The John Milton Series: Books 1-3 (71 page)

The room was full. Crawford guessed there were five hundred people inside. There were a few curious students, not Robinson’s normal constituency, but Crawford had insisted. It made him look more hip and helped in his campaign to broaden his appeal to a younger audience. He knew, too, that the governor was occasionally prone to phoning it in if the room was too friendly; it did him no harm at all to think that there was the possibility of awkward questions in the Q&A that would follow his speech. The rest of the audience were naturally right-leaning voters from the area, all of them given a little vim and vigour by the dozen or so backers that the campaign brought with them on the bus. They were doing their thing now, hooting and hollering as they watched a video of the governor’s achievements as it played on the large video screen that had been fixed to the wall.

The video ended, and Robinson walked through a storm of applause to the lectern.

“Thank you, Woodside. Thank you so much. The sign over there that says, ‘Thank you, Joe,’ no, I thank
you
. You are what keeps me going, keeps so many of us going. Your love of country keeps us going. Thank you so much. Woodside, you are good people. You are all good people. Thank you.”

Crawford looked around the room: five hundred avid faces hanging on every word.

“So what brought us here today? Why aren’t we catching a game, the 49ers or the Raiders, grilling up some venison and corn on the cob, maybe some steak with some friends on this Labor Day weekend? What brought us together is a love of our country, isn’t it? Because we can see that America is hurting. We’re not willing to just sit back and watch her demise through some ‘fundamental transformation’ of the greatest country on earth. We’re here to stop that transformation and to begin the restoration of the country that we love. We’re here because America is at a tipping point. America faces a crisis. And it’s not a crisis like perhaps a summer storm that comes in from the Pacific—the kind that moves in and hits hard, but then it moves on. No, this kind will relentlessly rage until we restore all that is free and good and right about America. It’s not just fear of a double-dip recession. And it’s not even the shame of a credit downgrade for the first time in U.S. history. It’s deeper than that. This is a systemic crisis due to failed policies and incompetent leadership. And we’re going to speak truth today. It may be hard-hitting, but we’re going to speak truth because we need to start talking about what hasn’t worked, and we’re going to start talking about what will work for America. We will talk truth.”

Robinson stopped. He waited. One of the women in the audience called out, “We’re listening!”

He grinned. “Now, some of us saw this day coming. It was three years ago on this very day that I gave my acceptance speech after I was re-elected as governor. And in my speech I asked: ‘When the cloud of rhetoric has passed, when the roar of the crowd fades away… what exactly is the president’s plan? What does he actually seek to accomplish after he’s done turning back the waters and healing the planet?’ The answer is to make government bigger, and take more of your money, and give you more orders from Washington, and to reduce the strength of America in a dangerous world. I spoke of this, but back then it was only my words that you had to go by. Now you have seen the proof yourself. The president didn’t have a record back then, but he sure does now, and that’s why we’re here today. He pledged to fundamentally transform America. And for all the failures and the broken promises, that’s the one thing he has delivered on. We’ve transformed from a country of hope to one of anxiety.

“Today, one in five working-age men are out of work. One in seven Americans are on food stamps. Thirty percent of our mortgages are underwater. In parts of Michigan and California, they’re suffering from unemployment numbers that are greater than during the depths of the Great Depression. The president promised to cut the deficit in half, and instead he turned around and he tripled it. And now our national debt is growing at $3 million a minute. That’s $4.25 billion a day. Mr. President, is this what you call ‘winning the future’? I call it losing—losing our country and with it the American dream. Mr. President, these people—these good, hard-working Americans—feel that ‘fierce urgency of now.’ But do you feel it, sir?”

