Landfall, p.42
Landfall, page 42
“I’ve appreciated your support,” he told the writer. “I hear you’re a complex, contradictory fellow.”
“Actually, I’m a seamless garment of truth: happy to support you where I can; eager to oppose you where I must. I don’t suppose I can convince you to sack Mrs. Hughes.”
Bush pursed his presidential lips and shot him a that’s-not-funny look.
Hitchens, having sat down without being asked to, pointed to the folders Mrs. Keller had brought and asked, “Anything interesting?”
Bush laughed. “First item’s a little sad. A statement on Ann Richards’s passing.”
“She once called you ‘some jerk.’ ”
“Thanks for the reminder.”
“The other one?”
“An annual, like one of Mother’s flowers.” Bush turned the document so that it faced Hitchens. The president’s yearly proclamation of Constitution Week was being issued “in accordance with the joint congressional resolution of August 2, 1956 (36 U.S.C. 108, as amended).”
“What’s your favorite within the First?” asked Hitchens. “First Amendment, that is. Which particular freedom?”
Bush gave him a smile that said nice try.
“I’m relatively fresh from studying the whole document for my citizenship test.”
“Good man,” said the president. “Have you had your ceremony?”
“No, I took the test on the sixth of June, and I’m still waiting.”
“Sorry things are slow. INS is a little preoccupied.”
“One would think they’d be quicker signing up allies ready to pledge fealty—on D-Day, no less. But Chertoff promises to swear me in himself when the time arrives.”
Bush wasn’t surprised that this guy knew the head of Homeland Security. “Rove tells me that you get around.” The Architect had also told him that the man was a prodigious drinker.
“My own personal preference—going back to the First Amendment,” said Hitchens, “would be the lead item on the list: ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.’ ”
Bush just nodded. Here comes the Mother Teresa shit.
“I’ve been wondering about these three Republican congressmen who are threatening to hold up your defense-appropriation bill unless the military’s chaplains are allowed to invoke Jesus’ name a bit more particularly than they are at present.”
“I take it you have an objection to their reform proposal.”
“What I have,” said Hitchens, “is a better idea. Eliminate the chaplains entirely. Madison was quite pointedly against having them, either in the foxhole or at the congressional rostrum.”
“You know, there’s a war on—”
“Something of which those three House members trying to give Jesus pride of place might well be reminded.”
“—and I’m trying, have been for five years, to keep it from being one religion at war with another.”
“You’ve been forced to make war on the one religion most bent on making government and religion indistinguishable. The further we stay away from doing that, the mightier and worthier a foe we shall be.”
He couldn’t get him out of here soon enough. “Christmas’ll be coming along in a few months. We’ll have a little manger and some Hanukkah candles upstairs. That too much for you? Got a problem with that?”
“A considerable one. The ecumenical is still theistic, and thus an unjust imposition on many citizens, including some future ones.”
Rove was going to pay for this. The NEAH Chairman, too.
“I thought you’d want to be talking about Iraq,” said the president.
“We are talking about Iraq, no?” asked Hitchens. “In some essential way?”
“I’d rather talk about North Korea. Rove says you were there a few years ago and saw people eating grass. Tell me more about that.”
CNN Studios in Washington, D.C.; September 14, 2006, 9:10 p.m.
“With all due respect,” said Molly Ivins, onscreen from Austin, “and given who the deceased is, or was, shouldn’t we have more Democrats here?” Larry King’s two other guests, all of them paying tribute to Ann Richards, were Barbara Bush, onscreen from Houston, and Bob Dole, across from the host in the studio. Mrs. Bush laughed at the Texas journalist’s remark in the cheery American funereal way. Dole quietly harrumphed. Ann Richards’s actual funeral would take place Monday in Austin.
Ivins was often compared to the late governor. They had been friends, competitors, and antagonists; she was lucky enough to be finishing last in their race with cancer. Still in treatment, she looked awful. Bits of a crew cut stuck out from under her turban.
