The Sun King

by David Ignatius

  “I proposed, instead, to meet with Pastor Carnes tomorrow and hear his complaints about the article. That’s something a good newspaper is always ready to do.” There was silence as the crowd pondered whether this amounted to a cave-in, and then applause as they concluded that it didn’t.

  “I told the publisher, finally, that I agree with him that we need to rethink many of the things we do in journalism. The Sun can be more exciting and readable—and many of the changes Mr. Galvin has made have been good for us. But I also told him that I want the Sun to remain a great newspaper—not just a fun paper, but a great one—and that can only be done by the professional journalists in this room.”

  A roar went up when she was done—a sigh of relief as much as a cheer. People wouldn’t stop clapping. She had saved the paper, saved their jobs too—for many of them had been on the verge of quitting. She was a wonder-worker. Despite her patrician upbringing, she was one of them—a real journalist who had won a Pulitzer Prize. And they loved her.

  I stopped by Candace’s office later to congratulate her. I had to wait a few minutes, there was such a crush of wellwishers. People couldn’t wait to start sucking up to the new boss. I closed the door so that the adoring masses couldn’t eavesdrop.

  “Was that for real?” I asked her. “I mean, it was a great speech, and the staff ate it up. But did Galvin really agree to all that?”

  “Of course he did. I wouldn’t lie about it. He wanted me to be the editor, and he was willing to make concessions to get me to say yes.”

  “But you’re his girlfriend. Isn’t that going to cause problems?”

  “Why should it? People understand these things. I’ll do my job, and he’ll do his. What happens outside the office is our business.”

  She looked so tough and taut. My vision of her had been fulfilled, but not in the ways I had imagined. All the softness had gone hard.

  “How can a journalist love a liar?” I asked. She was silent, but I knew the answer. Everyone loves a liar.

  CANDACE WAS A CELEBRITY, instantly. All the newspapers had stories the next day—about how she had faced down the publisher on an issue of principle. The stories were full of details that could only have come from her. The Times mentioned that she and Galvin had been involved romantically in college, but was strangely silent on the current state of their relationship. She went on two of the morning talk shows too, and they didn’t ask about her personal life either. The media elite were taking a dive. Candace was part of the club, and they would protect her as long as they could.

  I had never resented Candace’s success before. She had always been exempt from my malediction on those who survived and prospered in the media fun house. But I confess that I felt angry now, and that a part of me wished her ill.

  NINETEEN

  THE ASSAULT ON GALVIN BEGAN IN EARNEST IN DECEMBER. I’d never doubted that it would come. Every action creates a counteraction, and that’s especially true in a zero-gravity place like Washington. Galvin had broken too many rules. You can get away with that sort of iconoclasm as long as you appear to be powerful. But the minute you seem vulnerable, your enemies gather for the feast. This is what Washington has in common with Lagos or Beirut. At the end of the day, when the legalisms are stripped away, politics is about the ability to inflict pain.

  The opening salvo appeared on the front page of The Wall Street Journal. The story was a detailed account of how the Commodities Futures Trading Commission and the Treasury Department had quietly come to Galvin’s aid the previous month—by encouraging some big banks to provide an $800-million bridge loan to his investment firm. According to the Journal story, Galvin had lost hundreds of millions of dollars betting the wrong way on interest rates and had gotten squeezed by his creditors. I assumed that was the “liquidity problem” he had mentioned to me in his pleasantly off-handed way around that time.

  What made the Journal story interesting was the allegation that Galvin had discussed his financial problems with the President during one of their wine and cigar evenings, and that the President had personally asked the CFTC and Treasury to see what they could do to help Galvin. It was a damaging leak, and it testified that Galvin had made powerful enemies.

  Candace looked unhappy that morning as we rode up together in the elevator. She had the Journal under her arm. She had underlined passages from the Galvin article in yellow highlighter. She’d had the good times—she’d gotten to give her Gipper speech and save the newsroom—but now she would have to do some serious shoveling.

