The Frankenstein Candidate Page 6

  “How do we understand the demagogues’ rhetoric? Listen carefully to what they say. Here is an example.

  “Who do you think said this? ‘I know America wants reconciliation and unity. I know Americans want progress. And we must seize this moment and deliver.’ Your choices are: a) George H. W. Bush, b) Barack Obama, c) Jimmy Carter, d) George W. Bush, or e) Bill Clinton.”

  Frank Stein looked around the room.

  A few hands went up.

  Ralph Prescott of the Boston Monitor said b. An old lady seated at the back was confident it was Bill Clinton. The man next to her said George H. W. Bush.

  “None of you got it right. The right answer is d. Now, here’s the problem. I did a questionnaire composed of two hundred such platitudes. Even those with a media background got about 30 to 40 percent right. Others got 20 percent right. That’s no better than pure luck.

  “So every four years, you are seating or unseating a government based on bromides that are so worn that even you don’t remember who said what.

  “When they tell you that this election is about putting people first, ask them whether it means people other than their cronies and the politically connected.

  “When they tell you they will build new hospitals or roads, ask them whose money they are stealing to finance the project that is buying them votes and what other projects will not happen because of the road they are building.

  “When they tell you they will fix the environment, ask them why they are so sure that it even needs fixing.

  “When they tell you that they will create jobs, ask them which jobs they will destroy to do so.

  “Representative democracy will only work if the media behaves responsibly.

  “So I ask, once again, for the media to avoid the easy sensationalisms and treat the population as essentially clever. Take that risk. You might just surprise yourself.

  “Thank you.”

  The paltry crowd was dumbstruck. They had heard this before—the candidates who gave speeches like this were always called loonies or extremists—they never won anything, so what was he talking about? If you wanted to win office, you could be right of center or left of center but not off-center.

  Ralph Prescott raised his hand again.

  “Yes?”

  Ralph was quivering as he asked softly, “Ralph Prescott, Boston Monitor. Mr. Stein, if we displease the government, they won’t let us get on to the latest scoops or interviews.”

  “So are you going to spend the rest of your life writing what pleases your masters?”

  Ralph Prescott said nothing. He sat down.

  A diminutive but confident woman got up.

  “Kayla Mizzi, Net Station. If governments are unable to create jobs, wealth, and improve the lot of people, why are you bothering to try to get there?”

  “To prevent them from making things worse,” Stein said.

  There were no more questions.

  Stein left as quietly as he had come, a lone figure in a thick winter overcoat making his way to the cab stand to hail a taxi.

  7

  Iowa, where it all began

  It always begins in Iowa in January or February of an election year. For the nomination as well as the final election, voters don’t directly elect their candidates. Instead, they elect delegates who, with only rare exceptions, are obliged to vote for the candidate they have pledged to vote.

  The primaries used to be decided in state-by-state elections across a period of several months, except for the day that is called Super Tuesday. In 2008, Super Tuesday moved into February instead of the traditional March. This is the day on which eight key states used to have their primaries, effectively deciding almost half the delegates of the convention—but in 2008, the number swelled from eight states to twenty-three as states tried to increase their influence and move up their primary elections.

  By 2019, the process had become so unmanageable that each of the major parties decided to have just two dates on which forty-eight states, minus the early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire, held their primaries. The last Tuesday of March was designated the new Super Tuesday, with twenty-four states holding their primaries. The last Wednesday of April became Super Wednesday, with the remaining twenty-four states holding their primaries.

  This election, the Democratic Iowa caucus was going to be held on Friday, January 10, 2020.

  Colin Spain tried to appear unruffled. It was January 6. The crowd at the Des Moines town hall was less than he had expected—much less.

  “Middle America,” Colin said, “is suffering. Suffering from neglect. Four years of a Republican government has practically crushed the middle class. The worker. The real worker. The family man. The woman juggling a job and two children. The housewife trying to make ends meet. That’s who I am talking to. Not the great pontificators who ran our economy into the ground.

  “The dollar used to be a strong currency. Not so long ago, nine, ten years ago…we used to able to buy over one hundred yen and six Chinese Yuan or eight Swedish kroner with it. You know what we get now? Sixty yen, give or take. Less than six kroner and much less than five Yuan. The U.S. dollar has dropped about thirty percent, ladies and gentlemen, thirty percent, most of it in the last four years.

  “The market just downgraded our government debt again. Another downgrade, and U.S. government bonds will be considered junk. And whose fault is it? It is the fault of those who said they run America. The president, the Treasury, the Federal Reserve, Wall Street. But they don’t go home to mortgages and faulty plumbing and load-shedding electricity shortages. I am talking to those who do.

  “We, we Middle America, we must take America back from those who ruined it. We must reinvigorate the economy.”

  Colin Spain looked around. He couldn’t even tell whether he had the rapt attention of everyone who was there or whether years of apathy made people just listen, without emotion, without a shout or scream or question.

  Colin Spain decided it was the former—surely he had their rapt attention. They loved him. He was in, he thought—he was going to be the next president of the United States of America.

