Power Blind (26 page)

“But you've still got a foreign company at least indirectly contributing to a U.S. election campaign. That's a violation not only of election laws but the Foreign Agents Registration Act.”

“Think again. They weren't contributions. They were loans that came through Mann Trust.”

“It's still foreign money.”

“U.S. banks are full of foreign money. You don't think foreign deposits aren't going into every bank in the U.S. that's loaning money to political candidates? Hell, foreigners even own some of those banks.”

“What about money coming from Caribbean islands directly into campaigns?”

Landon shook his head. “It never does. Maybe into 527s and political action committees, even super-PACs, but never into any campaign accounts I'm associated with. That would be a crime. And the money is clean as long as the foreign account is controlled by U.S. citizens.” Landon smiled. “You want to talk to our lawyer?”

“Not if it's Brandon or Anston.”

“The National Senatorial Campaign lawyer. And we have an opinion letter from Stone & Whitman.”

“I'm sure everyone on your side thinks it's legal.”

“It's more than legal. It's exactly what I said. It's what you get when you combine free market capitalism with politics.”

Gage shook his head and pointed at Landon. “Remember what happened the last time you took something to its logical conclusion?”

Landon stiffened. “I was just ahead of my time. The immigration issue wasn't ripe.”

“And I'm not sure this one makes any more sense than that one did. Your political business model is leaving you not with profit but with debt. A whole lot of it.”

“For a while, only for a while. We just consider it an investment.”

“The way my people have added it up, your so-called investment in the form of loans to candidates and 527s is around forty-five million dollars just this year.”

Landon half smiled and looked away. “A drop in the bucket.”

Chapter 71

L
andon really did eat at the Flying J.

Gage found a booth while Landon glad-handed his way around the restaurant. He'd ordered for both of them by the time Landon sat down.

“Where's the menu?”

“You don't need one,” Gage said. “You already told me what you were having. Chicken fried steak.”

An outstretched hand attached to a plaid-covered arm injected itself into their conversation. Landon shook it, then scooted out of the booth. A skinny, five-foot-two-inch truck driver swept his John Deere cap off his head and offered Landon a toothy smile.

“Just had to shake your hand, Mr. President.”

Landon smiled back. “We're still over a year away from the election and there's no guarantee I'll win. Just call me Landon.”

The driver fidgeted, flustered by the offer. “I'm not sure I can do that, Senator.” He slipped his cap back on. “Sorry I interrupted your conversation, but I just had to tell you how much I support you and them two nominees. I'm tired—” The driver jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward the tables of truckers behind him. “We're all tired of judges makin' the laws. We elect you-all to make the laws and they're supposed to follow them.”

“I agree with you . . .”

“Chuck.”

“I agree with you, Chuck. And I'll do my best to get the nominees confirmed.”

“Thanks a lot, Senator.”

“Landon.”

“Okay.” The driver displayed a bashful smile. “Landon.”

Gage was still shaking his head when Landon slid to a stop on the bench seat.

“How many times do you go through that every day?” Gage asked.

“As many times as I can.”

Landon grabbed a napkin, then slid it under the table to wipe his hands.

“The funny thing is I always thought I was a solid person,” Landon said, “all of one piece. But every hand I shake is attached to someone who wants me to be something else.” He offered a weak smile. “Sometimes I feel like Frankenstein's monster.” He glanced over at the tables of truckers. “These people don't have a clue. Courts will always make law. There's no such thing as strict construction or originalism, that's why I never use the terms. The Founding Fathers never could've anticipated the Internet or stem cell research or nuclear weapons. The Court's job is to maintain the national character as embodied in the Constitution, but applied to today's problems, and sometimes that means restoring or even remaking the law when Congress or some lower court goes astray. Precedent and
stare decisis
can't mean anything more than that or be any more restrictive than that. Not in the real world. That's the only way the Court could have gotten to the
Citizens United
decision. It certainly wasn't because prior justices were confused about what a person was. The world had changed since the Constitution was written and the Supreme Court—not the Founders—wanted to give corporations the same rights as persons so they could participate in the political process.”

