Jennifer Close - The Hopefuls

I had a friend who had worked in the Clinton White House who told me that when Bill Clinton walked into the room, the whole place was electric. “He gave people goose bumps just by arriving,” she said. “Take my word for it — it’s almost like he’s magic.”

And I’d seen it with Obama — the charm that doesn’t feel sleazy, the smiles that seem genuine, the eye contact that makes you believe he’s paying attention, that maybe he even remembers you from the last time you met. Each year at the Christmas party, Obama gave a speech and made sure to thank the family members of his staff, telling the spouses that he knew the sacrifices we were making. Now, don’t get me wrong — I know he made this same speech at least a dozen times, repeating the lines at all of the Christmas parties they hosted. But still, it felt like he was speaking directly to me, and I cried every time — and it wasn’t (just) because of the strong eggnog they served there.

Where do people get the ability to do this? What is it that makes some politicians so attractive? Why did people like Hillary so much more when she cried? Why is it that Obama sings and it’s amazing, but Mitt Romney sings and looks like a nightmare you’d have about a wax figure come to life? And why, in God’s green earth, could Sarah Palin wink and talk about pigs and somehow make everyone around her forget that she’d basically admitted she didn’t read?

I don’t know the answers to any of these questions. If I did, I’d be earning millions somewhere as a political consultant, teaching awkward people how to be relaxed, making the unlikable appealing.

What I do know is that Jimmy had it — that thing that some politicians have and some don’t; that thing that can’t be named or explained. I heard him make the same promises to people, over and over, and they still sounded true. He’d shake people’s hands and say, “Let’s turn Texas blue,” and make it seem possible. It was amazing how people turned their bodies toward him as he walked into a room, how his smile made them feel warm. Everyone just wanted to be around him. Even me.

—

The first time I saw Jimmy talk to a group about fracking, he was unsure and a little shaky. He spoke in vague terms, and it was clear (at least to me) that his grasp of the situation was tentative at best. But just two days later, he sounded more confident, and by the end of the week, it was as if he’d been making speeches about drilling and wells and fracking his entire life.

Sometimes Matt dominated our dinner conversations with new things he’d learned — another town that just discovered water contamination, or a case that the current Railroad Commission had unfairly decided. And I started to notice that Jimmy repeated what Matt told us when he spoke to voters, that he copied whole phrases and stories word for word, even getting outraged at the same parts, acting as if he were the one who’d discovered this information.

“Do you notice,” I asked Matt one night, “how Jimmy copies exactly what you say?”

Matt shrugged. “Yeah, but that’s kind of the point. I write his speeches. We go over all of his talking points together. That’s my job.”

“No, I know,” I said. I tried to find the right way to explain myself. “It’s just funny to see him say exactly the same things you said the night before.”

“At least he’s not going off script.”

“Yeah…but, I mean, doesn’t it ever bother you? Like you’re doing the work and he’s cheating off of you?”

Matt looked up at me, considering the question. “That’s just how it works. It’s the same thing I’ve always done, to an extent. I’m supporting the candidate.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I don’t know why it feels weird.”

“It feels weird, because this time it’s Jimmy,” Matt said. “That’s why.”

—

At the end of Jimmy’s campaign, there were a million things I was unsure of, and just one thing that was definite: Matt’s words sounded better when they came out of Jimmy’s mouth. And it wasn’t fair, it was just the way it was.

Ash was different in Texas. For one thing, everyone called her Ashleigh and some people (mostly her family, but a couple of friends too) called her Ashleigh Mae, which sounded ridiculous because it rhymed. Ash-lay Mae — even I couldn’t say it without taking on a southern accent.

But it wasn’t just that, of course. It was that her personality changed, so that she seemed not quite the same person I’d befriended in DC. I didn’t notice it right away, not really. But the more time we spent there, the more I began to see that she acted a little more proper, was a little more done up, a little snobbier. Also her accent was much stronger, almost like she’d been hiding it all those years in DC, and sometimes when I’d hear her call up the stairs, “Vivienne Rose, I hear you fussing and I’m on my way,” she sounded like someone I’d never met before.

I began to think of her as Texas Ash, sort of like Malibu Barbie — basically the same, but with a few tweaks and extra accessories.

She took her role in Jimmy’s campaign very seriously — her role (as she saw it) being to stand next to him at events, dressed perfectly, smiling at everyone. Not a week went by that she didn’t go shopping and come back with bags of new clothes. “I just don’t want to keep getting photographed in the same thing over and over,” she said, like the paparazzi were following her everywhere, like she was Michelle freaking Obama.

And then there was her need to be a super housewife. Ash had always loved entertaining and cooked a lot (or at least more than I did), but now she seemed obsessed with what to make for dinner, insisted on preparing breakfast for us, which I found so strange — couldn’t we all just pour ourselves some cereal? Her table was fussier, always set with place mats and cloth napkins, a vase of flowers in the middle. Whenever I tried to help her in the kitchen, she either shooed me out or assigned me a small task — grating cheese or chopping peppers — and then hovered over me to make sure I was doing it right.

A lot of the girls Ash had grown up with lived in Sugar Land too, and even though she always introduced them to me as “my dear friend Ainsley” or “Charlotte, one of my oldest friends in the world,” I suspected she didn’t actually like any of them all that much.

They called themselves the Dozens, because there were twelve of them, but actually there were thirteen and the last poor girl to join the group, Mary, was always reminded that she ruined it a little bit for everyone when she came along. When I’d meet one of them, Ash would say, “She’s a Dozen” or “She’s one of the Dozens,” like it would mean something to me.

They went on annual trips together and out for “ladies’ nights,” where they’d inevitably all pose together for a picture, one big group of tiny blond girls, clutching Cosmos and smiling widely for the camera, and sometimes I wondered if the whole point of their friendship was just to post these images, to prove to the world that they had a bunch of pretty friends.

There was an undercurrent of competition with these girls — everything from house size to how many children they had. I wanted to think that Ash was above it all, but once when we were over at her friend Louise’s house, she went on and on about Stella and Dot, talking about how thrilled she was that she found success in a career that still let her spend loads of time with Viv. “You know, it’s not about the money, obviously. I think working makes me a better mother,” she said. “Not to mention how important it is for Viv to see an example of a strong female.”

Later, although I was pretty sure I knew the answer, I asked Ash if Louise worked. “Oh no,” Ash said, “she’s a SAHM.”