The Incumbent

by Brian McGrory

  We talked over some questions. Martin, for all his idiosyncrasies, and they are many, is good at that, cutting to the quick, finding the fault lines, gauging reader interest. I'm good too, and I possess the additional ability that he doesn't necessarily have, of dealing with people, and I'd have to lean heavily on that to steer Hutchins away from what I assumed was the point of this meeting-the offer of press secretary-and over to my purpose-the investigation into the assassination attempt.

  At about eleven-thirty, I slipped into my navy blue suit jacket, put a microcassette recorder into my chest pocket, grabbed my White House clearance pass out of my top drawer, and headed for the door. As I walked the two blocks down Pennsylvania Avenue, I thought back to a running joke that Katherine and I had. We were figuring out how to decorate our upstairs study. She wanted colorful soft lines and a veritable jungle of plants. She said it helped her to create, all that growth and brightness. I wanted the feel of an English library, with hunter green walls and a leather club chair. We compromised, shooting for what she described as an Oval Office look. We refinished the moldings in bright white and hung old prints on pale yellow walls, and rather than an overwhelming desk we bought a nice library table at a little storefront antique shop near Middleburg, Virginia. Neither of us had a clue what the Oval Office actually looked like, except that it was probably oval, and our own little office was square and about one tenth of the size. When we were done with the decorations we toasted many hours of creative thinking with a glass of champagne, then effortlessly ended up on the antique rug engaged in a fit of wonderful sex. Nice memories, and soon I was there, at the guard shack, staring inside a sheet of bullet-proof glass at a bored-looking member of the U.s. Secret Service.

  seven

  At the entrance to the West Wing of the White House, a marine in full dress uniform stands so perfectly straight that visitors think he might be a mannequin, a toy soldier, until he snaps open the substantial door with a flip of his brawny wrist. Inside, in the lush reception area, an inevitably becoming young woman provides callers with an escort to their destination.

  I don't know why I bring this up, however, because as a reporter I am required to enter through the press briefing room. It looks nice on television, when presidential spokesman Royal Dalton stands before a deep blue curtain with a White House emblem and rattles off the news of the day at his afternoon briefings, taking questions on anything from the subtlest change in U.s. policy toward Zimbabwe to whether White House aides are serving as the source of negative information about income tax and real estate questions faced by Democratic presidential nominee Stanny Nichols. (they were, despite Dalton's assertions to the contrary.) The podium gleams, the room looks spacious and official, and it appears as if American journalism-indeed, American democracy-is well served in that daily sixty-minute word fight when White House officials stand before a sometimes frothing press.

  In point of fact, though, the room is an absolute pit-a bus station, others have called it, though they are quick to add that such a comparison may be slanderous to the well-meaning folks over at Greyhound. Years ago, this used to be the site of the White House swimming pool, where John F. Kennedy swam laps as therapy for his chronically ailing back. Richard Nixon, for reasons that have never been explained, filled the pool in and turned it into a briefing area.

  Now, burly cameramen allow their Starbucks coffee cups to pile up for weeks at a time before throwing them away. Their colleagues inevitably come along and choose a cup in which to deposit a wad of old chewing tobacco. The highly paid on-air talent toss their notes on the floor, assuming that someone else, as in the rest of their lives, is there to pick up after them. The threadbare rug is stained by the slush of too many winters and the sweat of too little air conditioning in the strangling Washington summer. And the chair backs are soiled by pencil gouges and graffiti marks, with declarations like "I should have gone to law school."

  Sunday noon brought me through this very room, darkened because of the weekend. I climbed the few steps into the West Wing from the press area and announced myself to a uniformed Secret Service agent, who gave me a "So what?" look he seemed to save for all reporters seeking another bit of information to help along another story that was probably not very good for the administration. It was a look that made me want to grab him by his starched white poly-cotton shirt. But my ribs.

  "I have an appointment with the president," I said, in what amounted to a verbal cuffing.

