Cut and Thrust

35

Stone and his guests, the Bacchettis, the Eagles, and Ann Keaton, were settled in the skybox while the conventioneers took their seats. Tonight’s program was short.

Promptly at six o’clock the lights dimmed, music swelled, and an enormous screen on the stage came to life. For the next thirty minutes, the audience followed Will Lee from his boyhood in Delano, Georgia, through university and law school, through his tenure as a legislative assistant and later chief of staff to the legendary senator from Georgia, Benjamin Carr, and as counsel to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. There was a brief snip of Will questioning Katharine Rule, a CIA analyst, who was testifying on an agency budget request, their first meeting. The film then followed Kate’s rise at the Agency to deputy director for intelligence, her marriage to Will, and finally to the passage of an act of Congress that allowed him to appoint her director of Central Intelligence. Brief attention was given to some of the crises where she was a principal adviser to the president, then to their travels around the world together, when she acted as both adviser and first lady. Then, as the film faded to black and the room to darkness, a voice proclaimed, “Ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States.” As Will Lee strode from the wings and took the podium to wild applause from the audience, the armored glass curtain rose from the floor.

He finally got them quieted. “Fellow delegates, honored guests, ladies and gentlemen,” he began, “I am rapidly running out of occasions where I can address an event this large... and this friendly... so I have a great deal of gratitude to spread around, and that is best done to a captive audience. Don’t try to make a break for it, the doors are closed and guarded.” Big laugh.

“Most of the people who made it possible for me to be elected to this job, then be reelected, are in this room. I thank you, one and all, for every word of advice you gave, every favor you extended, every dollar you contributed, and every push you gave me toward the presidency. I also want to thank many of my opponents for the office who, with their soaring oratory and loose grip on the facts, made me look better than I had a right to. I could never have done it without their help.” Big laugh. “Far too many of my best friends were unable to be here tonight, summoned to a higher calling. First among them is Senator Ben Carr, that master legislator and brilliant senator at whose knee I learned nearly enough to get me through my Senate years and to the White House. His like will not be heard again on the Senate floor, and I still miss him.

“Now, before I yield the podium, I have three duties to perform: the first is to reiterate a promise I made to the nation not very long ago: I shall support the nominee of my party for the office of president of the United States!” The crowd roared with laughter. When he had calmed them he continued: “My second duty is to place in nomination the name of the man who will be the running mate for our candidate and who will be the next vice president of the United States. He has distinguished himself as a fine state senator, as a brilliant mayor of a major American city, and as an outstandingly effective governor of our most populous state, and he is now ready to take the national stage and occupy the second-highest office in the land. It is my great honor and even greater pleasure to place in nomination for the Democratic candidate for vice president of the United States, the name of the governor of the great state of California, Richard Collins!” Huge roar. Will waited for it to subside, then cupped a hand behind his ear. “Do I hear a second?”

“Second!” the huge crowd shouted.

Will picked up the gavel and hammered it once. “The motion is adopted by acclamation!”

Demonstrations now took place in the aisles, and the band played. Eventually, order was restored.

“I have one further duty,” Will said, “before I slink into the ignominy of lame-duckhood. I must say that this duty gives me the greatest pleasure of my life — so far. It is my great honor to introduce to you a person who has already, in the many years of her public service, done more for her country than have most presidents, and done it quietly, behind the scenes in ways often brilliant, but necessarily concealed, that the public cannot know about for decades to come, who has always put her country first in her life and work, and who now seeks to come into the bright light of an election and seek the highest office in the land — one that she richly deserves.

“My fellow Americans,” Will shouted, “the next president of the United States, Katharine Lee!”

Kate walked briskly from the wings, clad in a red suit, setting off her blond hair. She stood at one side of the podium, then the other, waving, pointing at people she knew and those she didn’t, then she returned and stood quietly at the podium until the last of the applause died. She reached forward, pressed a button on the podium, and the thick glass security screen descended into the floor. Kate leaned into the microphone and said, “I never want anything between you and me but air.” And the crowd went crazy again.

Finally, after she had quiet, Kate began to speak, without notes or teleprompter, which had disappeared with the glass screen. “I stand before you a proud but chastened woman, for today I have learned what every nominee for the presidency before me has felt — that accepting the Democratic nomination for the presidency is not something that can be taken lightly. It is a heavy responsibility, and I accept it. I accept your nomination!”

Much cheering.

“Next week, we begin this campaign in earnest, and when it is over, Governor Richard Collins and I will have visited every state and told their citizens what we plan to do in office, so I will not give you that long list now. Suffice it to say that we will continue the policies of my brilliant predecessor!”

Laughter.

“We will meet you at the center, where the work gets done!” This had been Will Lee’s campaign slogan. “We will use the Internet and social media to state our proposals in detail, since personal appearances are all too brief. I want every American to know what we stand for and what we won’t stand for!”

The crowd went wild yet again. When the applause petered out, Kate went on.

“But there is something I want every American to hear now,” she said. “The most important question any candidate is asked: ‘Why do you want to be president?’ I want to be president because my upbringing, my education in school, at university and law school, my work as an intelligence officer and my leadership as the director of Central Intelligence, my time in the White House, and my very close relationship with my president and my contributions to his policy decisions — all these have given me a unique set of qualifications, and I want to put those to work, as I have always done, in the service of my country. I want to heal old wounds and break new ground. I want to conduct the necessary and constant rebuilding of our nation while forging ahead in new domestic and foreign policy. And if elected, I want to do what Will Lee has done — leave my successor with a better country than when I started.”

Much applause.

“I ask of my countrymen more than their votes for me, I ask them to give me a Congress that is committed to our ideals as a nation and that will be ready to work hard every day for our people. If my countrymen will do that, then Dick Collins and I, with the support of a hardworking Congress, will give them an even better America!”

Kate stepped back from the microphone and waved to Dick Collins, who was in the wings, to come onstage. They embraced, then clasped hands and waved as the band began to play and the crowd cheered themselves to hoarseness.

Up in Stone’s skybox he and his guests poured champagne, toasted the new nominees, then sat down to dinner while the crowd below began to drift toward the exits.