“If I don’t Stu Fielding can make it sound as though I do. Isn’t that what speechwriters and campaign managers are for?”
“I don’t trust Stuart Fielding,” Hickman said seriously. “He’s ugly and horny. That’s a bad combination.” Then he smiled. “It’s much better to be fat and bald.”
The door to the study opened and Kimball looked in. “Mr. President, it’s time for your nine-fifteen.”
“Be right there. And, Wayne, put me down to see Stu Fielding sometime today. Short. I want a paper that shows positive results of our Soviet grain embargo. I want our farmers to understand… you know what I want.” Kimball was writing furiously. “Right. Brilliant speech. Embargo. Farm vote. I got it.” McKenna turned to Hickman. “Happy?”
“I’ll be happy when you get me tickets to your next inaugural ball, Mr. President.” The president raised an eyebrow. He glanced at Kimball. “Won’t we all.” Dorothy Longworth was perusing one of the volumes of Churchill’s memoirs on World War II when the president joined her in the library. She was a small woman, oddly, McKenna thought, considering the clout she held in the press. He’d never actually noticed her height during press conferences as she was usually sitting down; she was not one of those jack-in-the-box correspondents of the White House Press Corps “who competed for questions from the floor. She was thirty-five with a Dresden doll’s face, and she dressed simply. She wore a dark, high-necked dress with her hair done up in a bun, an attempt, McKenna guessed, to make her appear older or more mature, perhaps both.
“Good morning, Miss Longworth,” he said graciously. “I hope I haven’t kept you waiting.” He gestured for her to have a seat.
“Not at all, Mr. President.” She set the book on a side table rather than putting it back in its place on the shelf. “I was just reading Mr. Churchill’s reminiscences of the Potsdam meeting.” She sat down in a flowered-print chair. “Did you ever meet him?”
“Churchill?” McKenna smiled. “I was eleven years old when they divided up Europe, Miss Longworth.
I never even met Eisenhower.” He took a seat opposite her on a matching love seat. “Do you know Walter Cronkite?” Dorothy Longworth’s mouth turned up slightly, her eyes half closed. “Touche.” She took out a reporter’s pad and pencil. “You know, Mr. President, I was a little surprised to get this interview.”
“I figured it was about time we met face to face. As long as you’re writing so much about my Administration, I thought you ought to meet the source of the country’s problems.” Her eyes narrowed. “That isn’t quite fair, Mr. President. It’s not personal at all. My job is to write what I see. And I see an Administration in turmoil.”
“Do you?”
“You’re not getting much support from the Hill these days.”
“What president ever got much support from Congress, Miss Longworth?” She nodded and jotted quickly on her pad.
“One direct quote, sweetheart,” McKenna said, pointing to her notebook, “and I’ll paddle your ass right in the middle of my next press conference.” She glanced up sweetly. “I know the rules, Mr. President. I’m just generally noting the rich flavor of your thoughts.”
“You couldn’t print the rich flavor of my thoughts.” He studied her severely. “No notes.” Dorothy Longworth sighed. She put her pencil down. “As you wish, then.”
“Let’s get down to it, shall we? What do you want?”
“That’s direct.”
“I don’t know any other way. You came here for something exclusive, I assume.”
“As a matter of fact—” She stopped and unfolded her hands. “Do you mind if I smoke, Mr. President?” He shook his head. “Not at all. Are you nervous?”
“It’s a journalist’s bad habit. I have to have something to do with my hands. And if I can’t take notes…”
“Light up.”
She took a package of slim cigarettes from her purse and offered one to McKenna, who declined with a shake of his head.
“There is something on my mind,” she said through a pale cloud of smoke as she extinguished the match.
“Shoot.”
“Are you going to make a deal with Weston?” She leaned forward slightly.
“I have nothing to offer the senator,” McKenna said casually. “Next question.”
“The rumor is that if you step aside, hand him the nomination, you could return to Washington in any job you asked for.”
“That sounds like a rumor.”
“Is it true?”
“Aren’t you counting your chickens a little early, Miss Longworth? Neither the senator nor I have made a commitment even to run for the nomination.”
“Not publicly, no.”
“I can’t speak for the senator, and I wouldn’t try to, but I haven’t decided yet. You’ll hear it when everyone else does.”
“Weston is coming on strong. Any unquotable mellifluous comments?” The president glanced at his watch. “Come on, Dorothy. Give me. some tough questions. I have a Security Council briefing in ten minutes. You make a fortune in syndication. Let me see you earn it.”
“You are going to run again, aren’t you?”
“I haven’t run yet, if you’ll recall.”
“You’re avoiding the question.”
“Who wants to know, you or Wes Nichols?”
Her face turned angry. “I resent that! You have no right to ask—”
“As much right as you to print half-truths and rumors, my dear. Besides, this interview is off the record.
You can tell me, Dorothy.”
She composed herself quickly. “If you don’t mind, Mr. President, I’ll be the interviewer.”
“What else do you want to know?”
“Oil,” she said. “The people want to know about oil. Our supply is oozing to a halt from the Persian Gulf. What’s really new on the Alaskan slopes?”
“New finds.”
“Enough?”
“Hopefully.”
“Gas rationing?”
“I’m still trying.”
“It’s your Congress, Mr. President.”
“It’s our Congress, ma’am. I don’t appoint them, unfortunately. The people elect them. I just try to work with them. You ought to remember that.”
“I do.” She gave him a wicked smile. “I expect that’s a thought heavy on your mind, too — the people voting, I mean.” McKenna grinned. “They told me you were a tiger.”
“I expect they didn’t say ‘tiger,’ either.”
“No, tenacious bitch, actually. Yes, Miss Longworth, I’m aware that I wasn’t elected to this job.
Everybody’s aware of it. It’s not something I need reminding of. It doesn’t bother me. If I run, I’ll take my chances. If I don’t—” He shrugged. “Like I said, you’ll find out when I decide, just like everyone else.”
“The polls don’t look good for you. That doesn’t bother you?”
“Polls?”
“C’mon, Mr. President.”
“Lyndon Johnson’s polls didn’t look good either, in 1963. But he won by the biggest margin in history the next year.”
“You’re not running against Barry Goldwater.”
McKenna chuckled to himself. “Some people think I am Barry Goldwater.”
“What about the Russians?”
“What about them?”
“SALT. I’m talking about SALT… the talks, the embargo. When are you going to sit down with them again?”
“I’m ready. They’re not.”
“What does that mean?”
“Just what it’s always meant, Miss Longworth,” McKenna said wearily. “When they pull their troops out of Afghanistan, when they drive their tanks out of Poland, when they stop trying to slice up Yugoslavia, when they quit their aggressions in countries that don’t want them… then we can talk.”