polls, looking down the pipe to four years in the White House in his own right. Granted, he was only taking a brief breather here, but the respite should not be spent laboring over the finer or broader points of the muddled and immovable Middle East peace process. It crossed my mind that the Record story might be one reason why Hutchins wasn't happier. The reality of his life was another. He was childless, wifeless, and really had no one with whom to share the moment aside from a group of aides I don't think he particularly liked.
So here was Hutchins, alone with a reporter he barely knew, fretting about issues he had frustratingly little control over.
I hadn't said anything yet, and Hutchins didn't appear interested in my opinion, so I sat in silence, watching closely the sad, almost sour look on his face, the toll of this job, listening to the words flow into what seemed a pool of self-pity. His reputation was that of a hard-charging bull, a man whom I once wrote had a steakhouse charm about him: straightforward, with few garnishments. Today, he appeared wilted, like some hound dog on a hot August afternoon.
'And you,' he said, more politely now, paternal. 'Where are you on our proposal? You make up your mind yet? You ready to do the right thing and join the team, help make history? I'm about to win four more years. I'll be able to do anything I want, go anywhere I want to go.
I probably won't even run for reelection. I might just use this term to kick an awful lot of ass and let things fall where they may. You could be there, every step of the way, for every kick and all the applause that follows.'
Hutchins paused, staring out the French doors. His feet were up on the coffee table. He held his half glasses in one hand, letting them dangle by the stem as some people do, occasionally flipping them around. He reached up and rubbed his eyes with two fingers, massaging them hard as if he were trying to push them back into his head. He looked as if he were about to lose the election rather than win the damn thing.
I said, 'I'm putting an enormous amount of thought into your offer, sir. But I think it's fair to warn you that I don't think this is an appropriate time for me.'
Hutchins just kind of looked at me for a minute, allowing his eyes to scan over my face, probing, silent.
'Howa your ribs?' he asked, surprising me.
'Much better,' I said. 'I'm getting a lot more comfortable.'
'Hasn't affected your work, for chrissakes,' he said, getting that mischievous smile again, looking at me hard, playfully, waiting for a response.
I smiled. 'Busy time.'
'Oh, it's a busy time all right. It's a busy fucking time.'
He let that hang there, and the two of us sat facing each other, waiting for reactions.
I broke the silence. 'Sir, do you have any reaction beyond what Dalton has said on the performance of the FBI? Are you worried they're going to botch this shooting?'
He resumed his serious look and tone. 'I can't help you on this one.'
Then he did. He repositioned himself on the settee and said, 'Look, they're the FBI. You hope to God they know what they're doing. You believe in your heart that they do. You look at their record, at their history, at their tradition, and at their reputation, and you just have to believe they're going to get things right.'
Nice little quote that my paper will have exclusively-certainly a lot better than that patter of Dalton's.
'Here's the point, though,' he continued. 'You're a smart kid. I want you in my trench, not shooting at me from someone else's. If it takes money, I promise you, we'll max out on your pay. I'll dip into my own pocket to supplement it. I'll give you hiring power over at the press office. You bring in whoever you want. You know you have my ear.
I'll give you virtually open access to the Oval. You come in here anytime you want and talk things through. You'll be one of my most important advisers, cutting across the board.'
Holy shit. Essentially, what he was now offering me wasn't just the position of press secretary, though that slot alone was pretty damned good. He was talking about senior presidential adviser, at the very center of his inner circle, a fixture in the Washington power structure. Senators would have to kiss my ass. Network anchors would vie for my time. My financial future would be set. This was interesting, though probably not interesting enough to sway me. The story-this assassination attempt and all the mystery that surrounded it-was too good. My roots in newspapers ran too deep.
'It's all very flattering,' I said. 'I really will think about it.'
My deadline was supposed to be the next day, Friday. 'Take whatever time you need,' he said. 'The sooner the better, but I'd rather have a yes in a week than a no in a day.'
I said, 'I don't want to leave you hanging. I'll move as quickly as I can. But like I said, right now, to be perfectly honest, I'm leaning against it.'
There was a moment of silence. I gazed around the room again, thinking this could be in some way mine, this hold on power.
With the quiet mounting toward God knows what, my curiosity got the better of me, and I took a chance. 'You don't look so good, sir.
Given that the polls show you creeping ahead, I would think you'd be in a better frame of mind.'
He focused on me-bore in on my face, still silent, his gray eyes locking in on mine, not in an angry way but almost in some odd way pleading, but for what, I had no idea.
'Are we talking, me and you, or am I talking to 700,000 Record readers?' he asked.
I think he inflated our circulation figures, not that I mind. 'Me and you, sir,' I said.
He sighed loudly. 'This job, it's not what you might think. Hell, it's not what I had thought. There is the swarm of attention, and in the middle of that swarm, the sense of total isolation. There is the dangling prospect of accomplishment, matched against the overriding reality of constant failure.'
He paused for a moment, looking out toward the Rose Garden. He continued, 'Look, it sounds foolish to complain about all this, and there's a lot that's great-this house, the limousines, the helicopter, Air Force One, Camp David. I have a staff of valets who'll help me put my boxers on in the morning if I ask them to. They lay out my clothes every day, freshly pressed, always nice and clean. I can play golf at any frigging private club in America without even calling for a tee time. But for the rest of my life, I'll never be able to sit at a bar and order a hamburger. I'll never be able to go for a Sunday-afternoon drive. I can't even go for a walk in my own neighborhood. Hell, I don't really even have a neighborhood. I am the neighborhood.'
He was on a roll. The stream of consciousness seemed to be turning into a tidal wave. 'I'm not a professional politician. Maybe that's my biggest problem, at the same time it's my greatest asset. I didn't spend my entire life praying and scheming to be president. I didn't ask for this job.'
He paused, and I cut in, my tone noticeably sympathetic even if I didn't yet feel any great sympathy. 'Sir, with all due respect, you did ask for this job. You're in the process of asking for it right now, in this election.'
He seemed not in the least bit offended. 'Yeah, you're right, I am asking for it,' he said. 'But tell me this, how do you not ask for this job when you know you could have it? How do you turn your back on being in every history book of every junior high kid in the country from now until the end of time? How do you walk away from that?'
Fair points. We sat in silence again for a moment. He was brooding; I was stunned, for a variety of reasons. I had never seen him this reflective, this thoughtful. He usually put forth the veneer of a fraternity brother, ever mischievous, involved only in the moment. I recalled his great delight at watching me drive the ball into the woods at Congressional. I remembered his fascination with the presidential suite at the Bethesda Navy Hospital. But you always knew that below the surface there was an inner, driving force with this man. It was part of his great charm.
Still, I didn't know it ran this deep, or this purple. Here was the president of the United States, heading toward probable victory in an election just five days away, outright depressed at the prospect of four years in the White House. I thought back to past presidents, how they arrived and how they left, John Kennedy embodied a new age of Camelot. Three years later, he was shot and killed, his brains spattered across that convertible limousine in Dallas. Lyndon Johnson was broken by the Vietnam War. Richard Nixon fulfilled his greatest dreams with his election in 1968, outdid himself in 1972, and then left in disgrace two years later, standing at the entry of Marine One on the South Lawn, his staff and friends on the grass below, giving a final, two-handed victory sign, his suit jacket awkwardly scrunched up below his arms as his face was formed into a forced, bittersweet smile. Ford was only given a taste of power. Carter was given only a little more than that. He arrived so young, with so