  Later, at a posh restaurant in the heart of Des Moines, Colin was having a late dinner with some of his campaign staff. Three tables were booked, so large was his entourage. Larry, Katrina, and Olivia sat at his table.

  “How are we doing, Larry?” Colin asked.

  “Pretty good so far. Ganon and Rogers have made some impact. But the ads are still to run.”

  “What kind of ads will they be running?” Katrina asked.

  “Don’t know,” responded Larry, “but neither has much funding still, I heard somewhere just under fifteen million each. We have fifty million now, and it’s growing. Our ads about Middle America are almost ready to go. After that, all the good money will bet on Spain.”

  It’s the part of the game I still have to learn, thought Olivia, the ads, the message discipline…but I know how to fix things, shouldn’t that matter more?

  Olivia’s cell phone interrupted her internal monologue. She would have ignored the call, but it was home calling. She took it, excused herself, and went outside.

  “When are you coming home, Mom?” Georgia asked.

  “Soon, honey, soon.”

  “When?”

  “In about ten days.”

  “That’s too long.”

  “Make it seven then,” Olivia conceded.

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  “Make it four, no three.”

  “I can’t be back any earlier than that, Georgia. But seven days is a promise.”

  Olivia finished several minutes later, after saying goodnight to Georgia, then Natasha, and then Gary. Somehow, she had to explain to Colin that she had to be out of Iowa as soon as the caucuses finished and the results were known. She was not going to break a promise made to her daughter.

  When she got back to the hotel, it was past midnight but she wasn’t tired. She decided to give the TV and room s
ervice a try.

  As Olivia was surfing the channels, the room service delivered ice cream with fresh strawberries. It had been the one constant in her life since she was a child; she had never had a different opinion about her favorite dessert. Frank Stein was on CBS. She stopped for a moment. He seemed too didactic to be running for office.

  “Imagine a boardroom,” he said. “Imagine that the company president waxes eloquently and stirs up strong emotions. Suppose he never answers questions asked of him by the directors and just keeps going like a sports coach giving a last-minute pep talk before his team heads out onto the field.

  “Of course it will not be tolerated…not by the board, not by the employees, and not by the shareholders. Nor should it be. Well, you are the customers and the employees, ladies and gentlemen, and the politicians are your hired chiefs. Their eloquence is meant to be detrimental to your understanding of their real business, which is the business of getting re-elected at any cost. You must denounce their oratory.

  “So say it…say it to your elected representatives, to your senators, to the journalists who ought to be like the board of directors, say it loud and clear. No more pep talks. No more hiding the truth behind empty slogans.”

  The TV kept running. Olivia didn’t even know when she fell asleep. She missed the footage of a small but growing crowd chanting, “Fran-ken-stein, Fran-ken-stein.” Somewhere deep inside the hearts of some people, Frank Stein had struck a chord, and for them at least, the resonance was deafening. The television ran all night. Yet Olivia slept soundly and awoke refreshed.

  She turned it off in the morning. The newspaper had been delivered under her door. She glanced at it. Frank Stein had made the cover page with his pronouncements. The reporter had dug into his background. Olivia was saddened to find out that Frank Stein had been orphaned at fifteen, but that didn’t excuse the rest of the story.

  But then she knew only too well how journalists loved to slant their stories. The piece said Frank was against public spending, that he was a free-market ideologue, and that he was a Wall Street junkie who had made billions in deals that inevitably ran aground. The paper even said he was against the environment. How could that be? That would destroy him, she thought. No one should be against freshwater rivers, pristine landscapes, natural beauty, and keeping polluting corporations in check. They compared him to the fictional Gordon Gekko of the 1980s movie Wall Street.

  He will lose, she thought. Just as well. She didn’t want to meet him or even run into him.

  “He will be the most despicable person I will have ever met,” Olivia said audibly to herself. “If I ever meet him.”

  8

  Francesca Oliviera

  Gary Allen was forty-nine with smiling eyes and a slim, angular body that made him look taller than the five foot eleven he was. A friend of his had introduced him to Olivia when he was studying architecture in New York. In her young days, she was vivacious but at peace with herself.

  For Gary, work was work, play was play, and family was family. He was fond of children, and his desire to play dad matched her eagerness to start a family. Despite their outward differences, they were good together. Olivia’s rise in political office to the position of senator had meant less time together, but fortunately she was making more money just as he was making less. Unfortunately for Gary, Olivia’s mind didn’t make the work/play/family connections he did so effortlessly. She carried her work home, and she carried her ache to spend more time with her children to her work. It tore her up, but she never acknowledged it; with her, it was always meant to be, a destiny that was somehow inevitable if you “had gifts” and if you “wanted to do something useful for society.” He still smiled whenever he thought of the Olivia he married.

  Lately, there hadn’t been much in his life to smile about. New construction was virtually at a standstill. Olivia was always very busy, and now she was in Iowa, campaigning. He had started doing a tutorial at the local architectural college. It kept him busy as the college was an hour-long drive away.

  Right now, though, Gary was smiling at Francesca, an attractive twenty-six-year-old immigrant from Belgium who was studying to be an interior designer.