  This made him take his task more seriously. He picked up the telephone, had a brief conversation that as best I could tell consisted of half a dozen prehistoric grunts, then led me past the Roosevelt Room on the right, past the Cabinet Room on the left, into an anteroom with two secretaries, one of whom greeted me with an enormous smile and unabashed pleasure at our meeting.

  "Sylvia Weinrich," she said, holding out a delicate, perfectly manicured middle-aged hand. "It's delightful to see you. I must say, you've carried yourself with great dignity on television after the shooting. I don't know how I would have handled all that."

  "Jack Flynn," I said, this time speaking the obvious. "I had the great advantage of not actually being hurt. Had I been, that might well have changed things."

  We laughed politely at a joke that really wasn't all that funny, until Sylvia casually looked over her shoulder into an open door and said,

  "Why don't we just head right in. The president will probably want to get started."

  She then brought me through a pair of wide doors into one of the most incredible places I have ever been: the Oval Office. The rug was such a colorful blue you could almost get lost in it, like the sea. In the middle was a bright eagle within the presidential seal, and beyond the rug on all sides was a shiny parquet maple-and-oak floor. A tall case clock ticked loudly by the door. Sunlight streamed in over the South Lawn through French doors and long windows. Magnificent paintings and portraits decorated the walls, including an unfinished one of George Washington hanging over the fireplace. Hutchins, in shirtsleeves-though elegant ones, I must say, with a fine blue pinstripe and presidential cuff links-stood up from his enormous oak desk at the far end of the room. It was a substantial, beautiful desk, a desk where presidents have signed declarations of war and treaties of peace, addressed the nation in times of crisis and triumph, plotted strategies to win reelection, to shape history, taped conversations that would haunt them to their graves. Hutchins stood up and boomed,

  "From the land of the living dead, Jack Flynn. Damned nice of you to come over."

  I offered a simple smile at him and his surroundings, noticing Sylvia backing quietly out of the room. "A pleasure, sir," I said. "Thank you for the invitation." I found myself addressing him in that unusually formal tone, like on the golf course, and wondered if it was like that for everyone, especially in this office. I kind of presumed it was.

  "Let's sit," Hutchins said, lowering his hand toward a blue-and-white-striped couch that I'd seen on television many times, though usually then it was occupied by a Middle Eastern king negotiating a truce or a Senate Republican having his arm twisted to back what always seemed to be billed as a landmark budget deal.

  Hutchins settled in a pale yellow upholstered chair set to the side of the fireplace.

  "How are your ribs?" Hutchins asked as I lowered myself gingerly onto the couch. Then he answered his own question, as he tended to do.

  "Doctors tell me you're doing pretty well. Helps to be young and virile, huh?"

  The door to the office swung open. Hutchins looked over, slightly startled, then watched calmly as the tall, courtly form of White House chief of staff Lincoln Powers came striding into the room.

  "Sorry to interrupt, Mr. President," Powers said in that patrician Texan twang he has. "Have an important message I need to pass on to you." He handed Hutchins an official-looking memorandum, then turned back to me. "Well, you look even more handsome in person than on TV, young man," he said. "I'm Lincoln Powers, Mr. Flynn. Nice to meet you."

  This
TV thing, unbelievably, was starting to get old. I wondered how Walter Cronkite handled it all the time. I suppose it's different when you do it for a living.

  Anyway, the story of Clayton Hutchins and Lincoln Powers was an unusual one-how the lives of two very different men intersected at a time of national crisis, and how they had bonded together ever since.

  Hutchins's, mostly, was the amazing story. He had made his mark as a successful businessman in Des Moines, Iowa, taking a startup technology company that produced personal finance software called Cookie Jar into the big leagues, eventually becoming a staple in households across America and earning its inventor hundreds of millions of dollars. Across Iowa, a state of significant prudence and few celebrities, Hutchins became a folk hero, lauded for his ambitions and his brains and loved for his massive acts of philanthropy. Some of the state's elder politicians took to joking that Hutchins's name became so commonplace on libraries, hospital wings, and school buildings that people might think he owned a construction company.

