The Innocent Have Nothing to Fear by Stuart Stevens

Author:Stuart Stevens
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2016-06-28T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

“MY FELLOW AMERICANS, I come before you with a heavy heart.”

The president sat behind his desk in the Oval Office, dark circles under his eyes. In the months since he had announced he was not running for reelection, any expected positive change had not occurred in the president’s appearance.

“He looks like crap,” said Kim Grunfeld. “The guy is broken.”

We were in our war room at the Windsor Court, which felt far too nice to be a real war room.

“He’s gonna screw us,” Dick Shenkoph said good-naturedly.

“Why would he screw us?” asked Kim, who was smoking a small cigar. “He picked Hilda as his VP. It helps him when we win.”

“He’s too broken. The possibility of her success haunts him,” Shenkoph said.

“What is that, some kind of quote?” Kim shot back. “You turning into some kind of poet?”

“Trust me, Grunfeld. I know more about failure than you do.”

“Give her time,” Eddie Basha said, then smiled at Kim.

“God, why am I always the only woman?” Kim moaned.

“We haven’t noticed. Honest,” Dick Shenkoph mumbled, staring at the screen. “I had sex once in the White House, a little basement alcove near the Situation Room,” he said.

“Bullshit, you’ve never had sex,” Eddie Basha countered.

“I’m talking a long time ago,” Shenkoph assured him.

I watched all this with a certain detachment, my mind somewhere between Tyler’s strip club and Jessie’s questions. Walking back to the Windsor Court from that aborted dinner with Jessie, I’d convinced myself that she knew all about Tyler, and if she knew about Tyler, she probably knew all about Powell Callahan and his own, well, predilections and problems. It was the only way to look at it—assume the worst. Hadn’t I drummed that into every client of mine over the last fifteen years?

I knew what I’d do if I was advising a client—I’d tell ’em to get everything out in the open right away, dump it all, smother the press with information. That was the creed I’d lived by for years, and whenever a client with a problem resisted, I’d made it clear to them how much worse it would be trying to keep secrets hidden. It was so easy giving the advice. But right now, the idea of watching some reporter—say, Sandra Juarez—announce to the world in a breathless newsbreak that new revelations about the family of Vice President Hilda Smith’s campaign manager, J. D. Callahan, had the Republican convention talking, just the thought of that, made me want to throw up. I knew how it would play out: “The implications for Vice President Smith’s campaign are unclear, but the vice president released a statement just moments ago clarifying that J. D. Callahan has left her campaign. Let me repeat, J. D. Callahan has resigned as Vice President Smith’s campaign manager. Her former campaign manager, Lisa Henderson, who has been serving as chief of staff, will return as campaign manager.”

God, I would cut my wrist with a rusty cat food lid before I let that happen. Forget what it would mean for my budding television career—like flush it forever—it was the sheer, well, humiliation.

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