The Last Debate (17 page)

“Mr. Meredith, what kind of wall would you build along the Texas-Mexico border to keep out people who look like me? Brick, concrete—or barbed wire?”

Howley said: “Good questions, Henry. Particularly the one about the wall.”

“Yeah,” Barbara said.

“But, with all due respect, Henry,” said Joan, “I don’t believe they will blow the lid off, so to speak. Most of that has already been gone over. He’s already been asked most of those questions in some form or other, and he’s managed to dodge and charm and lie his way around them. The American people, I am sorry to say, have sat there and watched and listened and read while he did it. But they still want him as president—if the new poll is right. They want a wall and a moratorium on immigration and all of the rest.”

“The poll is right,” Howley said.

“He’s manipulated the people,” Barbara said. “He’s in the same league with Koresh and Jones and those other cult fanatics, only he’s done it to more people—enough to elect him president.”

For a few seconds the only sound was from the television. The stock-car race had now given way to a movie starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. It seemed to Joan that there was always a movie on television starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.

“Maybe we should forget this whole thing,” Joan said. “Maybe the people really do know what they’re doing and supporting. Maybe the people have a right to ruin their country. That is democracy, isn’t it?”

“We’re back where we started?” Henry asked.

“No,” Barbara said. “Let’s see what we can think of. I had a question for Meredith about civil rights. The bastard really does not believe anybody should have them except white males. He really did say the other day that reverse discrimination is now the real racial and gender problem in this country. Can you believe that?”

They could all believe that. But it clearly wasn’t enough. Not to throw the election. Not to do him in.

“It would sure help if Greene was a better candidate,” Joan said. “His poll negatives are almost as bad as Meredith’s.”

“Worse in some areas—like ‘leadership,’ ‘presidential-like,’ ‘bearing,’ ‘charisma,’ ‘breathing,’ ” Mike said.

“We can’t give up,” Barbara said. “We’ve come a long way. Let’s not quit now.…”

“I’m not sure I’m there yet about laying it out there at the beginning the way Mike said,” Henry said. “I think we are smart enough to do it and not leave any fingerprints.”

“I disagree,” Mike Howley said.

Henry told me his mouth moved into shape to say Yes, sir, but the words did not come.

“Look,” Joan said. “I had sketched out a jugular one for Meredith. Let me read it.” She looked down at some papers in front of her. “Mr. Meredith, there is a growing consensus in the country about three things. One, that you are going to be elected president. Two, that you will have done so by dividing the American people into their most self-interested groups, by appealing to their worst sides, to their fears and loathings, to what separates them one from the other. Three, that as president you will govern the nation in that same way. What is your comment?”

Barbara clapped. Henry signaled a thumbs-up.

“Right, right on!” Barbara said.

“Now we are talking,” Henry said. “Olé, olé, gringo anchorwoman!”

Mike Howley said: “I’d give you an A for content, D-minus for length.”

Joan shook her head. “Thanks, one and all. But is it enough? If we could depend on Greene to pick up on it and for all of us to jump in—”

“Without appearing to be piling on,” Henry said.

“That’s the way it’s going to look no matter what, but who cares?” Barbara said.

Again, the other three turned toward Mike Howley. Again, he was the one they wanted to hear from.

He had them now exactly where he wanted them.

There was a knock on the door.

Henry, once again, did the duty, holding a shsssh finger to his mouth and going to the door.

It was the room-service supervisor, the guy in the green blazer. He was holding a huge round tray off to the left side of his head. “Surprise, ladies and gentlemen of the press! Surprise!” He took a ta-dah step into the room. “Hot-fudge sundaes for everyone!”

“I don’t think we ordered anything like that,” Joan said rather meekly and quietly.

“They’re on the house. The management and employees of Colonial Williamsburg and the Williamsburg Inn and Lodge want you to have them as a token of our admiration and good luck.”

Henry, still the welcomer at the door, said: “Well, sure. Thanks and olé.”

“Is it against our journalist code of ethics to accept free hot-fudge sundaes?” Howley asked.