“Bob Dole,” said King, “you knew Ann at Verner, Liipfert, the big legal-lobbying firm here in Washington.”
“Yeah. It was a good place for politicians who were past it.” He muttered “Mitchell” and “Bentsen,” then trailed off, and then resumed speaking. “I came in a little after Ann. She got trounced by Bush in ’94, and Clinton did me in a couple of years later.”
Ivins chimed in from a thousand miles away. “While they were at Verner, Ann and Bob made things as easy as they could for Big Tobacco.”
“Would you say that’s ironic?” King asked the Austin screen. “Given how Ann died?”
“God, Larry,” Ivins replied. “I’d say it’s tragic.”
“Ann tangled with both Presidents Bush. We have a clip.” The control room played the “silver foot” sound bite, and King asked the former First Lady: “Despite all that, do you have a favorite memory of Ann?”
“Oh, yes, she came to a party at the White House when George and I were there, and wonderful Charlie Wilson—such a handsome, colorful rascal!—brought her as his date. What charisma those two had!”
Ivins elaborated on the conservative Democrat who’d secretly helped the Afghan mujahideen get rid of the Soviets. “I like Charlie, too. They’re making a movie of his life now. His sex life’s a little more Clintonian than Mrs. Bush’s party usually approves of.”
“He always had the best-looking secretaries on the Hill,” Dole observed, neutrally.
“Can you still even say something like that?” King asked with a laugh. “Different times!”
Ivins answered for Dole. “I don’t know about the senator, but at this stage of my life—stage four, to be precise—I can say anything I like.”
“Molly,” asked King. “A favorite memory of Ann Richards?”
After a moment’s consideration, the columnist answered: “A pool party in Austin, back in the seventies, when Nixon was throwing in the towel. We acted out the White House transcripts and Ann made a fine Haldeman. This all happened when Mrs. Bush’s husband headed the RNC and kept telling us what a great guy Nixon was.”
Barbara Bush smiled, jiggled her earpiece and pretended she hadn’t caught the last sentence. “I’m looking forward to seeing Bob in person next month in Washington. The Navy is launching a carrier named for George Herbert Walker Bush. I couldn’t be prouder, Larry.”
“We’ll cover that!” King promised. “You’re a special lady. How do you manage to let bygones be bygones?”
“Oh, Larry, life is too short. One should enjoy all its fascinating people while one can.”
“Ann Richards was certainly one of those,” the host declared.
“And one of the quickest!” added Mrs. Bush.
Had she said too much to her on that observation deck at Anderson two months ago? She had seen her putting two and two together in a flash. Well, what did it matter? She was good and dead, and she’d taken whatever she figured out to the grave.
34
OCTOBER 7–9, 2006
Northrop Grumman shipyard; Newport News, Virginia
“The USS George H. W. Bush is the latest in the Nimitz line of aircraft carriers. She is unrelenting; she is unshakable; she is unyielding; she is unstoppable. As a matter of fact, she probably should have been named the ‘Barbara Bush.’ ”
A distant peal of thunder injected some nervousness into the crowd’s laughter over the president’s remark. Even with its 4.5-acre surface—a quarter the size of the entire White House grounds—the ship being named for 41 seemed vulnerable to the approaching elements. But the incumbent president continued, paying tribute to his father’s conduct on September 2, 1944: “During that raid, his plane was hit by antiaircraft artillery, and it caught fire. Yet he stayed on course. He released his four bombs and scored four direct hits on that Japanese radio tower; he headed out to sea; he ejected.”
Turning to look at the subject of his words, Bush saw Condi Rice a row behind the former president, leaning forward to give her old boss a grateful pat on the shoulder.
Doro, 41’s youngest child, was soon cracking a bottle of sparkling wine against the carrier, and the sailors, to the sound of “Anchors Aweigh,” were racing up the ladders to man the ship, like ants fleeing a spray gun, or specks in a videogame—a kind of virtual virtual reality. The current president had to banish from his mind the additional thought that they looked like a rewinding film of tiny bodies leaping from the Twin Towers.