  “What are we going to do about that little item?” I asked, pointing to the Journal.

  “Cover the story,” she said. “We have no choice.” She had already called our best financial reporter at home, and told him to come in and interview Galvin. The reporter was upstairs now, she said. Galvin had been so angry about the story, his first instinct had been to catch a plane for Europe. But she’d convinced him to stay and face the music.

  We published the interview the next day. The publisher gave cagey answers that confirmed most of what the Journal had—he couldn’t very well deny it; they had names and dates and direct quotes from meetings—but didn’t add much new information. Candace put the story on the front page. I’m sure Galvin hated that, but it was the right call. He wanted to write a first-person editorial explaining himself—and describing how treacherous the financial markets had become—but Candace told him to forget it. This was no time for him to be delivering lectures.

  The Journal story created an opening for Galvin’s enemies, especially for congressional Republicans, who hated both him and the President and were delighted to have an opportunity to attack them both simultaneously. The chairman of the House Commerce Committee announced that he would hold hearings on Galvin’s business affairs in January, when the new Congress was seated. The committee staff would begin gathering information immediately. I could only imagine what the reaction must be among Galvin’s business associates: They would say it was his own fault, for moving his business operations to a lunatic asylum like Washington. They would charge him more to borrow money, too—making it that much harder to pay it back. That was what happened when you got caught in the squeeze.

  The White House issued a careful statement in response to the Journal story. It denied any impropriety in the President’s contacts with Galvin but promised full cooperation with the House inquiry. They were going to roll over on him; they had to—the President had too many other problems just then to worry about Galvin, no matter how many bottles of fancy wine they’d put away together. It was a funny time. There’s a phrase for it in most languages: sauve qui peut; sal si puedes. I suppose the current English vernacular would be Cover your ass.

  I received a letter from the House committee, requesting my voluntary cooperation with their inquiry and setting a date in December when they wanted me to come in for an informal chat. That posed a dilemma—not a moral one, exactly, but a practical one.

  I called an old friend from college who was now an overpaid Washington lawyer and a man I normally treated with cordial contempt. I told him about the letter and asked which was likely to cause more trouble for me personally—testifying or not testifying. That was hard to answer, he said. I could refuse to talk to them, on the grounds that I was a journalist—but that could cause a flap. Or I could agree to an informal interview, but insist that it be off the record. In that case, he advised me to tell the truth—and to say I knew nothing of Galvin’s misdeeds. I liked that; it had an attractive symmetry. He urged me, especially, not to talk to anyone about my summons.

  I MADE AN APPOINTMENT to see Candace. You had to do that now, she was so busy. She had moved into Bacon’s office and installed a plucky brunette named Eileen as her secretary, whose job was to keep the well-wishers and ass-kissers at bay. Candace didn’t wander around the newsroom anymore on her way to the ladies’ room; she had her own toilet now.

  She had already redecorated the office. Bacon’s worthy books about politics and foreign polic
y were gone, replaced by shelves full of novels. Jane Austen in place of Zbigniew Brzezinski—who wouldn’t make that trade? She’d done other things to make the office feel homey—put in a couple of easy chairs in place of Bacon’s leather couch, and replaced the fluorescent lighting with several nice table lamps. The picture of her father was there too, newly framed. Atop her coffee table rested a lavish spray of cut flowers, courtesy of the publisher. The teddy bear was gone, though—just when she needed him most.

  “You’d better do something about Galvin,” I said. “The vultures are circling.”

  “I know. The House committee sent me a letter yesterday. I told our lawyer I wouldn’t go. They have no business even asking me—I’m the editor of the paper, not to mention his close friend. The lawyer thinks they’ll drop it. It’s a fishing expedition.”

  “That’s good.” I didn’t mention my own letter from the committee; I hadn’t decided what to do about it yet.

