The Speechwriter (14 page)

The governor had become obsessed with lists. He wanted a list of opinion writers who had defended him and a list of those who had ridiculed him, another of donors he needed to call to apologize for “letting them down,” still another of Rotary Clubs he hadn't addressed in more than a year.

“Courson!” he might shout. He meant Senator John Courson. “What's Courson said about resignation?”

“Uh,” one of us would say.

“Come on! We've got to know this. We need a list. Put together a list of every guy upstairs who's said something publicly about stepping down.”

And off one of us would go—usually it was me—to compile another list. Nat wagered it wouldn't be long until he demanded a list of all our lists.

I'd compiled that list of house and senate members who supported resignation, and it was almost identical to the list of members of the legislature. Only two or three members of the caucus didn't put their name on a letter calling on the governor, for the good of the state, to step down.

That afternoon I walked up to the house gallery and waited for the session to start. The floor was packed, which was extremely unusual for a special session in the middle of summer called for the purpose of changing one law that virtually every member agreed needed to change. They were there for Delleney's motion, I thought.

Speaker Harrell oversaw the proceedings efficiently. It took no more than thirty minutes to get the final vote on the unemployment law.

“Is there any other business?” he asked.

Delleney rose. He had a thin, pronounced nose and neatly brushed brown hair, and with his determined expression I thought he looked like a bird of prey.

“Mr. Speaker,” he said, “I've introduced articles relating to the governor's recent absence from the state. Rather than wait until January to address the matter, I would submit to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle that this is too important
to be left for another six months. Mr. Speaker, I move we take it up now.”

“Mr. Delleney,” Harrell said, “this session has been called for one purpose only, and I'm finding it hard to see how your motion relates.”

“Mr. Speaker, impeachment is something only the house can do,” Delleney contended. “We act separately and independently from the senate in this process. We are the only ones that can impeach. I would submit that, in order to move forward on a subject as important as this one, the house should take it up now.”

Harrell paused. “Mr. Delleney, your argument strikes me as tenuous, but I'm willing to entertain debate on the question. Is there debate on the question? Mr. McLeod.”

Representative Walt McLeod, a tiny and ancient member, rose to his feet. As a member of the minority, McLeod had never been a “friendly,” as Jeane called potential allies. I knew little about him other than that he liked occasionally to rant from the podium, always in a voice far louder than his tiny stature would signify and always concluding with the words “I thank the members for listening to this little tirade” or some similar charming apology.

“Mr. Speaker,” McLeod said, “I just want to be clear. We came to the capital today to make a minor change to the law and extend unemployment benefits, and now we're being asked to take up the impeachment of a governor? Well, Mr. Speaker, as many of y'all know, I am no fan of the governor's policies. I bear him no ill will and once in a while I agree with what he says, but we don't see eye to eye on most things.
But I recognize that sometimes a man falls into folly, and it would do us all good to remember that we too have fallen, we too have been guilty of some mighty stupid things, and we don't necessarily want it brought before the world in this way. That's just my opinion. I know some differ. And anyway, I think bringing this up now, rather than waiting till the house has a better feel for what laws might or might not have been broken, if any, I don't know—Mr. Delleney may have some strong arguments later on, but at this point, his proposal is absolutely immatu—I mean,
pre
mature.” McLeod paused, then looked around at Delleney. “Might even be
im
mature.”

The house exploded in laughter.

Harrell, chuckling, asked if anyone else wished to debate the question.

There were two or three more questions, but by their tone it was pretty clear that the feeling of the house was against Delleney. I suppose members didn't want to take up impeachment because they didn't want to spend another two weeks or a month in town, though many of them bore such hatred for the governor that they would have made that sacrifice. I've always felt that Representative McLeod's slip of the tongue saved the governor's job, and mine.

14

A LARGER NOTION

T
wo or three months passed, and slowly I began writing again. Not op-eds or talking points, mainly just letters. There were lots of thank-you letters to write; far more, in fact, than before the scandal. Ordinarily people sent gifts—a map of Italy from the Italian consul in Atlanta, say, or a hand-crafted pen from prisoners at one of the state prisons—and these were all to get personal notes in response. Now there were more gifts, but they were mostly of a particular kind: the mail bin was full of books with titles like
The Key to Companionship
and
Your Life, Your Marriage
. One was called, improbably,
The History and Philosophy of Marriage
. Another—this one self-published, it appeared—bore the imposing title
Understanding the Devastating Effects of
Sex Outside of Marriage
. Initially I thought these had been sent by pranksters, and maybe some of them had been, but I read the notes accompanying them and the senders seemed to be genuinely, if a little unctuously, concerned. One of the notes began, “I foolishly destroyed my marriage many years ago. If I had read this book, I might have done things differently.” A great many well-meaning supporters thought the governor would benefit from watching a movie called
Fireproof.
(“Lt. Caleb Holt lives by the old firefighter's adage: Never leave your partner behind. Inside burning buildings, it's his natural instinct. In the cooling embers of his marriage, it's another story.”) At one point there were at least fifty copies of the movie lying in a pile; staffers were told to take as many as they pleased.

