The 45th, page 21
“Yes, odd; because the ads attacking you are coming from sources over which he has no control, but the ads attacking him - ones that suggest that ‘We don’t know anything about him’ - I think that is the line used in all of them - are paid for by your campaign. At the end of each of them you say you ‘approve of this message.’ These ads seem to suggest some dark conspiracy, that Julian Drake is a kind of Manchurian Candidate, controlled by alien forces trying to take over the country. My question, again, is whether you think you owe Congressman Drake an apology of the sort he just gave you?”
Hillary Constable leaned forward, closer to the camera, closer to the millions watching, waiting for her response.
“I have been in public life for more than forty years, from the time I first worked as a volunteer in a presidential campaign, through my years in the senate and then as secretary of state. Everything I stand for, every position I have taken, every bill I introduced, every bill I voted for, every speech I gave, every article I wrote - all of it is there, a matter of public record. There are no questions, no serious questions, about what I believe, what I would do as president. The same thing cannot be said about the other side. If you are going to run for the presidency, if you are going to ask the American people to entrust you with the most powerful office in the world, the people have a right to know everything about you.”
She held both hands, palms up, evenly balanced, and then, as she spoke, raised one while, at a corresponding rate, she lowered the other.
“You have to weigh these things against each other: what you know about one candidate, what you do not know about the other; what one candidate has done consistently through long years of public service, what the other candidate did, once, twelve years ago, and then disappeared.”
“Disappeared?” asked Julian, when Rosenthal gave him chance to reply. “That’s right, I did; I disappeared from Washington and all its endless bickering. I did not disappear from life. I spent the better part of the last twelve years like the rest of you,” he went on, looking directly into the camera, “living my own, private, life; doing what I could to raise two children, doing what I could to become a better man and a better citizen. That may seem like disappearance to someone who spends all their time running for office, trying to figure out what everyone else thinks so they can claim to think the same thing, but then there may be something to be said for trying to learn all you can, including, most importantly, how to think for yourself.”
Cromwell turned to Rachel Good for the next question.
“This question is for Congressman Drake. Secretary Constable has said that American support for Israel is unconditional, that when it comes to our policy in the Middle Eat we should never do anything that endangers the security of Israel. Is this also your position, and if not, why not?”
Julian narrowed his eyes into a look of intense concentration. His chin came up a slight fraction of an inch.
“A president of the United States has one, and only one, unconditional obligation, and that is to pursue what is in the best interest of the United States. That may, or may not, be consistent with support for Israel - or any other nation. I understand that some believe we should never do anything that Israel doesn’t want. A president doesn’t have the right to think that way. We do not elect someone president to let the leader of another country - Israel or anyone else - decide what our foreign policy should be. It would be well to remember that without American assistance - the decision made by President Truman in l948 - Israel would not have become a nation. We owe Israel what we owe every other country: the honesty of our opinion and respect for theirs, nothing more and nothing less.
“You asked what my policy would be in the Middle East. I will answer with a single word: disengagement. What happens in the Middle East has to be decided by the people who live there; it cannot be decided by us. What have we done? - Destroyed Iraq in retaliation for an attack with which they were never involved, created hatred that will last for generations, and worse even than that, created in this country a belief that we somehow have the obligation to sacrifice the lives of thousands, tens of thousands, of our own sons and daughters, and spend ourselves into bankruptcy every time some new force arises that threatens what we erroneously think our interests in the region. This country has to decide something no one talks about: are we going to be an empire or a republic, a country that believes it has to use military force to impose its will, or a country that leads by our example, the example of what a free people can do of its own volition.”
Constable saw her opening, and with catlike cunning tried to take advantage of it.
“I’m sorry that Congressman Drake doesn’t think that we, and our closest ally, Israel, face serious danger from the rogue nations and terrorist organizations in the Middle East. If he had been paying more attention to what is going on in the world, perhaps he might have noticed that there are every day threats against Israel’s very existence, threats to wipe Israel off the face of the map, and that the same people making these threats would destroy the United States if they were given half a chance. This is a dangerous world we live in. We aren’t living in the l8th century anymore. It doesn’t take weeks to cross the Atlantic; it’s only minutes once a missile is launched.”
Cromwell started to ask the next question, but Julian interrupted.
“Despite what the Secretary seems to think, the United States cannot solve every problem in the world. We cannot fight other people’s wars. Ask yourself this question: What good have we done in the Middle East?” Turning away from the camera, he faced Constable directly. “Do you really think that a civilization that has been in existence for almost fifteen hundred years is suddenly going to give up everything it believes, discard everything they have been taught, because deep down they really want to be just like us? Do you really think that you can bring them into what we like to call the modern age by bombing them into submission? What have we really accomplished, except to make us more enemies than we had before? Thanks in no small measure to what we have done there, much of the Middle East is now involved in civil war. Isis, which is all anyone seems to want to talk about, is not a state, it is a movement, and you are not going to stop a movement - you will only help it grow - by attacking it as if it were a conventional military force. The people of the Middle East have to decide what they want and whether it is worth fighting for.”
