We're with Nobody (19 page)

What's the best hit you ever saw in football?

What's the best fight you ever watched?

What's the best thing that could happen to bin Laden in hell?

For us, there is no best or worst thing. It's more a question of whether a candidate is solid or not, irrevocably flawed or not. Sometimes we find a silver bullet; oftentimes we don't. It's all the little pieces of shrapnel that add up to paste a candidate in a political campaign. It's rare that we find nothing usable, but it does happen, and when it's the opponent we're researching, finding nothing gives us fits. But when it's our candidate, finding nothing can mean finding someone who, for the most part, is beyond reproach, who keeps us inspired, such as the Midwest nurse who was a political neophyte, with nary one untoward detail in her background, who had dedicated her life to helping people and saw high office as a way to do more.

Our research of her was thorough, but our report was brief. She was a near-perfect candidate, we wrote. Nothing in either her personal or professional life that could hamstring her campaign. She was just a middle-class woman with a family, who spent her career serving others. Her opponent, on the other hand, was a crusty longtime elected state official who had angered and confused voters of both parties with her stances on same-sex marriage, school busing and creationism in schools. Forced to seek other political avenues because of term limits, she was slaughtered on election day by our newcomer nurse. Unfortunately for her and the citizens she served, a political tidal wave four years later pulled her under and cast her out of office, along with many others who simply shared the same letter beside their names.

But with all the negativity that surrounds our work, and political campaigns in general, to find a candidate such as our nurse restores a sense of the goodness about people. The blemishes that permeate everything we do are pushed aside for the moment when someone appears from seemingly nowhere and carries the day for all the right reasons. And maybe people like her are the answer to the question: What's the best thing you ever found?

Alan and I generally don't go to election night parties. They are for the candidates and their campaign workers, official staffers and supporters—people who are part of the concentric circles ringing the candidate, around which we have orbited rather obliquely for a time. One of the few events I attended was supposed to be a victory party for the governor for whom Alan worked at the time. I joined Alan there, and we watched, with growing dismay, as the numbers slowly, inexorably, stacked up against his boss. You watch the votes coming in, see the general drift against you and tell yourself not to jump to conclusions because things can change, can easily swing the other way, after the votes in certain counties and precincts are counted. But in this case the trend never varied. Everyone grew quiet as the evening wore on, standing with their little plates of bland shrimp and toothpick-impaled cheese. I watched on multiple big-screen TVs as the race and Alan's job disintegrated simultaneously.

“Until then, I had fielded a hundred calls in my office at the Capitol on any given day,” I remember him telling me. “But the day after the election my phone rang, precisely, once.”

He had learned, then, the perils of being with someone. All those supposed political allies were gone. The governor still had a few more months in office, but his reign was over, and Alan had to figure out what he would do next. As it happened, that was opposition research with me. It had been a good run.

If accepted, the job offer now before him would result in only a temporary position, like everything else in politics, like our fieldwork for campaigns, like any assignment for a journalist—like American democracy itself, a constantly changing, ephemeral state, lurching this way and that, evolving and embracing this and that, and then moving on.

When my phone rings on Monday morning, I brace myself for the moving-on part. I know the questions with which Alan has wrestled. Would taking a full-time political position in Washington, DC, mean that he had merely been waiting for the right moment to tether himself to someone? Is our view of the world—our roles as independent observers and gatherers of fact—more important than any job, however attractive that job may be? They are the same kinds of questions, in various forms, that anyone who seeks political power must also answer.

“Well, I may be making the biggest mistake of my life, but sometimes you've just gotta say ‘forget it.' I'd have to give up too much—everything, really, and I just can't do that,” he tells me. It pains him for many reasons, he says. He'll be disappointing one of the rare politicians he truly admires, someone who could withstand the scrutiny, who could, as he likes to say, lead the tribe, whom he'd have been proud to work for.