The governor himself dictated a few responses to these well-wishers, but he couldn't keep up and told me to write most of them.

June came to my desk one afternoon. “We've got a problem,” she said. June managed several executive branch divisions; one of those was the Correspondence Office, and usually when she came to me about a problem it was because the governor wanted some form letter rewritten. At the time, we were dealing with the first lady's announcement that she'd filed for divorce.

“We have a good many of those,” I said. “Which one are you referring to?”

“The word ‘integrity' is all over our letters. It's everywhere. It's not that I don't think he has integrity,” she said, I thought with a smile. “It's just that when most people get a
letter from him right now, they might find the word ‘integrity' a little, um—.”

“Ironic?”

“Off-putting. And ironic.”

She handed me a folder full of form letters—a letter to newlyweds, a letter to new parents, to bereaved family members, to winners of sports awards and military medals. Each contained the word “integrity”; all had to be reworded, and usually shortened.

Condolence language had to be redone too. The governor liked to send short letters to anyone he knew or had met whose spouse or close relative had died; the composition of these letters, normally formulaic, now required thought. I could no longer use the first-person plural to refer to the governor and his wife, as in “You'll be in our thoughts and prayers.” But I couldn't just change “our” to “my” since “You'll be in my thoughts and prayers” called attention to his singularity, and in any case who wants to be thought about and prayed for by a lonely disgraced politician?

Other changes were necessary. Someone in a cabinet agency noticed that a form letter signed by the governor had for years been attached to literature given to new mothers. The letter explained how the governor and his wife had always tried to view their children as precious gifts. It had to be rewritten.

Among the most severe challenges was the letter to couples newly engaged. The one I used consisted of about two hundred words, a cheery and slightly hokey paragraph about the meaning of marriage. (“More than anything, marriage
is about commitment.”) Instead of ceasing to send them, as both June and I told the governor would have been the wiser course, he wanted to rewrite the letter and continue the tradition, “but without saying anything weird.” I had always thought that writing meaningless words must be easy, but it isn't. Try writing three uplifting sentences about marriage without in any way mentioning or alluding to marriage.

A little later, when we began once again to send out statements and press releases that had nothing to do with divorce or impeachment, I drafted a release in which it was suggested that “an honest look at the numbers” proved something or other. “It looks fine,” he said after reading it. “But let's not use that word ‘honest.' I'm not really in a position to lecture people about honesty.” He said it with uncharacteristic sadness, and for a moment I forgave him for everything.

In the fall he was ready to “get back out there,” to speak publicly about something other than the scandal—or, as he had begun referring to it, “that which has caused the stir that it has.”

Congress was rewriting the Real ID legislation, and it was decided that the governor should hold a press conference on the administration's “concerns” about the new version. He'd do it at one of the DMV offices in the Upstate. Paul explained to me what the three concerns were, and I wrote them out in my customary way, adding a flourish or historical parallel here and there. Stewart, Nat, and I met with the governor. He
was far more agitated by what the press might ask about his marriage than about anything to do with public policy.

“Look, Governor,” Stewart began with his usual reassuring articulacy. There was no doubt reporters were going to hit him with a lot of questions about the divorce, the flights, Maria, and everything else. He actually said the name Maria; it felt wrong to hear anybody say it in the governor's presence. But, Stewart went on, he had to let them do it, get it out of their system. Once the governor responded in the same way a few times, they would get tired of asking.

“Okay,” he said, almost appreciatively. “So let's practice.”

Nat, imitating the self-consciously dignified tones reporters sometimes use, began: Would the governor be able to give the job his full attention in light of all that was happening in his personal life? “Aaaah,” came the response. “I'd simply say this.” His voice sounded relaxed, urbane. “I've already talked in more than enough detail about struggles on the personal front. We're trying our best to work through some issues. I'd leave it at that.”

We went through a few more questions before Paul came in. There was a problem. The third of the three points the governor was to explain at the press conference—the one about Real ID not distinguishing between indictments and convictions, I think—wasn't true. We'd have to take it out. But, Paul said, we can just go with the first two; those are solid.

“So we've only got two problems with the new bill?”

“Yeah,” Paul said, “but they're solid.”

“Okay,” the governor said, the urbanity in his voice turning immediately to aggression, “I'm not getting out there to
talk about two stupid points. I need three points, first, second, third. Got that? Give me a third point. Go.”

The four of us walked over to the policy office. “Okay, people,” Paul said to the three or four staffers and law clerks, “we've only got two points and the boss wants three. Let's find him a third point.”

Eventually they found one, but it didn't matter. Stewart's and the governor's instincts were right. There wasn't a single question about Real ID. All reporters cared about was the divorce. During the questions three college students stood behind the gaggle and ridiculed him. “Governor,” one of them kept shouting, “where's your wedding ring?”

