The 45th, page 8
Trump looked at Julian as if he were seeing him, as in a sense he was, for the first time.
“I’m afraid I don’t remember….But you were in Congress, and you’re here to help the majority leader with the speech he is going to give?” He turned back to Matson for the answer.
“Louis asked if I would write the speech, a first draft, if you will. It’s been a long time, but I -”
“Yes, that’s very interesting,” said Trump, as he began to fidget with his small, thick-fingered hands. His eyes were still fixed on the majority leader. “I certainly don’t want to interrupt, but I thought we really had to talk, and I wonder if we might…?”
“Say what you came to say. It’s always good to have a witness, don’t you think, in case there is any misunderstanding later about anything that was said.”
Trump always dressed the same way: a blue suit, white shirt, and red tie. He looked like a rumpled American flag. He sat with his legs spread apart and his elbows on his knees. His face was too bloated to allow any obvious changes of expression. He had a blank look on his face and a wintry, slightly suspicious look in his pale blue eyes. With his squirrel’s nest of bleached blonde hair and his round, rather weak chin, he seemed a carnival barker, a small town hustler drawn from the pages of Sinclair Lewis. There was something missing, the capacity to doubt, the ability - the intelligence, if you will - to understand that money and fame might not be the measure of a life worth living.
“I understand you had a meeting the other night with Cruz, which I thought -”
“I didn’t have a meeting, I was offered a ride home after the dinner. We had a brief conversation in the car.”
“It comes to the same thing; you had -”
“It does not come to the same thing,” insisted Matson, who took an obvious pleasure in the correction. “When you say we had a meeting, it suggests something arranged in advance, something done because both parties have something to discuss. You and I are having a meeting; Cruz and I had an accident – we met by chance.”
Trump blinked twice. He did not see the significance, and he did not like the waste of time. Julian, watching, tried not to smile. Trump, who thought business the only important profession, cared even less than he knew about the subtleties of politics and power, something that was the lifeblood of a master of the craft like Louis Matson.
“He was just leaving,” Matson continued, adding, quite on purpose, one meaningless detail after another, a method meant to be irritating. “He saw me walking on the sidewalk and he gave me a ride. He asked me if I would consider releasing my delegation at the convention and let them vote as they wished. I said I did not think that would be a problem.”
Julian had moved his chair a little farther to the side, so that he could see Matson more clearly. A casual observer, he leaned against the side of the overstuffed chair and as he studied the expression on the majority leader’s face noticed that no matter how much he had aged, he looked exactly the way he remembered when he was playing with other men’s ambitions, building them up, breaking them down, evaluating their strengths, explaining their weaknesses, whatever he thought necessary in that shrewd and sometimes unscrupulous mind of his, to get what he wanted, or needed, to have. It was what kept him going, the game itself, because whatever the outcome, the game never ended. There was always something more to do.
“You didn’t think it would be a problem?” asked Trump, refusing to believe what he had heard. His face started to turn red. “If you do that….Do you realize what will happen?”
Matson shrugged with indifference. “Cruz thinks a majority of the delegation will go for him. I really wouldn’t know.”
“We both know – everyone knows – he’s a lying hypocrite.”
“Aren’t all hypocrites liars?” asked Matson.
Trump scratched the side of his face, trying, as it seemed, to stop himself screaming.
“Look, you have to make a choice. The convention is split almost evenly. No one has a majority, the Michigan delegation – your delegation – has the votes to give the nomination to whichever one of us you want.”
“And what is the reason he would want one of you instead of the other?” asked Julian, as if the question were not only of interest, but one he had every right to ask. Trump did nothing to hide his surprise, or his irritation. “Seriously,” persisted Julian, “when you get right down to it, what really is the difference.” He was looking straight at Trump, but he could sense Matson’s approval. “Cruz may be what you say he is: he may be someone you could never trust, but both of you seem to be saying the same thing. He may be more willing than you are to talk about shutting down the government, but neither one of you seems to be in favor of using the government to do anything.”
It was only with a show of reluctance that Paul had looked at Julian, and now he immediately looked back at Matson.
“I came here to talk to you about the nomination. I didn’t come here -”
“To tell anyone why you should have it?” remarked Julian with a mocking laugh that made Trump grind his teeth.
“Does he speak for you?” he demanded of Matson.
“I don’t speak for anyone – not even for myself,” added Julian with a strange, inward smile. “I have no standing here; I hold no office. But you’re playing for rather high stakes, and I thought I ought to ask you the question that my old friend here may be too polite to ask.”
Matson could barely keep from laughing. He was not sure what Julian was up to, but he was perfectly content to sit back and watch what happened.
“It’s one thing, Mr. Trump, to go around telling everyone what the Democrats have done wrong; it’s something else to explain the real source of the problems we face. Unless of course you really do believe that all we have to do is have government get out of the way and everything will take care of itself.”
“Government is the problem, Mr…, it’s not the solution.”
“You have reversed the line, but the thought is still Ronald Reagan’s. You believe the government should provide protection for life and property – defense and the police – and that with their safety guaranteed everyone should be free to do whatever they choose. Or have I misstated your position?”
