I love the clacking of a typewriter. The sound stirs a vestigial emotion buried in my ancestral DNA, so long ago I had downloaded a program that synced the tick and bringg of an IBM Selectric to my computer keyboard. But those reassuring sounds were lost in the din of our newsroom. Making journalism is supposed to be loud and sweaty. My story began, “‘This was probably the worst day in the history of the United States,’ White House press secretary Eunice Kaufman admitted today. As individual acts of incredible heroism continued into the evening, and responders began the painful task of recovering the bodies of many more victims, the questions remain: Who is responsible for these attacks and why wasn’t this nation better prepared?”
“C’mon, Rollie, we need it!” Howie screamed at me. “Let’s go. Let’s go.”
I pecked away, the words coming as easily as if I were pounding them into a cave wall. I leaned way back and stared at my monitor. Words dug into my soul: killed, crushed, children, families, bloody, explosions. I released a long controlling breath, reminding myself I was a reporter; report it, don’t feel it. There had been a lot of bad days in the past eight years, more than I could count even if I took off my shoes, but there had been nothing as stomach-churning, black-pit awful as this day had been. I reread my words, my head shaking back and forth like I couldn’t help wondering, how the fuck did we get here?
Like so many others, I had assumed that no administration could be worse than Trump/Pence. In those days we had been thankful for the Trumpers’ ineptitude: The pit bull trainer put in charge of the pandemic response. The twenty-four-year-old college graduate running banking policy. The son-in-law who made a full-sour pickle seem warm and fuzzy apparently in charge of everything else. We used to joke about how much real damage to the country, to the world, they would have done if they had been competent. Then the pandemic came along and the laughter stopped. Then the drought and the subsequent famine.
I remember that incredible sense of relief that we had survived Trump. Well, those of us who had survived. I still have the T-shirt. Looking back on it, I am reminded of Steve McQueen’s story in The Magnificent Seven, about the guy who fell off the roof of a ten-story building; as he passed each floor, people heard him say, “So far, so good.”
Any chance Biden and Democrats had to lead the recovery had disappeared with the drought and the subsequent famine, not to mention Superstorm Malika, which had further devastated the Gulf Coast. The Democrats’ efforts always reminded me of that classic 2022 photo showing disbelief, frustration, and helplessness on Dodgers outfielder Cody Bellinger’s face as he watches Aaron Judge’s World Series–winning home run sailing into the Yankee Stadium bleachers.
As much as possible throughout my career, I’ve been an equal opportunity smart-ass. I poked at both sides equally, or in the last election all three sides. About Wrightman I had written: “Senator Wrightman’s record in the Senate has been unblemished by achievement or conviction. He established his legendary ‘independent streak’ by refusing to support controversial legislation proposed by either party. When criticized for this lack of achievement, he responded by railing against both parties for ‘their transparent efforts to silence the only truly independent voice in the Senate.’”
While John McCain had once described him as having “the depth of a puddle after a light drizzle,” he proved to be the perfect political package for the moment: a walking antidote to chaos and controversy. He was, as his campaign slogan promised, The Wrightman for the Right Time.
He certainly looked right for the part. His trim body seemed made for Italian suits, which never wrinkled as he walked; his full head of silver hair was so perfectly flaked with hints of black that Benjamin Moore might have manufactured it, and his teeth were whiter than a Trump rally.
He was a terrific politician. He smiled easily and often and had mastered the complex skill of never being caught by photographers between friendly expressions. There were no Dukakis’s head popping out of a tank or John Kerry sailboarding pictures of Ian Wrightman. He brought to mind that great Nixon political credo: Never wear a hat or stay for dinner. Early in his political career he had found the comfortable ground between self-deprecating and acceptable opinion and couldn’t be moved off it with a backhoe. He spoke in a deep and mellifluous voice that resounded with profundity; Wolf Blitzer once noted Wrightman could make a mattress label sound profound.
But mostly, Senator I. M. Wrightman understood completely that the most important skill for an American politician was to be first to be second. He never actually staked a position on an issue. Instead, he had the rare ability to catch the most desirable breeze and make it his own.
