Oppo

by Tom Rosenstiel

  Traynor was a technology billionaire who had dreamed up his first company in his college dorm room. But he was better known for owning sports teams and flying around the planet to every event where celebrities might show up. He was profane, blunt, and swaggering, a man who cultivated a frat boy image to hide his intellect. And when he decided three years ago to run for the Senate from Colorado—while continuing to run his businesses and flying around the world—most people in Washington thought it was a joke. Then he won.

  Now, after two years as a dilettante senator, he was running for president, and there was a very real possibility he might win the nomination.

  “Then why are you wasting time calling me, dude?” Sedaka asked.

  Upton shot her chief a chastising look. She hated any version of dude culture locker-room talk, and she chided Sedaka when he fell into it. Sedaka glared back like she was an annoying big sister.

  Moss laughed on the other end of the line, a baritone barroom chortle.

  “Wanted to run something by you, Gil. Off the record. Just in theory. Unofficial.”

  Moss was into weird Washington code talk already.

  Sedaka now had to resist the urge to put Moss on speaker. The consultant would be able to tell the conversation was being overheard. So Gil came around to Upton’s side of the desk and held the phone so they could both hear more easily. He felt a little naughty.

  “Sure,” he told Moss.

  “I want you to listen carefully, Gil,” Moss said. “So when you see your boss you can get what I am about to say exactly right. Do I have your attention yet?”

  “You have my attention,” said Sedaka.

  “I’m wondering, just thinking.” A pause, as if Stir’s wondering and thinking were weighty activities in themselves. “I’m curious, if your boss is amenable to being considered as a possible vice presidential nominee. Just thinking out loud. Unofficially. Is that something she’d consider? And if so, is that something she would consider from across the aisle?”

  Upton and Sedaka’s eyes met, widening. They’d worked together so long, their reactions to a lot of things had become alike. And they were enjoying the absurdity of the moment.

  Moss was making an exploratory call to see if Wendy Upton, a Republican, popular with women, widely considered a wise and steady hand and a fine mind, would run as number two on the presidential ticket of David Traynor, Democrat of Colorado, breaker of rules, shatterer of expectations, bad boy reformer.

  Traynor had placed second in the Iowa caucuses three weeks ago to Maria Pena, the progressive governor of New Mexico. Then Traynor had won New Hampshire, making him the front-runner. But he had come in second again to Pena in Nevada, giving her two wins to his one. And then Traynor had tied for first in an improbable three-way dead heat in South Carolina, breaking the race wide open. The other two winners were Omar Fulwood, the African American congressman from Philadelphia, and Cole Murphy, a former cop and Iraq war veteran who was trying, along with Traynor, to move the Democratic Party to the center. In other words, the Democratic race was up for grabs, but Traynor was a serious contender.

  All that complicated math meant that exploring the vice presidency with Upton was not some long-shot gesture by a campaign about to slip below the waterline. If Traynor persuaded Upton to join him—on a cross-party ticket, with most of the primaries still ahead—it would be a bold gesture, a signal he really did want to change how politics was played. It was also a massive gamble: choosing Upton might alienate Democrats and end his candidacy. Or it could catapult him to the nomination on the healing wave of a bipartisanship that could carry through November. It might, if you were an optimist, even change the course of the country.

  “But we’re not having this conversation,” Moss said.

  “Not having this conversation” meant that Moss could deny he had ever reached out.

  Upton knew there was another meaning behind that phrase, too. This call was not an offer. Not even close.

  Before a presidential nominee picks someone to run on the ticket as vice president, several things need to happen.

  To begin with, the potential vice presidential candidate has to be vetted within an inch of his or her life.

  Then the nominee has to know beforehand that the person they want to pick will say yes. No candidate with any sense would make an offer to someone if there were even an iota of risk they’d be turned down. Political Washington was a small town, maybe ten thousand people. Eventually everyone knows everyone’s business. Especially if it’s embarrassing.

  So this phone call, which was “unofficial” and “just a conversation,” meant that Traynor had done enough vetting to be interested. Now he wanted to know—if he did offer her a place on the ticket—whether she would say yes.

  If she signaled interest, Traynor’s people would do more vetting. Upton would hand over materials, maybe sit down with Traynor’s people, all in secret. That way, if something looked amiss, everyone had deniability. Deniability was important—for Upton as much as Traynor. If it were known you had been looked at and rejected due to something in the vetting, that would leave a black mark on your record that never disappeared.

  All this coursed through Upton’s political brain in an instant, and, she assumed, Sedaka’s.

  Upton tried to read her chief, a man five years her junior. His political instincts were always sharper than hers, but he was also more emotional than she was.

  Sedaka said to Moss: “Stir, this isn’t something I can speak for her on, obviously. I need to talk to Wendy. But I will talk to her. If I can track her down today.” A glance at his boss. “It’s a rough calendar. I may not even see her till tonight. But I will say this: I’ll recommend she seriously consider it. I think it’s intriguing as hell.”

  That meant exactly nothing. But it bought them time.

  Upton also thought she read something else in her friend’s voice. The idea excited him.

