Wag the Dog (33 page)

⁶⁵
Teddy was essentially right. Details, attitude, and style can reinvigorate a genre endlessly and make for great filmmaking—
Sahara
is reinvented as
The Guns of Navarone > The Dirty Dozen > Platoon > Uncommon Valor.

At the same time it proves how right Hartman was to select Beagle for the project, because ultimately Beagle did not just run a riff on the formula. When the genre was inadequate, he stepped outside of it and even outside his medium in the way it was normally used. He let the nature of the project define the form.

⁶⁶
Not a truly original thought: “According to Jefferson Morley [in the
Nation
]: several employees of Wackenhut recently worked on an elaborate scheme to help death squad members kidnap the U.S. ambassador to El Salvador, Edwin Corr. The rightists evidently hoped to place the blame for the event on the FMLN.” Edward Herman and Gerry O'Sullivan,
The Terrorism Industry: The Experts and Institutions That Shape Our View of Terror
| Pantheon Books, 1989)

⁶⁷
The treatment of Joseph McBride at
Variety
for his review of
Patriot Games
was more than a glaring revelation of the financial incest between be entertainment industry and the entertainment media. It was a recognition of the total victory of our official ideology on the issue of terrorism.

What is now called terrorism is, after all, the method of warfare employed by individuals and small groups against the power of the state. These groups were, not long ago, called the Underground and the Resistance. And they were, not long ago,
automatically the heroes
of our movies. The Secret Police that searched them out and the armies that hunted them down were
automatically the villains.

It may be argued that our attitude has changed because the Resistance that we loved consisted of civilians who targeted bad military people and the new ones are bad (though unofficial) military people who target civilians. But that would at least be an argument. The point is that there is no argument. It is considered unfit to mention that
another point of view exists.

T
HE PRESIDENT
'
S JOB
existed beyond logic and sense. It truly belonged in the realm of magic. When the Man was blessed, thrice-blessed, all acts were good. Signs and portents ruled the realm. When the Man was cursed, truly cursed, all skies brought unwanted rain, nothing brought gain.

It seemed, looking backward, that the strangeness had come with Camelot. Imagine this, that the nickname was more knowing than knowing knew. That the arrogant affectation—that this was a new age and bright, that these were knights more special than those that had gone before—revealed a truth so bizarre that no one single person for one single moment considered it literal. The myth of Arthur is that he was the Once and Future King. That he would return. Imagine this, that he did return and that he re-created the kingdom dedicated to dreaming, generosity, and virtue. Someone there was Merlin. Who the hell was Merlin? It doesn't matter.

What matters was that once again the king must die, once again be murdered. The corpse—like the body in some fabulous allegory—wove its own shroud into a tapestry of illusion. Everyone who looked upon it saw a different story. Everyone who looked upon it swore that all the other stories—about his death, about his killers—was false.

And he left a curse upon the crown. His death left everything upside down. Or perhaps Merlin, divine necromancer,
interepochal fixer, in rage and despair, left a wizard's trick upon the throne.

How else to explain the tragic Macbeth—Macbird, they called him in delicious satire—who followed him? How to explain the fall of Richard Nixon, master of intrigue and plotting, brilliant and devious—how could the incompetence of a couple of clowns breaking into a hotel, step by somehow unstoppable, undivertible step, bring him down lower than any president before him? Then Gerald Ford, an apparently decent, competent man, with no fault except bumping his head, found unfit to be president because he was clumsy on camera. Then Carter, who worked hard, who studied goodness like a theologian, brought down day by grinding day, by the hostage countdown on television.

Which, of course, is the name of the magic that brought us John F. Kennedy, whatever he was, and the curse that he left behind. The proof is the one and only man who beat the curse—the television man, Ronald Reagan. He didn't work hard, he didn't know much about all those things that presidents are supposed to know—economics, foreign policy, law, history, even art. He did the opposite of what he said, seemed unable to tell truth from late-night TV, and should have been embarrassed by much of the company he kept. Yet he once again made the White House seem like a palace and the capital of a glittering imperium. Luck and blessings seemed to fall on all that he did and there was radiance around him.

A curse? To Bush, whose whole life had been subservient to the goal, whose every choice had been faithful to what the polls said a president should be, do, think, feel, it often seemed as if, having arrived, he had stepped off the edge of the known world. Nothing he did had the result it was supposed to. All the courtiers and advisors and cabinet members and experts scurrying around the White House, very busy, in a great hurry, carrying lots of papers, going up, going down, going sideways, making conference calls, sending memos, screaming to be heard, convinced they were right, requiring limousines and special lunches, were a bunch of rabbits and Mad Hatters, and not all their energy made one dent in what
was really important, his standing with the American people and whether or not he would win reelection.

Bush was on
Air Force One.
Baker was with him. They had been at a meeting in San Francisco with the Pacific Rim Business Association. Most of its members were Americans, including the majority of the board of directors, but in essence it was a front for Japanese corporate interests. Its pitch was free trade, something that was part of the Republican canon and which the president intrinsically favored. The argument against it was that the Japanese used its rhetoric to mask practices that were, in actuality, both restrictive and predatory.