  “Besides,” she said, “I don’t know anything about Sandy’s finances. We never talk about money. Although I must say, that’s starting to bother me. I worry that there’s all this stuff out there involving him, which nobody at the paper knows anything about—except that creepy Ted Amara. And I didn’t like having to chase someone else’s story about our own publisher this week. That was embarrassing.”

  “What are you going to do? You don’t have a lot of time. The House investigation is rolling.”

  She moved uncomfortably in her chair, as if a weight were pressing against her. Her eyes turned toward the flowers on the table—a hundred dollars’ worth of irises and orchids and roses thrown her way, like an extravagant kiss. She didn’t want to look at me. She was trying to be an editor, and it was lonely.

  “I’ve been thinking that we need our own investigation,” she said. “To protect Sandy and the Sun from any accusation that we’re covering things up. We could look into things quietly, on our own. That way we won’t get blindsided. I’m sure there’s nothing terrible out there. Sandy isn’t dishonest. We’d form a little team, and keep it very quiet, and then publish a story. That’s what a serious newspaper should do in a situation like this, I think. Does that make sense to you?”

  “I guess so,” I said. “This isn’t going to go away. You have to do something. Are you going to tell Galvin that you’re investigating him?”

  “I don’t think so. Not in the beginning, at least. I’ll have to ask him for comment when we’re done—the way we would with any story. But this needs to look independent. That’s what Sandy would want. He didn’t buy the Sun to make it a propaganda sheet, whatever people may think. He wants to publish a great newspaper.”

  I offered my help. I said I knew some people who might have information about Galvin’s business, and she seemed pleased to have someone to share the burden. I should meet with the reporting team, she said. She had selected two trustworthy reporters—an investigative reporter and our Wall Street reporter in New York. That would make four of us who knew. She stressed the need to keep it all confidential. The Savant would have to steer clear of his usual gossip channels, and I was happy to agree. I understood that she was doing the right thing—journalistically speaking.

  CHARACTERISTICALLY, GALVIN HIMSELF SEEMED largely oblivious of the storm clouds gathering over his head. Circulation was continuing to rise, regardless of his financial problems. The paper was up more than a hundred thousand now—and the trade publications were writing articles about the “miracle turnaround” at the Sun. He was looking for ways to keep the momentum going. That was the thing about Galvin’s kind of business; it was unstable—if it ever stopped growing, it was in danger of imploding.

  Galvin’s current obsession was buying the local MLS men’s soccer team. He had decided that soccer would be the next big thing in the United States, and he wanted the Sun to profit from it. He stopped by my office one day to ask why we weren’t writing more about the team in the Lifestyle section. They were in the playoffs, but the paper was ignoring them. Did we dislike Spanish speakers? Was that it? he wondered aloud. What was the point of buying the soccer team at all, if the paper wouldn’t cover it?

  “These players are great stories,” he said. “Colorful guys, far from home.”

  “A little too colorful. I think a couple of them were accused of molesting a young woman last year.”

  “Negative, negative. Those two were never convicted of anything. I had Ted Amara look into it. The fans don’t care about that stuff anyway. Soccer players are the new superstars. Babetto, Zidane, Baggio. They’re gods. In Brazil, they name children after soccer players. It’s going to be that way in America soon. And we’re going to be ready.”

  Galvin planned to rename the team the Suns. “The team with a heart, brought to you by the newspaper with a heart.” He’d talked to the local cable people, and they were willing to carry every away game—if the Sun agreed to do cross-promotion for it in the paper. He was even thinking about sponsoring a Sun youth league, with coaching tips in the paper, and the players giving free clinics.

  He was in one of his remake-the-world phases again, the way he’d been with racial healing. The energy was all there, but the package was shopworn. There was a thinness in his voice too, as if there were something caught way down in his throat. That was the Sun King’s only weakness, that I could see. He could defy the financial markets and House investigative committees, but he couldn’t permanently defy time. His universe was beginning to bend back upon itself.