The next morning the governor walked into the press office and sat down without saying a word. Nat asked him what he thought of the press conference. The stories in the press weren't great, but they weren't terrible, and the governor had looked briefly like a governor.

“Just glad it's over,” he said. “Do you know, I've never worn a wedding ring?”

Aaron had left for another job. Nat was now spokesman. He didn't want to do it, he told me, but the governor had a way of persuading you to do things you didn't think you'd do under any circumstances. Nat was the kind of person who would overprepare for everything, and the thought of becoming the mouthpiece of a lame duck administration in perpetual crisis seemed overwhelming to him. He'd have me practice
giving him hard questions, and we both knew he didn't do particularly well. Even in ordinary conversations, he always seemed to know more than he was letting on—he had a cold, ironic sense of humor—and his answers sounded vaguely inauthentic. But he worked hard at it. Once, as we were walking to lunch, we saw Donald Hatfield, the AP reporter, a few hundred yards away. “You know,” he told me, “Hatfield's worked for the AP for thirty-five years, and they've never made him bureau chief. You know why?” I said I didn't. “Because in like Nineteen-sixty-eight he killed a woman. Involuntary manslaughter. He served some time. But when he took the job with the AP, they made it a part of the deal that he couldn't be bureau chief, just because of the scandal. And he agreed.”

“Are you serious?”

“No, I just made that up. How'd I do?”

By late fall the governor was starting to do events again. At first he had the scheduling office line up innumerable Rotary Club visits. The purported reason for these visits was the usual one, namely to go over his agenda for the upcoming legislative session. He had a modest agenda. But the real reason was to apologize to his supporters. He must have visited thirty or forty Rotaries over the following year, and at each one he would begin with a long apology. Usually it would end with some homely riff on the theme of redemption. “God's in the business of turning lemons into lemonade,” he would
say, occasionally reversing it: “God's in the business of making lemons out of lemonade.”

Governors always have economic development announcements to attend, and he began doing these. He spoke at an announcement by a diaper company and another by a diesel engine manufacturer, and then another by a company that produced composite materials. But the strategy of doing “normal” stuff to make reporters forget about the scandal never really worked. For one thing, Donald Hatfield would show up at every event and ask the governor something about the scandal, and reporters from the national papers, the
Times
, the
Post
,
Politico
, and the others, were always showing up and asking questions about the first lady, or the former first lady as she soon became, or the mistress or the flights. But sometimes, when nothing scandal-related had happened for a few days, he could get through a whole event and no one would say anything about Maria or Argentina or divorce.

In January the legislature came back, and he delivered a modest but successful State of the State speech. It was the first and only time he ever used a teleprompter. He practiced for many hours, with me running the script, and did well on the night of the speech, although one of the teleprompter's reflectors was slightly off, and after the speech he told me angrily that he had to slouch to one side for the entire fifty minutes. You couldn't tell, though.

I don't know if I'd gotten better at my job, or if the whole affair had shaken the boss so badly that he'd forgotten how much he hated my writing, but he seemed oftener now to
take what I gave him without much impatience. Occasionally, though, he couldn't be satisfied. Once, he was to speak at the grand opening of a manufacturer of electric buses. It wasn't an ideal event to write remarks for, partly because the idea of an electric bus just sounded improbable. A company of that kind survives on grant money, and that alone predisposed the governor against it; what lit his imagination was innovation springing from the profit motive, not grants and bridge loans from government entities in the name of fostering the “knowledge economy.”

There was also the fact that the first lady had filed for divorce and the hearing was a few days away.

When I walked into his office to go over the event with him, he didn't look at me. “What?” he said, as if to the wall.

“The TerraPax event's tomorrow. That's the company that makes electric buses. Have you looked over the stuff I put in the speech book?”

“No. What do you have?” he replied, looking at various things on his desk but not at me. “Tell me about it.”

I handed him another copy and told him about the company. He looked over what I'd written, but I had the feeling he wasn't seeing it. He just mumbled, “This is stupid . . . Stupid . . . I don't get it . . . Who cares . . . Boring.” At last he looked up at me, and I could see his eyes were bloodshot. “Here's the situation,” he said, “none of this is interesting. I need something that's moving, something—I don't know. I mean, what is this?” He read out a fragment or two; he was working up to a rant. “You're a bright guy. Get me something interesting. About the company, or about innovation. About
buses. I don't know. I could hire any twenty-year-old to give me this stuff. This is just a poor effort.” Now his eyes darted around the room. “You don't have to get up there in front of five hundred or a thousand people tomorrow. You have to have creativity for something like this, not some stupid line about”—he looked again at the paper in his hand—“the industrial revolution. These people already know about the industrial revolution. This isn't a history lecture. You can't—.”

“Got it,” I said.

As I walked out of the office, Stewart, who'd heard some of the exchange, murmured, “Pride cometh after the fall.”

It happened once more. I gave him two pages of themes. What they were I don't remember—something about pollution at the Beijing Olympics, something about mass transit improving quality of life, and four or five other ideas. He hated them all.