The Latina President...and the Conspiracy to Destroy Her

by Joe Rothstein

  “Well, we certainly know her,” said Hurley. That’s why we did everything we could to try to defeat her when she ran for the Senate. It was just bad luck and poor timing that we didn’t. But this isn’t the first liberal Democrat we’ve had to deal with as senator. And we feel pretty confident we could keep control if she becomes president. We have a lot of experience taming them down.”

  “This is a lady you think you can tame? I don’t think so,” said Carmona. “Let me tell you something. “Señora Tennyson has a role model from our ancient past. It was a Mayan princess by the name of Ix Wak Chan Ajaw. In the ancient city of Naachtun, which is now within Guatemala, there’s a huge statute of Ix Wak Chan Ajaw, in full battle gear, standing on the back of her conquered victim. This warrior princess was ruthless with all her enemies. Many of the cities she conquered were burned to the ground. We’re only now uncovering them and discovering how powerful and vicious she was with any who stood in her way.”

  “Interesting,” said Hurley, growing agitated by the conversation. “What’s the point?”

  “The point is this,” said Carmona. “Don Miguel told me about this to assure me that Señora Tennyson’s choice of role models when she was young meant that she would have what we might call the killer instinct needed to run Groupo Aragon. He was right about her killer instinct, but he seriously misjudged whom she would find the enemy.

  “We’re the enemy, my friends. All of us. Anyone and everyone with wealth. If we don’t stop her she will torch us all. You, me, and the entire class of people we associate with. She will go after all of us like no one ever has. I’m warning you, not just to save you, but because we at Aragon have similar interests. If she destroys your markets she destroys ours.”

  “So what do you suggest, Carmona?” said Pete Garner. “We’re supporting Rod Rusher in the Democratic primaries. And if she beats us there, which is unlikely, we’ll do everything we can to beat her in November. Our people tell us she’ll be out by March, April at the latest. She got in late and has no experience running for president. The first thing she did as a candidate was pull that damn fool stunt at the Alamo that likely will kill her chances with a lot of voters. Personally, I don’t see the threat.”

  Irving Pounds had been listening to all this. He was wealthy, but not in the league of others sitting around the room. Carmona had asked him to come for a reason. Pounds understood the reason.

  “Gentlemen,” he said. “Five years ago, after my fool son-in-law appointed her to the Senate, I sat in a room just like this with many of what I consider the smartest, most successful people in California, and I argued just like you’re arguing, that she could not win a statewide election and that, no matter, we had all the resources we needed to keep her under control. How wrong we all were. We savaged her in her election campaign. Savaged her. She beat us, and has spent the past five years savaging us. I don’t know about any Mayan princesses. I think of her as our own Margaret Thatcher, but on the wrong side. Don’t take this threat lightly.”

  “So what do you want us to do?” said Hurley.

  “Destroy her,” said Carmona.

  “Destroy her? Meaning...?”

  “Take her down politically. We can’t let her succeed. I’ve asked you here because you have all the resources you need to ruin her for good. Money, access to media. Research. Legislative traps. Everything. And whatever else you need, Bassam, Kurt, Rene, all of us and others would provide. Nothing is more important.”

  Hurley and Garner were both surprised and impressed at Carmona’s intensity.

  “You’ve made your point,” said Garner. “We’ll see what we can do.”

  With that the meeting ended.

  Hurley and Garner stopped for a minute on the curb outside the villa, before getting into their separate cars.

  “What do you make of all that, Jack?” asked Garner.

  “Family feuds,” said Hurley. “Irving Pounds and his daughter. And for the Mexicans it must be some kind of a clan thing.”

  24

  Despite the money and resources his corporate allies poured into his campaign, Roderick Rusher could not overcome what many perceived as a cardboard personality. Momentum created at the Alamo carried Tenny to big wins in Iowa and New Hampshire. Roderick Rusher hoped southern state primaries would stop the accelerating landslide. He carried South Carolina and Arkansas, but he could not recover after losses in North Carolina and Tennessee. He was out after Florida. By April, Tenny was the consensus nominee.