  “Good man, Gil. Good man,” Moss said. “That’s all I can ask. Get back to me. Quickly. I don’t need to tell you this is time sensitive. I can’t let this hang out there, with my fly unzipped.”

  His fly unzipped. Men really are idiots, Upton thought.

  Then Moss was gone.

  Two

  Sedaka placed his cell phone back on Upton’s desk next to his car keys, almost ceremonially, eyes on the senator. And exhaled.

  “So that was a thing,” he said.

  “A thing no one’s actually done,” Upton said, “since . . .” She stopped. “Has anyone ever done it?”

  People had come awfully close to cross-party presidential tickets before.

  A dozen years earlier, though the story wasn’t public, the Democratic nominee tried to persuade a respected maverick Republican senator to run as his vice president against GOP president Jackson Lee. The ticket would have pitted two decorated Vietnam war veterans against a man who’d avoided combat and taken the country into a disastrous war. The Republican senator, a man named John Conner, was tempted but said no at the last minute. The story had never gotten into the press.

  Four years later, Conner, now the GOP nominee, tried to woo his best friend in the Senate, a Democrat, to be his VP, which would have given his candidacy a needed jolt. When he was turned down, Conner picked a Wyoming governor he barely knew as running mate instead—Pamela Smiley—a decision he would regret the rest of his life.

  “I think technically, Andrew Johnson was a National Union Democrat and Abraham Lincoln a Republican,” Sedaka said.

  “Just . . . 156 years ago,” said Upton, doing the math in her head. “A long and rich tradition.”

  They were bantering, a little stunned by what had just transpired. And a little giddy.

  The vice presidency was something people made denigrating jokes about. Especially in this town. “Not worth a bucket of warm spit,” FDR’s first vice president, John Nance Garner, supposedly said. Until, apparently, someone calls you up and actually discusses offering it to you.

  Upton b
ecame more serious. “So, Gil, you’re my chief adviser. Advise me. What are you thinking?”

  “Mostly, well, holy shit.”

  She tried not to laugh.

  Then she gave him the look, one she had perfected long ago when she was both older sibling and mother to her half sister, Emily. Upton’s staff had a name for it: “Senator Disappointed.” It meant she wasn’t satisfied by the answer and you had to do better.

  “Terrific, that’s done then,” she said. “Anything else on the calendar?”

  She and Sedaka had been colleagues for fifteen years, since they worked as equals for Senator Furman Morgan. Gil was the only chief of staff she’d ever had—House and Senate. He watched out for her and, politically, often thought ahead of her.

  Sedaka’s giddiness was wearing off.

  “I think the logic for this is different now than it was few years ago,” he said. “A bipartisan ticket wouldn’t be a stunt. It’s more compelling now. The country is such a goddamn mess. Actually, the analogy to 1864 and Lincoln is pretty apt.”

  For a moment, neither said anything.

  “And, Wendy,” Sedaka added, “Traynor could win: with you on the ticket, he could win.”

  She waited a beat before saying, “Lord help us.” But neither of them laughed.

  She felt restless. “Look, let’s get out of here for a few minutes.” She wanted to walk a little and think and not be interrupted. They often did their best thinking outside the office.

  “Brantley’s?”

  It was a coffee place that had been set up near the Senate dining room, open all the time, where you could have more privacy and weren’t served by waiters in tuxedos.

  They sat in a corner where no one could see or hear them, but Gil still lowered his voice. “As your friend, I think you should say no. A national campaign isn’t like running for the Senate. It’s incredibly vicious. And frankly, Wendy, you’re not nasty enough. A VP candidate has to be a bully.”

  That was the traditional view, at least. VP candidates were supposed to be able say things the top nominee wouldn’t, the blunt instrument used to inflame the base. Except these days it seemed there was nothing nominees wouldn’t say themselves. If anything, Upton would give Traynor class.

  “There’s a ‘but’ coming next, isn’t there?” she said.

  “Yes, there is,” he said slowly. “But another part of me, the guy who believes in you, wonders a little.”

  Senate chiefs of staff were powers unto themselves on Capitol Hill, and they tended to come in two flavors. There were “policy chiefs” who knew issues and guided their senators in crafting legislation. And there were “political chiefs” who thought mostly about helping their bosses get reelected, analyzing every vote from that perspective, and strategizing how far to allow a senator’s conscience stray from party orthodoxy. Sedaka was a hybrid, which suited Upton fine. She was a policy wonk, and she needed someone who could help her think through the politics. But she could have never abided someone purely political.

  “A part of you wonders what, Gil?” she said. “You need to use your words today.”

  He gave her a look. “A part of me wonders if you helped Traynor win the nomination whether together the two of you might just be able to take the country in a new direction. Help it begin to heal a little.”

  She gave him a skeptical glance but didn’t say anything, and Sedaka pressed his case:

  “Maybe Traynor really does want to change the paradigms in politics. I think he’s serious about entitlements, and reforming social programs, doing real tax reform, not the ugly thing we do now.”

  “So he says.”

  “Don’t believe him?”

  “Just because he’s new to politics doesn’t mean he’s not full of shit.”

  Gil laughed.

