Balance of Power

TWENTY-FOUR

Riven by doubts, Chad Palmer prepared to commence the debate on gun immunity.

Senator Palmer had always thought of himself as conservative—a believer in free markets, military preparedness, and individual accountability and initiative. With others of his Senate colleagues—Cassie Rollins among them—he had watched in rising dismay as men like Paul Harshman equated "conservative" with the unfettered gun rights and a militant social agenda fueled by fundamentalism and financed by those for whom, too often, a truly free market meant freedom from the constraints of law.

The latter forces, Palmer knew, bought influence in either party. But while their Democratic beneficiaries adopted what Palmer thought of as a simpering hypocrisy—claiming to take large donations in self-defense— the Republicans of Harshman's stripe cast their voracity for special interest funding as a constitutional right. Thus, Chad's battle against money in politics had earned him the bitter enmity of those within his party for whom guns and money and religion were a recipe for power.

This was why he had struck his Faustian bargain with Frank Fasano, trading gun immunity for a clear shot at campaign finance reform which Kerry Kilcannon wanted almost as much as he. But Kilcannon was President. For the senior senator from Ohio, seemingly blocked by Fasano and his supporters, reform might be his only recompense for a career paid for with his daughter's life. And so Chad went to the floor of the Senate, supported by his most ardent enemies, to oppose a friend whose own wounds Palmer felt more keenly than his allies of convenience ever could.

It was best, Chad knew, to stick with what he truly believed.

He stood at his lacquered desk, notes in front of him. The Senate was full. At its front were Frank Fasano and Chuck Hampton, separated by the narrow aisle which divided the two parties.

"This pestilence of lawsuits," he told his colleagues, "is both symptom and disease. For many small and honest businesses, it is terminal. But for all of us it symptomizes a breakdown in our social fiber where law replaces morals, mischance becomes opportunity, and the courtroom converts neighbors into predators.

"The Civil Justice Reform Act is an effort to restore the time when lawsuits were not a form of social insurance; when lawyers were advocates instead of opportunists; and legislators—not judges—made our laws."

* * *

The Senate was still, attentive. Unlike some of their colleagues, Frank Fasano reflected, Chad Palmer was most effective when he spoke from core belief—he was too free of self-delusion to be facile at dissembling. To Fasano, equally free of delusion but far more inclined to pragmatism, it was what made his Republican rival both admirable and dangerous. To be allied with him, however briefly, was a luxury to be enjoyed, and to have turned Palmer on Kilcannon a genuine work of political art.

"We are told," Palmer continued, "that class actions are the last redoubt of the small investor against financial fraud. If only that were so. But most investors are lucky to recover a dime on a dollar, and only after their wealthy lawyers have pocketed a multimillion-dollar fee." Palmer permitted himself a smile. "For one such lawyer, the definition of a 'small investor' is the pet client who has purchased one share of stock in every company listed in the Fortune 500. Enabling his legal champion—as of yesterday—to bring twenty-six class actions in his name.

"Let there be no doubt who ultimately pays this lawyer's fees. We do—in higher prices, lost jobs, and the erosion of the principle that the purpose of a lawsuit is to gain genuine redress for an authentic wrong."

Palmer paused, gaze sweeping the chamber. "But I have another concern," he said firmly. "That lawsuits have become a tool of our own corruption, funnelling money from litigation into our political system so that trial lawyers can wield unprecedented—and in my mind—unprincipled power."

Fasano glanced at Senator Hampton, who remained inscrutable. "This debate," Palmer continued, "is about more than the corrosion of our justice system. At its heart, it is about the corrosion of our politics through money, and whether we have the courage to stop it."

At this, Hampton acknowledged Fasano with an ironic lift of his eyebrows. What about your special interests? Hampton seemed to say. But perhaps he was conveying more—his admiration of the neatness with which Palmer had moved the debate to grounds more congenial to him than to Fasano.