“At my place the rule is anything worth less than ten dollars doesn’t count,” Henry said.

“My magazine specifically exempts hot-fudge sundaes from all rules,” Barbara said.

With flourish and commotion, the man in the green blazer served a sundae to each of the four. Then he stood back and off to the side as if he were settling in to watch them eat each and every bite. Henry said it was clear he had something else on his mind. And in a few seconds he got it out.

“I have a favor to ask of you, if it is not too much,” he said.

“We are not going to tell you our questions, sir,” Henry said quickly.

“No questions. A picture. I wonder if I could have my picture taken
with you? I have a camera.” He pulled a small Canon Sure Shot camera out of his jacket pocket. “I asked one of the waiters to come with me. He is out in the hall.…”

Henry looked at his colleagues. “No problem?”

And soon the supervisor in the green blazer was standing against a wall surrounded—two on each side—by Michael J. Howley of
The Washington Morning News
, Joan Naylor of CNS News, Henry Ramirez of Continental Radio, and Barbara Manning of
This Week
magazine. One of the two waiters who had been in the room clicked off three shots.

“This picture will make me famous in my neighborhood,” said the supervisor. “Thank you.”

Henry, escorting the two men to the door, said: “It was nothing. We love to have our picture taken.”

“Ask good questions,” said the supervisor.

“Do you have a question you think we should ask tonight?”

“Yes, I do. Ask why they lie about everything.”

Henry opened the door. “Good idea. Thanks for the sundaes.”

“We’ll be back for the dirty dishes.”

“No reason to do that. They will not be a problem.”

Henry closed the door. “Ain’t democracy an olé thing,” he said to Howley, Joan, and Barbara.

Howley held up his hand to signal the others. Hush, please. Say nothing. He picked up his ice-cream bowl and looked and felt the bottom. He nodded for the others to do the same. Silently.

Bingo. A small receiver, dull silver the size of a penny, was stuck to the bottom of the bowl Joan Naylor was using. Nobody said a word as Howley took the tiny thing between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand and carried it into the bathroom. There he placed the stopper in the sink, filled the basin full of water, and dropped the little piece of round silver into the water.

It was Henry who said “Jesus” this time.

It put an eerie urgency to the business at hand, which nobody had to restate. Nobody had to restate the fact that time was running out, the fact that they had agreed on nothing, the fact that it had come down to Mike Howley. He had been about to say something when the knock on the door of the man in the green blazer interrupted.

Nobody had to say, Well, Mike, what were you going to say—if anything? Well, Mike, have you got an idea, Mike? Hey, Mike, how
do
we do in David Donald Meredith?

Howley put them through several excruciatingly tense silent dum-ta-dum-dum seconds. He walked back and forth across the room twice, the last time turning up the sound on Liz and Dick. He shook his head from side to side several times.

It was quite an act.

Finally, back in his chair at the big table, he said: “As a matter of fact, I may have a way to do it. Some papers came into my possession right before I left Washington. I didn’t take them to a Xerox machine, so I have only one copy of each. If you wouldn’t mind reading them one at a time?”

He reached down into a small black canvas briefcase on the floor by his chair and pulled out some papers. He handed them to Joan, who was the closest to him.

They spent the next two hours reading those papers and making the decision that would transform a presidential election, journalism, and themselves.

A
t 6:01
P.M.
, Eastern Standard Time, Michael J. Howley took the hand-signal cue from the stage manager. Howley looked at the spot he had been told to look at, grinned slightly, and then said to an estimated ninety-two million Americans and several million other people around the world:

“Good evening.… And welcome to the only debate of this presidential campaign between David Donald Meredith, the Republican nominee, and Governor Paul L. Greene, the Democratic nominee. Welcome, Mr. Meredith … Governor Greene.”

The candidates smiled and nodded. They were standing behind the blue-gray podiums that came up to just above each man’s waist. Both were dressed in dark blue suits and white dress shirts. Greene’s tie was his trademark shamrock green. Meredith’s was his customary dark burgundy. Howley and the three panelists were seated facing the candidates from behind their table. It was the customary look for presidential debates.