Still, he would have to not only give up opposition research, but relinquish his ability to chronicle the story of American politics through the pages of this book. He'd be required to cancel the contracts for this as well as books he's previously published. Though there is a slim possibility that he might be granted an exception, the administration's position is clearly stated in the offer letter: The job is contingent on his agreeing to get out of all of his publishing contracts, which, viewed from the administration's perspective, is perfectly logical. As Alan points out, if his job were to preserve the power of the presidency, would he be willing to risk hiring someone who planned to publish a book about researching the dark side of politics? He would not, especially going into a presidential election year. So he must ultimately choose whether to let go of his independence, and in the end, he can't. He decides to hold on to this strange alliance: him and me, sometimes working for, sometimes working against, all the while wondering why, with so much at stake, so many people don't care, or seem to care about the wrong things.

“So where are we going next?” he asks me with a laugh that is part resignation, part putting the job offer behind him and part looking forward to the road ahead.

Allegiances are strange animals. They define us. They guide us. They bring about both success and failure. They steer us down the paths of our lives. We used to pledge the most basic of all allegiances as children, and then stopped for the most part when we reached adulthood, as if we no longer needed that reminder of loyalty to God and country. But allegiances exist everywhere; they swirl thick around our heads, tempting us always to choose or to swat them away.

In Pearl, Mississippi, at the Lowry Rifles Camp of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, which meets in the fellowship hall of the small Central Independent Baptist Church, members begin their meetings with an opening prayer and then pledge allegiance to the U.S. flag, then to the Mississippi state flag, then to the Confederate flag, vowing their faithfulness to the cause each represents. Are such polygamous allegiances even possible? Can a person be loyal to two opposing views at the same time, to two opposing governments whose stances, right or wrong, resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people? It's not like having a Toyota Camry and a Ford Taurus in your two-car garage. You can't get behind the wheel of the U.S. Constitution on Saturday and slide into your support for the Southern cause on Sunday. Pick one or don't pick any.

Some allegiances are exclusive. When Republicans in the House of Representatives unveiled their twenty-one-page Pledge to America in 2010 to tell voters what they'd do if they took control of Congress that November, they actually rolled out nothing more than a pledge to others in their party and to the conservative tea party movement that had been wreaking havoc on mainstream GOP candidates. The pledge, which included commitments to extend tax cuts for the wealthy and permanently prohibit taxpayer funding for abortion, vowed to “honor families, traditional marriage, life, and the private and faith-based organizations that form the core of our American values.” Some provisions even matched the hardened positions of the tea partiers. The point is that such pledges are not really promises to “America” and are certainly not intended to include everyone, namely Democrats in this case. They are tools to divide, to differentiate and to destroy. In a political debate during a heated campaign, what could be better than to wave around a sheet of paper, point to your opponent and say, “I took a Pledge to America and he didn't.”

The preamble to the promise included a line that read, “We pledge to honor the Constitution as constructed by its framers.” It included a line that read, “We pledge to make government more transparent in its actions, careful in its stewardship, and honest in its dealings.” It also included this: “We make this pledge bearing true faith and allegiance to the people we represent.” When I read that last line I thought, “Huh? What? Didn't each of those House members already make those pledges when, on their first day in office, they raised their right hands alongside every one of their colleagues and uttered the words, ‘I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States' ”?

To advance politically, you have to be with someone, even if that someone is just you. Your allegiances have to be secure. Your actions must be beyond reproach. You have to care about nothing more than what advances you politically, because that is the source of your power, whether you intend to use it for your own gain or for the betterment of society and the people you serve. Every day, our elected leaders and would-be leaders are offered invitations to form allegiances—from giant corporations with deep pockets, from small business owners with shallow pockets, from seasoned political activists, from fringe groups borne out of the issues of the moment such as health care and immigration reform, from regular folks interested in nothing more than a good job and a better life for their families. The allegiances they choose can keep them in office, send them back home or even put them in jail. For these current and prospective officeholders, it won't take a lifetime to be defined. Alan and I can do it in less than a month.