Bill Magnoli, president of America's Exporters, Inc., had asked for a few minutes to present his case to the president.

A million voices clamor to be heard. The king wishes only to survive. Yet he must make decisions, he must lean left or right, forward or back. On what basis can he choose? The president—who has no time for original research, who doesn't have the energy left to reach outside the loop on every one of thousands of issues—listens to those few voices that get to present their story. Which is what makes access the prize.

America's Exporters had at one time actually been an American-owned company. It was now owned by Musashi Trading Company, the key company in what is called a
keiretsu
in Japan. As every reader of the financial pages or of Japan-bashing thrillers knows, a
keiretsu
⁶⁸
is like a conglomerate, but larger, closer-knit, more predatory, infinitely more terrifying.

Musashi had bought America's Exporters for its name and for its president, Bill Magnoli, the most American guy the Japanese company spotters had ever met. Workdays or weekends, Bill was a bouncing ball of cliché. Drove a Mustang, ate grilled steaks and large desserts, watched football, talked football, played golf, boffed his secretary twice a week, his wife once a week, really liked double knits and Willard Scott, played Lotto and thought Vegas was really, really hot. He had two kids, one in college, one in rehab, and carried their pictures in his wallet. He was a go-along, get-along guy, a real booster of whatever put bread on his rather large table and gas in the tanks of the four cars he supported.

When Bill Magnoli got up and spoke on behalf of America's Exporters, it took a real effort to remember that he was really a spokesman for Hiroshi Takagawa, whose title at Musashi was always translated into English as “vice president for the improvement of Japanese-American relations,” but written in
kanji,
the ideograph version of Japanese, it could be read as “member of the General Staff, Strategic Planning for Victory in America.” It was never translated that way, and it was considered rude to even mention that around
gaijin.

At issue was military procurement, one of the ways that America has traditionally supported private industry. Private industry, in turn, has been very supportive of the military. Some chipmaker with a politician in his pocket—alternatively described as a congressman concerned with his constituents, many of whom made their living in silicon; alternatively described as a patriotic American worried about his country's high-tech independence in case of war—had introduced a bill requiring the Pentagon to buy only Made-in-America chips. The congressman was going to get his bill, but it would permit the Pentagon to make exceptions if . . . There was currently a debate over whether the next phrase would be “it was a matter of compelling necessity for the immediate defense, for a period not to exceed one year,” or “no reasonable alternative was available.” Obviously, the impact of the law, if any, now depended on which clause was selected and how it was enforced.

Magnoli was cogent, colorful, concise. As well he should have been since Hiroshi Takagawa had paid a great deal of money to an American PR firm to research and prepare the pitch, as well as for an acting coach to drill Magnoli.

The question was not whether or not Magnoli was wrong or right, whether he was an agent of influence of a foreign power, or even whether or not the president should have heard those opinions directly. The question was, why did Bill Magnoli have access?

“Bushie, how did you happen to be talkin' with this Magnoli fellow?” James Baker asked the president.

“Neil,” the president said, talking about what he was concerned about, his son. “Is there an outcome indicator?” Meaning,
Did Baker know if Neil would be indicted or not.
⁶⁹

“It's taken care of.”

“If he weren't my son . . .” Bush waved a finger. Not meaning,
If he weren't my son, I'd see to it he did hard time to set an example;
meaning
If he weren't my son, no one would care.
“Not some blabbermouth publicity hound.”I
hope the attorney at Justice, who is told to quash this thing, doesn't turn around and tell the world he was told to quash it
⁷⁰
“This picking, picking at nits. They better wait and see.”

“You know he fronts for the Japs,” Baker said. Back to Magnoli.

“Of course, I know—what do you take me for?” Bush said. “Don't answer that,” he quickly quipped.
⁷¹

“His company is wholly owned by Musashi.”

“I told you I knew that,” Bush said. “Read my lips. Do you want to know how I knew that?”

“Sure,” Baker said.

“Because it was my friends at Musashi, who are helping me out, and who else is? They asked me to give a few minutes of my time to Magnoli. Two plus two, that's not going to escape my notice,” Bush said, pleased, as he was from time to time, to do something that Baker didn't even know about.

“Helping you out?”

“With the Memo thing. Gosh, I didn't tell you about that, did I?”

“No,” Baker said. “You didn't. Not that you have to. I just like being in the loop because it makes me feel important, you know that, Bushie, and who the hell is more behind you than I am.”

“Remember the Memo?'

“The Memo?”

“Atwater's Memo,” Bush said, smiling his famous lopsided smile.

“Oh. The Memo.”

“Right.”

“How it said, Hartman, show it to him.”

“It didn't say show it to Hartman,” Baker said. “It sort of said don't show it to anyone, maybe get Hartman to do the job if anyone was going to do the job.”

The president cocked a finger like a gun, pointed it at Baker, and said, “It's
in development.”

“In development?”

“That's the way they say it in L.A. ‘In development.' And they put their top, top shooter on it Jonathan Lincoln Beagle. Do you remember
Riders of the West.
That was one great movie. That scene where Clint Eastwood just squints at the bad guys, that squint . . .” The president squinted like Clint.