Political Pressure

8

Orville Flicker watched the news feed from the Midwest, where candidate Dr. Donald Lamble was pretending not to be overjoyed by the hoots and cheers.

The network cut back to the anchor. "Strong words from Senate candidate Donald Lamble. Not the sort of aggressive stance I would have expected from an independent running at least four points behind the two major-party candidates vying for the same seat. Sam?"

"That's right, Sam," said the hastily arranged expert, a commentator from the nightly news show who was added to the normally second-rate afternoon line-up just to give it a shot of credibility. The camera pulled back to take in the elderly man who had been a network news fixture for decades.

Two Sams, Flicker chuckled. Some producer was probably being fired that very minute.

"It is just the kind of remark the public will take as coldhearted," Commentator Sam opined.

"Although his constituency seems to agree with him," the anchor said.

The old commentator gave the younger man a patronizing, gin-soaked smile. "Important to note that those are not his constituency, Sam, but his campaign staff. I think we'll see quite a different reaction from the voters Dr. Lamble hopes to represent."

"Perhaps, Sam," said the younger anchor doubtfully.

"Count on it, Sam," snapped the commentator.

"I wouldn't count on it at all, Sam, you old sot," Flicker told the television.

"What's that, Mr. Flicker?" Noah Kohd thumbed off a mobile phone and looked at the television, just one of three that folded down from the roof of the limousine. The other two were silently showing broadcasts from other networks.

"I know that old drunkard better than my own Dad," Flicker complained, waving his remote at the screen. "He dropped out of high school, for Christ's sake. He never would have made it to the networks if he hadn't been in the trenches in Korea, and he only made it there because he was too sauced to know any better. Then he spends the next fifty years on the air acting like he knows what he's talking about. He's a moron. You should have heard some of the questions he used to come up with for the President."

"Yes, sir," Kohd said as his phone tweeted and he placed it to his ear. Kohd listed to the phone with one ear and to his boss with the other, although he knew perfectly well that Flicker was about to tell him about the time the commentator fell asleep during a White House news conference.

"One time he fell dead asleep during a White House news conference and started snoring. I wanted to have the old booze hound blacklisted after that." Flicker bit the inside of his cheek out of habit. "Of course that didn't happen," he concluded for his own benefit.

Orville Flicker sat up straighter. Got to look good. No slouching. He knew he was not a terribly appealing man physically, and only persistent attention to posture and behavior could overcome his physical failings. Small of stature, gaunt without looking fit, he was in his mid- forties and already his murky brown hair was showing signs of gray. His skin was pasty and his lips thin.

What he needed was an image consultant. Not one of those Hollywood sleaze merchants, but a real man who knew what a real man should look like. Someone who could train him to smile like he meant it. Someone who could make Flicker look like he had stature. Presidential stature.

Kohd nodded into his phone. "Okay," he said, and thumbed it off. "Check BCN, sir."

Flicker expertly muted one screen and brought up the sound on another just in time for the BCN Instant Opinion Poll.

"Well, it looks like the people have spoken!" cheered the anchor. Frank Appee was the new afternoon man at the BCN news desk. "Senate candidate Donald Lamble has got a few folks jumping-up-and-down mad in his home state, no doubt about it."

Flicker froze, eyes locked on the screen.

"But the angry types are in the minority! Just look at how the chips are falling in America's heartland, folks! Our results show eighty-one percent agreeing with Doc Lamble. You heard me. That's eight out of ten think Lamble's on-target when he says that Governor Bryant was a crook and he died like a crook. Ten percent are undecided and another nine percent think it's Lamble who ought to be shot for saying bad things about the recently deceased."

Flicker smiled. Kohd saw his boss relax with relief. Flicker had worried that public reaction would not be sympathetic to the party line. Kohd had never worried for a second. After all, they had been following the White Hand Book. The book was always right.

Kohd put the phone to his ear as it rang again. "Right," he said, then nodded at the first screen. "Sir."

Flicker snapped BCN into silence and brought up the sound on the first screen, where the two Sams were staring offscreen. "—think you can fire me? You can't fire me! I quit! You can take your old drunkard—"

The offscreen tirade vanished and was replaced with a commercial featuring a floppy-eared Irish setter bounding overhead. Flicker snapped it into silence, thinking that he might recognize the voice of the producer who had just ruined all his future possibility of getting employment in the network news business. On the third screen another poll was coming up, and he brought the sound. The anchors were talking in sonorous baritones.

"This is quite unprecedented but it is just as I expected, Karl," said the man with the vast toupee and the heavy eyebrows. "The people are fed up with the corruption."

"How so, Kent?" asked his partner. "We have had corrupt politicians before."

"That's an understatement, Karl."

Both men laughed politely, although the expressions on their faces were cast in stone.

"Yes, we've certainly had our share of unethical elected officials, Kent, but historically there has always been a sort of break in the public's awareness of unethical behavior. During this lull, the people tend to forget or downplay the scandals of the past."

Kent nodded somberly.

"This PLOC, or Perceived Level of Corruption, rises and falls with the media attention paid to political scandals," Karl continued, "but in the recent years these scandals have been unceasing. Therefore the PLOC level has remained high."

"In other words, there has been no PLOC lull," Kent said in an undertaker's voice.

"Exactly," Karl agreed expertly. "And without a significant PLOC lull, the public becomes overly sensitive to unethical behavior and more harsh in its judgment."

Kent and Karl, as wise and incisive as economics professors, considered the dire and meaningful implications of this. "This raises some interesting questions," Kent said leadingly.

"It certainly does," Karl responded. "If we had experienced a PLOC lull instead of a consistently high PLOC, would the people have been more forgiving of Governor Bryant's alleged corruption?"

"Absolutely not," Flicker responded to the screen. Kohd, on the phone with another call, nodded in agreement.

"If there had been any kind of a meaningful PLOC lull at any time in the recent past, would we see such broad-based support for the comments of the Senate candidate? After all, one of the unwritten laws for U.S. politicians has always been to never speak badly of dead opponents. It is seen as disrespectful."

"Not if their opponents are criminals," Flicker growled.

"What candidate Lamble has achieved," Karl concluded, "is change the perceptions of the public. The people won't mourn a dead criminal. Lamble has convinced the people—at least some of the people—that Governor Bryant was a criminal and he should not be mourned."

Flicker's face tightening into a smug grin. "Damn straight," he said.

Kohd gasped and disconnected his call without saying goodbye, then sat and looked at his boss with amazement. Flicker's confidence was in high gear. "Excuse my language, Mr. Kohd."

"I should say so, Mr. Flicker," Kohd responded.

Flicker tried not to roll his eyes. He wanted to tell his assistant to get the hell off his fucking high horse, but if he heard more than a single four-letter word in an hour Kohd would probably cover his ears and ran screaming into the hills. The man was just so damn straight. Flicker considered himself straight, in every sense of the word, but nothing and nobody was more clean-cut, more spit-and-polish, more sinless than Noah Kohd.

Which, believe it or not, could get on a guy's nerves after a while.