Howley continued: “I am Michael J. Howley of
The Washington
Morning News.
I am working tonight with three other journalists—Joan Naylor of CNS News … Barbara Manning of
This Week
magazine … and Henry Ramirez of Continental Radio.”

Joan Naylor looked like Joan Naylor always looked. She was usually described in the personality magazines as that perky, spirited girl-next-door type who was clearly number one in CNS’s Doris Day Always Lives Here corps. Joan was blond, blue-eyed, lovable, and she was all of that and more now as the camera went to her when Howley called her name. She was dressed in a dark green silk suit. That was because she had never flubbed a line or done a poor interview after drinking a cup of hot tea with lemon, talking on the phone with her Aunt Grace in Sandusky, Ohio, or while wearing dark green. She had called her aunt before leaving her room at the Inn while sipping a cup of hot tea.

There had never been a personality-magazine story about Barbara Manning. If there had been, it would probably have described her as a natural physical heiress to Lena Home. She could probably have been a campus beauty queen if she had been so inclined. She was looking down at something on the table in front of her when Howley mentioned her name. The camera missed her facial beauty but not the stylishness of the beige dress she was wearing. Her main predebate problem had been resisting the temptation to tell Barbara Hayes what was coming. When she had gone back to her room from Longsworth D, there was a hotel message slip under the door, and the red light on the phone was blinking. Call Barbara Hayes. Barbara Manning wavered but did not call her back.

Henry Ramirez was as attractive a man as Barbara Manning was a woman. He came to that debate table even more unknown than Barbara Manning. His hair was full and black and combed straight back. He gazed right into the camera and winked when Howley introduced him. He appeared ready, confident. It triggered prize fighter analogies. Henry was wearing his dark blue suit, the one he wore at his Texas A&I graduation and all monumental and solemn occasions since. The shirt had been a problem because he didn’t think any of the ones he owned was right. So he had gone to Brooks Brothers on L Street and bought a blue pinstripe oxford-cloth button-down “classic” before leaving Washington. Unfortunately, he had forgotten that new shirts come out very wrinkled from their cellophane and pins. Fortunately, he unwrapped it and discovered
his problem soon enough to send it off in the hands of a bellman for a rush press job. He also bought a new tie at Brooks Brothers. It was dark blue with half-inch pink stripes angled across it. He thought he vaguely remembered Phil Donahue—or was it Robert MacNeil?—wearing something like that the other day on television. The last thing Henry had done before leaving his room was talk to his mother in Falfurrias. “Muy bien, my son,” she had said. It was an expression he had heard from his mother since the first time he remembered hearing anything. There were no better words to hear.

Howley was dressed in a dark brown suit because that was what he always wore when any kind of serious chips were down. He had worn that suit the last two times on the NBS morning show, and when he got his honorary degree and delivered the commencement address at Amherst College in Massachusetts. (“I beg of you to enter journalism,” he said to the graduates. “Come save it from what we’re all doing to it before it’s too late.”) The only physical flaw he exposed to the American people this night was his hair. He had thought about getting a fresh haircut before the debate, but Marengo, his barber in Washington, was away seeing his family in Lebanon, and Howley had neither the interest nor the energy to find someone else. To hell with it anyhow, he must have thought. This isn’t show business, this is serious business. So his graying dark brown hair was careening slightly down over both ears and his shirt collar.

He said to the millions: “We are here in an auditorium in the Williamsburg Lodge on the grounds of historic Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia. There could be no more fitting setting for such an important exercise in modern democracy.”

There was no TelePrompTer. Howley had worked to memorize the copy, but he looked down at his paper now. The next was the most difficult part, the important part. It had to be said correctly and firmly. It had to resonate, reverberate.…

O Jesus, help us as we travel toward the shadow of death, thought beautiful Barbara Manning.

Olé, Mike! thought handsome Henry Ramirez.

From this next moment on, my life will never be the same, thought perky Joan Naylor.