Washington, D.C./Aiken, South Carolina, March 1987
“Does Castle like golf?”
“Sure.”
“Why don’t we make it then for next month, look in at the Masters? Everybody goes there, nobody is really conspicuous.”
“I’ll check it out with him,” said Susan, chief aide to Senator Castle. “His calendar is clear for that weekend. He would probably need—I mean, it would make sense—to have an invitation. Senator Castle doesn’t like to do things that can be thought pure self-indulgence. He should be, in some way, part of the show.”
“Good. If you have any trouble getting a personal invitation, I know one or two of the pros. ‘Dear Senator Castle: I know that you like our sport—the sport! I would be honored if you came to the Masters and were there when, I hope, I finally get that green jacket. If you find you can work it into your schedule, I would love to have you as my guest.’ Signed, ‘Your fan, Hank Wright.’”
“Sounds good.” Susan was taking notes, in her fabled shorthand. Nobody, she had boasted at age twenty-two, could speak more rapidly than she could take it down. She winced when reminded, as occasionally happened, that she had once made this claim. Vainglory. Not because it had ceased to be true—her fluency on her notepad was dazzling—but because to say what she had said smacked of, well, exhibitionism.
In her twenties she had developed into a secretary and confidante utterly free of self-concern. She was the secretary about whose private life nothing was known and, after a while, nothing was asked. When, on the death of Congressman Adam Benjamin Jr., she was approached by the personnel hand Howell Anderson and asked to sign up with the newly elected senator from North Dakota, she deliberated the proposal. She was fifty years old, and liked the prospect of a prolonged attachment. It didn’t surprise Anderson when she said she would look into Senator Castle’s background and only then decide.
While it didn’t surprise Anderson that Susan Oakeshott would want to think it over, he was surprised that she didn’t ask him for the substantial packet of information about Reuben Castle that had been accumulated for the campaign. “Thanks very much, but I can put my hands on everything I’ll need to consider.”
“Reuben,” Anderson had said to him, “it just doesn’t matter what the strain on you may be of waiting to organize your office. If she says yes, then you’ll have the best office manager in Washington, D.C.”
She did say yes. And now, six years later, it was Susan Oakeshott, not the senator, who was approached about an utterly secret meeting between Castle and the quiet kingmaker, Harold Kaltenbach.
What Kaltenbach wanted to deliberate was whether Castle would make a good presidential candidate five years down the line. “The Republicans are going to take the White House in 1988,” he told Susan. “I’m deciding who to back for 1992.”
Whom Harold Kaltenbach would back in 1992 was a matter of critical importance to the contending parties. Kaltenbach was from Nebraska. He loved politics, and politics loved him. He loved his money and his network of friends, and he was doggedly attached to the Democratic Party. Susan, of course, knew all this, knew all about Kaltenbach, and she knew that her senator would appreciate the importance of meeting with him as a petitioner, and would agree to have such a meeting on Kaltenbach’s terms.
By noon the next day Susan had cleared the Augusta weekend. Working at his end, Kaltenbach had managed an invitation from Hank Wright. The senator would be, unofficially, Wright’s guest at Augusta, and would attend as much of the tournament as he could. Kaltenbach would decide—there was plenty of time; the tournament was four weeks off—whether it would be useful to have the senator say a word or two at any of the official functions.
Their actual meeting would be at a golf course—but not the Augusta National. Instead, they would go to nearby Aiken. Kaltenbach and the senator would both be dressed as golfers. Susan had made a reservation at the club dining room in the name of Hank Wright.
The table was at a well-removed corner of the dining room, and they met at eleven-thirty, a half hour before many other patrons would gather.
Harold Kaltenbach was very quiet, embarked on his super-charged mission. Reuben was acutely aware that he was being examined through the special microscope of a true political professional. The questioning was deceptively orthodox: name, rank, and serial number, like a form for a bank loan.
Reuben found his doughty self-confidence strangely useless. He knew that anything that smacked of rodomontade would be…silly. Maybe even fatal. A demonstration of confidence in his political future was of course useful, but it mustn’t be superficial. If Reuben Castle was going to talk persuasively about his strengths, he could do so plausibly only by communicating strengths that were not obviously visible to Harold Kaltenbach. But what wasn’t visible to Harold Kaltenbach? And would the impression be damaging if Reuben miscalculated?
Probably the thing to do was to act absolutely natural. He had this difficulty, which many first-rate politicians caught up in the theater of politics have, namely that he wasn’t sure what was in fact natural. Reuben knew that he was attractive to men, even charming; and he could not remember a time when he had failed at ingratiation with women, communally and individually. He had those advantages at the outset.
He braced himself for two questions. How was it that, in fifteen months in Vietnam, he had avoided combat entirely? (He had a pretty satisfactory answer to that one, he thought—he didn’t control the combat assignments, after all.) And the second: Why was it that he hadn’t finished law school? Complying with the Buckley Amendment of 1974, college administrators were required to make available to students or ex-students any official reports written about them or their work. And ex-students could requisition these, in later years, removing them from the university’s files. Why had Reuben done exactly that with his professors’ reports from the University of Illinois?
He had an answer, but he knew it wasn’t always effective. Garry Givern, a fellow contestant for the Democratic senatorial nomination in 1980, had touched on the delicate point at a party caucus in Bismarck, North Dakota’s capital. “Reuben,” Givern said, “I pulled out my academic records too. The difference between us is that I am delighted to show mine to anyone who is interested.”
Susan had told Reuben that Harold Kaltenbach probably knew about these early exchanges. “He’s that kind of man, and he loves it. He could probably sit down tomorrow and do a mini-biography of you.”
Reuben had asked, “How many political biographies does he master?”
“Not many. And Lord knows, he doesn’t always end up with a winner. But he won’t back anybody he thinks has no prospects.”
Well, Reuben would soon find out if his answer to the grades-in-law-school question—that the records had been mislaid—was serviceable.
“So, Senator, you decided to go to law school—”
“Please call me Reuben, Mr. Kaltenbach.”
“Perhaps in the future. For the time being, if you don’t mind, I’ll call you ‘Senator.’”
Reuben did not surprise himself when he replied, “Whatever you say, Mr. Kaltenbach.”