He went on in the same vein for another ten minutes. It was a bravura display, yet again. In his two years as Robinson’s chief of staff, Crawford had probably heard him speak a thousand times, and that, right there, was another in a long line of brilliant speeches. It wasn’t so much the content. That didn’t matter, not at this stage of the game. It was the way he effortlessly connected to his audience, made them feel like he was one of them, the kind of fellow you could imagine having a beer with, shooting the breeze and setting the world to rights. That was what summed up the man and made him so exciting. He measured his audience so well and connected so precisely, and more incredible even than that was the fact that he did it all so effortlessly. It wasn’t a conscious thing, a talent he calibrated and deployed with care and consideration; it was totally natural, so much so that he didn’t even seem to realise what he was doing. It was an impressive bit of politics.

He stepped away from the lectern and made his way along the front row of the folding chairs, pumping offered hands, sometimes taking them in both of his and beaming that brilliant megawatt smile. They were all over him, clapping his back, hugging him. He didn’t back off or fend them away, the way that some politicians would; instead, he hugged them back, seeming to get as much satisfaction from touching them, draping his big arm over their shoulders, as they got from him.

Crawford watched and smiled and shook his head in admiration.

No doubt about it: Joseph Jack Robinson was a natural.

He stayed with them for half an hour, listening to their stories, answering their questions and signing autographs. The principal pitched him about the need for more money to fix a leaking roof, and the governor said that increasing funding for education was one of his campaign priorities; that was news to Crawford, who tapped out a note in his phone to remind himself to look into that later. Then they all followed him back downstairs and out to the campaign bus. Crawford and Catherine Williamson, the press manager, trailed the crowd. Catherine looked at Crawford and raised her manicured eyebrow, an inverted tick of amusement that the governor had done it again. Crawford looked back at her and winked. J.J. did that, now and again, surprised even the staffers who had been with him the longest. It seemed to be happening more often these days. As the speeches got more important, as the television crews that tailed them everywhere grew in number, as his polling numbers solidified and accrued, Robinson pulled the rabbit out of the hat again and again and again.

It was why they were all so excited.

This felt real.

It felt like they were with a winner.

Crawford followed the governor up the steps and onto the bus.

“Great speech,” he told him as he opened his briefcase and took out the papers he needed for the trip.

“You think?”

“Are you kidding? You had them eating out of your hand.”

Robinson shrugged and smiled. Crawford found that habit of his a little annoying, the aw-shucks modesty that was as false as the gleaming white veneers on his teeth. The governor knew he was good. Everything was done for a reason: every grin, every knowing wink, every handshake and backslap and beam of that radiant smile. Some of the rivals he had crushed on the way had been good, too, but not as good as him. They had a nagging sense of the ersatz that stuck with their audiences and curdled over time, seeds of doubt that grew into reasons why the voters chose Robinson instead of them when they finally got to the polling booths. The governor didn’t suffer from that. He was a good man, completely trustworthy, honest to a fault, or, more relevantly, that was what they thought. The greatest expression of his genius was to make the whole performance look so effortlessly natural.

“Those questions on immigration,” Robinson began.

“Go vague on the numbers. We don’t want to get caught out.”

“Not the numbers. The message. It’s still holding up?”

“People seem to agree with you.”

“Damn straight they do. If I can’t say it like it is, what’s the point?”

“I know—and I agree.”

“These fucking wetbacks,” he said with a dismissive flick of his wrist, “taking jobs that belong to Americans; damn straight we should be sending them back.”

Crawford looked around, making sure they weren’t overhead. “Easy,” he advised.

“I know, I know. Moderation. I’m not an idiot, Arlen.” He dropped down into the chair opposite and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. “Where next?”

“Radio interview,” Catherine said. “And we’re an hour late already.”

Robinson was suddenly on the verge of anger. “They know that?” he demanded.

“Know what?”

“That we’re gonna be late.”

“Don’t worry. I told them. They’re cool.”

They were all used to his temper. He switched unpredictably, with even the smallest provocation, and then switched back again with equal speed. It was unnerving and disorientating for the newest members of the entourage, who had not had the opportunity to acclimate themselves to the vagaries of his character, but once you realised it was usually a case of bark over bite, it was just another vector to be weighed in the calculus of working for the man.

She disappeared further up the bus.

