Primary Colors by Joe Klein

day; they were a blur. He got into the van. He didn't turn around. He said, staring straight ahead: "I didn't want the first thing they heard about me to be negative," he said. "I didn't want to give Ozio the power to make me the sonofabitch."
    He plugged Ray Charles Sings Country and Western (Volume One) into the tape deck. He worked a stack of paper.
    Thanksgiving dinner was for two hundred, mostly residents of Mammoth Falls's homeless and battered women's shelters. A tent was pitched on the back lawn of the Mansion. We served. That morning, the governor and Jackie had gone out in the Bronco, trailed by a panel truck from a local market with Uncle Charlie riding shotgun, delivering turkeys to the homebound. He returned about noon, glowing, as if he'd just made love. He and Jackie tossed a football on the front lawn, waiting for the guests to arrive; neither was an athlete--but both were enthusiastic.
    Jackie had, somehow, come out normal. He didn't sulk or strut, like most politicians' kids. He went to public school. He liked computers. He seemed entirely unaffected by the passions and ambitions that swirled through the household. Indeed, he was an anchor--a reminder, for both Stantons, that there was a normal world out there, where the greatest looming issues were the embarrassment of orthodontia and the need to stay awake through A Tale of Tivo Cities.
    There was nothing strained or showy about their relationship with their son; the affection was deep, comfortable and unadorned. At times, when things got really bad, when I wondered how I'd gotten mixed up in such a thing, when I had to list the reasons, the image of the three of them chattering over a board game or just sitting together on the couch in the study watching a video would be the first thing that came to mind. It was the best evidence I could marshal that these were actual human beings. That the governor's egregious empathizing wasn't just for public consumption, but had some basis in his own life. That he lived a life beyond strategy.
    I was, in truth, having some doubts about the entire Stanton enterprise that Thanksgiving. I had defended the governor on the phone with Richard after the Ozio whiff "He had his reasons," I said. "He may be right."
    "Or Ile may be a chickenshit," Richard said. "My perfect candidate, my wet dream, is warm and strong, fucking warm without being squishy-shit and quiet, Clint Eastwood strong. Don't need a rocket scientist to figure that one out. Always wonder why more of these overgrown student-body presidents don't get it. Our boy's got the warm part knocked. I'd be feeling just a little bit more comfortable about this if we had some sense of the strong."
    "I saw him in that room with Ozio," I said. "He was fine. He didn't get pushed around."
    "Maybe." Richard was bored. "Where are you, anyway? Pit Falls? You bakin' any muffins?" Then, "Henri, look--don't worry 'bout it. We're in this now. It works or it don't. It don't work, you got a gig with me. You got the makins of a serious rainmaker, Henri--bring me all the black caucus business. You'd be a monster with suburban housewife candidates, too, I'd reckon. We'll make a fortune. But, Henry"--his voice turned serious--"you don't need to go getting TB on me now, y'hear? It ain't worth it. Life goes on."
    TB: True Believerism. It was part of the code, consultant duende. It was what separated the men from the boys, staff from pols, servants from operators. You wanted to keep perspective. You wanted to see the horse as a horse and not Pegasus. But I couldn't. I remembered Stanton, glowing, coming back from delivering the Thanksgivin g t urkeys, his arm draped over little Jackie--and I knew it was hopeless. I was caught up in this thing. I had no perspective. I was a staffer in my soul. Different code.
    Later, after we'd fed the multitudes--Jack, Susan, Momma, Uncle Charlie, several state commissioners and I made for a very high-profile cafeteria line (and it looked real good on the