The candidate smiles. ‘That’s just what I was thinking, Morrison.’
Morrison smiles back, thinly. ‘That’s because it’s true, sir. You’re the incumbent. This belongs to you already.’
It does a candidate good to think that there’s some lucky-omen, stars-aligning thing going on. Morrison likes to pull these little tricks off if he can. That’s what makes him good at his job. It’s that kind of thing that makes it just that little bit more likely that his guy will beat the other guy.
The other guy is a gal, almost ten years younger than Morrison’s candidate, hard-edged and hard-nosed, and they’d pushed her on that in the weeks of campaigning. I mean, she’s divorced, after all, and with those two girls to raise, can a woman like that really find time for political office?
Someone had asked Morrison if he thought politics had changed since the – you know – since the Big Change. Morrison put his head to one side and said, ‘No, the key issues are still the same: good policies and good character and, let me tell you, our candidate has both,’ and so he went on, guiding the conversation back round to its safely railed-in scenic route past Mount Education and Healthcare Point via Values Boulevard and Self-Made-Man Gulley. But in the privacy of his own mind he admitted to himself that, yes, it had changed. If he’d allowed the odd voice in the centre of his skull operational control over his mouth, which he’d never do, he knew better than that, but if he’d said it, it would have said: They’re waiting for something to happen. We’re only pretending everything is normal because we don’t know what else to do.
The candidates hit the floor like Travolta, ready with their moves, knowing that the spotlight is going to find them and illuminate every glistening thing: both sequins and sweat. She hits it out of the park with the first question, which is Defence. She’s got her facts at her fingertips – she’s been running that NorthStar project for years, of course, he should push her on that – but his guy’s just not quite so easy with his comebacks.
‘Come on,’ mouths Morrison at no one in particular, because the lights are too bright for the candidate to see him. ‘Come on. Attack.’
The candidate stumbles over his answer, and Morrison feels it like a punch to the gut.
Second question and the third are on state-wide issues. Morrison’s candidate sounds competent but boring, and that’s a killer. By questions seven and eight she has him on the ropes again, and he doesn’t fight back when she says he doesn’t have the vision for the job. By this point, Morrison’s wondering if it’s possible for a candidate to lose so badly that some of the shit really will spray off on to him. It might seem as if he’s been sitting around eating M&Ms and scratching his ass for the past few months.
They go into the long commercial break with nothing left to lose. Morrison escorts the candidate to the bathroom and helps him to a little nose powder. He goes through the talking points and says, ‘You’re doing great, sir, really great, but you know … aggression’s no bad thing.’
The candidate says, ‘Now, now, I can’t come across as angry,’ and Morrison grabs him right there in the stall, grabs him by the arm, and says, ‘Sir, do you want that woman to give you a pasting tonight? Think of your dad and what he’d want to see. Stand up for what he believed in, for the America he wanted to build. Think, sir, of how he would have handled this.’
Daniel Dandon’s father – who was a business bruiser with a borderline alcohol problem – died eighteen months ago. It’s a cheap trick. Cheap tricks often work.
The candidate rolls his shoulders like a prize fighter, and they’re back for the second half.
The candidate’s a different man now, and Morrison doesn’t know if it was the coke or the pep talk but, either way, he thinks, Well, I’m a hell of a guy.
The candidate comes out fighting on question after question. Unions? Boom. Minority rights? He sounds like the natural heir to the Founding Fathers, and she comes off as defensive. It’s good. It’s really good.
That’s when Morrison and the audience notice something. Her hands are clenching and unclenching. As if she were trying to stop herself … but she can’t be. It’s impossible. She’s been tested.
The candidate’s on a roll now. He says, ‘And those subsidies – your own figures show that they’re completely out of whack.’
There’s a noise from the audience, but the candidate takes it as a sign that they approve of his strong attack. He goes in for the kill.
‘In fact, your policy is not only out of whack, it’s forty years old.’
She’s passed her own test with flying colours. It can’t be. But her hands are gripping the side of the podium, and she’s saying, ‘Now, now, now, you can’t just, now, now,’ as if she were pointing out every moment as it passed, but everyone can see what she’s trying not to do. Everyone except the candidate.
The candidate goes for a devastating move.
‘Of course, we can’t expect you to understand what this means for hard-working families. You’ve left your daughters to be raised by NorthStar day camps. Do you even care about those girls?’
That’s enough, and her arm reaches out and her knuckles connect with his ribcage and she lets it go.
Only a tiny amount, really.
It doesn’t even knock him over. He staggers, his eyes go wide, he lets out a gasp, he takes one, two, three steps back from his podium and wraps his arms around his midriff.
The audience have understood, both those live in the studio and the folks back home; everyone has watched and seen and understood what’s happened.
The crowd in the studio go very silent, as if they were holding their breath, and then there’s a bubbling, gathering, discordant, roiling murmur rising higher and higher.
The candidate tries to stumble on with his answer at the same moment that the moderator says they’re taking a break and Margot’s expression changes from the angry, nose-curling victory of aggression to the sudden fear that what she’s done cannot be undone, in the same instant that the studio audience’s rising bubble of anger and fear and incomprehension turns into a mighty wail, at the very same second that they cut to a commercial.
Morrison makes sure that the candidate comes back from the commercial break looking groomed and smooth and poised, but not too perfect, maybe just a little shocked and saddened.