  GALVIN DISPATCHED TED AMARA to talk with the owners of the soccer team. They were a group of local real estate developers who had made their money in the seventies and early eighties building the malls and office buildings that now ringed the capital. Amara met them at the Tower Club in Tysons Corner—a giant office block that rose out of the old farmland by the Beltway. This was the gathering spot for northern Virginia’s newly rich, the suburban entrepreneurs who’d made fortunes in clean, bloodless businesses like telecommunications and computer services. From the club’s picture window, Washington and its problems looked small and far away.

  Amara arrived with his briefcase and bad suit. In this citadel of bland success, he was the odd man out. But he had a way of establishing common ground, even here. Galvin was vague about precisely what Amara had offered. The Sun proposed to pay a small premium over what the owners had originally spent for the team, plus a share of its profits in the future. They weren’t really thinking about selling until Amara’s visit, Galvin said. But by the time he left, he had a preliminary agreement.

  “How does Amara do that?” I asked. He had an uncanny ability to get people to do what he wanted. “Is he a gangster?”

  “Quite the contrary,” answered Galvin. “Ted is the most honest person I know. He just helps people understand what’s in their best interest.” In this case, Galvin explained, Amara had understood he was talking to real estate people. They had a lot of money at risk in a market that was going soft. Amara happened to know that some of their deals were in trouble—a big shopping-mall project in Leesburg, for example, that couldn’t close the previous week because the financing dried up. So Amara had helped them find money to complete that deal. He had told the group about some other things that were over the horizon, which they might not have known about, and they were grateful. Businesspeople weren’t stupid, regardless of what journalists might think, Galvin said. They understood where their interests lay.

  I shook my head; I didn’t get it. Where did Galvin have the money to be bailing out other investors?

  “Shouldn’t you be more careful?” I said. “You’re in the same boat as these real estate people. You have money problems, no matter how high the Sun’s stock price is. Some of your deals are going soft. This isn’t the time for you to be a sugar daddy.”

  Galvin laughed. He thought that was funny, that I was giving him financial advice. “Don’t be such a worrier. Everything will turn out all right.” He pointed to the Little Mermaid poster on my wall. “Don’t forget h
ow the story turns out. The prince marries the mermaid and they live happily ever after.”

  WHEN THE SPORTS EDITOR learned that Galvin was about to buy the local soccer team and rename it “The Suns—The Team with a Heart,” he made a broken-field run to Candace’s office. “He’s killing me!” he said. “You gotta make him stop!”

  Like most journalists at the Sun, the sports editor saw himself as a professional. He’d been supervising sports coverage for more than a decade—and during that time he had faced ceaseless pressure from owners and managers who wanted favorable stories about their teams. They’d all made the same pitch: We’re the home team! We’re the good guys! We should get positive coverage in the hometown newspaper! To which the sports editor had always replied, “Go to hell! The Sun doesn’t root for anyone.” Now the publisher was threatening to destroy that precious credibility.

  “I’ll try to turn him around,” Candace said. “But what will you do if he won’t back down?”

  This was not an easy question. The sports editor was fifty-two years old and had three children—one in college and two more in high school, and it was unlikely that he could earn anything approaching his current salary if he left.

  “I’ll have to quit,” he said. “There’s no point in working for people who don’t understand the rules.”

  Discretion was not the sports editor’s strong suit, and the newsroom quickly learned about his ultimatum to the new editor. Poor Candace. She didn’t need this fight right now. She didn’t give a hoot about soccer, or about sports coverage in general, and she had so many other problems to worry about. But the sports editor was popular with the staff, and she knew that on principle, he was right: The Sun had no business owning a local sports team.

  SHE ASKED GALVIN TO take a walk by the river. She told me about it when she got back; I think she was surprised at how it had turned out. It was a sunny December day, cold and clear, with the sky a perfect crystalline blue as if the color had been frozen in the upper atmosphere. They left the Sun building and walked down Virginia Avenue to the waterfront. The sculls were out on the river, struggling to make their way upstream against the current and the wind.