  “Plus, he seems to have no interest in learning how laws are made,” Upton said. “He spends more time on his jet than in the office.”

  “We don’t make many laws anymore, remember?” he said. “We do symbols. Weren’t we just drafting some?”

  He put down his coffee and leaned toward her again. “Look, I think a bipartisan ticket now could be a meaningful statement. Especially coming from Traynor. And you.”

  There was no disputing Traynor was different. The Colorado senator was so new to politics, he could genuinely claim he was trying to change things. He was an outsider who talked like a Silicon Valley CEO, not a politician, and he had a different kind of politics, too. He called himself a “Libertarian Democrat” who wanted to shrink the federal bureaucracy while protecting people’s civil rights.

  In stump speeches he declared he wanted “to disrupt government from the bottom up. But to make it work better, not to burn it down.” And he would always add, “Burn things down and millions will die in the fire. That’s not government reform. It’s insurance fraud.”

  The language about burning things down was an allusion to a loose collection of groups called the Shut It Down movement, which was finding a resonance on both the left and the right. The Shut It Down crowd called for a constitutional convention to rethink the rules governing how Congress was elected and operated.

  “His answer to the Shut It Down movement is pretty good, right?”

  “The guy can talk, I grant you that,” Upton said. But she was frowning.

  She took a sip of coffee and then blew on the cup. Steam mushroomed into her face and softened it.

  “What do you have against him?” Gil asked.

  “Where do I start?”

  Traynor was rash, a showman, and seemed to flout every rule.

  She, by contrast—an army veteran, an accomplished prosecutor, an orphan who had raised her little sister—believed deeply in the power of rules. They might be the only thing, at the moment, holding the shivering country together.

  “Wendy, I’m serious. He’s offering something here. Something that might change politics.”

  The way Gil said it seemed to change the conversation. It felt as if he had laid something on the table, as if he had dug into his pocket and pulled out all their years together, their friendship, their hopes, their frustrations, their shared battles, their encroaching middle age, and had thrown them down like an enormous bet into the pot in a card game.

  Upton became serious, too.

  “You want to talk about the politics? How’s this: He’s a Democrat and I’m a Republican. If I crossed party lines, it would be a kind of death. I’d become a political orphan. My own party would disown me. And the Democrats would never fully trust me.” She paused. “Any more than I trust them.”

  That hung in the air a moment between them. “I don’t believe that,” Sedaka said. “You would be his successor. A heartbeat away from the presidency.”

  “In theory,” Upton said.

  But it was not, they both knew, very likely to occur. At least not based on history.

  They were as familiar with the statistics as athletes are with the records in their sports. Since 1900, only five vice presidents had ascended to the White House—three by death and a fourth by scandal. The lone exception, the only vice president to be elected to the White House, was George H. W. Bush, who also was the last sitting president to lose reelection four years later.

  No one grew up aspiring to be vice president. No one. Not in the history of the world. Not ever. Including Wendy Upton.

  “He also just might be better than whoever wins the nomination in our party, Wendy.”

  That earned a grimace from Upton.

  The Republican race was dominated at the moment by the two most conservative and, Upton thought, dangerous candidates in the race: Governor Jeff Scott, a charismatic populist from Michigan, and Richard Bakke, a mean-spirited but undeniably smart senator from Kentucky.

  Upton leaned back in her chair. “So your first reaction is ‘Holy shit,’” she said. “Your second is I’m not tough enough to do this. And your third is we might just change the country and save democracy.”

  Sedaka shrugged.
“I’m still processing.”

  The Disappointed Senator face reappeared.

  “You know I’m going to turn him down,” she said. “I have to. It would end any chance I have to be a serious lawmaker.”

  “Unless you win.”

  “You think I should take that risk for David Traynor?” She blew on her coffee again. “You know I’ll say no.” Then she gave him an inquiring look. “You’ve got something else up your sleeve. You’re trying to draw this out. You don’t want me to say no too quickly.”

  Sedaka blushed. She had him.

  “You want to make me take it seriously enough to get Traynor to meet me face-to-face.” That would make Traynor’s consideration of her more real. “And then you want it to leak, don’t you?”

  Sedaka lowered his voice. “It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if people knew he’d considered you. In some ways it’s the best possible outcome, being considered for VP, rather than being it.”

  “Careful, Gil.”

  But Sedaka was warming to his argument. “That may even be what Moss wants,” he tried. “Maybe Traynor’s not even serious about this. Maybe he just wants people to know he’s considering you. That serves his purposes, too, right? Let it be known he’s thinking about crossing the aisle? Show he’s a different kind of Democrat?”

  Upton considered this as her chief plunged on. “For all we know, they intend to leak this.”

  Upton put her coffee down. “Don’t handle me, Gil. I have political consultants for that.”

  “I’m not handling you, Wendy. All I’m saying is drag your feet. Let me say you’re seriously thinking about it and we need more time.”

  And slowly, almost reluctantly, she let herself smile, a younger smile, almost a teenager’s, from a woman who had barely had the chance to be one. On the few occasions it came out, something about that smile broke Sedaka’s heart a little.