Now the silent observer, Matson remembered what he had earlier tried to explain: that the voice, how the words sounded, made all the difference in the world. Julian’s voice drew you toward him, make you feel that even if you disagreed with everything he said, you wanted to hear more. The anger, the impatience, the intense dislike that marched through Trump’s eyes had all but vanished.
“You haven’t misstated my position. That would be a fair summary of what I think the principle involved. But you asked the difference between Cruz and myself. He insists – and he’s either a fool or a liar when he does – that you can change everything overnight. I know better than that. You can’t just dismantle social security or Medicare. You have to do it gradually, introduce free market reform, give people a choice to stay in a program the government provides or take the money – their money – money they have earned, and invest it in the kind of securities that will let them pay for what they need.”
Julian nodded three times in quick succession, tapped his fingers on the arm of the chair and appeared to agree.
“The difference, then, is that Cruz can’t do what he says he will, because it can only be done the way you say it can - with time?”
“Yes, exactly.”
“Which means, does it not, that there is no real difference at all?”
“What -?”
“He can’t do it – except the way you say you’ll do it, so both of you would end up doing the same thing the same way.”
Chapter Seven
There were a thousand different rumors, and a thousand different interpretations of what those rumors meant, as the delegates poured into Cleveland from all across the country. The most interesting rumor, and one that needed no interpretation at all, was that some of them, though pledged to one or the other of the candidates, might decide to vote for someone else instead. No one had a clear majority. There was nothing to stop a delegate from changing his mind, nothing to keep anyone from looking to their own advantage, the chance to own the gratitude of a candidate who could not win without them; nothing, that is to say, except their own sense of honor, and no one thought it safe to count on that. Julian Drake thought the whole thing fascinating, comical and completely insane.
“Two minutes after it’s all over, two minutes after someone gets the nomination, everyone will insist they knew it all along, that it all makes sense.” He nodded toward the crowded tables in the hotel coffee shop where he and Ismael Cooper had come to talk alone. “Every restaurant, every bar, every place you can find a place to sit and something to drink, the same conversation: What is going to happen, who is going to win. Ask any of them who they think it is going to be – they won’t even guess, afraid they might be wrong. All they want to know is what everyone else has heard. But after it is over, after it has been decided….”
Ismael Cooper leaned forward on his elbows, holding a cup of black coffee in both hands. He blew gently on the dark, impenetrable surface though it was already getting cold. It gave him something to do as he tried to clear his mind. Julian’s remark made him smile.
“And you? Who do you think will get it?”
It was a fair question, fair to ask if his own criticism did not also apply to him, but instead of being put on the defensive, Julian’s eyes were suddenly full of mischief.
“I have no idea, and, worse yet, when someone finally has the nomination, I still won’t believe it.”
“You still won’t…?”
Julian sank into the corner of the booth and, laughing quietly, casually crossed his arms.
“Believe what defies all reason. Because whoever it is, it isn’t going to be anyone who should be president.”
Ismael put his cup down on the table and with the tip of his finger began to trace random circles on the liquid surface.
“That’s the whole reason Louis has gone to so much trouble with the Michigan delegation – to stop anyone winning on the first ballot, because, after that, anything is possible.”
Julian shoved his own half-empty cup to the side. It was nearly nine-thirty on the night before the convention was scheduled to open, but dressed in a suit and tie Julian looked as if he were just starting the day instead of near the end of it. Ismael remembered that Louis had once told him that Julian would sometimes work straight through the night and not sleep at all until the night after that.
“Yes, well,” he said, starting to pick up where he had left off. “There is more to it than that. You were there when he had that meeting with Trump – You made quite an impression, by the way. Louis said Trump turned red when you were finished – After you left, he told Paul the same thing he told Trump, that he would allow the delegation to vote however each of them wished.” Ismael trembled with suppressed laughter as he shook his head at the eager willingness with which vain and ambitious men hear only what they want to hear. He looked at Julian, certain that Julian understood. “The moment they heard that, they thought they had the nomination. In a way, you can’t blame them. Spend two years doing everything you can think of to get it, be that close, just a handful of votes away, know that the difference is in the hands of one state’s delegation, start believing that the only reason you might lose is because the majority leader – an old man who never liked you; an old-style politician who has spent so many years in Washington he doesn’t know what is going on in the country, the new forces that are reshaping politics in the party – and then, suddenly, he agrees to give you the chance of convincing his delegation that you’re the only one who can win in November! The nomination is all but yours!” Ismael’s laughing eyes narrowed into the shrewd certainty of someone who knows the secret of the game. “What they don’t understand is that, once released to vote as they wish, almost all the delegates are still going to vote for Louis, the favorite son. When the roll call is taken, they’ll both think, not that they were stupid, but that they were betrayed.”
Julian bent his head to the side, trying to understand something that did not seem to make sense.
“But whatever the Michigan delegation does, one of them is going to win.”
“Not if Louis has anything to do with it.”
Julian threw up in his hands, a friendly gesture that confessed his own confusion.