That campaign slogan was right; he probably was the right man for the time. After the daily chaos of Trump/Pence, followed by the aggressive flailing of the Democrats, more than anything else Americans craved normalcy. They wanted a decent person who had a pet and watched the same TV shows they did.
Senator Wrightman announced his independent candidacy after both parties had made their choice, claiming he was reluctantly running only because neither nominee was capable of reuniting the divided nation. As his running mate, he picked the respected former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Marine general Arthur T. Hunter. Wrightman’s choice of the Hun was meant to send an unambiguous message to our allies and enemies, a list that had been jumbled during Trump, that the United States was willing and able to defend our shores, wherever in the world we decided they happened to be.
While Wrightman’s opponents made grandiose promises about restoring basic American values, uniting the country, and regaining our prestige in the world, he did no such thing. His campaign slogan was concise: “Restore Order.” It was presented as a social, economic, and diplomatic doctrine, and rather than being pinned down to any specific policies, he urged voters to define it in their own best possible way. Restore order. That allowed people to interpret it to mean whatever most appealed to them. The one thing few experts realized is that it meant exactly what it promised.
The essential feel-good highlight of his campaign had been the gleeful announcement that his and Charisma’s twenty-two-year-old daughter, America, had become engaged to a Marine combat vet who had lost an arm fighting in Afghanistan, a man she’d met while volunteering at Walter Reed. His Republican opponent, former vice president Mike Pence, who had begun wearing pre-wrinkled jeans to prove he was just an ordinary guy’s guy, had skillfully countered that by tearfully putting down his previously unknown fifteen-year-old border collie, Abraham Lincoln. He was accompanied to the vet’s office by his family and a media horde, but America Wrightman had still snared People’s cover while the photograph of a tearful Pence carrying Abe’s lifeless body was relegated to an inside quarter-page.
Running as an Independent who was “not beholden to any special interests,” Wrightman benefited from the disarray in both parties. With the lovely, oft-blushing, and unthreatening Charisma at his side he ran a feel-good campaign mostly free of specifics other than I’m not the other guys. With his campaign song, “There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow,” playing in the background, he had been appropriately sympathetic to the plight of the unemployed renewable energy workers, he had stood next to dour farmers whose silos were filled with rotting corn, potatoes, and soybeans, and he had been supportive of congressional efforts to pump money into the system while proclaiming himself fiscally conservative.
He was folksy when necessary, admitting sheepishly to voters during the first debate that it was Charisma who had urged him to get into politics after he had sold the family publishing empire, “mostly because she wanted to get me out of the house, where I was spending way too much time disagreeing with Judge Judy’s verdicts.”
As he had done in the Senate, during the campaign he mostly laid back and let his opponents destroy each other, busying himself shaking hands, kissing babies, and reminding voters that “America’s future is still ahead of us.” People believed Wrightman was a nonentity who slipped into office because of the disdain voters had for both political parties. But the actual key to his success turned out to be twenty-four-year-old wunderkind Raymond Munchmeyer, a lanky, quirky cybermarketing genius who teamed with veteran pollster Nolan Noyes to create the social media effort that shaped each of Wrightman’s images. Reign Man, as Munchmeyer was known inside the campaign, lived by the motto “You are what you share.”
Noyes’s polling data determined what people wanted to hear and Munchmeyer’s manipulation of social media fed it to them, making it possible for Wrightman to simultaneously be all things to all voters. To young people, for example, he was the sometimes forgetful but lovingly supportive dad, even when befuddled by technology; to Southerners, he was a down-home guy who loved banjo music, William Faulkner, Friday-night football, NASCAR, and the American flag; to Northerners, he was the egghead who sang along with Springsteen, recommended Walter Mosley, and loved his daughter’s rescue labradoodle, NBA basketball, and the equal protection guarantees of the Constitution as symbolized by the American flag.
It was a marketing technique that worked equally well for selling diapers and electing a president. According to various media, his inauguration marked “a new dawn,” “a new beginning,” “a new era,” “a rebirth of the American spirit,” and “a new day” on which “it is time to turn the page” on the “darkest moments in our history” and “bring forth a renewed spirit of cooperation” or “a rebirth of American democracy.”
