The Pinocchio Syndrome. David Zeman

Чтение книги онлайн.

       3

       WashingtonNovember 16

      An hour after the Washington Today broadcast, Vice President Dan Everhardt was in his EOB office, already laboring under a mountain of work.

      It was a beautiful day outside. The Washington Monument thrust boldly into a sunny sky while the last of the fall colors daubed the trees along the Mall. A perfect Washington day, cool and crisp. The kind of day that DC natives dreamed about throughout the steam bath of summer.

      This was football weather. It brought back pleasant memories of college games in which Dan had tested his strength against some of the toughest linemen alive.

      Had he been looking out the window, he might have seen Karen Embry’s little Honda pass by on 17th Street. Karen was on her way to the Library of Congress. She had some medical research to do, and not much time to do it in.

      But Dan Everhardt was looking at the list of appointments on his computer screen. The list was long. It was going to be a tiring day.

      The phone on Dan’s desk rang. His secretary said the president was on the line. Hurriedly Dan sat down and pushed line two.

      ‘Mr President. Glad to hear from you.’

      ‘Danny, how are you?’

      ‘Fine, Mr President.’

      ‘I’m just calling to congratulate you on your performance on Washington Today. We all liked what we heard.’ The president’s voice had its usual composite tone, at once caressing and demanding. He was a man who knew how to get what he wanted from political men without browbeating them.

      ‘Thank you, Mr President. I’m glad Mike Campbell was there,’ Dan replied. ‘In all honesty, I’m not a genius at thinking on my feet. That sheep ranch bit of Goss’s had me thrown. But Mike jumped in and bailed me out.’

      ‘Michael is a good boy,’ the president said. ‘He’s bright, and he has the right instincts. I told him how much we appreciate his help. He says he’ll go anywhere for us.’

      ‘I’m glad,’ Dan Everhardt said. ‘We might need him. Have you seen the polls today, Mr President?’

      ‘Let me worry about the polls, Danny.’

      The president’s reassurance was sincerely meant, but the fact remained that in the latest opinion polls the public’s approval of the administration was at an all-time low. Nearly fifty percent of registered voters told pollsters that if a special election for president were held today they would cast their votes for Colin Goss.

      ‘Frankly, Mr President, I’m worried that I didn’t do a good enough job,’ Dan said. ‘If it hadn’t been for Mike I would have looked like an idiot.’

      ‘You did fine, Danny. The choice before the people is clear. At the moment they’re expressing their worries about the future by flirting with Goss. But they’ll never take that into a voting booth. All we have to do is sit tight and keep doing our job.’

      ‘I hope you’re right, Mr President.’

      They said good-bye, and Dan Everhardt let out the sigh of relief that had been trapped in his lungs throughout the conversation. Had he heard a hint of impatience in the president’s reassurances? The thought made sweat stand out on his palm as he replaced the receiver. No matter how ingratiating his manner, the president was still the president. His tolerance for malingerers was zero. Everyone knew that.

      For a moment Dan sat thinking about Colin Goss. Not since McCarthy had an extremist of the Right worn so hateful a mantle. Dan Everhardt had done a senior thesis on Hitler at Rutgers. There were obvious parallels between Hitler’s anti-Semitism in Mein Kampf and Goss’s speeches about terrorism. The megalomania, the paranoia. The caricature of the opponent as a subhuman cancer cell eating away at the heart of the civilized world.

      Obviously it appealed to something in the psyche of the voters. Since the Crescent Queen Americans were lining up by the thousands to hear Goss’s speeches, and writing letters to the editor of their local paper to say that he was the man to ‘save the country.’

      To inflame the public further Goss had recently begun placing ‘public service’ ads in major newspapers and magazines, stressing the theme that it was ‘Time to Fight Back’ or ‘Time for a Change.’ Criticized by journalists and even advertisers for electioneering on behalf of himself at a painful time, Goss responded by placing some of the ads on television. It was not unusual these days to see commercials on cable and network stations featuring Goss, a fatherly expression on his face, talking about the ‘crisis’ America faced and the need for Americans to ‘make the tough choices’ at this critical time. Several of the ads showed Goss before a back-projection view of the Crescent Queen explosion.

      Those who tried to keep the ads off the air were frustrated by Goss attorneys who cited their client’s right to free speech. The advertising managers of the television networks were loath to say no to Goss’s money, especially when the public seemed to be responding so positively to the ads.

      This was going to be a tough battle, Dan Everhardt realized. Goss was throwing everything he had into the effort to force the president out of office. The political situation was meeting Goss halfway. People’s fear of another nuclear attack, possibly on American soil, was greater every day. The status quo was a continual state of terror. More and more voters wanted a change at any price.

      Dan was glad Michael Campbell was on board. Mike was hugely popular СКАЧАТЬ