“He can stop the convention choosing anyone on the first ballot, but the convention has to choose someone, and it can’t be someone who lost in the primaries, it can’t be someone who tried to run and had to quit. Who is left? Who does Louis want? Does Louis even know?”
Ismael glanced around the crowded room, as if to make sure no one was close enough to hear.
“He won’t say, but whether that means he knows and won’t tell, or he doesn’t at this point have any idea – whether he wants to come up with a name on his own or just let the convention decide, start with a clean slate as if the primaries had never happened – I don’t know.”
“He has to know,” insisted Julian. “He has to have some idea. He can’t leave it up to the convention, he can’t simply throw it open; he can’t make sure no one wins on the first ballot and then go to a second ballot, when everyone is free to vote as they wish, if he wants a third candidate to have a chance. Without another candidate that suddenly everyone is talking about, the margin is too narrow for it not to become a bidding war. Whichever one of them – Cruz or Trump– can get to a few dozen delegates that came in pledged to the other side…. Cruz, Trump, they’re different versions of the same thing. No one who changes sides is going to think themselves traitors to a cause.”
Julian had become eager, intense, his eyes flashing with growing certainty as he followed out his argument. Suddenly realizing what he had done, he laughed in apology.
“You’d think I was still in Congress, arguing about what was going to happen in the next election.”
“That is pretty much what we used to do, wasn’t it?” remarked Ismael with a look of nostalgia for his own remembered past. “We treat politics like sports: a game in which the only thing that matters is whether you win or lose. Then, the game is over, but there is always next season - the next election - and you have to get ready for that. It all runs together now, the permanent campaign; it never ends. It’s worse than that. For some of them, maybe for most of them now, the campaign is the only thing they know, the only thing they like. They give all the reasons they should be elected, but the only reason they want the office is so they can run again. They don’t want to govern – they don’t know how. All they want is to have everyone know who they are, and think of them as somehow unbeatable.”
“You’re talking about the Clintons.”
“They’re the best example, but all of them – Who would have thought twenty, thirty years ago, that you could be nominated for the presidency without having done anything except get famous? Not famous for anything worthwhile, just famous because you figured out a way to be on television.”
“But if it weren’t for television we never would have had Sarah Palin,” said Julian, with a droll expression. And then, immediately, he became serious. “Television has only speeded things up; Americans have always been in love with whatever is new, because whatever is new is supposed to be better. It is how we’ve all been trained, isn’t it; what we all believe – this year’s model is better than last year’s; the new invention that will change everything, the new drug that will save more lives. A hundred years ago – no, farther back than that, after the Civil War – the country changed. Science, industry – everything became provisional; change became the rule, and the rate of change began to accelerate. Everything was now about the future; the past, instead of the standard, something to be preserved, was forgotten, dismissed as of no importance.”
Ismael Cooper stared down at the coffee left in his cup. The lines in his forehead deepened. His mouth tightened at the corners. He looked up, a question in his eyes, a question he started to ask, and then, suddenly, was not sure he should. Before he could decide, Julian asked it for him.
“Is this what I have been doing, these last twelve years – reading history, trying to understand how we got to where we are? Yes, but other things as well. It isn’t that difficult to understand. The more I learned, the less I knew.” There was an almost boyish enthusiasm, an embarrassed pride, in the way he tossed off this seeming paradox, this epigram of studied ambiguity. “And the less I knew, the more I had to learn.”
Julian’s eyes, full of laughter at his own inability to explain any more clearly what he had done, and why he had done it, held Ismael’s gaze just long enough to let him know that even this was more than he would have told anyone else. But then, as Ismael immediately grasped, who else could he have told, having lived an almost perfect recluse all these years? Even when Julian was spending all his time in politics surrounded by other people he had been something of an enigma: always in the center of attention, and always, in the most serious sense, alone.
“So, who would you choose, if you were Louis, what third candidate?” asked Ismael. “After Louis gives that speech of yours – a speech he has not let me see – after no one wins on the first ballot, what happens then? I think you’re wrong, by the way.”
“Wrong? Probably, but about what?”
“That left to its own devices the convention would end up picking one of those two. It’s because what you said is right: that they are both different versions of the same thing. It is the reason both of them would lose in the general election. Everyone knows what the polls are saying. There are two competing emotions in this convention: the desire to have the candidate you support win the nomination, and the desire to win the election. Once the first ballot is over, once it becomes doubtful that your candidate can win the nomination, you are free of the burden of worrying about anything except who has the best chance to win in November. It is strange, but true. I’m certain of it. They want to win; they know, or at least they are afraid, that their candidate can’t, but they are committed, they’re loyal; but now, suddenly, they don’t have to think about anything except finding someone who can lead them to victory. Watch it happen; watch their faces, the tremendous sense of relief, the catharsis, the sudden knowledge, the hope, that everything is going to be so much better than they had feared. I can feel it; it’s real. It isn’t going to be Trump or Cruz or anyone like them; it will be someone, a conservative, who in comparison will seem almost a moderate.”