  His was a uniquely American story-born and raised on a farm miles and miles from his closest neighbor, schooled at home, college educated later in life, entirely self-made in both the worlds of commerce and government.

  His entrance to politics was unconventional, to say the least. A few months before the Iowa governor's race six years ago, a group of business leaders and citizen activists, dissatisfied with the lackluster candidates for the two major parties, got together and launched a massive draft-Hutchins movement for a third-party write-in campaign. Hutchins reluctantly accepted. Standing onstage with his two opponents at a series of debates, he had them so outwitted and outsmarted that the race seemed almost unfair. He won with 45 percent of the vote, fifteen points ahead of his closest competitor.

  Hutchins came in with a refreshing ability to speak the truth and the simple promise that he would run the government like a business and demand nothing but the best service at the lowest cost possible. He balanced the state's budget. He fired a string of high-level managers who had long been suspected of corruption. He spoke his mind, spoke it often, and spoke it well. Even 60 Minutes, the bane of politicians countrywide, aired a glowing profile of Hutchins, calling him "one of the last great moderate politicians in America."

  Two years later, the Republican front-runner for the presidency, Senator Wordsworth Cole, for reasons he didn't understand, found himself suddenly getting battered in Iowa public opinion polls about a week before the caucus. Experts said it was bad organization and a stale message. Most Iowans were more pointed in their beliefs. They just seemed to think he was out of touch. So Hutchins unleashed the full glory of his power to help Cole win, and win he did, by a huge margin-a victory that analysts described as the watershed event in the campaign. From there, with momentum, he steamrolled into New Hampshire, and then across the country and all the way to the Republican nomination. Privately, at the August Republican Convention in Miami, he promised to give Hutchins any cabinet post he desired as a reward for his crucial work.

  Flash ahead to three weeks before the November election. The New York Times published a report that Cole's vice presidential running mate, Senator Steven Sugara of Wyoming, had been addicted to the prescription drug Prozac two years earlier, but had never disclosed the fact to Cole or, for that matter, to Wyoming voters. In a neck-and-neck race, the Cole campaign immediately went into a tailspin. But Hutchins met up with Cole on the campaign trail, counseled him that voters cast ballots for president, not vice president, and told him to publicly stand behind his nominee. He did, and staggered to a slim victory, but a victory nonetheless. They don't partially furnish the Oval Office or limit your miles on Air Force One because you only won by 2 percent. A week later, Sugara resigned. Hutchins was picked as vice president, and he continued like that for three and a half years.

  He was a good understudy, a major fund-raising asset, a loyal and confidential adviser. At first, my brethren in the news media thought his personality might not fit the required role. Hutchins harked from the no-bullshit world of high-technology business, a place where risk led to the ultimate rewards and prudence was the hallmark of those left behind. He was offensive in almost every possible way, but not in the worst sense of the word. He was blunt. His voice was hard, as if it had been pounded by rocks. He was built like a fireplug, at five feet, ten inches, I'd guess, with a barrel chest and broad shoulders. His face was rough, his hair thinning, and he was anything but handsome, yet when he met with contributors or businessmen or even aides, he spawned many imitators, those who wanted to be like him, to dress like him, to talk as he did in words and tone. He was someone who seemed never to expect anything other than wild success, but when he achieved it, he gave the impression it would never change him.

  As vice president, he was strong, but he knew his place. That meant he was fully aware he had not been elected. He knew his role was virtually meaningless compared to the president's. He accorded the president the same kind of reverent respect he expected from those under him when he worked in business. He understood that his most important function at its most fundamental level was simply to be there, to be ready, if the president should die. And that had happened this past August, one week before the Republican Convention.

  President Cole dropped dead of a massive heart attack on the private tennis court tucked into the bushes on the South Lawn of the White House. It was a stunningly beautiful summer day. He had just put the finishing touches to his acceptance speech and was planning to take a week off with his family at their getaway house on Sea Island, Georgia.