Admittedly I had been as guilty as anyone else in creating that positive atmosphere. A couple of those phrases had come from my computer, which makes it difficult to deny I wrote them. It is amazing how easily we all bought into that. All of us. I understand the general public falling for this—after all, campaigns spend millions of dollars to accomplish that—but me? On Inauguration Day I had written that the voters had “saved democracy.” I admit that; those were my own words. But as the immortal Eric Stratton pointed out in Animal House, “You fucked up. You trusted us.”
The entire Pro crew watched the inauguration on the TVs above the bar at Lucille’s Ballroom, our local hangout across the street from the office. “Cut-rate coverage,” as we referred to it. We rarely sent a staffer to cover any event viewers could watch on TV. Wrightman’s inaugural address had been somber and realistic. “As we approach our two hundred and fiftieth anniversary,” he told the huge crowd, “our democracy faces grave challenges from many quarters, among them from rogue nations and terrorists both across the oceans and close to home, as well as our fellow Americans who have lost faith in our shared American values of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Damage has been done to this country that will take considerable time to heal. The foundations of our financial security have been hobbled by irresponsible fiscal policies. Hatred based on race, religion, creed, nationality, political status, and gender has been exposed to light and has grown. Our physical infrastructure and the value system that had made us great among nations has deteriorated and is danger of collapse.
“And yet it is a great day…”
My own feelings were a mix of relief and trepidation. I loved this country with all its faults; I had never bought into the American myth, but I always appreciated the potential greatness of this country. My grandfather, Aubrey Stone, had emigrated here from Eastern Europe. Sometimes at night, after he’d had just enough to loosen his memory, we’d sit on the porch swing and I’d listen as he described the terrors of his adolescence. “It may not be so perfect here,” he’d say with the last trace of an accent he tried so hard to overcome. “Americans like that Disney stuff because they got good at pretending, but you listen to me, here is much better. There we carried around our fear with us like we were walking in a shadow. We were wondering always what was waiting around the next corner. The people here, they wouldn’t never let what happened there happen here. They’d see it for what it is and stop it quick.” Then he would launch into one of his stories about a neighbor disappearing or hiding a radio under the floorboards at the first sound of boots on cobblestones or his walk over the mountains to get out.
I voted for Wrightman. I know, I’m not supposed to reveal that. Journalism 101. But as I write these words, I think it’s important to admit that. Considering … well, considering. I believed that this nation, America, needed a president who lacked sufficient passion to alienate anyone. A healer, someone dependable; a decent, reasonably intelligent guy stuck firmly in the middle. I actually found his lack of grandiose plans far more honest and appealing than the hollow promises made by his opponents.
On his first day in office Wrightman began fulfilling the only promise he had made, restoring order. “A free society relies on a trustworthy, vibrant media,” the official announcement began. To rectify the damage done to the media’s credibility by President Trump’s continued accusations of “fake news,” broadcast and print media henceforth would be required to post either a news, fact, or an opinion logo, a shield with an N, F, or an O on its stories. Significant penalties, including loss of license for multiple offenses, would be levied against any outlet mislabeling its content. This was necessary, the announcement continued, to protect the First Amendment. It was not intended to be any restriction on free speech, which would of course be unconstitutional; instead, it was simply a matter of extending the movie and music industry rating systems to news outlets to assist viewers and readers in separating actual news from opinion or “fake news.”
The reaction surprised me. I expected most journalists to be outraged. And in fact some news outlets did object, pointing out that government officials would be empowered to designate stories as real news or opinion. In response, to help viewers and readers understand the objectives of this system, those officials gave these complaints the very first O rating.
While people like Howie were furious, to my surprise many outlets accepted it, even praising the administration for its efforts to combat the concept of fake news. They were okay with it, so long as the government did not impose any restrictions on what to report. When Chuck Schumer warned in a tweet, “He who controls the media controls the American people,” he actually received more responses correcting his misuse of gender—“It should read ‘He or she who…’”—than criticizing the policy.