Landon thumped the table with his finger. “The Boston Tea Party wasn't just aimed at the Revenue Acts, but even more so at the all-powerful East India Company. The last thing the Founders would've done was grant corporations the personal rights of citizens. But times have changed and now we have statutory ways to control corporate lawlessness.” His eyes went vacant as though the thought was continuing to develop in his mind, then he said, “At the same time, a ruling not based on precedent or that the Court refuses to allow to be used as precedent subverts the legitimacy of the court. That's why
Bush v. Gore
was a travesty—not because the decision was wrong—it was right—but because the court cowered in the face of its own reasoning and ruled that it could never be cited as precedent in any other case.”

“Why not just stand up and say all that?”

“Because people don't like to be confronted by the nauseating reality that we build the bridges we walk on to get where we're going and sometimes have to repair or rebuild them from the middle. Those who describe themselves as strict constructionists or originalists are engaging in self-deception. Did you see Justice Sunseri on CNN last week? The reporter asked him whether torturing enemy prisoners was prohibited by the Constitution as cruel and unusual punishment. He responded by asking her whether she would ever use the word ‘punishment' to refer to torture.” Landon smirked. “What a stupid question. Idiotic. If originalism really meant anything to him, he would've asked whether the
Founding Fathers
in the eighteenth century would've applied the word to torture, not whether she would in the twenty-first. She didn't write the Constitution, they did. I'd never before seen someone expose himself so completely as a fraud—and no one in the media caught it.”

Landon's face flushed. “If your position is well founded, there's no reason to create a mythology to support it.”

Landon paused, then shook his head as if shaking off a catcher's sign.

“The same with the Bible. Nobody could follow it word for word. I'm not even sure anyone knows what the original words were. If we tried, we'd be stoning people to death every day. Billy Graham's greatness wasn't because he could shout out passages like a nineteenth-century orator, but because of the way he interpreted them and wove them into a modern message of personal salvation.” Landon grinned. “He spent his life as a Frankenstein's monster, too. Always a registered Democrat.”

The waitress placed a basket of dinner rolls and their salads on the table and winked at Landon before she turned away.

“Apparently she can't see where Dr. Frankenstein made the stitches,” Gage said.

“She must be blinded by my star power among the blue-collar crowd.”

Landon bowed his head in prayer, then picked up a dinner roll and buttered it.

“How about your star power in Washington?” Gage asked.

“I guess that's going to be up to you.”

“How do you figure?”

“I'm pretty sure I can survive a TIMCO scandal and—”

“You fly commercial this time?”

“I always fly commercial to Iowa. And because of our conversation today, whether your allegations are true or not, I won't be accepting TIMCO's largesse in the future.” Landon nodded with pursed lips. “Helluva fleet they have.” He set the uneaten roll onto his plate. “Let's put it this way. Washington, and by Washington I mean President Duncan, will bless me if I get his nominations—”

“His nominations? That's not what the press is saying.”

“Okay, my nominations . . . through the Senate. And you, my friend, are the only person in the country who can derail them. If you leak any of your, shall I say,
suspicions
to the press—”

“If your campaign funding scheme is legal, what difference does it make?”

“The public wouldn't understand, at least right away. And people fear what they don't understand.”

“You mean they'll think it's a corporate conspiracy to manipulate the electoral process, like the way many voters view super-PACs?”

Landon thumped a finger on the Formica table.

“The corporate conspiracy to manipulate the electoral process is called the liberal elitist media.”

Gage rolled his eyes. “Not this again.” He spread his hands on the table, “And now you're going to tell me it will be the fault of the media if the public comes to the conclusion that your brother's law firm—”

“Ex . . . ex–law firm—”

“—obstructed justice using a Cayman Island bank account later used to funnel loans to political campaigns?”

“I . . . no. If you put it that way, no. But that has nothing to do with me, and it's not the issue.”

“Then what's the issue?”

“The issue is political.”

“I'm not a political person.”

“You're the most political person I have ever met.”

“What party do I belong to? Who did I vote for in the last presidential election?”

“Not that way.” Landon pointed at Gage. “Everything for you is a moral issue. If it's between you and someone else, it's called ethics. If it's between you and world, it's called politics.”

It was true, but Gage had never expected to hear it as an accusation. Except he recognized that Landon was dissembling, for by “political” he really meant “partisan,” exploiting the double meaning of the word to conceal—maybe from himself—the degree to which his own ethics had mutated since his first campaign.

“I didn't realize I was a subject of your psychological analysis.”