  The traditional business community was in panic. Rusher was their guy, the one who they bet on heavily to win the nomination. When it became obvious that Rusher would fall short they convinced him to concede gracefully, throw his support behind Tenny and try to use his influence for appointments and policy if she won. It wasn’t an easy sell. Rusher had spent his adult life building toward this year’s run for the White House. It was there, within reach, and then snatched away by the most implausible of circumstances. The opportunity of a lifetime was gone. He would have no more lifetimes. Decades of planning, working, compromising, would wash up on a barren shoal. It was not easy for him to accept. Harder still for him to pretend to be sporting about it.

  The Republican field began with eighteen candidates, but by April it was clear that the winner would be either Senator Dorie McHenry from Michigan or Senator Chet Freeman from Oklahoma, neither of whom could count on enough delegates to nail down the nomination. The intraparty battle between the far right and the not-so-far right would continue right up to the convention, sapping financial strength and encouraging attacks that would prove ugly in the general election for whomever emerged.

  All of this looked to be setting the table for a November walkaway for Tenny. But the Republicans proved resilient. The league of billionaires who had financed the various GOP candidate campaigns through the primaries were not about to back a predictably lost cause in the general election. The party’s presidential candidate had to be competitive if for no other reason than to save Republicans lower on the ballot and to keep majorities in Congress.

  After three ballots made it clear that neither McHenry and Freeman could gain enough delegates to win the nomination, wealthy patrons engineered a third choice, Jake Larson, governor of Wyoming. Larson hadn’t run the obstacle course of primaries and caucuses, but he had received Wyoming’s favorite son delegate votes, plus a scattering of others. Technically, he was a candidate, and the deeper the McHenry and Freeman feud sunk into an abyss of rancor, the more appealing Larson looked as a serious alternative. People said of Larson that he was right wing without being fright wing. He would prove a charismatic new face for a public weary of those who had been campaigning for nearly two years.

  Larson’s running mate was Lucy Bravo. Like Tenny, Bravo came from a Latin background. She was chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, solid on conservative issues, and a woman who played her politics as tough as a pro football nose guard. Bravo and Tenny knew one another from their days butting heads when Tenny served in the House. Bruising fights. Passionate differences. Bravo was clearly on the ticket to break some bones.

  “Not good,” said Ben as he watched the birth of the Larson-Bravo ticket on television. “The bastards worked some magic to turn disaster into a pretty attractive alternative.”

  Democrats would convene next week. The heat was on to counter a saleable Republican ticket with one of their own. Tenny’s first choice for vice president was her old friend from Alaska, Sheila Fishburne, now a senior Democrat with a solid record of accomplishment but a very low public profile.

  “We’d be great together,” said Tenny. “We’re on the same page with most things. I could trust her always to back me up.”

  “Can’t do it,” said Ben. “Two women. Two westerners. Two progressives. She adds nothing. Maybe she carries Alaska’s three votes, maybe not.”

  Tenny was determined, but finally the full force of outside opinion came down hard on her. Reed Guess weighed in. So did Susan Cipriani, Reed�
��s campaign manager who played such an important role in Tenny’s own nomination. Finally, Fish herself convinced Tenny it wouldn’t work. “You’re almost there,” said Fish. “Don’t go for a moonshot.”

  The battle for Fish consumed valuable days. Now they were on the eve of the convention. A decision had to be made. Ben and the core strategy group poured over poll research to match potential names with battleground state electoral votes. One name kept rising to the top of the list. At first they dismissed it out of hand, until its logic became overwhelming.

  “Rod Rusher? Not on your life! We don’t agree on anything! I hate the bastard and everything he stands for...and everything he doesn’t stand for. No way. Go back and get me someone else. Anyone else.”

