Bullshit 1 is empty except for Jay, who’s grabbing an OTC way back in the ERPP, and through the port windows you can see all the techs and heads and talent in a king-size scrum around Mrs. Donna Duren in the gravel courtyard, and there’s the additional cynical thought that doubtless some enterprising network crew is even now pulling up in front of poor Chris Duren’s junior high (which unfortunately tonight on TV turns out to be exactly what happened). The bus idles empty for a long time — the post-event scrums and stand-ups last longer than the whole THM did — and then when the BS1 regulars finally do pile in they’re all extremely busy trying to type and phone and file, and all the techs have to get their SX and DVS Digital Editors out (the CBS machine’s being held steady on their cameraman’s little stepladder in the aisle because all the tables and the ERPP are full) and help their producers find and time the clip of Mrs. Duren’s story and McCain’s response so they can feed it to HQ right away, and the Twelve Monkeys have as one body stormed the Straight Talk Express, which is just up ahead on I-85 and riding very low in the stern from all the weight in McCain’s rear salon. The point is that none of the usual media pros are available for Rolling Stone to interface with about the Chris Duren Incident and maybe get help from in terms of trying to figure out what to be cynical about and what not to and which of the many disturbing questions the whole Incident provokes are paranoid or irrelevant versus which ones might be humanly and/or journalistically valid … such as was McCain really serious about calling Chris Duren? How could he have even gotten the Durens’ phone number when Mrs. D. was scrummed solid the whole time he and his staff were leaving? Does he plan to just look in the phone book or something? And where were Mike Murphy and John Weaver through that whole thing, who can usually be seen Cell-Waltzing back in the shadows at every THM but today were nowhere in sight? And is Murphy maybe even now in the Express’s salon in his red chair next to McCain, leaning in toward the candidate’s ear and whispering very calmly and coolly about the political advantages of what just happened and about various tasteful but effective ways they can capitalize on it and use it to get out of the tight tactical box that Bush2’s going Negative put them in in the first place? What’s McCain’s reaction if that’s what Murphy’s doing — like is he listening, or is he still too upset to listen, or is he somehow both? Is it possible that McCain — maybe not even consciously — played up his reaction to Mrs. Duren’s story and framed his distress in order to give himself a plausible, good-looking excuse to get out of the Negative spiral that’s been hurting him so badly in the polls that Jim and Frank say he may well lose South Carolina if things keep on this way? Is it too cynical even to consider such a thing?
At the following day’s first Press-Avail, John S. McCain III issues a plausible, good-looking, highly emotional statement to the whole scrummed corps. This is on a warm pretty 11 Feb. morning outside the Embassy Suites (or possibly Hampton Inn) in Charleston, right after Baggage Call. McCain informs the press that the case of young Chris Duren has caused him such distress that after a great deal of late-night soul-searching he’s now ordered his staff to cease all Negativity and to pull all the McCain2000 response ads in South Carolina regardless of whether the Shrub pulls his own Negative ads or not.
And of course, framed as it is by the distressed context of the Chris Duren Incident, McCain’s decision now in no way makes him look wimpy or appeasing, but rather like a truly decent, honorable, high-road guy who doesn’t want young people’s political idealism fucked with in any way if he can help it. It’s a stirring and high-impact statement, and a masterful — Avail, and everybody in the scrum seems impressed and in some cases deeply and personally moved, and nobody (including Rolling Stone) ventures to point out aloud that, however unfortunate the phone call was for the Durens, it turned out to be just fortunate as hell for John S. McCain and McCain2000 in terms of this week’s tactical battle, that actually the whole thing couldn’t have worked out better for McCain2000 if it had been … well, like scripted, if like say Mrs. Donna Duren had been a trained actress or even gifted partisan amateur who’d been somehow secretly approached and rehearsed and paid and planted in that crowd of over 300 random unscreened questioners where her raised hand in that sea of average voters’ hands was seen and chosen and she got to tell a moving story that made all five networks last night and damaged Bush2 badly and now has released McCain from this week’s tactical box. Any way you look at it (and there’s a nice long DT in which to think about it), yesterday’s Incident and THM were an almost incredible stroke of political luck for McCain … or else maybe a stroke of something else, something that no one — not the Twelve Monkeys, not Alison Mitchell or the marvelously cynical Australian Globe lady or even the totally sharp and unsentimental Jim C. — ever once broaches or mentions out loud, which might be understandable, since maybe even considering whether it was even possible would be so painful that it’d make it impossible to go on, which is what the press and staff and Straight Talk caravan and McCain himself have to do all day, and the next, and the next — go on.
SUCK IT UP
Another paradox: It is all but impossible to talk about the really important stuff in politics without using terms that have become such awful clichés they make your eyes glaze over and are difficult to even hear. One such term is “leader,” which all the big candidates use all the time — as in “providing leadership,” “a proven leader,” “a new leader for a new century,” etc. — and have reduced to such a platitude that it’s hard to try to think about what “leader” really means and whether indeed what today’s Young Voters want is a leader. The weird thing is that the word “leader” itself is cliché and boring, but when you come across somebody who actually is a real leader, that person isn’t boring at all; in fact he’s the opposite of boring.
Obviously, a real leader isn’t just somebody who has ideas you agree with, nor is it just somebody you happen to believe is a good guy. A real leader is somebody who, because of his own particular power and charisma and example, is able to inspire people, with “inspire” being used here in a serious and noncliché way. A real leader can somehow get us to do certain things that deep down we think are good and want to be able to do but usually can’t get ourselves to do on our own. It’s a mysterious quality, hard to define, but we always know it when we see it, even as kids. You can probably remember seeing it in certain really great coaches, or teachers, or some extremely cool older kid you “looked up to” (interesting phrase) and wanted to be like. Some of us remember seeing the quality as kids in a minister or rabbi, or a scoutmaster, or a parent, or a friend’s parent, or a boss in some summer job. And yes, all these are “authority figures,” but it’s a special kind of authority. If you’ve ever spent time in the military, you know how incredibly easy it is to tell which of your superiors are real leaders and which aren’t, and how little rank has to do with it. A leader’s true authority is a power you voluntarily give him, and you grant him this authority not in a resigned or resentful way but happily; it feels right. Deep down, you almost always like how a real leader makes you feel, how you find yourself working harder and pushing yourself and thinking in ways you wouldn’t be able to if there weren’t this person you respected and believed in and wanted to please.