“I pay attention to people who have become dangerous. And, at the moment, you're the most dangerous man in America.”

“To these nominations, maybe, but not to America.”

“You don't get it.” Landon started thumping the table again. “These nominations are the future of America, and I'm not sure you want to compromise that future because of some silliness by my brother—allegedly by my brother—fourteen years ago.”

S
illiness
.

The word ricocheted around in Gage's mind as he stood in the boarding line at the Des Moines airport.

Four men incinerated on the top of TIMCO's fractionating tower wasn't silliness.

Obstruction of justice wasn't silliness.

Bribing an OSHA investigator wasn't silliness.

Paying off a witness wasn't silliness.

What happened to the Landon Meyer I used to know?
Gage asked himself.
The Landon Meyer who prayed to a God he believed would someday judge him? He can't really believe God is on his side in this one.

The man behind Gage tapped him on the shoulder and said, “The line's moving, pal. Put it into gear.”

Gage closed the gap between himself and the woman in front of him.

It had all come too fast. Gage knew he hadn't asked all the questions he should have. Even when he was sitting across from Landon in the Flying J, he knew it. Landon's people had a decade to work it out, he only had a fraction of that time to grasp it.

He felt his stomach turn.

For a while
, Landon had said about the debts his chosen candidates had shouldered during their campaigns.
Only for a while
.

And Gage then knew he needed to find out when that while would end, and where.

Chapter 72

M
arc Anston glanced at his airplane ticket as he walked from American Airlines Admiral's Club at the San Francisco Airport toward his departure gate. He hated his first name. Not the sound. Seeing it in print. The spelling: French. Like a recurring nightmare. The language of the self-important. The self-delusional. A nation that had been defeated in just days by the Nazis during the year of his birth, and despite having been rescued by soldiers such as his father, proclaimed itself one of the victors at the end of the war.

Fellow students at Andover called him Frenchie, but that ended after three bloody noses made their way to the school nurse. And by the time he'd arrived at Yale, word had gotten around to not even try. Nonetheless, Anston grew up feeling like the kid in “A Boy Named Sue,” and nauseated by the fact that it was a song written by a Jew and sung by a country hick.

Anston surrendered his boarding pass and walked down the ramp toward the first-class cabin. In a few hours he'd be at the Rocky Mountain Center for Corporate Responsibility in Aspen.

That, too, he realized as he stepped across the threshold into the plane, was a boy named Sue.

A
nston climbed out of the limousine in front of the St. Regis Resort and took a long look at the brick façade. He knew it would be the last time he'd breathe the alpine air or be seen in public until he checked out two days later.

After tipping the porter, he inspected the three bedrooms of his sixth floor suite in the Residence Club. One had been converted into a conference room. The second into an office. He walked to the master bedroom and changed from his suit into slacks and a sweater, then inspected the stocked refrigerator in the kitchen and brewed a cup of tea. He had just settled onto the couch in front of the stone fireplace when three quick knocks on the door brought him back to his feet.

“Am I the first one here?” Preston Walters asked as he strode across the threshold.

With his magisterial white hair, tan face, and self-satisfied expression, Anston thought Walters appeared even more presidential than Landon Meyer—and felt annoyance that he was stuck dealing with politicians like Meyer because the American public was unlikely to ever let anyone step from a corporate suite directly into the presidency.

Anston nodded. “How was the flight?”

“Cramped.” Walters made a show of shifting his shoulders. “I hate playing the part of the worthy corporate citizen by flying commercial. All I could think about was our new Boeing sitting in the hangar. Range of six thousand miles. You should see that thing.” Walters grinned. “The best fifty million dollars of shareholders' money I ever spent.”

“What are you calling this one?”

“The TIMCO Star.”

W
e'll get campaign finance before the court by the end of November,” Anston said.

Eleven of the twelve industry lobbyists and corporate officers sitting around the oak conference table nodded.

The twelfth was staring down.

He looked up at Anston and asked, “Who's the plaintiff going to be? It can't be one of us.” He scanned the other faces. “It's impossible to make hundred-billion-dollar companies seem like victims.”

Anston smiled. “We already have plaintiffs.”

“Since when?”

