Malcolm leaned back in his chair. 'The candidate is Governor Haze Richards. All of you here are professional campaign workers being paid for your services. Some of you have only a marginal understanding of what the candidate represents. Our campaign chairman, A. J. Teagarden, will be able to fill you in on 'the message.' A. J. has known Haze since childhood. . AJ.'
Teagarden lumbered up out of his chair. Most of these people he knew; some he'd worked with before and hired for this campaign.
'When I was a little boy,' he started, a smile on his face, 'Every Christmas I asked my parents for a pony. . '
Some in the room had heard the story before and started to smile.
'Christmas morning, I'd look under the tree, but no pony. I'd look in the kitchen, maybe he'd be in there. . After all, ponies got hungry. No pony. I'd look in the garage-everybody knows ponies need room. . but no pony. I looked and looked. I wanted to ride him to school. . feed him, pet him. But what I got was roller skates. So I'd put on the roller skates and you know what would happen. .?'
'Would you get a blister, A. J.?' Vidal asked, grinning.
'Bet your ass, Vidal, I'd get a flicking blister. And you know why I got the blister? Because I was so upset I didn't find my pony, I would skate and skate to get rid of my disappointment. Now what does this tale of my youth have to do with this campaign?' He grinned at them, stroking his bushy beard. 'I'm still looking for ponies. A pony is anything good. A blister is anything bad. We need to avoid getting blisters.
'I did a survey ten years ago. I asked focus groups all over the country a bunch of questions, and then, last year, I asked the same questions to other groups made up of the same social and demographic cross sections. Ten years ago, when I asked people if national politicians cared about them, ninety percent said yes. Even if they didn't always agree with the result, they felt elected officials had their best interests at heart. Just ten years later, astonishingly, eighty-five percent said no-a complete reversal. Eighty-five percent of this country doesn't believe in the system anymore. They don't think politicians give a shit. The y d on't perceive any difference between the twoparties.
They're fed up and, hear me on this. . angry. . They're angry as hell, yet in the face of this groundswell of anger, isn't sn't one voice out there saying, 'I can fix that. I can make the system work.' The press doesn't write about this frustration. It's not a story because everybody accepts it.' He looked around the table. 'This massive opinion shift has gone virtually unnoticed, unreported, and unresolved. We are in the midst of the second great American revolution and nobody's talking about it. Well, people, this is about to change. We have the strongest, most potent message imaginable. We're going to tap into that anger, tap into that frustration. We're going to be the candidacy of change. Haze has never run for national office, but every single one of these other candidates has been sucking on the national tit for years. They're a part of the system that the American public is furious with. We're gonna lump all these guys together and we're going to make them wear the clothes of that discontent. So. . what's the message? It's simple, and it's gonna be as clear and beautiful as an Iowa sunrise.'
He looked around the room, taking a minute for the dramatic impact.
'Haze Richards is going to make America work again for you.'
They were scribbling it down on pads.
'No more meetings where Congress votes through their own pay raises at midnight. No more limos in the Senate garage. No more budget-stimulus packages. No more check kiting on the House bank. No more billion-dollar peanut-farm aid programs. No more presidential air force. No more horseshit, lying, stealing, taxing and spending. No more! No more! No more! Haze Richards, the man from Providence, an outsider who hates what's happened at much as all of us. . Haze Richards is going to take America back. He's gonna make America work, goddammit. He's gonna make it work again for you!' His voice was thundering off the back wall of the small room.
He looked around at them, all of their faces turned up at him. 'And that, my friends, is the pony every American has been looking for. That message played right wins us the presidency.'
They started nodding and smiling.
'We run above the issues,' Malcolm said, his voice seeming small after Teagarden's impassioned oratory. 'It's not about gays in the military, or health care, immigration, abortion, women's rights, or minority programs. It's about Americans losing control of the system. We want America back and Haze is going to give it to us.'
'Haze Richards is going to make America work again for you,' A. J. Teagarden finished. 'That's the message. Malcolm will give you the strategy.' And he sat down.
The room was silent and the lean, black yuppie spoke.
'I've talked strategy with most of you,' Malcolm said, 'It's simple. We've got to score big at the Des Moines Register Guard debate next Tuesday if we expect to get national press coverage. Right now, Leo Skatina is polling over fifty percent in Iowa, but it's on name identification alone. He's a familiar face, but we can cut into him. The other three guys have modest and equal chunks of the rest. About twenty percent is undecided. Our goal is to beat the shit out of them at the Des Moines debate and then get the press to run with it.'
Vidal said, 'I got some bad. News there. Because of budget problems, most network news shows have cut back their live coverage in Iowa. The only network sending out a live team is UBC,' Vidal continued. 'Koppel, Jennings, Brokaw, and the rest of those media big feet are gonna chill it. CNN will be there, as usual, but even their coverage will be cut down.'
'All we need to do in Iowa,' Malcolm said, 'is get twenty percent of the vote and run a strong second to Skatina. If we do that, we're gonna look like we're taking off like a rocket. Everything, every bit of our effort, the whole banana goes into Iowa.'
'What about New Hampshire?' Susan Winter asked.
'Without Iowa, there won't be a New Hampshire,'
Malcolm said. 'Right now, Iowa is the whole ball game.' When the meeting broke up, Vidal came over to Ryan. 'Do you know anyone over at UBC?' he asked. 'Cole Harris was married to a friend of mine.'
'Cole Harris is dust. They axed him two months ago.
He was doing an underworld crime series that was killed by the news committee. He accused Steve Israel of collusion and they sacked him the next day.'
'Really?' Ryan said, surprised, remembering the intense black-haired newsman who had been in L. A. for a while. 'I also know the political editor for Steve Israel on the Rim in New York.'
The Rim was a room on the twenty-third floor at the black tower on lower Broadway that housed UBC. It got its name because of its circular shape; news staffers and segment producers had desks looking out toward the floor. The center was the set for the nightly news with Brenton Spencer.
'Good. You check out your contact. I'll call Brenton Spencer,' Vidal said.
Brenton Spencer was the star anchor and executive producer for the UBC nightly news. His ratings had been falling for almost six months. What Brenton didn't know was that he was destined to become the campaign's first big pony.
Chapter 14
Brenton Spencer was scared to death. The cold January wind was tugging at the corners of his cashmere overcoat, chilling his legs, freezing his balls. He stood i n f ront of his Fifth Avenue apartment building, waiting fo r t he UBC limo.
The man he'd been summoned to meet was short and repulsive and didn't give a shit about news. C. Wallace Litman owned the network and he wanted happy talk. Just yesterday, they'd been fed a segment about whale pups being born at Marineland, California-Shama and Heidi. The network satellited the footage from the West Coast at five thousand dollars per minute, and they'd rolled off two and a half minutes of whales and their trainer. Steve Israel had put in some jokes, and Brenton had to turn to his co-anchor, Shannon Wilkerson, and say, 'There's a whale of a tale, Shannon,' and she said, 'Oh, Brenton. . that's very fishy. . ' All of this while homeless people were freezing to death in Central Park and the Middle East was teetering on the edge of destruction. When he complained, they pulled out the November sweeps book, which showed a 10-percent erosion in the nightly news