Smiling with his eyes, Fasano shrugged in answer. The truth, though Hampton might not know it, was that Fasano had expected nothing less. Whatever its momentary discomforts, a Chad Palmer in character enhanced Fasano's chances of capturing Cassie Rollins. Toward the rear of the chamber, the junior senator from Maine watched Palmer with unwavering attention, heedless of the packed gallery of press and public gazing down on all of them.

* * *

In the Oval Office, the President watched C-SPAN with Kit Pace and Clayton Slade. Kerry did not speak, nor did the others; among the one hundred senators, only Chad Palmer's opposition was too personal for comment.

Let us turn, Palmer said, to the most vexing and contentious question presented by this bill: whether to protect gun companies from lawsuits based on the violent acts of others.

That gun violence is a tragedy is beyond debate. And, to me as to the President, it is long past time for us to hold human life more precious than blandishments of a gun lobby whose power outstrips its decency.

Silent, Kerry shook his head: this was the kind of bluntness, rare in politics, which endeared Chad Palmer more to average citizens than to his colleagues—except, perhaps, to Kerry himself. To see it placed in the service of Frank Fasano—and thus, perversely, the SSA—was difficult to watch.

But, Palmer continued, as legislators we should discharge our responsibility directly—not delegate it to the courts. Let alone to trial lawyers who seek to shift our own responsibility to where it least belongs: on those who make the trigger, rather than those who pull it . . .

"Read the depositions," Kerry murmured to himself. But, of course, Palmer could not. No one could.

In a just society, Palmer said, personal responsibility means just that. When parents fail to lock up loaded guns, they bear responsibility—however painful— when their child kills himself or someone else. Palmer's voice softened. Whether by accident, or by design. For, in the end, every suicide is the act of an individual, and every murder the act of a murderer.

The quiet statement, with its echoes of his daughter's death, reechoed in Kerry's mind. As much as the President had imagined it, this speech—this moment—was worse than he had feared. He could only wonder how it felt to Palmer.

* * *

And so did Cassie Rollins.

"How," Palmer asked the Senate, "can we allow sales at gun shows without a background check and then punish the gun company for the act of whoever buys it? That is an act of cowardice."

This, to Cassie, clearly staked out the course Chad was commending to her: to oppose the President on gun immunity, and then support Kilcannon's gun bill. But Chad's motives remained obscure, a matter of conjecture.

"But there is a more subtle form of moral cowardice," he continued with the same quietness of tone, "and that is to degrade the justice system through our desire—however human—to find a remedy for sorrows which have none." Palmer stood straighter, pausing to meet the gazes of his colleagues. "I ask you to pass the Civil Justice Reform Act as it stands."

In the hush that followed, Cassie glanced across the aisle toward Vic Coletti, head bent in contemplation. Among their undecided colleagues, only Jack Slezak, two rows behind Coletti, appeared indifferent to the moment.

* * *

Sitting, Chad Palmer felt wearier for the knowledge that had opened the way for the senator he most despised.

"In at least one respect," Paul Harshman told the Senate, "I must part company with my friend and colleague from Ohio, to whom I listened with unstinting admiration. For these lawsuits are more than just misguided, nor are they merely the work of lawyers. They are the invention of instinctive totalitarians—the most deadly weapon in the arsenal arrayed by the most powerful enemies of the Second Amendment rights established by our Founding Fathers."

Chad closed his eyes. Washington, Jefferson—Harshman. To Paul, it must have a certain ring. But then only a fool could be so pompous; only a moral midget could envision Thomas Jefferson as the father of the Lexington P-2. "Their aim," Harshman continued, "is the destruction of a legal industry, and, with it, the most basic right of all—the right to defend ourselves, our families, and our freedoms.

"We should not mince words. In the hands of a woman living alone, a semiautomatic handgun—and yes, an Eagle's Claw bullet—can deliver her from death or degradation. To paraphrase Senator Palmer, it is not the job of lawyers to calibrate her means of self-protection, approving only those guns, or those projectiles, least likely to ensure her safety."

He had made a deal, Chad told himself. But it did not involve listening to this. As soon as he decently could, Paul Harshman's "friend and colleague" left the Senate chamber.