy as possible. The University of New Hampshire. A student forum on the future of the welfare state. We'd stick in the knife between points five and six, go straight at Ozio's New American Community. The governor would say, "There are those, including some who contemplate entering this race [We gave Stanton the option of adding, "and contemplate, and contemplate . . .1 who believe you can have a new American spirit of community but have it without an equal sense of responsibility, without asking the same standard of moral behavior from the less fortunate that we demand of each other--and which we should demand of the wealthiest Americans as well, I might add. It is simply misguided not to demand that each of us do our fair share. It is as patronizing as our opponents who say--well, usually they don't have the courage to say it, they merely imply--that it's useless to help the poor, there's nothing we can do for them."

Kopp was furious. His reptile brain was apparently less subtle than the ones Leon connected with in focus groups. "That's all you're gonna do?" He stormed. "Why not throw down the gauntlet? Make it clear that this election is going to be a contest between the future and the past of the Democratic--"

"Because it isn't, Arthur," I said. "The primaries may turn out to be. But the election is between us and the Republicans."

"You're sounding like that jerk Sporken."

"This is what we're doing, Arthur."

We set up an open phone line from the microphone at UNH to anyone who wanted to hear it. We told Jerry Rosen, and several other New York types, that Stanton was going to have something interesting to say about Ozio. We told some of the Washington scorps they might want to listen in, too--though we weren't too specific on the Ozio part of the program. "You want me to listen to a welfare reform speech on the telephone?" A. P Caulley of The New York Times asked. He was smart, but better known for oenophilia than initiative. "Do you think this election is going to be about welfare reform?"

"Well, that's part of it," I said. "The folks seem interested. What do you think it's going to be about?"

"What it's always about," he said. "Sex and violence."

And he was right: this was about violence.

Stanton didn't say very much as we rode the van to Durham. He didn't even play any music. He flipped through the cards for the speech, noodling with this and that, crossing out and overwriting with his felt-tip. I couldn't tell what, if anything, he was doing to the Ozio card. And then he did something odd. He asked me something personal: "Henry, what are you doing for Thanksgiving?"

It was two days away. We were heading back to Mammoth Falls right after the speech. I had thought about visiting Mother and her new husband, Arnie Nadouyan, in Bel Air--a Hollywood Thanksgiving: turkey and sprouts by the pool, starlets and equipment. (Arnie always had the latest in clients and electronics.) But I hadn't thought very hard about it, and now it was too late to make reservations. I'd figured I'd see what the muffins were doing.

"Would you be able to join Susan, Jackie and me at the Mansion?" he asked.

"Absolutely," I said.

"You know," he said, suddenly deepening his voice and giving me his most intense look, "we've kinda come to think of you as family." "Yuh," I said, swallowing hard, hoping to gain control of my voice. "It would mean a lot to me, Governor."

And then we were there, at UNH.

And he whiffed on it.

He skipped the Ozio card. He didn't mention Ozio at all. He delivered a standard welfare reform speech--badly. The kids snoozed. I paced the back of the hall, feeling dog-tired and slightly sick. Stanton did rally during the Q&A. He was absolutely brilliant on a question that came out of nowhere, about the similarities between the black underclass and the Irish underclass of the nineteenth century. His belated virtuosity pissed me off.