Leon Uris - A God In Ruins

Quinn and his people staggered into New York for a hit-and-run visit.

This was Greer Little-Crowder country, and she filled the Plaza grand ballroom with a bursting crowd of financial wizards, stars of the entertainment business, developers, attorneys, CEOs, tall athletes, bankers.

(Gawd! He is gorgeous!)

(Well, she’s not exactly chopped liver.)

Quinn went to them as a successful businessman. “To retain our exalted commercial status in the world, let us run a gut check on ethical standards. Hey, soft money is greed money. Greed money is soft money. Soft money erodes our underpinnings.”

Just about everyone in the ballroom was uncomfortable but emptied their wallets to the limitations. Maybe Quinn was not for them, but it was nice to have a spokesman for the conscience before reelecting Thornton Tomtree.

Now for the grand entrance in a late rally at Columbia University with students bussed in from NYU and St. John’s and Fordham and Yeshiva and City College.

“We can no longer afford racism. A short century and a half ago we fought a civil war to erase the ogre of slavery. The twentieth century was all about people liberating themselves, declaring their freedom and dividing the planet into a hundred and eighty-five independent nations. This new century is the century we will get rid of one of mankind’s oldest scourges. We will rid ourselves of the curse of bigotry.”

A hundred cameras ate up several thousand exposures of Quinn shaking hands with Warren Crowder, of Quinn shaking hands with Warren Crowder and Greer Little-Crowder.

Meanwhile, Rita had garnered a great deal of attention of her own.

The Madison Square Garden fund-raiser turned away over three thousand people. The fever was like a Lindbergh parade down Broadway. Quinn left New York with over a million and a half dollars and fifty-eight percent of the Democratic vote.

“Governor O’Connell, Charles Packard, Reuters. Would you care to comment on the Newsweek story concerning your campaign chairperson, Greer Little-Crowder?”

“Without Greer my campaign would have never gotten off the ground, nor could it run so well.”

“Follow-up question, Governor. Were you and Ms. Crowder romantically linked?”

“We sure were. We were sweethearts at the University of Colorado thirty years ago. She was also an excellent baseball coach and raised my batting average almost forty points.”

“Doesn’t it seem newsworthy, sir, that Greer Little-Crowder is now a powerful person, throwing herself into your campaign?”

“Obviously, she was anguished by the Four Corners tragedy and, along with millions of Americans, believes the Second Amendment must be repealed.”

“Louise Markham, Washington Times. Have you and Ms. Crowder had contact in the intervening years?”

“Well, not the kind of contact you are hinting at. We’ve met on public occasions.”

“Governor, Chance Spencer, MS NBC Did Ms. Crowder resign or simply take an extended leave?”

“Hold the phone, ladies and gentlemen. You’re leading me down a dirt road to the woodshed. For God’s sake, don’t throw us back to the dark ages of 1998 and the damage it wrought, and the torture imposed on a great but imperfect man.”

“What about the public’s right to know?”

“That right ends at my front door. I hope I will be able to invite everyone into my parlor. The rest of my home is a private place between me and my wife and family, and God.”

Showdown time in Dixie. Six of the eight primaries were in the South.

Florida and Texas, two of the mega-states, loomed in front of Quinn. A

favorite-son candidate from Florida,

Governor, and later Senator Chad Humboldt, girded to stop the O’Connell train.

Quinn’s family began to surface in the press and interviews. Rita and her smile and her kind ways. One had to think back to Jackie Kennedy, although Rita’s beauty could scarcely be matched.

Hey, that Duncan, what a hunk! He left the daily nuts and bolts of the ranch operation to Juan Martinez. He spent most of his hours in the veterinarian and animal research facility built on the property.

It was only fitting that Duncan fall in love with a Glenwood Springs veterinarian, Lisa Wong, of Asian-American heritage. She came to Troublesome on a research grant, to positively determine the shelf life of eggs. She saw Duncan enter through the chicken coop .. . and that was that.

Duncan went campaigning and saw to his father’s rest periods, filtered the in-coming communications—a lion at the gate.

Lisa remained at the ranch, seeing to the comfort of her

grandmother-in-law Siobhan, who was Falling to cancer.

Rae, a computer scientist at the Atmospheric Research Institute in Boulder, took a leave of absence to set up and operate the campaign headquarters’ computers. She reported to Greer on everything from collections to travel reservations to advertising.

Rae tried one four-day campaign swing with the candidate, and that was

enough! . because everything blurred together: airports, welcoming

committees, Secret Service men moving back TV cameras, shouting

correspondents, “Would you mind a picture with Mrs. Gumport?” “I’d

love it!” Quinn would answer .. . hamburgers, baloney sandwiches,

tourist class, Big 8 motels, polls, TV studios, talk radio shows,

ballrooms, school auditoriums, “Let’s hear a rah-rah O’Connell,” homes

for the aged, beady-eyed big donors, wide-eyed girls with short skirts,

throw out the first pitch, press conferences, more press conferences, short parades in small towns, Irish, Jews, Italians, Gulf Coast fishermen, Mexicans, wheat farmers, black mayors, white mayors, tan mayors .. . Sunday. “Rita, you go pray for me, honey, we’ve got meetings every twenty minutes” .. . Internet, outer nets, books as wisdom, “Can we get this pressed and have it back in an hour?” .. . “What the hell do you mean, I’ve got a fever? I can’t have a fever, because I’ve got to be in Des Moines,” “We need cash, boss,” position papers, “Happy Days Are Here Again!” .. . orange juice, lots of orange juice .. . “Am I going to have time to go to the John?” .. . “Sorry, not till our next stop, Governor.”

Chad Humboldt blistered the South through innuendo. The word Catholic was not used out loud, but it played in the Christian Right churches. The gist of it was that O’Connell is only pretending to be one of us, but he isn’t. He’s a brooding mountain man, and when he looks you in the eye it is impossible to know if he is truthful. “Let us not forget that we have had presidents who looked us in the eye and lied through their teeth.”

Chad Humboldt was a generations fixture supported by a sudden coalition of politicians in Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and mighty Texas. Be cautious of the stranger. Be cautious of his inexperienced views on the issues. Humboldt wove around the gun-control issue but warned of a stranger who would steal away the traditions.

JACKSON, MISSISSIPPI MONDAY

MARCH 10, 2008 “You’re going to the well once too often,” Greer snapped. “It won’t play in Jackson.”

“It played in Atlanta.”

“It had great surprise and shock value, granted, but that was then and now is now. No electorate is going to keep listening to morality plays. We are in Apache country, Quinn.”

“Ummmm.” “Rita, Mal, help me, for chrissake.”