“Of course you will,” Adams replied. “Fortunately, you have the holidays ahead of you, and there’ll be time before you announce.”
“Announce?” Will said.
“I want you to announce for the presidency right after New Year’s; I want you to have established yourself as a candidate independent of me in the minds of the electorate before I withdraw.”
“I’ll have to give that a lot of thought, Joe.”
Sue Adams spoke up. “Will, speaking for myself, I think you’re now the Democrat who is best qualified for the presidency. You’re well established at the center, as well as at the heart of the party, and Joe and I want to see you elected next November.”
“We certainly do,” Adams said. “You are superbly qualified by temperament, training, and intellect. As far as I’m concerned, nobody in either party comes close.”
Will warmed to the praise, but he was being sucked into this little conspiracy, and he wasn’t entirely comfortable with it.
Adams seemed to sense his disquiet. “Will, all I’m asking you to do is to help me make a graceful exit from public life, while accomplishing as much as I can in the time remaining to me. Is that too much to ask of a close friend?”
“No, certainly not,” Will replied.
“Good,” Adams said. “Call me when you’ve made a decision about announcing.”
4
Will took off from College Park Airport and called Washington Center for his clearance, as the Marine lieutenant had instructed him to do. To his surprise, he was cleared direct to his home airport in Warm Springs, Georgia, instead of being routed on airways. He climbed to his assigned altitude of 18,000 feet, leaned the engine, punched the identifier for Warm Springs into his GPS computer, switched on the autopilot, and sat back, doing an instrument scan every minute or so.
Hardly a word had passed between him and Kate on the helicopter ride back to College Park, and until now, he had been too busy flying to talk. He wanted to talk.
“This whole thing scares me to death,” Will said.
“You? Scared of running for president?”
“Not that, so much; it’s Joe’s situation. It’s like a bomb that may or may not go off.”
“Do you really think he’s doing the right thing?”
Will shrugged. “I’m not sure there’s only one right thing,” he said. “It would be right if he announced his condition publicly and resigned, but who’s to say that what he’s doing is wrong? He has some very good points about his usefulness to the party and the country over the next months. I certainly wouldn’t deny him that.”
“You understand that, if the bomb goes off, it’s going to hurt you, as well as Joe.”
“Maybe; that’s entirely unpredictable. I’ve been thinking back over the history of the presidency, and the only thing I can think of that resembles this situation is Woodrow Wilson’s illness in office, and his wife’s acting for him. Of course, it’s not quite the same thing; Joe’s not president. If he were, I think he’d have to resign, regardless of the consequences.”
“Do you think Reagan was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s during his last term?”
“I don’t know; it’s possible, I guess, and it’s also possible that nobody really noticed. After all, he was the oldest president, and you’d expect some slowing down at that age.”
“Remember when he had to testify in court? He said ‘I don’t recall’ dozens of times. At the time I thought he was dissembling, but maybe he really didn’t remember.”
“Maybe not.”
Kate was quiet for a while, then she spoke. “If you do this, it’s going to play hell with our lives.”
“That’s true of everybody who ever ran for the office,” Will replied. “Do you not want me to do it?”
“Oh, Will, I think you’d make a superb president, you know that.”
“I’m glad you think so. What we have to get clear between us is what your role is going to be.”
“What do you want my role to be?”
“We have two choices, I think: One is that you resign from the Agency and play the campaign wife. I know you don’t want to do that, and I don’t expect you to. The other is for you to remain at the Agency and do your job. I can say, in campaigning, that my wife and I are both public servants and that we decided, together, that the country would be best served by your remaining at the Agency.”
“Sounds good to me,” Kate said.
“Understand, though, that there are times when I’ll want you at my side: at the convention, for instance, and, if I get the nomination, on election night.”
“At the whole convention, or just for the smiling and waving at the end?”
“At the whole convention, I think. There has to be some time when the party and the press get to feel that you’re a real person and not just a cardboard cutout that’s set up for photo ops.”
“All right, I can take vacation time for the convention.”
“Also, when I make evening appearances in or around Washington, I’d like you on the platform, work permitting.”
“Work permitting, okay. What about Peter?”
“The last night of the convention and election night only; that’s all I’ll ask of him. I don’t want to interfere with his schooling or with his relationship with his father.”
“Yes, that would really set Simon off.”
“I don’t want you to press Peter to do this; I’d rather not have him there than have him think I’m imposing on our relationship.”
“Peter loves you, Will; you know that. He’ll be glad to help.”
“You’re going to have to warn him about the press, too, and...” Will stopped.
“Tell him to stay out of trouble?”
“Well, yes. He’s a normal kid, and I want him to stay that way, but I don’t want him getting busted for smoking pot, or anything like that.”
“I think that’s a reasonable request” — she laughed — “and I think he’ll think so, too.”
“I’ll need to talk about this with my folks, of course,” Will said.
Kate laughed. “You think they’re going to discourage you? It’s their dream come true!”
“Well, yes.”
“Who else should you talk to?”
“I wish Ben Carr were still alive; I’d sure like to talk to him.”
“Who else?”
“Tom Black, of course; I’d want him to run the advertising and to advise, in general. I’ll want Kitty Conroy and Tim Coleman on board right away.” Conroy was the chief of his Senate staff, and Coleman, his press secretary.
“You need a top politician to be campaign manager,” Kate said. “Maybe another senator, to do for you what you were going to do for Joe Adams.”
“I’ll have to think about that,” Will replied. “Nobody jumps to mind, and a third of them will be running for reelection.”
“Thank God you don’t have to make that decision — whether to run for president or for reelection to the Senate. At least, if you lose, you’ll still be in the Senate.”
“There is that.”
“All in all, Senator, I’d say you were in pretty good shape.”
“Sure, all I have to do is beat a big field in the primaries and a Republican in November and, along the way, raise sixty or seventy million dollars.”
“Oops, forgot about that.”
“I’m not president yet. Of course, in the event that I actually get elected, the problem of your role is going to be a thorny one.”
“Will, I cannot be Nancy Reagan or Rosalyn Carter or Eleanor Roosevelt.”
“I understand that, but even if you stay at the Agency, there’ll be a lot of times when you’ll have to be at the White House — interviews, events, state dinners, and receptions — and probably some foreign travel.”