“Well, tomorrow morning we’ll be contacting the Marines and see if we can’t get your son transferred, or at least put on leave, so he can help.”
“Stop it right there. My son is a Marine. He’s an adult now. What he’s doing is more important than whatever you have planned. He stays out of it. If I hear that you’ve even thought about calling the Pentagon or the Marines about him, I will go on national television and denounce you personally and publicly. Is that understood?” I told him.
It was with a considerable degree of ill grace that Rove accepted these restrictions. It was important to remember that when dealing with Karl Rove, he had the moral sense of a hungry wolf eyeing a wounded fawn. He could have given lessons in dirty tricks to Richard Nixon. One time when he was in college, he used a fake name to infiltrate the Democratic headquarters of the fellow who was running for Illinois Treasurer, stole a few reams of letterhead stationery, and then used it to send out invites to drunken orgies. He had done other stunts over the years, like planting bugs in his own office and then claiming the Democrats were doing it, and leaking information on other campaign operatives that would then make him look better. During the recent primary, Rove had managed a whisper campaign against McCain insinuating that John McCain had a love child with a black New York City prostitute, none of which was true.
At that point we took a brief break and Rove brought in some of the aides and assistants who would be working with us. Things actually began to improve, because some of these people were actual humans. Karl might have been born with the number ‘666’ burned into his flesh somewhere, but he did have some normal people working for the campaign. This could also be simply that as the Vice Presidential nominee, I didn’t rate the real spawn of Satan that worked with George Bush. I got the wannabes who had to practice being evil.
We dined on room service that evening, not wanting to be seen publicly yet. I split my time until late, alternating working with a speechwriting team on my speech on the Texas on Monday, and working with the team who were coaching Marilyn. This consisted of fifty percent holding her hands and fifty percent toning down the nonsense that they had planned. It came down to a compromise. They would write a few short test speeches, and then have Marilyn and the girls practice them on a mock stage. Then they could make a judgment before we broke apart at the end of the week. My wife and children agreed to this, though the girls were much more excited about the idea. They’d learn soon enough — ha, ha, ha!
The next few days went about like I thought they would. The official announcement was made on the deck of the USS Texas, an ancient battleship tied up to the dock in Houston. It was a fine choice for the event; the Bushes were popular in Texas and a World War II battleship made a great patriotic backdrop. George Bush made a wonderful speech extolling me to the heavens, and then I came trotting out through a hatch, smiling and waving to everybody. After that I invited Marilyn and the girls to come out, and they made the same trek, smiling and waving to everybody. Then I made a speech extolling the wonders of George Bush and ‘compassionate conservatism.’
Nobody actually understood what compassionate conservatism was, but it didn’t really matter. It was sort of like Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland, who said, “When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” (As Robert Heinlein once commented about what sovereignty meant, it was somewhere between sober and sozzled in the dictionary.) The curious part to me in the whole exercise was that I was giving a stump speech for somebody other than me. Up until now, I gave a speech about how wonderful I was, not somebody else.
Tuesday it was Marilyn’s turn. While she is very good talking to people one on one, and frequently talked to people after campaign appearances with me, or to reporters, she had never once given a speech or talked in public with a microphone and cameras. They rigged up an empty hall in the hotel with a podium and some lights and a camera, and Marilyn came out and gave a stump speech.
Like I told Karl Rove, I didn’t marry Marilyn because she gave a good speech. Marilyn’s career as a public speaker looked to be abysmally short. She never got the hang of memorizing a speech, and would simply read the words off the notes in front of her. Forget about the teleprompter, since she refused to wear her glasses or contacts. Her timing was terrible, and her speech pattern was either too fast or too slow. It was painful to watch, and got worse as the day went on. On her last run through she was crying.
On the plus side, Holly and Molly were naturals! They were gorgeous and outgoing, bubbly and cute, and could handle a five minute speech without batting an eye. They were judged to be a real advantage.
The best we could do was simply to keep Marilyn off of the podium. What they couldn’t understand was how warm and personable she was in person, just talking to people, and yet be so horrendous in front of an audience. How could she introduce me at the convention, in what was now a tradition? I settled it by suggesting that we combine her introduction with another tradition, the biographical film on me. She could do the voice-overs and talk about me in a personal sense, without having to memorize lines or stand in front of a crowd. They scribbled out some trial notes and sat Marilyn in an armchair and tried it, and that went well. Her speechwriters began some serious scribbling. We had found a job for Marilyn!
Wednesday they had her try this some more, and Marilyn worked out much better. She was fine as long as nobody slapped a mike and a camera in her face. By the end of the day, we had settled on how she would handle things. When we split apart to do our campaigning, I would take the girls to the Heartland and Marilyn would go with her bunch to Baltimore, where a bunch of writers would comb through our family photos and develop my biography.
As for me, I had to do some campaigning! Thursday night we would fly to Lexington Kentucky, where I would give a speech at a fundraiser. Friday we would board a bus and drive south into Tennessee, stopping every few hours to give a speech. I would have my daughters with me, and we could give them a shot at speaking. They thought this was incredibly exciting. I knew better, but I was just their father, so they didn’t have to listen to me. I simply smiled at that. They’d learn.
Chapter 128: Stormy Weather
Thursday, July 20, 2000
They learned, all right! By Thursday they were heartily bored and sick and tired of the whole thing. The first day or two had been interesting. Marilyn and I had never taken the kids to Kentucky or Tennessee, not even on vacations, so everything was new and interesting to them. We would roll into some little town, and the local Republican committee would have a stage set up somewhere, maybe the local school or the courthouse or veteran’s hall. The local organizer would introduce Holly and Molly, who would then do four or five minutes and introduce me. I would come out and hug my daughters, and then deliver a stump speech. Afterwards we would meet the local reporters, have a meal, and climb back on the bus. Two hours later we were someplace else.
During all of this I would be surrounded by ‘consultants’, who would basically plan everything I did, from the time I woke up, until the time I went to bed. There was a wardrobe consultant, so that I would be appropriately dressed. If I had to wear a suit, they would decide what color suit and shirt and tie; if I was in shirtsleeves, they would decide how far up the arm they would be unrolled. If they didn’t stay at the appropriate height up my arm, they would be more than happy to staple them into position. There was a speech consultant, to edit the stump speech as needed. There would be somebody to liaison with everybody locally. There were food consultants to tell me what I was eating and when. There was probably a bathroom consultant, to make sure I took Vice Presidential dumps at appropriate times.