Chapter Fourteen: A Leader is Found

“Me?”

The rising excitement inside Toby had reached a crescendo, and his heart threatened to explode. He was supposed to run campaigns, not run himself. The idea had often crossed his mind but only in daydreams, just as one might daydream about flying or meeting aliens, but it was just that—a daydream that would never happen. Like flying or meeting aliens…

It took two hours for Bruce to get Toby to say, “I’ll run for president when Dubois and Ajala sing a duet of ‘We’re together again’ on the roof of one of the Twin Towers,” and another hour to get him to, “Okay, okay, just turn off that damn poster and stop squeaking your chair.” At the time, the poster had a picture of Napoleon Bonaparte, with the caption, “In politics…never retreat, never retract…never admit a mistake.” Bruce turned it off via his TC, revealing that the Einstein picture and quote—“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds”—was the default mode.

“All you have to do,” Bruce said, “is look, act, and sound like a president, and if the voters fall for it, you’ll be president.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“No,” Bruce said. “We’ll also need a miracle. I left that out.”

Toby shook his head. “You do realize I have a wife and son who might have something to say on this?” His heart still beat like a piston. A very fast piston. And yet he was already adjusting to the idea of being a candidate and perhaps someday running the world. Perhaps the years of daydreaming had prepared him.

“Just a wife and son, huh? I wonder what Lara has to say about that?”

Oops, Toby thought. How could he have forgotten his daughter? Just because she was running Dubois’s campaign…

“Besides,” Bruce said, “you and Olivia are practically separated, and Tyler lives with her. When’s the last time you saw them?”

It had been a while. He’d been staying at hotels for seemingly forever. He did call Tyler at least once a week, but he could do that from anywhere.

“So what now?” Toby asked. “You want to be vice president?”

“No way,” Bruce said. “I’d be a heartbeat away from being the most effective and most hated president in history. I don’t want to be the head chimp.”

“Then I’ll hire you as campaign director.”

Bruce shook his head. “You couldn’t afford me. Not that ten million a year is much these days, but if you want to hire me off the college ping-pong circuit, that’s what it’d cost you. If you want a volunteer director, who you’ll turn loose so we can make havoc of this race, then you have a deal. But you’ll have to do what I say.”

“You do remember that I have a little experience myself in running political campaigns? I might have some insight into our plans.” Turning Bruce loose in a political campaign, Toby thought, would be like tossing a great white shark into a hot tub full of conservative and liberal online grubbers. Not a bad idea, actually, but there wouldn’t be any writers left afterwards to cover the campaign. Someone had to restrain Bruce or he might blow up the planet. Or worse.

“You’re the candidate,” Bruce said. “Candidates can’t see straight. You said that yourself. You need someone on the outside telling you what to do, someone who can keep his eye on the goal, and not worry about minor day-to-day ethical challenges.”

“I remember what I said.” First Lara, and now Bruce were quoting him. At least he now knew they actually listened to what he said. “What I told Dubois was, ‘I’ll tell you what to say, how to say it, what to look like when you say it, and then I’ll spin it for the masses.’”

“Sounds about right. When you’re on your own, you go all ethical. That’s gotta change.”

“Sorry, Bruce, but I think I’ll keep veto power. I’d like to be the head chimp for a change. You like to quote stuff I’ve said; do you remember what I told Dubois before his debate with Xu?”

“You told him bringing logic to a public debate is like bringing a neocortex to a laser fight.”

“Did I?” Toby didn’t remember that one. “What I told him was, ‘What does it profit to gain the world if he loses his soul?’ I think that’s from the Christian Bible.”

“We’re not going to lose your soul, just lease it out for a while.”

“Well that’s nice, risking my soul for the good of mankind.” Toby decided not to point out that if there was such a thing as a soul, all successful politicians had lost theirs long ago.

“It’ll be for a good purpose, and it won’t go cheap,” Bruce said. “Didn’t you also say, ‘Never sell your soul to a special interest group until you’ve calculated the political return’?”

That one Toby remembered. It seemed he’d spent a lot of time thinking about souls when he was with the Dubois campaign.

Time for a compromise, Toby decided. “How’s this? You plan and run the campaign, and I’ll go along. But I get sparingly-used veto power.”

“Great. A wannabe leader who wants to lead. Next you’ll be acting all presidential, all grown up and all. It’s so wonderful seeing them leave the nest on their own, spreading their wings, taking flight, and falling on their faces.”

“Shut up, Bruce, you’ve got a campaign to run. You might start by raising it from the dead, or rather the unborn. We’re two votes, and we’ll need about two billion.”

“Too bad Tyler’s only fourteen and can’t vote for two more years.” Bruce began bouncing a ping-pong ball on a paddle. Toby grabbed the ball out of the air.

“Bruce, do you ever do anything spontaneously?”

“All the time, but only after I’ve thought it through.”

“Exactly,” Toby said. “You’ve been thinking about this for a while, and I know you have sinister plans for this ridiculously impossible campaign, so why not share them? I already outlined the problems: no staff, no organization, no money, little name recognition, and we can add no strategy to that list.”

“Before we get to all that there’s a larger imperative,” Bruce said. He tossed the paddle aside. “Why do you want to be president?”

“Because—”

“Don’t tell me!” Bruce jumped to his feet and pointed at the picture of Albert Einstein. “Tell him!”

“You want me to tell Albert Einstein?”

“No, idiot, think of him as a portal to the world. He represents the public. Tell him why you want to be president. Be spontaneous.” Bruce sat down again to another loud, jarring squeak.

Now Toby leaned back in the sofa, ignoring Stupid’s squawk as the iguana jumped out of the way. It was such a simple question, one he’d always asked his candidates, but he’d never had to answer it himself. It was a lot easier asking than telling.

“Just say what comes to mind,” Bruce said. “We can fix it up later. And I’m recording this for future use.”

“The political world is split.” Once he started, the words spilled into Toby’s head faster than he could say them. “Every five years the two sides duke it out, and we end up with a liberal or a conservative in charge. But that’s the view from New York City. The rest of the world isn’t liberal or conservative. They don’t think that way until we drill it into their heads that they have to make that choice. They just want leaders who will do what’s best for all of us, not what some political philosophy says to do. And that usually means finding a solution that’s not liberal, not conservative, but a compromise. A moderate solution. Which is where most people are, if we only gave them that choice.”

Bruce clapped his hand against his paddle. “Perfect! That’s about thirty seconds; later we’ll work out a fifteen-second version. But I think we’re ready to move to strategy.”

“So you have given it some thought?”

“Of course.”

So had Toby. “If we’re going to start a party in the middle, where most of the voters are, what are the other two parties supposed to do?”

“What do we care?” Bruce said. “Our goal isn’t to resolve some sort of conflict with the other parties; our goal is to beat them!”

“Exactly,” Toby said. “So now that we’re the party of choice for the masses, how do we educate them to this fact?”

“That’s the problem, and here’s how we’re going to solve it.”

Toby would have to wait to learn that strategy, as his TC was alerting him to breaking news. The alien was about to give a speech to the world.