  He had met her a few times. It was he who counseled her to go to design school. He had first run into her at the elementary school when she was dropping her nephews off.

  She had come up to him after the tutorials and asked questions. At times, he thought she was coming on to him. Gary’s friend, a former classmate and a medical doctor in whom he confided, said it was just his male ego. Gary loved Olivia and their two little girls. He had cheated on Olivia, but it was only once, six years ago. It had lasted a few months. She had never found out. Back when he was busy, he was hardly home.

  Now Gary taught stage and theatre design, a subject he thought was totally redundant in a recession—no new theatres were being built anywhere in the United States. Nevertheless, he enjoyed teaching. Besides, he had nothing else to keep him occupied during school hours.

  Francesca Oliviera had originally wanted to be an actress. She had studied drama for several years, working part-time as a waitress before she enrolled in the interior design course.

  “Should a concert hall be organic or de-con?” she asked him.

  “Organic,” he said. “I don’t like deconstructionist architecture.”

  “What is your favorite organic structure?”

  “The Fallingwater residence,” he said, referring to one of organic architecture’s most famous residential masterpieces in America.

  “Me too…I like Frank Lloyd Wright’s work a lot.”

  Gary could tell she liked him. He was good-looking and made time for his students, unlike some of the other tutors they had from the private sector.

  “Hello,” she said, “are you still here?”

  “Uhh…yes.”

  She told him she was not sure if she wanted to study. It was much harder than waiting tables, but she needed money to live on while she persevered at her acting ambitions.

  “Anything you want to talk about?” He wanted to read her thoughts—did she feel that way about him? “Perhaps you would like to have a chat over a coffee?”

  “There is the college cafeteria downstairs,” she said.

  He noticed her long, slim legs wrapped in a pair of sheer dark stockings. Had he just asked her out? His heart began to beat faster. He was making a mistake. He knew he should stop himself.

  “All right,” he said and packed his briefcase. She picked up her thick overcoat.

  Gary’s head rationalized all the way down the stairs and into the cafeteria. It’s just coffee; she’s young; she needs my advice; that’s all there is to it.

  The college cafeteria was closing, so they walked across the street to a little bohemian café that stayed open all hours. It could seat sixty, but because it was a U-shaped lounge, one had the cozy, dim atmosphere that epitomized a bohemian way of life. Little murals hung from the walls and nestled into the vines springing from the floor. Soft, upbeat music played in the background, and the waitresses dressed in 1920s Parisian outfits. A fake Picasso hung in the center, together with a large embossment of the artist’s famous phrase, “Everything you can imagine is real.”

  He could tell that the atmosphere relaxed her. She opened up and talked about acting school at night and auditions on the weekends. She kept talking, and he kept listening.

  “You do have the talent for interior design, but your focus is frittered,” he said, catching her off guard. “The thing to do is find at least one thing that sells, and at the moment, interior redecoration is about the only thing people can afford. And of course, movies. Escapism does better in depressing times.”

  He wanted to go on and on, but he looked at his watch. It was time to pick up Georgia and Natasha from school.

  She got up to go, her fingers fumbling in her purse.

  “That’s all right, the coffee is on me. I’ll wait for the bill.”

  “Till next Tuesday then,”
she said, smiling and turning away.

  “Till next Tuesday. By the way, I have a friend who is a film producer.”

  She turned back swiftly.

  “Perhaps he needs an assistant. Want me to ask?”

  “Sure…thank you, Gary,” she bubbled in her delightful Belgian accent, and left.

  He was there only a few minutes after she left, waiting for the bill, when a tall man from the next booth walked past, dropping an envelope on his table.

  Gary thought it was accidental until he saw his name written on it. He looked up, but the man was already gone. Gary opened the envelope. A little piece of paper was inside. Words scribbled on the paper read, “Don’t even think about it.”

  Who was this man? Why this note? What did it mean?

  To be honest, he knew perfectly well what the words meant, but he had no idea who was following him and why he would feel the need to leave such a note.

  Gary picked up the tab and left to collect his daughters. He tried to form a picture of the man, but all he could remember was a tall, lean figure in a hat. He could have been any age, any hair color, any ethnicity—Gary hadn’t got a look at him, and why would he, when Francesca and the tall seat behind her completely obscured his view?

  Gary wasn’t scared. But he had stopped smiling.

  9

  The Future Is Now

  January 10 was almost upon them. Sidney Ganon and Casey Rogers had campaigned well, but both had a traditional liberal focus on the unemployed, the homeless, and the uninsured, and neither was an exceptionally eloquent speaker. The net result was that they were drawing crowds away from each other, which played right into Colin Spain’s hands with his distinctive Middle America campaign.

  Large corporations sometimes waited until after Super Tuesday before making their campaign contributions, but Katrina Marshella had done a great job of getting into corporate America quite early. Provided Spain won Iowa handsomely, she had another forty million or so lined up to bolster up the New Hampshire and Super Tuesday campaigns, and that pretty much meant a landslide nomination win for Spain.