I could do it, you know. I had the secret sauce. But you know what I realized? The day-to-day business of government is a grind. It is! It’s goddamn boring!” He picked up his drink and finished it off. “Do you want another one?”
Rich raised his hand and signaled the bartender for a refresh without waiting for an answer. The bartender poured straight into his empty glass.
“The fun is all in the running. It’s all in the strategy, in the chase, in the kill. You know when the people love a politician the most? The night he gets elected. After that, it’s all downhill. You’re looking at me like I’m crazy right now, but I’m telling you, it’s true! They never love you more than they do the night they call your name.” He looked down at the glass, swirled the whiskey, smiled. “That night, for the guy who got him up on that stage, for the guy who won him that election? It’s the best feeling in the world. Better than sex, better than drugs, better than this shithouse whiskey. It’s like”—he opened his eyes wide—“BOOM! A shot of adrenaline straight to the heart. You feel invincible that night, you really do. And then your guy gets up on the stage to give his acceptance speech, and he opens his mouth, and you hear your words coming out. It’s like being a ventriloquist, only you don’t have to stick your hand up the guy’s ass.” He smirked. “I had one or two of them ask me to do that, but that’s another story. So yeah, it’s hard work and you’ll never sleep and you’ll never have a family and if you do you’ll lose them, but goddamn if it isn’t the best job in the world. At least that’s what I think.”
He took a sip of whiskey, thought for a minute.
“My guy, now—maybe our guy, we’ll see—he’s got everything. He’s got looks, he’s got brains, he can talk, he can do the crinkly-eyed bullshit that makes all the housewives love him, he can do the down-home-good-ol’-boy-cowboy shit that makes the men love him, he works hard, he goes to church, he doesn’t complain, and goddamn if he isn’t the most charming motherfucker I’ve ever met. I’m telling you, I’ve been doing this for ten years and I’ve never seen a candidate like him. He’s got what it takes to go all the way, and I mean that. I know it sounds crazy, me saying that to you while we’re sitting here in this shitty bar in this shitty hotel”—his eyes flicked to the bartender—“no offense. But I’m dead serious. The guy could make it to the top, and I plan on being the one to take him there.”
He shook his head as if weighing something up. “Only problem is the wife. She looks the part—pretty face, blond hair, straight white teeth, the whole package—but she’s not exactly the touchy-feely type, if you know what I mean. Got a little bit of Hillary in her. Worse, her heart’s not in it, you can tell. She’s done a couple of events and she just stands there, like”—he stretched his face into a rictus grin—“and I mean, you can see people just not buying it. They think she thinks she’s better than them, and that’s because she does think she’s better than them. Hell, you should see the way she looks at me: like something she scraped off the bottom of her shoe. She’s from California, you know. San Francisco. Has a master’s in basket weaving or something. She used to work as a teacher, which you’d think would work for us, but when she talks about it, she sounds like a hippie or something. It’s all ‘integrated classrooms’ and ‘emotional intelligence,’ all that kind of mumbo-jumbo shit that frankly does not fly with voters who are worried about their kids being stuffed into classrooms with a whole bunch of Mexicans who don’t speak any English. Comprende? No comprende!”
He chuckled to himself, sighed, grew serious.
“Anyway, I’ve got a real shitshow on my hands at the minute. We’re talking a class-A weapons-grade plutonium nightmare that has the potential to torpedo the whole election, and she’s smack bang in the middle of it. I told him when I came on board that she was a liability, but this.” He shook his head in disbelief. “This is something else.”
He finished his drink, checked his wristwatch. “I gotta get going. I’m meeting the boss in twenty