After a day of settling procedural details, the conventioneers went out on the town. Philadelphia was not known for its nightlife, but a couple of thousand convention delegates went seeking entertainment and found it. Easily.
The next morning, despite hangovers and grossly exaggerated tales of romantic encounters, the delegates got down to the serious business of nominating candidates for the presidency.
Several dark horses were named, more to put them in a position to bargain with the eventual winner than as serious contenders.
Senator Tomlinson was nominated by aged warhorse Senator Zucco, who stressed the new beginnings that the Tomlinson space plan offered the nation, and the world. (And New Mexico, of course.)
As soon as Zucco finally mentioned Tomlinson’s name, Lovett’s people exploded in a frenzy of marching bands and high-stepping cheerleaders. Watching from Tomlinson’s suite in the Loews Hotel, Jake half expected to see Amy out there strutting with them. The auditorium rocked with noise as carloads of glittering confetti descended from the ceiling.
Jake was impressed with Lovett’s choreography. Across the room the senator grinned at the display, then turned to his wife and wisecracked, “Somebody down there likes me.”
Senator Sebastian was the final nominee, and the celebration for him was even bigger, with drone aircraft flitting through the auditorium dropping SEBASTIAN FOR PRESIDENT souvenirs onto the yelling, laughing, celebrating delegates.
Standing next to Tomlinson, Pat Lovett watched the festivities with unalloyed admiration. “Drones,” he muttered. “We should’ve thought of that.”
* * *
With a handful of campaign insiders, Jake watched Tomlinson’s evening speech on the Brandeis campus from the campaign headquarters suite in Philadelphia’s Loews Hotel.
The senator spoke in a large tent that had been erected on the school’s grassy campus. The tent was packed with university bigwigs and parents of the graduates, all listening to Tomlinson’s vision of what the future could hold. Despite the evening’s muggy heat, he soon had his audience spellbound.
The senator started by delineating the difference between the rule of law and mob law. “In our ongoing struggle against terrorism,” he said, “we mustn’t descend into the same tactics that the terrorists use: if we drag people out onto the street and kill them because of their names or their beards or the color of their skins, we’re no better than they are.
“America has been built on the fundamental freedoms that are based on the bedrock of the rule of law. We assume that you have to prove that a man is guilty before you punish him. We assume that the rule of law is what stands between us and the terror of the mob.”
Then the senator’s speech shifted to the space plan, with its bright promise of developing the frontier overhead.
Stretching his right arm in the general direction of the nearby Atlantic Ocean, Tomlinson said, “The sea was once a barrier to the Europeans, a wall that fenced in their hopes to expand civilization, to grow and prosper. Their dreams ended at the water’s edge. But they learned to build ships that traversed the sea, and transformed the ocean from a barrier into a highway. Civilization grew and expanded. People built new worlds, governed by freedom and the prosperity that only free men and women can create.
“Today we look up and see the barrier of outer space, a vast and seemingly unpassable wall that prevents us from expanding civilization anew. But we have learned to build craft that can traverse that barrier and turn it into a highway that leads to new wealth, new opportunity, new civilizations.
“A new age awaits us out in space. This generation of Americans can lead the world to a new era of peace and prosperity for all the peoples of Earth.”
As one person, the crowd rose to its feet and mightily applauded the new vision.
Sitting in the Loews Hotel suite, Jake felt his eyes misting at the dream Senator Tomlinson was promising.
* * *
As expected, the first ballot failed to produce a winner in Philadelphia. Sebastian was a mere twenty-eight votes short, but Tomlinson’s strong showing forced a second ballot.
And maybe a third, Jake thought as he watched the proceedings from Tomlinson’s suite. And a fourth.
It’s going to be a long convention, he realized.
Oratory flowed from the speaker’s platform like lava pouring from a volcano. Down on the convention floor deals were proposed, discussed, made and unmade. The delegates voted again, and again Sebastian came close to victory, but could not clinch it.
Despite Lovett’s wishes, Jake avoided the convention center as much as he could. Too crowded, too noisy, too steamy with politicians great and small eagerly pushing their own agendas, their own state’s favorite programs, their own egos.
Sitting wearily in an armchair in Senator Tomlinson’s suite, Jake watched the televised proceedings in a growing funk of worn-out numbness.
This is how we select our leaders, he told himself, while a delegate from North Dakota waxed almost lyrical about farm subsidies. Neither Tomlinson nor Sebastian had shown themselves at the convention. It was a long-standing tradition that the candidates did not appear among the delegates until one of them had won the nomination.
By the time Jake got back to the Downtown Courtyard and crawled into bed, dawn was beginning to lighten the sky. Tami was already in bed, sound asleep, with a quizzical little smile on her lips.
* * *
“How do we break this goddamn deadlock?” Lovett wondered, after the fourth ballot came out exactly like the third.
Jake saw the frustration on the campaign manager’s face, heard it in his increasingly abrasive tone. At this rate, he thought, we could be here ’til Christmas.
Jake was sunk into an armchair in the second bedroom of the senator’s suite, a place of relative calm for the inner elite. Lovett and O’Donnell were standing near the wall-screen TV with Tomlinson. Amy hadn’t put in an appearance yet; she was catching up on her sleep after spending the night and early morning watching the TV coverage.
Even the normally unruffled senator was beginning to look frayed. “So what can we do, Pat?” he asked.
Lovett shook his head. “We’re holding our own, but we’re not making any progress. If we don’t think of something, and soon, we’re going to start losing delegates.”
Tomlinson laughed derisively. “We won’t have to lose very many of them to hand Sebastian the prize.”
“There must be something we can do,” Lovett insisted.
Kevin O’Donnell, looking more pinched and cantankerous than ever, shook his head. “Sebastian’s people are sticking to him like they’ve been cemented in place.”
“How the hell does he do that?” Tomlinson wondered.
“More than a dozen years in the Senate,” O’Donnell answered. “He’s got a helluva lot of favors to pull in.”
“Well, we’ve got to do something,” Tomlinson insisted. “We can’t go on like this much longer.”
The bedroom door swung open just enough to allow one of the aides—a pretty young blonde—to stick her head in and announce, “A Mr. Patrone is on the phone, Senator. Says he has to talk to you. It’s urgent.”
Tomlinson looked baffled. “Patrone? Who the hell is Patrone?”
Lovett answered, “Sebastian’s campaign manager.”