“Two years ago.
Mid-State Machinery Incorporated v. Federal Election Commission
and
Americans for Americans v. Federal Election Commission
. The first to extend the
Citizens United
decision and allow for direct contributions by corporations to political campaigns, and the second to bar any corporation with less than fifty-one percent U.S. ownership from contributing to any campaign of any kind through any means of any kind.”

“And by any corporation, you mean those owned by the Chinese.”

“Of course, just because they're allowed to buy our bonds and our companies,” Anston said, “doesn't mean we're going to let them buy our politicians.” He smirked. “We have the exclusive on that.”

“Call it a corporate citizenship test.” Preston Walters laughed. “Or maybe immigration reform.”

“We had to get these cases through the district and the appeals courts to tee it up for our new guys. Oral arguments will be right after Thanksgiving.”

“When will they issue their opinion?”

“The second week in February.”

“Why then?”

“Because twenty percent of the caucuses and primaries will be over. Things will be so chaotic nobody will be able to figure out who the real beneficiary is—our side or the unions.”

“Except us.”

Anston nodded. “Except us.”

Walters looked at this watch. One fifty-five
P.M.
“We better get down to the conference. That foreign bitch Madeleine Albright is giving a talk on the ethics of globalization.” He shook his head in disgust. “It makes me want to gag.”

E
ight hours later, Anston tossed a log onto the fire as Walters settled onto the couch.

“How did the interview on CNBC go?” Anston asked, taking a seat in one of the matching side chairs.

“Softballs. That's all he threw. He didn't have a clue we spend a thousand times more on advertising our good deeds than actually doing them.”

“I saw the one on Peruvian reforestation,” Anston said. “I felt like nominating you for environmentalist of the year.”

Walters chuckled. “We did an acre and played it like we did a forest.” He picked up a glass of Scotch from the side table and took a sip. “What's your pitch to the group going to be tomorrow?”

“That we calculate each sector's contribution based on percentage of GDP, aiming at a total of five hundred million dollars.”

“That means . . .”

“Energy has to come up with forty million.”

Walters laughed. “Hell, I could raise half that myself by selling TIMCO's Gulfstream. But are you sure five hundred is enough?”

Anston smiled. “We don't have to buy the entire election, just add it into regular campaign contributions to reach the tipping point. Two hundred million to pay off outstanding loans and three hundred in new money.”

“I don't know. I'm still worried about Landon Meyer. I'm not sure he can play down the cultural issues long enough. He's always chomping at the bit about abortion and gay marriage. He thinks they're wedge issues, but they've become mainstream. He just sounds manic.”

Anston's smile disappeared. “I'm worried, too.”

“And we've got over half a billion dollars riding on him. Unless we have him in the Oval Office to veto Congress's attempts to circumvent the Supreme Court, it's going to be a wasted investment.” Walters pushed himself to his feet, then pointed down at Anston. “If TIMCO still has the EPA and OSHA breathing down its neck a year from now and if we're still blocked from Arctic drilling, and if anybody in the next administration ever uses the phrase ‘global warming,' I'll be pissed. All of us will be pissed. Our shareholders don't give a damn whether the enforcement guys at the EPA and the SEC and the Federal Energy Commission are fags, we just want them politically neutered.”

Walters walked over to the window and studied Ajax Mountain, pine green and ragged gray.

“Sometimes I think Landon believes he's a new Moses,” Walters said, “the bearer of ‘the Word,' with a vision of a distant holy land, a new City on a Hill. But that's not the Moses we need. We need the one who butchered his way across the Sinai to clear a path.”

Walters turned back toward Anston. “Landon understands how his trip to the White House is getting paid for, right?”

“He doesn't fully understand how he's getting where he's going,” Anston said, “but he knows who he'll owe.”

“That's not good enough. I'm tired of renting these politicians, or leasing them for two, four, or six years from political action committees and 501s and 527s. The guys who run these organizations can pivot at any time, even the fiscal conservatives, and run headlong at values issues—gays and drug testing and stem cell research—and forget why we gave them the money. And the politicians will pivot with them and forget why we put them in office.”

Walters raised his hand and jabbed the air with his finger.

“And I'm already sick of dealing through super-PACs and the greedy bastards who run them, and I'm tired of doing the idiotic non-coordination dance. I want to own these politicians outright and I want them to know I own them. I want to be the company store. I want them sucking on our tit so long and so hard they forget there's any other one.”