“I asked you all here tonight,” he continued, “not to once again convey my hands-off position during the campaign, but to talk about your hands-on position. I hardly have to tell you that, in recent years, our political process has taken on a harsh, even bitter partisanship that has not served either the process or the country well. We have spent far too much time and energy fighting for political advantage instead of working to make this a better country. I want us all to stop it, and the current campaign is the time and place.
“Because of the position in which fate has placed me, perhaps I’m in a better position than most politicians to call for this change. During my months as acting president, I have bent over backward to govern in a bipartisan fashion, and some of you have responded to that effort, while others have been, shall we say, less enthusiastic.” Nobody laughed.
“We’re beginning the new millennium in extraordinarily good shape — a healthy economy, a lack of major military conflict and even political conflict, low unemployment, lower crime rates, and high optimism among our fellow countrymen. The last century has often been called the American Century. Well, let’s have another American Century. Let’s consolidate the gains that our fathers and grandfathers and we ourselves have fought so hard to earn, and let’s go on to make this a better, safer, more peaceful country, while maintaining our leadership role as the world’s only superpower.
“But I’m falling into clichés here, and I don’t want to do that. I want to ask every one of you to go into this election as Americans, first, and party politicians second; I want an end to personal attacks and false moralizing; I want the next president to reach out to both parties and their constituencies; I want each of you here to dedicate himself to a new bipartisanship in this country. I believe there is more at stake right now in this country than at any time since the end of World War II, and if we can’t face the next century working together, we have a great deal to lose.
“I know that there are those among you who think that you are all right and everyone else is all wrong. I know this is true because at times I have had those same feelings myself. Doing this job has shown me that I was wrong.”
Then something happened that frightened Will. Joe Adams stood, his head down, staring at the table in front of him, saying nothing. For a moment, he thought Adams was near tears, then he realized that he had simply forgotten what he was going to say, or perhaps even where he was and who he was talking to. Sue Adams reached out and took her husband’s hand, and still he did not continue. Somebody had to do something.
Will got to his feet, applauding; so did Eft Efton, and in a moment, the crowd was standing, cheering. Sue Adams led her husband from the room. At the door, he paused, waved to the crowd, then disappeared.
The applause died, and Will’s eyes found Kate’s across the table. He could see the fear in them.
29
Before dawn, Will kissed a still-sleeping Kate good-bye, went downstairs, gave his bags to a Secret Service agent, and got into the car. Tim Coleman and Kitty Conroy were waiting for him, sipping coffee.
“So, how was the Adamses’ first White House party?” Kitty asked.
“Just great,” Will lied. He had lain awake last night wondering if Joe Adams’s slip was temporary or indicative of a slide into permanent senility.
“You don’t sound as if it was great,” Kitty said.
“Sorry, I’m still half-asleep.”
“Well,” Tim said, “this ought to wake you up: I had a call yesterday from Lou Regenstein.”
“The movie mogul?”
“That’s right; he’s the chairman of Centurion Studios.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever met him.”
“You’ve met Vance Calder, haven’t you?”
“Yes, at a dinner party in New York a couple of years ago.”
“Well, Calder is, apparently, a big fan of yours.”
“First I’ve heard about that,” Will said.
“You must have impressed him at the dinner party.”
“We did talk a lot; I found him very bright. For a Brit, he seemed pretty well informed about American politics.”
“He was born there, but he’s been an American citizen for more than twenty years. And, in addition to being Centurion’s biggest star, he’s a major stockholder in the studio.”
“I think I knew that; I’m not sure how.”
“Anyway, both Calder and Centurion want to get behind you in a big way.”
“How big?”
“Calder and the costar of his next film want to host a fund-raiser for you in L.A. right before the convention. He’s promised to get a thousand people to his house, at a thousand dollars a head.”
“He can get a thousand people into his house?”
“He’s got twelve acres in Bel Air, and he’ll do it on the lawn. It never rains in sunny California.”
“A million bucks in individual contributions? Wow.”
“And a lot of them will contribute to the party, too. There’s more: Centurion is going to give a million to the party after you’re nominated.”
“That would make them the single biggest contributor, wouldn’t it?”
“By a long shot.”
“Tell them I accept.”
“I already have. I hope you don’t mind, but I thought it was better not to hesitate.”
“You did the right thing, Tim,” Will said. “This is a great way to start the last leg of the campaign for the nomination.” He looked at Tim and Kitty. “So why do you two look so glum?”
“I guess you haven’t seen the Washington Post this morning,” Kitty said, handing it to him and pointing at a story below the fold:
“What the hell is this?” Will said, reading the piece.
“Larry Eugene Moody is appealing his murder conviction,” Tim said. “His grounds are that he was incompetently represented by you in his original trial.”
Will was having trouble reading the story in the moving car. “Go on,” he said. “Just how was I incompetent?”
“He says — or his new lawyer says — that you failed to depose a key witness against him, and that you offered no other witnesses to counter her testimony.”
“This would be the African-American girl who said he raped her in high school?”
“That’s the one.”
“It’s true that her testimony probably got him convicted. I thought I had it won until another witness blurted out the story about the alleged rape. Does the lawyer say how I was supposed to know she’d be called?”
“Moody says that he told you about the accusation in his first meeting with you, and that you did nothing to prepare for the witness.”
“That’s a bald-faced lie!” Will said. “Larry was convicted because he withheld that information from me. If I’d known about the incident with the girl, I would have known how to avoid opening the door on her testimony.”
“Was there anyone else at that first meeting between you and Moody?”
“No, we were alone.”
“Too bad; it’ll be your word against his.”
“All right,” Kitty said, “let’s run down what we’ve got here, and figure out how to deal with it. This story is, of course, immaterial to anything in the election. I think it’s a sideshow staged by the Republicans; they’re just hoping that enough mud will stick to hurt you. What we’ve got to do is to issue a statement this morning denying the charge of incompetence and stating the basic facts in the case.”
“All right, I buy that,” Will said. “You can type it up on the airplane and release it to the traveling press on the way west.”
“After I hand that out, I think you ought to go forward in the plane and just chat with them informally about the murder case. You have nothing to hide, it’s just Moody’s desperate attempt to avoid being put to death, et cetera.”