As the band went into a Sousa march, spectators began to move and mingle a bit. The president considered Condi’s gesture toward Dad and felt a tenderness toward her, an appreciation of her long loyalty to the family, something now being tested by a dubious (or was it?) quote in Woodward’s latest, which had Dad incautiously observing that Condi wasn’t really “up to the job”—her current one. The book was full of this stuff, and it was sticking, despite a week of all their guys trying to rebut it on the cable shows.
The truth is, she was not up to the job. (Would anyone be right now?) She’d arrived back from Iraq yesterday, full of gloom, reporting to him on all the pissy, mutual uncooperativeness of the Shia and Sunni guys she’d been in the room with. And when he asked her what she’d concluded, hoping for the sort of bold new certainty he’d been trying for eight months to hear from her and everybody else, she’d said she would “have to think about it.” That was the best she could do? After being back there herself, and with all these policy reviews going on, including the one at State, not to mention all the reports coming to her from Zelikow?
Still. He looked over at her chatting with Jim Baker and Colin Powell, whose personal loyalty, unlike hers, had never passed from father to son. He waved her over.
“Can’t tell you how much I appreciate your being here after the week you’ve had.” She’d been to Jerusalem, Ramallah, Baghdad, and London.
“I’m taking Monday off!” Condi assured him.
“Good. We may need you over in China soon. I’ve already talked to Hoo-Hoo.”
“About Korea?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
On Tuesday the North had announced an imminent nuclear test. Hayden, over at CIA, believed this was for real and that they should expect it tomorrow.
“We could try to interdict some shipping,” said the president. “But even that won’t do much good.” He slumped a little, still carrying the secret of how until this week he’d been prepared to go a hell of a lot further than that.
“I thought Chris Hill’s statement was strong,” said Condi, as encouragingly as she could. The U.S. representative to the six-party talks had declared: “We are not going to live with a nuclear North Korea.”
Bush frowned: “What he said was diplo-speak for ‘until we agree to do what I just said we wouldn’t.’ ”
Condi let him go into a silence.
The president didn’t want to have a debate with her. That would only add to the disappointment that had come with Putin’s long-delayed, dismissive answer—rendered after a couple of crucial, cryptic post-Strelna conversations. Any kind of raid on the facility would fatally destabilize Russia’s 17-km. border with North Korea. Do the Americans even remember that our two countries share one? Besides, Mr. Rumsfeld, without even being aware of what you proposed, very recently gave me the impression that anything more than consultation privileges with NATO, let alone actual membership—your apparent blandishment—would be out of the question for decades to come. I have to believe, regardless of what you have suggested, that Mr. Rumsfeld’s adamantine view belongs to his superior as well. If we were to cooperate in a raid, there would be no guarantee that America would not renege. Russia has been excluded from Mr. Rumsfeld’s “New Europe” just as she was from Old Europe—and will no doubt be from Far-in-the-Future Europe too.
“When did you last talk to Bob Gates?” the president suddenly asked Condi. Dad’s old CIA director was now the president of Texas A&M, which also had Dad’s library.
“Maybe a couple of months ago,” Condi replied. “I’d have to check the exact date.” She tried to figure out what had prompted the question.
The president again stopped talking and just listened to the band. This business with Vlad was a bitter pill. A strike against the North Korean reactors would have been quick and definitive—however risky. As they acted, the three of them—China joining in on everything but the raid itself—would have held their breath but managed to rein Kim in, made even him realize that there was no point in setting fire to Seoul, not with the three biggest powers in the world ready to crush him if he did. Now that Vlad had sent this idea south, his own presidency would come down to Iraq and Katrina. Not even to Afghanistan. Dear God, not even to 9/11.
