POLL

SATURDAY, AUGUST 14, 2004

“And so my truth is that I am a gay American.” From behind his desk in the White House, Karl Rove watched the Governor of New Jersey make the proclamation. He watched it on his VCR. Over and over. Forward and rewind, forward and rewind. “And so my truth is that I am a gay American.”

It was music to his ears.

Rove turned to a thick stack of polling data from Ohio, peering at toplines and crosstabs. Digging his index finger into data as if taking its pulse. Concentrating that famous encyclopedic mind of the American political landscape. And not just the landscape as a whole, but specific zip codes. Especially zip codes in swing districts of Ohio.

Ohio was the battleground in this presidential election. Ohio, with its shallow pools of undecided and persuadable voters. Their values were a complicated grafting of incompatible principles. The self-described “evangelical moderate women” in the suburbs of Cleveland; the “national security Democrats” near Youngstown; the “family-values Blacks who support social spending” in Toledo; and the “right-to-life Catholics who oppose the war” near Dayton.

These were the individual swing voters whose decisions could swing a precinct, and that precinct could swing a whole county, and that county could swing all of Ohio, and Ohio would swing the entire election.

Rove rubbed his eyes, as the small print of the poll grew fuzzy. The news hadn’t yet seeped into the data. But it would. Over the next few days and weeks, the images of the Governor’s announcement—not to mention the relentless footage of thousands of gay people demanding same-sex marriages in San Francisco—would help the undecideds decide. By putting a giant God-fearing, gay-bashing, gun-loving wedge between them and John Kerry.

And that would seal the deal, he thought.

Fear. Fear was the ultimate wedge issue. And who was tapping on their shoulders in the dark, reminding them of the dangers that gathered and lurked around them? The terrorists, who threatened their survival and the gays, who threatened their marriages. Boo!

Rove was satisfied that Kerry’s post-convention bounce was easing. It was coming back to earth. An earth infiltrated by gays and terrorists and illegal immigrants. Which made Rove smile.

Down the corridor, in the Vice President’s office, Dick Cheney suppressed a frown.

“Secretary Ridge is reluctant to raise the Homeland Security alert at this time,” Jon Pruitt had just reported.

“Reluctant?” Cheney repeated, lifting his eyebrow. He glanced at Scooter Libby, who sat stiffly in a Queen Anne chair.

“There’s no credible justification at the present time. We already raised the alert for various financial institutions without any supporting intelligence. We can’t keep doing that.” He sighed, almost painfully.

Cheney remained silent. Libby would do his work for him:

“How about the suspicious foreigner videotaping the Brooklyn Bridge?” Libby asked.

“His hobby is photographing bridges. Wants to publish a coffee table book. Not blow up a bridge.”

“That group of foreign students taking out books on nuclear fission from the library in Boston?”

“Students at MIT.”

“Okay, what about those guys who pulled out that prayer rug at the airport and started praying toward Mecca before getting on their plane!”

“We checked it out. Evidently the airport chapel was already taken. By Baptists who were praying before getting on their planes.”

“Still . . .”

An uneasy quiet settled on the Vice President’s office.

Libby broke the silence. “Let me be clear. We go into our convention in two weeks. We need the right atmospherics on this.”

Pruitt said, “I think we have the right atmospherics. Tell the voters we don’t need to raise the threat level! Why? Because the Republicans are keeping you safe. Period.”

Libby nodded his head in protest. “If people feel safe, they’ll start paying attention to other issues where we may be . . . soft. Which means they just might elect Kerry. Who will make this country less safe. And expose us to an attack by our enemies.”

Good boy, Scooter! Cheney thought.

“As counsel to the Secretary of Homeland Security,” Pruitt said as officiously as he could, “I simply do not have the comfort level to advise him to increase the threat level based on . . . political considerations.”

“Political considerations? Who said anything about that?” Libby snapped.

“Not me,” said Cheney. And he cast a glare that sent a searing pain through Pruitt’s stomach.