for what would happen in the coming decade or two. Nobody listened to every word. Even the Greenest voter—a college girl who rode her bike halfway across the state to support this man—was numbed by the relentless awfulness of what was being predicted. The earth was wounded. Ice was melting and droughts were looming and millions would soon move toward the high ground blessed with reliable aquifers. “Which is here,” he said. “We are living on what will become a promised land.” But he also promised tipping points, maybe several at a time, and governments would fail, and even the United States was subject to collapse. “We don’t have the money we think we do, and we don’t have any time left, and decisions will have to be made on the fly, and our state would be smart to make preparations for when it will have to take care of itself.”
Then came another brief pause, another shared breath by the audience.
At that point, Morris paused. But he still had twenty seconds for introductory remarks, which is why he offered a wide smile, thanking the Rotarians for sponsoring this event, and singling out Mrs. Gina Potts for her delicious lemonade.
Throughout the non-debate—with the opening statement and everything that followed—the governor stayed on track. He clung to his marks when he spoke and sat motionless while waiting his turn to speak again, smiling in that vacuous fashion common to people who can compartmentalize every portion of their lives. He wasn’t an exceptionally smart fellow. He had a pleasant, not-quite-handsome face made older by the baldness that had begun in his twenties. But he had always been blessed with competence and luck, and his wife was lovely and at least as ambitious as he was. The governor also had a gorgeous golf swing that had served him well in fifteen years of public life. Sitting on a folding chair, listening to the ex-professor’s diatribe, he not only understood that he would win the election by a four-to-one edge, but his opponent was doing his cause grave, irreparable harm. And being a considerate church-going person, the governor felt empathy. Taking an old man out of his element and putting him on public display like this … it was the kind of mistake he would never make. Governance was the magic done through a multitude of tiny, imperfect steps. If key details could be identified and the worst errors avoided or later denied, then it was possible to do just enough, leaving the world better than it otherwise would have been.
The event was scheduled to last sixty minutes. With ten minutes remaining, Morris threw a hand at the sky, saying, “If lightning strikes and I happen to win this election, there will be no greater champion making this state ready for what is to come. I’ll use these final weeks to make clear what is necessary and essential. Changes will be necessary if we are to hold onto a portion of our rights as citizens, retain some sliver of our present wealth, and not lose ourselves to the panic and reflexive violence sure to claim billions of unready, untested souls.
“I don’t believe in God,” he proclaimed, “but I believe in Laws. The Laws of Nature, the Laws of Cause and Effect.
“And there are no other Gods but Them.”
On that peculiar note, Morris Hersh returned to his folding chair and sat on his forgotten note cards.
The moderator took the microphone, but he had no voice. He looked at his watch, discovering the extra time. Not wanting to leave things in this uncomfortable place, he rolled his free hand in the air, inviting the governor to respond—a breach of the rules, but nobody complained.
The governor stood without hurrying.
With a big wink, he convinced half of the audience that he was looking at them, and then he stepped to the podium and smiled, waiting for the perfect response to come to mind.
He settled on a story from his teenage years—detassling corn from four in the morning until dusk every day, for minimum wage. Avoiding mention of his opponent or mental illness or the wild claims that would be splashed across newspapers and web sites for the rest of the week, he spoke only about himself and his ethic of hard work, and by the end of those ten minutes a large portion of the audience nearly forgot about madness and doom. People were smiling for no reason other than to hear how this round-faced golfer once wore his hands raw under a hot July sun. And then the governor sat, smiling at his lovely wife and their three darling children and a certain young aide lurking near the stage. A leader could do only so much. At the end of the day, almost nothing was possible, and very little was planned, and no person could claim total responsibility for the silly and the great decisions that he managed to make, every minute of his life.
Videos of the debate proved a huge embarrassment to one political party and were wildly popular on YouTube. But that changed when Kashmiri separatists raided a military base outside Islamabad, grabbing hostages and claiming possession of nuclear weapons. After a prolonged standoff, three missiles were launched at India. No warheads were onboard, and nobody important panicked. The hoped-for conflagration between old enemies failed to materialize. But those distant events had transformed the crazy candidate into a quirky prophet, and suddenly Morris’s appearance was watched closely, and every doomsday utterance caused the Web to spasm and shiver.
World notoriety didn’t bring success at home. Fifteen percent approval was his high mark. Voters saw a possible genius and a definite whack-job with no particular talent for managing the smallest limb of government. Morris’s backers briefly dreamed of forty percent in the general election—but no, he wouldn’t soften his message and refused to be edited, and he warned that if the party tried running television ads that didn’t focus on the world’s growing miseries, he would use his own savings, paying for spots that would make his earlier speeches seem decidedly bland.
The most rational player in this maelstrom was the governor. He smiled when necessary and shook every hand, and every speech was tailored to the audience of the moment. Mentioning Morris only as “my opponent”, he always used a tone of measured, imprecise concern—as if mentioning some neighbor who you worry about but don’t feel comfortable discussing in public. Aides pressed him to include national issues in his speeches. The election was won, they argued; why not begin the future senatorial campaign? But instinct told the governor to resist. He didn’t quite understand why and didn’t bother trying to explain. Sure enough, six weeks away from the election, an alarming rumor surfaced: The state’s most liberal billionaire was so alarmed by the deranged Dr. Hersh that he was mulling over the possibility of stepping into this mess.
The same aides pretended to be unconcerned. No newcomer, even one with bottomless pockets, could steal what rightfully belonged to their candidate. They claimed the billionaire might get thirty-five percent, maybe forty. But at this late date, with so much momentum on their side, there was no way a new player could win the contest.
The governor was less sure. Gambling was dangerous, regardless of whose money or reputation was at stake. The surest course to victory was to keep Morris in the race. As it happened, the governor’s wife was good friends with a retired mayor in the other camp. One discreet call brought news about an emergency meeting of party leaders taking place in a little city west of the capital. The governor was on the road within the hour, and at his urging, the state patrol officer at the wheel covered a hundred miles in a little more than an hour.
Another swimming pool had been commandeered for duty—this pool closed for repairs, the contractor home for the weekend. Twenty tense, irritated political beasts were sitting around one uncharacteristically quiet candidate. Whatever had been said just seconds ago was still hanging in the air. Nobody wanted to look at anybody else. Nobody wanted to be here, and every person was desperate to find some route by which they could escape a situation that was only growing worse.
That was the scene that the governor walked into.
He smiled and said, “Hello,” and then nodded, successfully crafting a face and persona that could not have looked more ignorant or less dangerous.
It was Morris who acted thrilled to see him. “Hello, sir. How are you?”
Alarm spread among the others. The meeting had gone badly, but here was the enemy, grinning like an idiot. It almost made them happy. Almost. A couple of the younger men stood, as did the ex-mayor, and she shook the governor’s hand first and asked about his wife, feigning ignorance to camouflage her involvement in his arrival.
The governor spoke to everyone by name.
Then after ninety seconds of intense, utterly empty small talk, the newcomer asked for a moment or two with their candidate. It was a matter of state business, he implied. It was important, he promised. Then he shook half of their hands as they filed away, and he looked hard at Morris; and after a very long pause, he said, “If I didn’t know better, I would believe they were trying to figure out some easy way to have you killed.”
“Everything but that,” the professor allowed.
“Of course they’re all wishing you would die. Natural causes, or whatever.”
Morris looked old and pale.
“Are you going to quit?”
