After the conventions were over, we examined the results. In most years, a party enjoys a surge in popularity after a convention of several points in the polls. This year was no different. The Democrats picked up 4 %, and then settled back down, and we picked up 3 % after ours. The next step would be the debates, to be held in late September and early October. John Kerry and I would meet Tuesday, September 28, in Houston, and John McCain would take on John Edwards a week later on October 5, in Spokane.
I managed to get into trouble shortly after the convention. Jimmy Carter, the ex-President, had become a Democratic gadfly over the years. He could be a real sanctimonious asshole at times, telling people how the Republican Party was a bunch of heartless bastards. He also thought he was a brilliant international negotiator. At the start of September, a bunch of Chechen terrorists took over 1,100 Russian adults and children hostage in Beslan, North Ossetia. By the time the Russians took control, hundreds of hostages were dead, along with the Chechens. Jimmy Carter managed to say, on camera, that the Russians had mishandled the entire situation, and that they should have negotiated and handled everything calmly and peacefully.
Needless to say, the Russians were not amused. Vladimir Putin called me and complained about the ex-President’s remarks. Putin wasn’t all that happy with America. Things might not be as warm as when he and I had our karate summit but we were still talking. The biggest problem was simply that Russia thought they were more important than they really were. They now were earning enough money through oil and gas exports to begin to rebuild their army and air force. It was still an incredibly inefficient system, but they had some money now and wanted more influence. Unfortunately for the Russians, they were still a second or third world economy at heart. Their only exports were oil, gas, and cheap but crappy weapons.
I sympathized with Vladimir without actually promising to do anything. I took his call while on a campaign swing in Tennessee, and afterwards, mentioned it to Josh Bolten. Unfortunately, I was overheard by a local reporter with a parabolic mike, as I said, “Somebody needs to tell Mister Peanut to shut his damn mouth and go build a house! It’s the only damn thing he’s ever been good at, anyway!” That made it to the news that evening, and I had to have Ari issue an apology the next morning. Mister Peanut was quoted the next day stating that the President of the United States should act and talk like the President of the United States, and not like the president of a drunken fraternity. At that point some of the networks dug up the fact that I had actually been the president of a drunken fraternity.
Like I said, a real sanctimonious prick.
The biggest worry we had in the campaign were the debates. At one point in American political life, political debates were considered high theater and a chance to actually argue your points of view with a contender in front of the populace. They would be written and published in newspapers, and discussed across the nation. Nowadays, they were nothing more than a chance to issue dueling sound bites and one-liners. Just like with everything else, we now had debate consultants to teach us what we were allowed to debate and say. Actual intelligence on the part of the debater was not considered important, and might be detrimental. If they were smart, they might try to actually answer the question rather than spout the canned response the campaign consultants wanted to deliver. Worse would be if they were stupid and tried to answer the question! As Abe Lincoln once said, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.”
Did debates matter? The jury was out on that. It was considered universal political wisdom that they helped kill Richard Nixon in 1960. He was a jowly man, with a heavy five o’clock shadow of a beard, and was coming off a bout of the flu. On the black and white televisions of the period he looked pale and coarse compared to the young and healthy looking Kennedy. People who heard the debate on the radio, or read it in the papers, thought Nixon won, but on television Kennedy slaughtered him. Likewise, Ronald Reagan, a fine leader but decidedly no intellectual, learned his lines like the true professional actor he had been for many years, and blew away both Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale.
Huge amounts of time and energy are expended by the campaigns on how the debates are setup and organized. How many would there be? What format would they be? Did we have a traditional debate, with the candidates standing in front of podiums and answering questions from a moderator? Would they be seated at a table facing each other? Or did we go with a town hall format, where we would be on bar stools in a surround setting, free to stand up and move around? Who would be the moderator? Would he simply ask questions, or would he be allowed to push back against the canned answers and demand that the candidates answer the questions? The last thing anybody actually wanted was a moderator who went off script and told the candidate that he was a lying sack of shit, which is what most of us were!
There was a lot of nervousness about this year’s debates. Nowhere is it stated in the Constitution that you have to have them. Typically you have two or three debates among the Presidential candidates, and one between the Vice Presidential candidates. The problem? I had never been in a debate — ever! It is rather unusual for Congressional candidates to debate, and we had blown off the Veep debate during the last election’s debacle over my Nicaraguan vacation. John Kerry, on the other hand, had been in several debates as a Senatorial candidate. I was considered the underdog, not a good position for a sitting President to be in, and was widely expected to walk onto the stage, trip over my shoelaces, and then pee my pants. One theory, posed by one of the drier wits in the bunch, was that John McCain would be able to pick up the pieces when I screwed up the week before. Nothing like trying to live up to high expectations.
I thought debates were bullshit, and I had better things to do with my time (like run a government) then spend days and days practicing sound bites in mock debates. We limited the debates to one for the President and one for the Vice President. Big mistake! This was considered a sign of weakness on my part, fear that I couldn’t cut it. Screw it! Maybe I wouldn’t piss my pants on television and be considered the winner!
My attitude must have come through during the debate prep, because Brewster chewed my ass out royally, most powerful man in the free world or not! I was to knock off my shit, stick around and not duck out, and learn my lines, or I was going to be a one term President! It didn’t help that John looked like a fucking perfectionist at this shit, either. I just reminded Brewster that I was legally allowed to write my own pardon in case I punched his lights out. He was not impressed.
That was the idea, anyway. The world has a way of screwing great plans up. On Tuesday September 14, Ari came into my office and asked me for a few minutes. I tossed down my pen and leaned back, nodding him towards an armchair in front of my desk. “Please! Have a seat. Rescue me from the budget, please!”
“Mister President, I just had a call about a story that was published in The National Enquirer.”
“Elvis is still dead and there are no aliens in Roswell,” I told him.
Ari didn’t look amused. “This is serious, Mister President. I just had a phone call from the Times about the cover story in this week’s edition of the Enquirer.”
“The Times? The New York Times?! I mean, not the Duluth Times or the Boise Times? Somebody at the Gray Lady reads the Enquirer? What’s going on, Ari?” I asked, giving him a curious look.