“So you wouldn’t do anything to help Israel?” Constable shot back. “You wouldn’t do anything to help keep the peace in the Middle East?”
“Keep the…!” exclaimed Julian with a look of astonishment. “There hasn’t been peace in the Middle East since - you tell me! Since oil was discovered . And Israel - Israel will always be given our help against invasion or attack; but this is not a one way street. Israel has it’s interests and we have ours. Serious friendships require serious respect for the integrity and intelligence of the other side. It requires at a minimum that you do not attempt to influence the domestic politics of the other country. That is really all I am going to say about that.”
Constable was up on the balls of her feet, her eyes shining with all the certainty of a quick victory.
“It was the Republican Speaker of the House who invited the Israeli prime minister to address Congress on why the treaty with Iran should be rejected. You are the Republican candidate for president. Are you now trying to distance yourself from what your party did?”
Julian Drake seemed amused. He scratched his ear, paused, smiled, shook his head and then threw up his hands.
“I’m not a Republican,” he said as if the fact were obvious. “And I’m not a Democrat. I’m a citizen of the United States who in the most unlikely way imaginable finds himself the nominee of one of the two major political parties. I did not seek the nomination; I never promised anyone anything to get the nomination. When someone does something they should not have done, I don’t look to see which party they belong to before deciding that they should not have done it. Yes, I know, it’s true, I served several terms in Congress as a Republican, but for the last twelve years, living in California, I have been a registered Independent.”
Rachel Good could almost hear Louis Matson laughing. Julian had just changed the political dynamics of the race. He was not just the nominee of a party, he was what the great majority of Americans like to think they were themselves, someone who would decide every issue on the merits and party be damned. But how much of this was instinct and how much calculation, how much a reflection of who Julian really was and how much the work of a remarkable, Machiavellian, mind? One thing seemed certain, after everything she had learned about him: whatever the reason he did something, he understood the effect. She could see it in his eyes, the silent laughter as he waited for Hillary Constable to try to turn the attention back to herself. And the strange part was that he was watching like someone who had seen it all before, that he somehow knew in advance each unfolding scene, that he had, in a sense, written it all out, thought through all the possible variations, all the possible responses, and was still writing, making whatever last minute adjustments were needed, and doing it all with such effortless speed that he seemed, as he stood there watching, to be doing nothing at all.
“I can understand why Congressman Drake would like to distance himself not just from the Speaker but from the Republican party. No one has ever said he was not intelligent.”
Lifting an eyebrow, Julian nodded, the slight gesture by which a teacher might approve the effort of a struggling student. Constable smiled and nodded back, and then, before the moderator could ask the next question, went on the attack.
“You were a Republican member of Congress, you ran as a Republican for the United States senate, but as soon as you were out of office, the moment you were out of politics, you changed your mind, decided you didn’t want to be a Republican anymore and became an independent?”
Julian smiled, gently, without indignation, without any sign that he at all resented the implied suggestion that he had never believed in anything except his own advancement, that he was, and always had been, the worst sort of political opportunist.
“There were two young children I had suddenly to raise. I wanted them to learn to think for themselves; I did not want them to be influenced by what I believed. I did not want them to look at the world through anyone’s eyes but their own. I wasn’t there to teach them to become Republican or Democrat or anything else; I was there to teach them what I could about the history of this country, the great things that had been accomplished whether by a Democrat like Thomas Jefferson or a Republican like Abraham Lincoln. The last thing I wanted them to do was to look at this country and its history from the point of view of a partisan, one of those misguided people who think that nothing his party does is ever wrong and nothing the other party does is ever right. Does that answer your question?”
There was nothing Constable could say. She turned to the moderator and waited for the next question.
“I want to turn to domestic issues,” announced Cromwell. “It is estimated that the social security system will go bankrupt in the not too distant future. What would you do to save it?”
“The system is not going to go bankrupt. It isn’t going to happen. I can assure the American people that the system will remain viable,” replied Constable. “There are certain things we may need to do, including raising the age of eligibility, the age at which someone can begin to draw benefits; and we may have to increase the amount on which the social security tax is paid. But the system will not be allowed to fail. Fixing social security will be among the first things I do as president.”
It was the same answer she had been giving from the day she first declared her candidacy; it was the same answer nearly everyone who was a serious candidate, not just for the presidency, but for the house and senate had been giving for years. Cromwell turned to Julian Drake, expecting a similar response.
“Congressman Drake - Do you have any different plans for social security?”
