"Jack Flynn," I said, this time speaking the obvious. "I had the great advantage of not actually being hurt. Had I been, that might well have changed things."
We laughed politely at a joke that really wasn't all that funny, until Sylvia casually looked over her shoulder into an open door and said,
"Why don't we just head right in. The president will probably want to get started."
She then brought me through a pair of wide doors into one of the most incredible places I have ever been: the Oval Office. The rug was such a colorful blue you could almost get lost in it, like the sea. In the middle was a bright eagle within the presidential seal, and beyond the rug on all sides was a shiny parquet maple-and-oak floor. A tall case clock ticked loudly by the door. Sunlight streamed in over the South Lawn through French doors and long windows. Magnificent paintings and portraits decorated the walls, including an unfinished one of George Washington hanging over the fireplace. Hutchins, in shirtsleeves-though elegant ones, I must say, with a fine blue pinstripe and presidential cuff links-stood up from his enormous oak desk at the far end of the room. It was a substantial, beautiful desk, a desk where presidents have signed declarations of war and treaties of peace, addressed the nation in times of crisis and triumph, plotted strategies to win reelection, to shape history, taped conversations that would haunt them to their graves. Hutchins stood up and boomed,
"From the land of the living dead, Jack Flynn. Damned nice of you to come over."
I offered a simple smile at him and his surroundings, noticing Sylvia backing quietly out of the room. "A pleasure, sir," I said. "Thank you for the invitation." I found myself addressing him in that unusually formal tone, like on the golf course, and wondered if it was like that for everyone, especially in this office. I kind of presumed it was.
"Let's sit," Hutchins said, lowering his hand toward a blue-and-white-striped couch that I'd seen on television many times, though usually then it was occupied by a Middle Eastern king negotiating a truce or a Senate Republican having his arm twisted to back what always seemed to be billed as a landmark budget deal.
Hutchins settled in a pale yellow upholstered chair set to the side of the fireplace.
"How are your ribs?" Hutchins asked as I lowered myself gingerly onto the couch. Then he answered his own question, as he tended to do.
"Doctors tell me you're doing pretty well. Helps to be young and virile, huh?"
The door to the office swung open. Hutchins looked over, slightly startled, then watched calmly as the tall, courtly form of White House chief of staff Lincoln Powers came striding into the room.
"Sorry to interrupt, Mr. President," Powers said in that patrician Texan twang he has. "Have an important message I need to pass on to you." He handed Hutchins an official-looking memorandum, then turned back to me. "Well, you look even more handsome in person than on TV, young man," he said. "I'm Lincoln Powers, Mr. Flynn. Nice to meet you."
This TV thing, unbelievably, was starting to get old. I wondered how Walter Cronkite handled it all the time. I suppose it's different when you do it for a living.
Anyway, the story of Clayton Hutchins and Lincoln Powers was an unusual one-how the lives of two very different men intersected at a time of national crisis, and how they had bonded together ever since.
Hutchins's, mostly, was the amazing story. He had made his mark as a successful businessman in Des Moines, Iowa, taking a startup technology company that produced personal finance software called Cookie Jar into the big leagues, eventually becoming a staple in households across America and earning its inventor hundreds of millions of dollars. Across Iowa, a state of significant prudence and few celebrities, Hutchins became a folk hero, lauded for his ambitions and his brains and loved for his massive acts of philanthropy. Some of the state's elder politicians took to joking that Hutchins's name became so commonplace on libraries, hospital wings, and school buildings that people might think he owned a construction company.
His was a uniquely American story-born and raised on a farm miles and miles from his closest neighbor, schooled at home, college educated later in life, entirely self-made in both the worlds of commerce and government.
His entrance to politics was unconventional, to say the least. A few months before the Iowa governor's race six years ago, a group of business leaders and citizen activists, dissatisfied with the lackluster candidates for the two major parties, got together and launched a massive draft-Hutchins movement for a third-party write-in campaign. Hutchins reluctantly accepted. Standing onstage with his two opponents at a series of debates, he had them so outwitted and outsmarted that the race seemed almost unfair. He won with 45 percent of the vote, fifteen points ahead of his closest competitor.
Hutchins came in with a refreshing ability to speak the truth and the simple promise that he would run the government like a business and demand nothing but the best service at the lowest cost possible. He balanced the state's budget. He fired a string of high-level managers who had long been suspected of corruption. He spoke his mind, spoke it often, and spoke it well. Even 60 Minutes, the bane of politicians countrywide, aired a glowing profile of Hutchins, calling him "one of the last great moderate politicians in America."
Two years later, the Republican front-runner for the presidency, Senator Wordsworth Cole, for reasons he didn't understand, found himself suddenly getting battered in Iowa public opinion polls about a week before the caucus. Experts said it was bad organization and a stale message. Most Iowans were more pointed in their beliefs. They just seemed to think he was out of touch. So Hutchins unleashed the full glory of his power to help Cole win, and win he did, by a huge margin-a victory that analysts described as the watershed event in the campaign. From there, with momentum, he steamrolled into New Hampshire, and then across the country and all the way to the Republican nomination. Privately, at the August Republican Convention in Miami, he promised to give Hutchins any cabinet post he desired as a reward for his crucial work.
Flash ahead to three weeks before the November election. The New York Times published a report that Cole's vice presidential running mate, Senator Steven Sugara of Wyoming, had been addicted to the prescription drug Prozac two years earlier, but had never disclosed the fact to Cole or, for that matter, to Wyoming voters. In a neck-and-neck race, the Cole campaign immediately went into a tailspin. But Hutchins met up with Cole on the campaign trail, counseled him that voters cast ballots for president, not vice president, and told him to publicly stand behind his nominee. He did, and staggered to a slim victory, but a victory nonetheless. They don't partially furnish the Oval Office or limit your miles on Air Force One because you only won by 2 percent. A week later, Sugara resigned. Hutchins was picked as vice president, and he continued like that for three and a half years.
He was a good understudy, a major fund-raising asset, a loyal and confidential adviser. At first, my brethren in the news media thought his personality might not fit the required role. Hutchins harked from the no-bullshit world of high-technology business, a place where risk led to the ultimate rewards and prudence was the hallmark of those left behind. He was offensive in almost every possible way, but not in the worst sense of the word. He was blunt. His voice was hard, as if it had been pounded by rocks. He was built like a fireplug, at five feet, ten inches, I'd guess, with a barrel chest and broad shoulders. His face was rough, his hair thinning, and he was anything but handsome, yet when he met with contributors or businessmen or even aides, he spawned many imitators, those who wanted to be like him, to dress like him, to talk as he did in words and tone. He was someone who seemed never to expect anything other than wild success, but when he achieved it, he gave the impression it would never change him.