“Sidney, Jack.”

“Beg pardon?”

“His first name was Sidney.”

“Whatever.”

—

Eddie Bancroft, the host of The Eddie Bancroft Show, pointed his index finger in the general direction of Air Force Colonel Max Eberhardt. “I’ll tell you what I think, Colonel. It’s not a coincidence that next year’s an election year. This whole business is an effort by the Republicans to suck the president into a ridiculous story. To force him to make a statement. Then, when it all turns out to be a joke, no matter what he’s said, he’ll look idiotic. Dumb. I mean, that’s the only explanation that makes any sense.”

—

Meredith Capehart, on The Rundown, scribbled something on her notepad, waved the pencil at her audience, and frowned. “I’m not supposed to mention this in public,” she said, “but the whole story was dreamed up by the media. Look, you have a couple of nitwits, Bucky Blackstone and what’s-his-name, Jerry Culpepper, saying crazy things during a slow season. Of course the media are going to run with it. What would you expect?” She touched her earpod. Faked a look of surprise. “Wait one, Louie, they’re telling me archaeologists have just discovered a working radio buried in the Great Pyramid.”

15

George Cunningham loved fund-raisers. He got no greater pleasure anywhere than mixing with the party faithful, hearing the enthusiasm when he walked into a room, seeing the gleam in everyone’s eyes, the hands outstretched to touch him. There was nothing quite like telling those jokes on himself, like the one in which the First Lady confessed to him that she’d fallen in love with him because he’d looked so much like her family’s pizza delivery guy back in Ohio. “She loves pizza,” he added. It always got a laugh.

The first requirement, if you want to succeed in politics, is to stand for something. The second is to pretend to be modest, to disguise yourself as an ordinary person. The guy down the street. And to play that role to the hilt. Be an average American with the right moral values. The kind of guy the average voter would like to sit down with over some beer. Pull that off, convince the voters, and nothing will ever stop you.

Cunningham would have been delighted to be able to say what he really thought, to be brutally honest with the voters, to point out that the country couldn’t go on forever watching the dollar lose value. That we couldn’t continue indefinitely packing more people within our borders. He owed it to the electorate to mention that sometimes the country needs a little socialism. (That it’s okay; we’ll just call it something else.) And so on. That was all political poison. To stay in power, you had to play the game. But that didn’t mean he didn’t believe in country over party. Everybody said that, but Cunningham believed it. It was a position that often alienated his allies. But he’d do what he could to stay in power because it was important to keep his political opponents well away from the Oval Office. They were inclined to approach every problem with a hammer.

He was at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza in Beverly Hills. There were some Hollywood people in the audience. Among them was Grant Barrin, the action star. Grant was at the far end of the president’s table. You couldn’t go wrong if the heroic types came out for you. Comedians were good, too. And leading ladies. But you couldn’t do better than someone like Grant.

Within minutes after he was seated, they rolled out the dinner. Steak, mashed potatoes, corn, red cabbage, and apple sauce. George’s kind of meal. He had never developed much of a taste for ethnic food. He was basically a meat and potatoes guy. Senator Andrea Gordon was on his left, and state party chairman Bill Merkusik on the other side. He expected to name Andrea as his running mate in 2020.

The party was anticipating problems holding on to its California House membership. And that became the topic during the meal. The voters were unhappy with the runaway inflation, and they wanted overseas bases closed down. The United States, many of them felt, had developed serious imperial ambitions, which it could not afford. The watchword in the 2020 election was going to be “time to come home.” George would have loved to pull out and bring everybody back to the States. He’d already done some of that. But the country had made promises under previous administrations. And some places were inherently unstable. Leave, and people who had supported the United States would die. He didn’t want that on his conscience. The New York Times was leading the charge against him. It was an easy enough call, he told Merkusik and Gordon, for The Times. They wouldn’t have to live with the results when people started getting butchered.

Sometimes, he regretted having gotten into politics. He didn’t like the life-and-death decisions that periodically faced him. Twice he’d stayed out of conflicts while his critics screamed for intervention. And he’d watched while dictators massacred thousands. Blood on his hands whether he acted or stood by.

Damned job. Sometimes, he was tempted to announce that he’d back off at the end of his first term. Let somebody else try his luck. If there were a graceful way to do that, he probably would. But it would hurt the party, and, consequently, damage a lot of the people who’d supported him.

—

When they’d finished eating, Merkusik rose to applause, took his place at the lectern, and introduced him. The applause was deafening. Andrea smiled at him. Go get ’em, cowboy.

He shook hands with the chairman. “Thanks, Bill,” he said, turning to the audience. He had to wait for them to settle down. When they did, he held up both arms. “I love California.”

More cheers.

“Thank you,” he said. “It’s always a pleasure to be among friends.” He told a few jokes about his early ambitions to break into the movies. “I always wanted to be a leading man,” he said, looking toward Grant as if trying to suggest they would both have been in the same class. Grant smiled and pointed a finger. You and me, baby. And the laughs came. He stayed on message. The party would win big next year, he told them, but they couldn’t do it without the efforts of the people gathered in that room. He thanked them, and expressed his hope for their continued support. He outlined his objectives for the second term. Social Security would be kept on track. The administration would continue its policy of closing overseas military bases deemed nonessential. “The problem we face,” he said, “is that two decades after we were saying that history had essentially ended, we are still dealing with an unpredictable world. And, unfortunately, the very act of taking precautions sometimes tends to create more potential enemies. The really good news, of course, is that the destruction of the global nuclear stockpile continues on pace.”

That line always got applause. Decades from now, if he was remembered for anything at all, he’d get credit for pushing, and finally bringing to fruition, the Nuclear Weapons Elimination Treaty. His father had been appalled that the world had stored tens of thousands of atomic bombs in its arsenals and, when the Cold War ended, made no move to get rid of them. “There won’t be a future,” he’d told George one evening after they’d watched a scientist on the History Channel make dire predictions about the next half century. “Eventually,” he’d said, “either by accident or design, one of them, or maybe a lot of them, will go off, and take three million people into oblivion with it. Once that happens, civilization will come apart.”