“I wouldn’t raise the income limit on which the social security tax is imposed; I would abolish it. Let’s understand what social security was meant to do; let’s understand, to use a phrase many conservatives like to use, the ‘original intent.’ It is not, and was never meant to be, a savings program. You do not pay into some private account where your money earns interest. It is what the name social security suggests: an insurance program. Everyone who earns a salary, everyone who works for an hourly wage, has part of that money withheld. You can pay into the system for forty years, but if you die before the age at which you are entitled to benefits you collect nothing. We all pay so that those of us who survive into old age will have enough to live on. If everyone lived to be ninety, if everyone lived long enough to collect benefits, and to go on collecting them, the system would have collapsed years ago. We keep raising the rate of taxation, keep asking people to pay more and more of their income - unless they make a great deal of money and then we ask them to do nothing. You ask what I would do. Simple. Remove the limit on the income that is taxable. There is no reason why someone making ten million dollars a year does not pay more than someone making a hundred times less than that amount. Remove the limit, and, if you do that, you can then reduce the rate that everyone pays and even do something no one seems to have thought of before: eliminate the tax altogether on the working poor. In other words, eliminate the upper limit and institute a lower limit. One other thing: start counting as income on which the tax is paid not just salary and wages, but investment income, stock options, every form of wealth someone receives. That, it seems to me, is the best way, the only way, to conserve one of the most important things we have ever done together as a country.”
“Do you really think you could get Republican support for something like that in Congress?” asked Cromwell, astonished at what he just heard.
“Once they understand that it is the business of conservatives to protect and defend the basic institutions of the country; once they understand that this is the best, if not the only, way to restore the original intent of one of the most important programs we have by which to ensure that our citizens have a decent level of support as they face the hardships of old age,” insisted Julian with a stern, determined glance.
“Secretary Constable, do you want to respond?” asked Cromwell, eager to hear how she would handle what seemed an attempt to outflank her on the left. “It would seem that, as between the two of you, Congressman Drake has the more liberal position.”
“I think it simply underscores how long he has been away, how remote he is from the way his own party - even if he now claims he isn’t really a Republican - has tried to privatize everything, including social security. He doesn’t seem to understand that the Republicans in the Congress, the Republicans he thinks he can persuade, are the same people who keep talking about private accounts, letting everyone invest the money that would go into social security in the stock market. Congressman Drake may think the rich should pay more, but most of the people he thinks he can persuade believe instead that everyone should pay less. He doesn’t seem to realize that they don’t all love F.D.R.; he doesn’t seem to realize that most of them would like nothing better than to repeal everything the New Deal, and not just the New Deal, everything any Democratic president, ever did.”
Julian Drake seemed to grow taller as he raised his chin and stared straight ahead.
“Just because they won’t listen to Secretary Constable doesn’t mean they won’t listen to me.”
A single sentence, but delivered with such inner certainty and confidence that it seemed the statement of an essential fact, established, as it were, in advance of the event. No one watching had any doubt that somehow it was true, that somehow, inexplicably, Julian Drake could foretell the future.
Chapter Fifteen
Rufus Chambers tapped three fat fingers on the lamp table next to his chair, stopped, then did it again, but harder, faster than before. His small, childlike mouth twisted back and forth. Hidden behind thick folds of mottled skin, his fierce, calculating eyes stared at the television set in angry disbelief.
“I told you, I told everyone,” he said in a harsh, unforgiving voice. “I told you what a mistake this was; I told you at the convention, I told you after that goddamn speech of his, after I read it the next morning, read it in the clear light of day, that Louis Matson had screwed us all.”
Chambers turned to look at the two other people in the room. Conrad Wilson and Angela Murray had both been there with him when with stunning arrogance Julian Drake had told them that he had no need of them or their money, and, worse yet, that what they had heard in that speech of his had been only the beginning of what he was going to do if he got elected.
“You believe me now; believe me, now that it is too late to do anything about it?”
They were gathered together in Rufus Chambers’ mid-Manhattan office. Chambers, or rather one of his many companies, owned the building, one of the tallest in New York. Central Park stretched out in the distance, a long dark rectangle lit by the lights that on four sides marked out some of the most desirable, and most expensive, real estate not just in New York but in the world. Chambers owned some of this as well. He would liked to have owned all of it, but then he would have wondered if he could have gotten it at a better price.
“I did what we agreed on,” remarked Wilson in a sullen voice. “I saw Matson’s guy, told him - it was just before Drake held that first press - that we could work with him, that we weren’t asking for anything, didn’t expect anything, that all we wanted was an assurance that whatever else Drake did he wouldn’t make any major changes in the taxes we pay. Cooper said he couldn’t speak for Drake. That was the only response; nothing, not a word, since. So my question is why are we spending all this money trying to defeat a candidate that, after what we have just watched, after what Drake has now told everyone he wants to do, we should probably be trying to elect? Hell, he makes her look like the voice of reason.”
