An hour after he’d left the president, Landon Meyer was still light-headed with a kind of breathlessness he hadn’t felt since his college rugby days when the world condensed into exhilarating, time-freezing moments. His hands vibrated as he raised the highball glass of bourbon from his desk to his lips.
H e’d steeled himself as he was escorted into the Oval Office. President William Duncan sat in an elbowed mahogany armchair. Chief of staff Stuart Sheridan stood by a window facing the Rose Garden. Duncan only stood long enough to shake Landon’s hand and to direct him to the couch.
It had never struck Landon more clearly than at that moment that if Brandon was his Machiavelli, then Sheridan was the president’s. Except Duncan and Sheridan could have been twins separated at birth. Duncan had been raised in a coal-mining town and wore the weathered face of struggle, while Sheridan had summered in the Hamptons, a childhood of ease. Both were in their late sixties, hair dusted with gray, faces keen and self-satisfied despite the historic reversal of roles in the Su-preme Court nomination process that was moments away.
“I think we should skip the niceties,” President Duncan said, “and start at the bottom line.” He offered a thin smile. “We can make nice later, if necessary.”
“I’ve given this a great deal of consideration, Mr. President-”
Duncan raised his palm. “Skip that part.”
Landon felt himself redden as if he was receiving a dressing-down in front of his classmates.
“Mr. President-”
“The names, man. Just the names.”
Landon gave him the names.
Duncan and Sheridan glanced at each other, then both grinned at Landon.
The president spoke first. “Let’s just call them Starsky and Hutch until we’re ready to release it to the press.”
Landon leaned forward in his chair.
“That’s it? No argument about you not wanting to waste political capital pushing through these nominations? Looking for a middle ground with the Democrats so you won’t get pilloried like last time? A black? A woman? An Hispanic?”
Duncan shook his head. “Lame ducks don’t need a middle ground-and this is about my legacy.” He rose. “I’m not blaming you personally, but for almost seven years Congress has been an evenly divided logjam. My so-called legislative agenda was stillborn. I could’ve spent my presidency fishing or clearing brush on a Texas ranch and it wouldn’t have made much difference. Other than a tiny bit of tort reform and a few defense spending bills, I’ve accomplished nothing.” He spread his arms wide. “Nothing on abortion. Nothing on debt. Nothing on Social Security. Nothing on Alaska drilling. Nothing on nuclear power.”
“I’m not sure that’s true,” Landon said. “What about economic-”
“Diddly-squat. Extending NAFTA was diddly-squat, even less than diddly-squat-and the jury is still out about whether it helped us or hurt us.”
Sheridan approached them and then sat down and interjected himself into the conversation.
“The lesson since the days of Earl Warren,” Sheridan said, “is that if you can’t win in Congress, drive your agenda through the Court.” He clenched his fist. “Just when the Democrats think they’ve won, we’ll crush them.”
Duncan grabbed the conversation back.
“I’m willing to let my presidency rise and fall on whether we-you-can push Starsky and Hutch through the Senate. Let Newsweek call mine a failed presidency. I want to give history something different to write about: how my domination of the Court controlled the country for a hundred years after I was dead.”
Landon glanced over at Sheridan, expecting a Sieg heil salute.
“Starsky and Hutch are young enough to serve forty years each.” Duncan smiled again and threw up his hands. “Shoot, man, that’s almost half a century right there, and it’ll take another half century for anyone to undo what they accomplish.”
“But they’re only two. I’m not sure you’ll get another opportunity to make an appointment, so we’ll only have a majority for-”
“Twenty years is long enough to cast the die. Think of what Earl Warren did. The country still hasn’t recovered from that disaster. We’ll have a super majority: Starsky, Hutch, Robins, Ardino, Thompson, and Sunseri. Even if one gets weak-kneed, the rest can deliver-and nothing is off-limits.”
“Getting these nominees through the Senate will require a lot of money and a lot of horse trading, Mr. President. More than I think you-”
“Damn right it will.” Duncan’s face hardened. His voice pounded. “Trade them everything else. Let them turn all of Montana into a giant national park, let them double capital gains taxes, let them table the abortion bill until the year 3000, let them hand out condoms to sixth-graders-I don’t give a damn… but get… their… votes.”
Duncan walked to his desk and picked up a photograph of Ronald Reagan.
“If Reagan had been a Democrat, conservatives would have condemned him as one of the worst presidents in history. At the time, the highest deficits in U.S. history, tax rates through the roof, nothing on abortion, nothing on prayer in schools, drug war a complete failure, a balance of trade that left us drowning, welfare programs never bigger, Castro more powerful than ever. He can’t even take credit for the collapse of the Soviet Union. It did itself in. Nobody in his administration had a clue about what was going on over there.”
Duncan stared at the photo. “But what he did was to articulate a unity of vision about what America was.” He opened a side drawer of his hand-carved mahogany desk and slid the photo inside. “All that morning-in-America stuff.” He turned back toward Landon. “The difference between Reagan and me is that I finally have a way to make the country actually match mine.”
T he bourbon glass rattled as Landon set it down on the silver coaster on his deceased father’s Georgian walnut desk. He could still see the dent where the old man had smashed the telephone handset when he learned Nixon had resigned-an act his father thereafter called the most sickening example of presidential cowardice in U.S. history. He even threatened to quit the Republican National Committee and devote the tens of millions of dollars he raised every year to creating a third party.
Landon rested his elbows on the blotter, then pressed his splayed fingers together. He stared through them into nothingness, thinking about the New Hampshire primary five months away, and about Duncan’s last words:
“Get this done, Landon, and you’ll own the primaries. I’ll do whatever it takes to get you the nomination.” Then the self-deprecating smile that once charmed the nation, but now only made him look weak. “You can even hold the goddamn sword while I fall on it.”
Landon took in a long breath and exhaled. He’d been so swept up in the moment, in the grand images Duncan had painted, he’d failed to notice Duncan hadn’t a clue why he’d chosen these particular nominees.
He smiled to himself as he imagined the president’s fury when he finally realized he’d picked them to ensure not Duncan’s legacy-but his own.