Ten rows back he could spot Allison O’Connor with a group of NSC staffers who had, no doubt, been hoping for a morning with better weather. He looked to see if O’Connor’s baby might be in her arms. He waved, and pointed her out to Condi, while trying to notice if the Weatherman had maybe come up from New Orleans to kick-start his reconciliation with Allison right here.
The two of them: little tumbleweeds of geopolitical destiny there in Granberry’s Lubbock backyard all those years ago. He had no recollection of them on that night, of course, and he had no touch of the mystic. But his faith did give him a belief that the newer parts of the Bible are prefigured in the older ones. When he thought of those two, both about Doro’s age, he somehow felt required to amalgamate not the past and the present but the miniature and the giant. If he could help to solve their problems, writ small in the ink of a double catastrophe, maybe that could lead him toward a solution for the catastrophes themselves. Ridiculous, yes. But even so.
Things were wrapping up here. The band struck up a couple of forties songs for Mother and Dad, one of which he recognized as “I Don’t Want to Walk Without You.” All the greatest-generation vets here today, half of them in wheelchairs, now sent his mind back to that World War II museum down in New Orleans, enormously expanded since he’d visited it before the storm. And then his thoughts returned to a conversation he’d had with the Weatherman down there, in August. You need to get your own family moved here….Maybe she needs more incentive.
He had an idea.
Two Days Later, 5:30 p.m.; Watergate Apartment of Condoleezza Rice
“I’m so sorry I missed this year’s Book Festival!”
The First Lady, on the other end of the phone, told Condi not to worry. “With all that you’ve been doing? Have you even had a chance to rest up from Iraq?”
The secretary laughed. “I’ve been home all day, and tomorrow will be almost as easy. I’ve got the Peruvian president, but it’s a leisurely lunch at their ambassador’s house. The briefing book is wonderfully thin!”
“Even so, they’re wearing you out.” Laura paused for a second. “At least they don’t have you campaigning, like two years ago.”
Any barnstorming, which had been iffy enough at NSA, was out of the question as secretary of state.
“Things don’t look good, do they?” Condi half-asked and half-observed. Even stalwarts like Lindsey Graham and Kay Bailey Hutchison were openly questioning Iraq policy.
“I skipped going to Reno and Arizona last week,” Laura confessed. “I just didn’t have the heart for it with all these millstones around our necks.”
Which ones did she mean? Condi wondered. “Neck imagery seems to be in style,” she replied. “I saw awful political disarray in Baghdad last week, and I told some Shia and Sunni leaders that if they didn’t start working together they’d all be swinging from lampposts six months from now. I couldn’t believe the words came out of my mouth!”
Laura laughed. “Denny Hastert and Bill Frist ought to start thinking about that—at least as a metaphor. And so should our biggest millstone of all.”
Get rid of Don. And get Laura to help you do it. It seemed she might not even have to ask.
“I tried,” the First Lady continued, “to solve that problem, through Andy, after the ’04 election. But Karl and Dick persuaded George otherwise. Even so, I’m certain that this is the moment to try again. In fact, there’s no time to lose.” She paused for a few seconds. “I’m curious: Did you ever read The Prime Minister, Trollope, on that e-reader I sent you?”
“I’m so sorry. I’m afraid—”
“I shouldn’t have asked. You have too much reading as it is, no matter how thin tomorrow’s briefing book is. I was just thinking it might give you some ideas for this little effort I have in mind. But I’m sure you can come up with your own creative ways—”
The buzzer from the lobby sounded—proof, in fact, that Condi was already on it. But even now, caution prevailed; she wasn’t sure she should tell Laura what she’d set in motion.
“It sounds as if you’ve got company,” said the First Lady. “Let’s talk in a day or two?”
“Oh, yes. Absolutely.”
Only when they’d hung up did Condi realize that Don’s name had never been uttered. After telling the doorman to send up the visitor, she looked over to one of her coffee tables and saw State of Denial, the Woodward book. A half-dozen Post-its bristled from its pages, which made her look more ineffectual than everybody else. The book even asserted that Don sometimes wouldn’t take her calls.