  Tenny was adamant. She was also sleep deprived, tired of living the life of pointless convention parties, meetings, inane questions—the gauntlet that faces any nominee in the weeks, days and hours between when the nomination is secure and finally affirmed on the convention floor. Her inexhaustible stamina had been severely tested. Her patience with minutia always had a shallow threshold. They had to wear her down further to get her to agree to a Tennyson-Rusher ticket.

  All the internal polls showed that the general election would be too close for comfort. Except when Rusher was added to the ticket. Just as Tenny could trace her family back to the rulers of Spain, Rusher’s family tree was rooted with Virginia settlers who worked with Thomas Jefferson to create the Virginia Declaration of Rights, precursor to the Declaration of Independence. Ben saw in a Tennyson-Rusher ticket the elements of an America-for-All campaign, historic figures uniting the Anglo and Hispanic colonies and interests. Powerful messages. Powerful media possibilities. With Rusher they were likely to carry Virginia and they also could be more competitive in North Carolina and Georgia. Pennsylvania was a more comfortable prospect. They couldn’t ignore Rusher. Rusher’s many years in the U.S. Senate also helped Democrats in key competitive Senate races.

  Tenny wasn’t the only one needing convincing. Rusher wasn’t thrilled about it, either. Her agenda was not his. But his patrons urged him to take it on and help influence their cause from the inside. After all, they argued, she might lose and being a good soldier now could make him the front runner next time.

  Despite all the reservations, on the convention’s closing night Isabel Aragon Tennyson and Roderick Rusher stood side-by-side fielding the blizzard of balloons and confetti that rained down from the arena’s roof, the unity ticket that would carry the party’s hopes into the general election. It would be the first and only time that Tenny and Rusher would ever hold hands and link arms with the pretense of being a team.

  Powered by an enormous war chest, Republicans ran a replay of the sex and crime charges that dogged Tenny during her campaign for the U.S. Senate. These proved to be red meat issues for reliable Republican voters but failed to move independents. Too improbable. Too scurrilous. Not believable. As in the California Senate race, efforts to bring down Tenny through sex and crime allegations proved more backlash than asset to the opposition. Too liberal? It didn’t seem to matter. Voters were ready for new and different. Too Latina? By campaign’s end voters had a much stronger sense of Tenny as a person—a fighter, a likeable, competent advocate for their interests. Rusher proved valuable to the cause, particularly in Virginia and other southern states where he was known and respected. Once on the ticket, Rusher campaigned as he always had—hard, and to win.

  In November, Tennyson-Rusher carried 300 electoral votes. Isabel Aragon Tennyson would be the next president of the United States.

  

  Almie

  Even in our earliest days together, when paying the electric bill was a problem and our books came from the second-hand shop you told me that someday I would elect a president. Not once did you say that, but who knows how often. So often that I began believing it. I didn’t love you because you believed in me. But I loved knowing that you did and that you were so willing to eat of out cans trying to get me there.

  Well, we’re there, Almie. President Isabel Tennyson. You would approve. I’ve never felt compromised in all the years I’ve worked with her. She’s genuine, nothing artificial about her. She knows herself and why she ran and what she wants to do.

  I’ll never forget that day you were with me in Santa Cruz and saw the poster for that candidate for sheriff, Peter Demma. Work to help the country be a place where someone can win with a poster like this, you said. I grabbed the poster off of a phone pole and kept it all these years.

  Moves with creative imagination

  Powered by love and devotion

  Guided by inner lights of awareness

  Through the darkness of fear and suspicion

  Toward beauty and joy

  Beyond the images of life and death

  Peter Demma lost, even in Santa Cruz, even at the height of the tribe movement there. I doubt anyone could win today with this message. But I’ve used it ever since to measure candidates. You would be surprised, or maybe not, at how many I’ve rejected because they were such ill fits. But Tenny comes close, and to think she’s now president, with all that power to use her creative imagination, love, and devotion. For what purpose? We never know, do we? Good intentions are seldom enough. Reality is what we live, not what we expect.