  He stole out back for a tune-up game with a mid-level aide. Witnesses said he had just broken service and was poised to win the first set when he crumpled to the ground. By the time the Secret Service agents got to him, which was in seconds, he was already dead. By nightfall, Clayton Hutchins had taken the oath of office on the porch of the vice president's mansion on the grounds of the Naval Observatory. Like Jerry Ford, he became president without ever winning a single vote on a national ticket.

  At a time of almost indescribable distress within the Republican Party and sorrow across the entire nation, Hutchins again proved to be a reassuring force. He accepted the nomination of his party by acclamation at a subdued convention in Chicago. He vowed to continue on the path blazed by Cole, a man he said he loved. He nominated Theodore Rockingham, a grandfatherly, even statesmanlike veteran of past Republican administrations, as his vice president. Throughout the autumn campaign, he remained silent as his Democratic opponent, the respected senator from Colorado, Stanny Nichols, got pelted by accusations over some decade-old income tax issues back home. It was still a tight race, but Hutchins was watching his poll numbers climb in the wake of the attempt on his life. As I sat in the Oval Office on this day, two months into Hutchins's presidency, victory in the election had become more realistic than at any other point in the campaign-realistic enough that Hutchins had just started thinking what he might do once he achieved it.

  Back in August, one of the first things he did after taking the oath was place a call to Powers's sprawling cattle ranch, to plead with the elegant Texan to return to the White House for one last tour of duty on behalf of party and country. Powers was perhaps the most experienced, most respected political adviser in America, a confidant to Republican presidents for three decades, a former secretary of state who had blazed around the world on missions of war and peace. He knew Washington and he knew power, and he knew how to handle the latter within the curious circus of the former, and for that, I suspect, he had been an invaluable part of Hutchins's smooth transition. They were an odd pair, these two, a consummate government outsider and the ultimate creature of the capital, a virgin and a pimp, if you will.

  "Sorry to cut in on you here," Powers said to me, as the president pulled a thick Waterman writing instrument off a side table and penned a note in the margin of the memorandum. As Powers took the papers back and walked from the room, a telephone console tucked on a shelf beneath the side ta
ble gave a soft, melodic ring. I looked down in surprise, having not seen anything there, and wondering who it is that calls the president. I answered my own question, watching a red light blink along a column that had various agencies listed: CIA, State, Chief of Staff, Treasury. The light illuminated beside the FBI.

  "Yes," Hutchins said, sounding annoyed as he answered the phone. There was a pause as he listened, then he seemed to cut the caller off, saying, "Look, I appreciate this, but I've got several things going on right now, like a presidential campaign. I will call you later when I have time for a full briefing." He hung up without saying goodbye, then turned to me. "I get a little flesh wound in the shoulder, and everyone acts like I have to drop everything in the name of a national catastrophe. Life goes on, except, I guess, for that poor bastard who took the poke at me."

  That would have been as good a time as any to cut in with a nicely placed segue, something original like "Speaking of the poor bastard.

  Any idea who the hell he is?" But I didn't feel comfortable enough yet, not with the president, and especially not here in the Oval Office, which was about as intimidating a place as I'd ever been in. I wondered if the word fuck had ever been uttered within these pristine confines, then remembered Nixon and assumed it had.

  "So, where are you in terms of our discussion Thursday?" Hutchins asked, cutting hard to the point.

  My eyes drifted around the room for a minute. All this time to come up with a pat answer, and I didn't actually have one. I looked out the French doors, into the Rose Garden, where the last of the season's hardiest flowers fluttered in the autumn breeze. I looked down to the circular drive, then beyond to the South Lawn, and imagined being here early on a Thursday evening, stepping onto the patio and walking across the grass to Marine One, giving a quick wave goodbye to the gathered staff, and lifting off for Camp David for a weekend of blissful seclusion, maybe a few holes of golf. Finally I looked at Hutchins, and from my sense of it, not a moment too soon, because he seemed to be getting aggravated with me. Searching for an answer, I punted. I decided to offer the truth.