“No need to snap at her,” Crawford said.

“You know I hate being late. My old man used to drill it into me—”

“You’d rather be thirty minutes early than a minute late. I know. You’ve told me about a million times. How’s the head?”

“Still pretty sore. You should’ve told me it was time to go.”

“I did.”

“Not early enough. We should have left about an hour before we did. You didn’t insist.”

“Next time, I will.”

“We probably shouldn’t even have been there.”

“No,” he said, “we should.”

The party had been a little more raucous than Crawford would have preferred, but it was full of donors and potential donors, and it would’ve been unseemly to have given it the bum’s rush or to have left too early. The hour that they had been there had given the governor plenty of time to drink more than he should have, and Crawford had spent the evening at his side, a little anxious, trying to keep him on message and making sure he didn’t do anything that would look bad if it was taken out of context. It had been a long night for him, too, and he knew he would have to find the energy from somewhere to make it through to the end of the day.

“You get the Secret Service if you have to. Tell them to drag me out.” He paused theatrically. “Do I have a detail yet?”

“Not yet,” Crawford said, playing along.

“You know what I’m looking forward to most? The codename. You know what they called Kennedy?”

“No, sir.”

“LANCER. And Reagan?”

“No, sir.”

“RAWHIDE. What do you reckon they’ll call me?”

“You want me to answer that? Really?”

“No.” He grinned. “Better not.”

CRAWFORD SETTLED BACK in his seat as the bus pulled out of the school car park, closed his eyes, and allowed himself to reminisce. They had come a long way. He remembered the first time he had met J.J. God, he thought, it must have been at Georgetown almost twenty years ago. He had been involved in politics ever since he’d arrived on campus, standing for various posts and even getting elected to a couple of them. J.J. had been the same. They had both been in the same fraternities—Phi Beta Kappa and Kappa Kappa Psi—and they had served on the same committees.

Eventually, they stood against each other for president of the Students’ Association. After a convivial two-week campaign, Robinson had defeated him. But defeated was too polite a word; it had been an annihilation. A good old-fashioned straight-up-and-down slobberknocker. Crawford knew the reason. Joe had always been a handsome boy, something of a surfer dude back in those days, and the aura of charisma that clung to him seemed so dense as to be able to deflect all of Crawford’s clever thrusts. It was like a suit of armour. The campaign was civil enough so as to require them to temper their attacks, but the list of deficiencies in his opponent that he had hoped to exploit—his vanity, his privileged background, the suspicion that he was doing this for his résumé rather than from a spirit of public service—were all neutralised the moment he switched on his smile and dazzled his audience with a serving of his West Coast charm. They had debated each other twice, and both times, even the most biased of observers would have had to admit that Arlen had destroyed J.J. on the issues at hand. It didn’t seem to make the slightest scrap of difference; J.J.’s election victory was the largest landslide in college history.

It was a good lesson learned: style trumped substance every single time. It was ever thus.

Crawford retired from student politics with good grace. He was better as the man in the background, the overseer with the long view to better plot strategy and tactics, and he was happy to cede the spotlight to characters like J.J. They had both become friendly during their jousting, despite the occasional low blow, and Crawford had agreed to work with him to make his term of office productive and useful. By and large, it was. They stayed in loose touch as they went their separate ways on graduation.

Crawford was always going to go into the law. His father was an attorney, and he had known that he would follow in his footsteps since he was young. He made a career for himself in property and taxation, esoteric subjects that were complicated enough to be remunerative for the few who could master them. His firm served the nascent technology industry in Silicon Valley, and his roster of clients included Microsoft and Apple. He did well. There was the big house in Palo Alto, the BMW in the driveway, and a boat. The trophy wife who wouldn’t have looked twice at him if they had met at college. Two healthy and happy kids. And it still wasn’t enough. Law was never what he would have described as fun or even satisfying, even though he was good at it. Eventually, each month became a long and depressing slog that was made bearable only by the massive pay check at the end of it.