Steven Gore - Power Blind

Landon slipped the end of the cigar into a miniature spring-loaded guillotine and snipped it off.

“Picture this. Early May, late evening, sitting on the porch of the vice president’s mansion. Me, him, and the head of the energy lobby, drinking Scotch and sucking on Cohibas. Male bonding. That’s what my wife calls it. But this wasn’t playing football in the park or catching bass on Lake Okeechobee or guzzling beer over boiled crayfish.”

Landon paused, glanced around his office, and then asked himself aloud, “Where am I going with this?” He ran the cigar under his nose, drawing in the aroma. “Following the money.

“Three little criminals sucking on Cohibas. Federal criminals at that.” He pointed at Gage. “I know what you’re wondering. You’re an investigator. You’re wondering where the vice president got the criminal cigars.” Landon smiled. “From the lobbyist, of course.” He gestured again, not pointing, simply punctuating. “And where did the lobbyist get them? From the president of Hudson Wire and Cable. And where did president of Hudson Wire and Cable get them? At a meeting in Barbados with the managing director of Hudson’s Cayman Island subsidiary that installed the electrical infrastructure for thirty-four hotels that were built on Varadero Beach in Cuba. And where did the managing director get them? From Fidel Castro’s brother’s son’s sister-in-law’s cousin who supervises the entire construction project.

“So there we were sitting on the back porch…” Landon paused, then clucked. “In case you’re wondering, the sister-in-law’s father is the leader of the largest anti-Castro group in Florida.”

Landon rose, walked to the window, and gazed over Washington. “Given this introduction, you’re no doubt imagining the lobbyist met with us to push for lifting the embargo. Not at all. And it’s not because he supports it. It’s simply irrelevant. Anti-Castro Cubans in the U.S. are no more than a bloc of votes to be delivered to politicians-on both sides of the aisle-who vote the right way on other matters.

“Hudson Wire and Cable makes tens of millions a year in Cuba, embargo or not. And one of those millions found its way into a political action committee backing me, and part of it has been set aside to get out the anti-Castro Cuban vote in Florida.”

Landon spun toward Gage.

“You think Hudson Wire and Cable ever gave a damn about how many political opponents Castro imprisoned and executed over the years? Or how many innocent Chechens Putin murdered or Egyptian protesters Mubarak shot down in the street? Or Suharto’s genocide in East Timor? Not a bit. As long as Hudson is free to pursue its interests in Cuba and Russia and Indonesia, it doesn’t care. And people like me who took their money didn’t choose to think about it.”

Landon picked at a fingernail.

“But let’s face it. The deaths of innocents are like fertilizer. Take China. Our Internet hardware manufacturers overlook political repression in order to sell them routers. Routers open the Chinese to the Internet. The Internet opens their eyes to freedom of speech and democracy.”

Gage pointed at Landon. “You’re starting to sound like Anston.”

“That’s exactly the problem, except Anston didn’t believe in democracy, only in fertilizer.”

Landon paused, then a half smile appeared on his face.

“There’s a certain irony in all of this I didn’t grasp until now. Brandon used to think of himself as my Machiavelli. What he didn’t realize was that Machiavelli believed the first act of a newly formed republic was sacrificial. It must murder the prince-and I suspect it’s something Anston never doubted.”

Landon’s eyes focused on the bookshelf behind Gage. “You know what St. Augustine says about original sin?” He looked back at Gage, but didn’t wait for an answer. “He calls it an inescapable blindness in human action. We never really know what we’re doing. And by ‘we’ I mean all of us. It’s not just Republicans or Democrats. We’re all coconspirators in our own self-deceptions. We create the most powerful industrial nation on earth, but only by funding oil-producing governments that want to destroy us. And then once in a while we wake up, have a moment of terrifying clarity, then run from it or go back to sleep pretending it was just a nightmare.” He hung his head. “Worst of all, when we most think we’re our own men, we’re really just someone else’s puppets.”

Landon inspected the cigar in his hand as if he’d never seen it before, then threw it into the wastebasket next to his credenza.

“In all these years since you gave me Augustine’s Confessions, it never crossed my mind he was talking about me.”

Landon dropped back into his chair, his arms limp in his lap. His eyes went vacant and inward for a moment, then he squinted as though searching for something far in the past. He finally focused on Gage.

“You always knew how all this would end, didn’t you?”

Gage shook his head, He hadn’t known. He had no way of knowing. And he was certain that in his heart Landon didn’t believe Gage knew. It was just that the floundering man still needed to believe that there was such a thing as perfect knowledge-both insight and foresight-with which he could have armed himself against the tragedy that now enveloped him.

“Maybe not specifically,” Landon continued. ”Maybe you couldn’t have foreseen where I am now, but from that first day on the river, you saw the hazards below the surface”-he lowered his gaze-“and all I really saw was my own reflection.”

Senator Landon Meyer paused at the threshold of the Senate Radio-Television Gallery, just out of sight of the video cameras focused on the door. He looked over at Gage.

“You know where I am in the New Hampshire polls?” Landon asked.

“Does it make a difference?” Gage asked.

Landon shook his head. “Turns out it never did.”

He then stepped through the doorway into the floodlights. In three strong steps he stood behind the podium. He scanned the familiar faces before him, the sources of thousands of questions over nearly two decades. While they were always dis-satisfied with his politically polished answers, he was always forgiven because of his charming delivery.

He glanced toward his wife standing behind him, thinking that she would have made a wonderful first lady. But he knew the voters would never forgive him for Brandon, and for his own blindness. She smiled at him as though they were alone in the kitchen reading newspaper cartoons over coffee or at the dinner table after he said grace.

As Landon’s eyes turned back to the crowd, he caught sight of an NBC producer, eyes pleading for action, as if to say the networks weren’t giving up advertising revenue only so the public could watch a senator gaze at his wife.

Landon glanced back at her again, then faced the cameras and removed his notes from his suit breast pocket.

“I have served as a United States senator for the last fourteen years and have sought to represent the people and the interests of the State of California.”

He paused and scanned the standing-room-only crowd.

“What does that mean? To represent. To act for others.”

He paused again.

“Who are the people? And what is in their interest?

“Does representation mean casting my vote to reflect the polls? Or does it mean voting my conscience that tells me what’s right, what’s wrong, and what’s in the true interest of the country, regardless of what the polls might say? It means all of this and, as it turns out, a great deal more.

“I say these things as a preface to a story I need to tell not only to the people of California, but to the people of the United States, for I serve in the United States Senate, not the California state legislature. This story recounts how I became elected to that body, how it happened that I continued to serve in that body, and finally became a candidate for president.”