  We know so little. Even what makes up most of the universe, what we call dark energy, that’s all around us, moving through us, we have no clue what it is. I’ve always thought that of you, Almie. What I feel and what I say. Words are poor agents. Are you part of the matter we still don’t understand? You continue to pass through me, even though we’ve lost touch.

  Love always,

  (mean it)

  Ben

  25

  January of the presidential inaugural year is a time like no other in Washington, D.C. Elaborate platforms are constructed next to the Capitol building and the White House. Parade grandstands line Pennsylvania Avenue, constricting sidewalks. Bunting hangs from hotels and offices. Throughout the city, people nervously check weather reports and generally find that January 20 almost always will turn up bone-chilling. Historic records show that for twenty-five days in January average temperatures are at freezing or below. But January is also the driest month of the year in Washington, averaging about three inches of precipitation, usually snow. Will it snow during inaugural ceremonies or the inaugural parade? Even without snow, will the wind be so conspicuous as to drive its way through the wools and furs and microfibers deployed against it?

  Ronald Reagan’s first inaugural was the warmest on record, 55 degrees. His second was the coldest, 7 degrees Fahrenheit, so cold the ceremony had to be moved indoors. The weather gods can be real pranksters. They interrupted George W. Bush’s plan to use the George Washington Bible. Too risky to transport that day because of snow and high winds. Eight inches of snow greeted John F. Kennedy on his inaugural day. Army flamethrowers had to be used to clear the path for the parade.

  Forecasts for the inauguration of President-elect Tennyson did not look promising. Relatively warm at somewhere between 35 and 40 degrees, and sunny. But in keeping with her high-voltage personality, the winds would be whipping hard—up to twenty miles per hour. Those lining the parade route or waiting four hours on the Mall for the swearing-in ceremonies would have to be hearty of spirit and creative in dress. Ski masks would be frowned upon.

  For weeks, Tenny had been living in Blair House, a stately brick townhouse complex directly across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House, assembled through the years by the U.S. government as safe quarters for visiting heads of state, former presidents and other dignitaries, and now the president-elect. While platforms were being constructed and plans were being made on the outside for the inaugural events, Tenny was inside Blair House working with staff to assemble her cabinet and to decide on those who would help create policy and manage the federal government. Carmie was Tenny’s first choice to take the job of secretary of the treasury, but Carmie had other i
deas.

  “Let’s start with this,” said Carmie. “I am in no way qualified for that job. Just because I’m a big deal on Wall Street doesn’t mean I have a background in everything touched by money.”

  “Then bring in people around you who know what you don’t. The biggest thing we have to do is get the financial system under control. The banks. The credit system. All the ways the big asses are gaming taxes. We’ve got to put the brakes on all that. I need a treasury secretary who sees it the way I see it. I can’t worry about having a person who just says, ‘Yes, Madam President. Right away, Madam President.’ And then finds ways with his equity-fund buddies to undermine me.”

  “You could trust me as Carmie your friend and policy soul-mate. But you wouldn’t be able to trust Carmie to be the wise and knowledgeable counselor who could beat this crowd at their own game. Believe me, there are thousands of ways I could be danced around until in all sincerity and trust, I’d be giving you bad advice. And here’s the second problem. Everyone who matters knows I’m not qualified. They would tear me apart at confirmation hearings. They’d use me to question your judgment and whether you were up to the job.”

  “But Carmie, I need you with me.”

  “Then make me commerce secretary. Nobody really cares who becomes commerce secretary. I’d slide through confirmation easily. Make Phil Stein treasury secretary. Phil and I are buddies. He’s got credentials up the wazoo. The last few years at Harvard, he’s sounded more academic than political, but believe me, Phil’s one of us. He and I worked together on that European Union trade deal and I learned to love the guy. What’s great about Phil is that he’s not a loudmouth. No bull horns or bull shit. No grandstanding. But impressive as hell, respected everywhere. When the policy war starts, the Masters of the Universe will never know what hit them. Phil knows his stuff and would be such an unexpected choice. And best of all, I’m pretty sure he’s a registered Republican.”