So we forge ahead with our freelance audit of American politics, trying along the way to explain to curious friends, and to a teenage daughter, exactly what we do. We dig alone, knowing that the outcome of the races we're researching will be determined by the voters who, on their own, will decide who should stay, who should go and who should take the wheel. November brings a new slate of winners and losers, though the election process never really ends. People may tire of that, of the endless campaign, but change is healthy. It keeps the country moving.

For now, the polls have closed, the weathered yard signs have been yanked from the ground and tossed in the garbage and fresh oaths of office—new allegiances—will soon be taken. Yet quietly hanging in the wings like a perpetual shadow is the question that's soon to be asked once more: Who are you with?

Acknowledgments

Alan

When I arrived in Chicago in 1993 for my first oppo research assignment, I had some experience in exhuming buried facts, primarily as a journalist. I was familiar with the machinations of politics, having ended up there as a result of the Mississippi voters giving the heave-ho to my former boss, Governor Ray Mabus, which forced me to cobble together a hybrid career as a freelance writer and researcher. A former compatriot from the governor's office, Jere Nash, who had since become a political consultant, had contracted with Michael and me as his research bad boys, and Chicago was my personal proving ground. I am therefore indebted to Jere for his advice and for getting the postpartum career rolling, as well as to my first newspaper editor, Lee Cearnal, for teaching me how to get to the bottom of things, and to former Attorney General Mike Moore and subsequently, Ray Mabus, for initiating me into the political realm.

Next, thanks go to my friend and fellow writer Shane Dubow, whose idea it was to write a book about doing oppo (I was initially skeptical, but he persisted), and who offered guidance as Michael and I went about developing the concept. From that point we benefited from the insights and ministrations of our discerning and enthusiastic literary agent, Patty Moosbrugger, as well as the thoughtful, erudite and incredibly-easy-to-work-with Stephanie Meyers, our editor at HarperCollins. Finally, Michael and I remain deeply indebted—indentured, even—to the complicated, unpredictable and occasionally insane political system of the United States, which provides all the raw material an oppo researcher or a writer could want. And while it should not be confused with anything like gratitude, I feel we must acknowledge the general drift of American politics today, toward political performances that chew the scenery and play to the peanut gallery, with reckless disregard—on both sides of the footlights—for the truth. That, more than anything, offers continuing inspiration to Michael and me to find out what's really going on.

Michael

Often I have to peer over my shoulder and ask, “How did I even get here?” The answer, of course, is found in the names of the many friends, family members and colleagues who led, pushed, cajoled, conspired, inspired and traveled with me to this place. It's been quite a party.

To begin at the beginning of my political beginnings, I owe gratitude to Kane Ditto, one of the great unsung mayors of Jackson, Mississippi, who allowed me to ply my fledging love of campaign research in his re-election bid so long ago, tasting victory for the first time. Jay Neel, political consultant and longtime friend, who always talked up our ability to get the job done, and who knows everything about the Gettysburg battlefield, which is reason alone to recognize someone. My downtown family who has been with me from the first chapter. Craig Noone, a bright ornament who left behind a spirit that will always be wtih us. And Kate Royals, our steely-eyed guardian of facts.

While I echo Alan's acknowledgements, I must thank Alan himself. With three books under his belt, he guided me along this boulder-strewn path, forced on numerous occasions to endure the phrase, “I'm stuck and I'm going to get a shot of tequila.” By the time we're through, he warned, you'll be sick of reading your own words. He was right, so I just read his.

Great stories never grow old. Claudia Levy convinced me a while back that I possessed an ability to tell a good one—and never grew tired of listening. She was a life preserver in a hurricane. Johnny, Rick and Sam, my lifelong friends, have always just been there. My two kids, Michael and Joanna, each in their own way, inspired so many of the words and thoughts presented here, and have been my breath.

Lastly, I must tip my cap to the most conservative Republican I've ever known; a woman who had to reconcile a mother's pride that her middle son could actually write a coherent sentence with the realization that he had somehow become a Democrat. And this acknowledgment should be construed as everything like gratitude.