I’ve got to piss so bad I can taste it, but I can’t move. I can’t get up until I finish this press release. Newt wants this press release and he wants it now, and what the Newtman wants, the Newtman gets.
Damn those two Ventes! Damn them! And damn me for believing all that shit about those ballbusters on Wall Street who spend the whole day at their desks and then piss twenty feet into the urinal before they go to party. Damn it!
<pI pound the keys for the last two paragraphs to give it that Newtman punch, that snap that lets everyone know the power of the Newtman, the world-historical grasp, the relentless vision that is denied to lesser men—the Clintons, the Hasterts, the McCains, the Giulianis. “The hand of the master,” Newt likes to say. “Let them feel the hand of the master.”
I proof the damn thing for dropped words and inconsistent tenses—Newt hates that. I correct a couple and give it a third review. I’d like to give it to Cheryl but she’s not here and I won’t give to Harry because he’ll just fuck with it. I hit send and jump from my chair. I’m just making the pivot when Harry walks by.
“Ned’s office,” he says. “Now.”
“I need a pit stop.”
“Later.”
Damn it! If I hadn’t already sent the press release I would have had an out. But it pisses Harry off when I’m working on a call from Newt. Newt’s supposed to call Harry, or Ned, not me. So I put a cork in it and follow him.
Once we get to Ned’s office I find out what the big deal is. Ned is pumped. He’s going on CNN live to talk about Newt and the primaries. Newt’s on speaker, and he’s rapping on strategy, how the Newtman’s going to play it. How inside is this! As long as I don’t piss my pants, it’s worth it.
As Newt’s talking—he’s saying the other candidates are dense pack, or something—it’s by me—and he’s Ronnie II, Ronnie all over again—my cell buzzes. I keep it on vibrator all the time in the office—I’m just not important enough to let the damn thing ring—and I let it buzz until it’s done. I have a guess who’s calling, but this is definitely not a good time.
It’s hard to have a conversation with Newt, because he has so much to say, but Ned’s a pro. Newt pauses for just half a beat and Ned jumps in, telling Newt there’s no one like him, that none of the others can go the distance. When Ned pauses for half a second Maurice starts talking about the Iowa polls but Newt interrupts him.
“Jerry,” he yells, “Jerry? Are you there?”
“I’m here, Newt,” I tell him.
“This release isn’t right. It’s not me.”
Harry smirks. He loves this.
“We need to strategize this,” Newt says. “This isn’t a throwaway. This is major. People will want to read this. We’ve got to flesh it out, tell a story. This is just facts. Are you going to be at the reception for Henry?”
“I can be.”
“Good. Good. Tell them you’re with me. We’ll find time. I want this to hit hard. We need to wake up some people on this one.”
I don’t smile, or at least I hope I don’t. To be sitting in a room with Ned and Harry, not to mention Janice and Michael, and Maurice, and to get a face-time summons. Well, it’s cool. It’s almost dangerously cool. Newt does that all the time, of course—pissing off his senior staff, praising low-levels like me in front of both senior and junior staff. He doesn’t know. He just doesn’t know. He’s in Newtworld, that strange and fascinating nebula in which all reality revolves around, in fact emanates from, Newt Gingrich, or at least it would if we could only get through the damn clutter, the pretty boys like Mitt Romney, the has-beens like McCain, the ego-tripping big-city big-mouths like Giuliani, and former fatboys like Mike Huckabee, who keep fucking up the damn radar.
Ned handles it well. He allows me my nano-second in the spotlight and then he shifts it back to himself.
“I need a zinger,” he says. “I can’t just give them two minutes of mush. We need to make an impact.”
There’s a pause, a nano-second of weightlessness. Oh, how Newt would love to launch a zinger, and how Ned would like to launch one too. But there’s a pause, as there always is.
“The timing,” Newt says. “I’d love to. But we’ve got to hit them both. Both parties are ducking the real issues. I mean, we’re falling behind the damn Chinese! And India! They’re producing five times as many engineers as we are! And the damn health-care system! When the hell are we going to rationalize our health care system through market forces? When is that going to happen?”
We all keep straight faces while Newt goes off.
“You’re right, Newt,” says Ned. “We need to hit them on this.”
“You’re damn right. Keep their feet to the fire. Let them know there’s someone out there speaking the truth.”
“Good, good,” says Ned, nodding. “Education and health care.”
“And energy. Look at gas prices. Three dollars a gallon! And all that money is going to our enemies! The American people want answers here. Where are the incentives? We aren’t thinking strategically. We’ve got to be. We’re reacting instead of acting. We’re letting people like Putin and Chavez set our agenda for us. Is that any way for a great nation to act?”
Newt’s on a tear, which is good for him but not so good for me. The stress is transferring internal pressure from my bladder to my bowels. I wonder if I’m sweating. Thank god Ned keeps the AC cranked in his office.
Newt is still going. He’s talking about the copyright office, the FDA, the crippling of American innovation.
“That’s really good,” says Ned. “Janice, are you getting that?”
“Yes,” says Janice, a little ticked, because everyone can see she’s typing.
“We’ve got it, Newt,” says Ned. “Good stuff. Very good.”
“What about social issues?” says Harry. “We’ve got Huckabee and Romney.”
“Huckabee we don’t have to worry about,” says Newt.
He laughs. It’s always good to hear Newt laugh, even when you think he’s wrong. Newt remembers Huckabee as the lardbutt from Arkansas who broke a chair by sitting on it. Ned and Harry don’t think that way. They think Huckabee’s got traction.
“Arkansas is dangerous,” says Harry. “They send us all their supershits.”
Mitt’s the one Newt doesn’t like. All that money, all those good looks, all that youth. “Fucking young prick,” I heard him say once, when he was watching Mitt’s rap on Fox. So he leans on Mitt.
“He’s dangerous,” he says, “but he’s got lots of baggage. The Baptists hate him. Just, just ignore him. I mean, if they ask you specifically say he did a good job in a very liberal state, I mean, no, don’t say that. Say, say, say he’s—frame it, say he’s got a lot of credibility problems with mainstream Republicans. I mean, no religion, say he had to go left to win in Massachusetts, which is understandable, but his record just doesn’t fit with the Republican mainstream. People have to ask themselves if he’s a real Republican.”
“What if they go with the Mormon thing?”
“It’s not an issue. It’s not an issue. No one cares about that. It’s, no, don’t go with abortion. Do not mention abortion. I mean, all Republicans are united on that issue.”
“What about Giuliani?” asks Harry.
“Let Rudy hang his own damn self,” Newt says. He’s laughing. He hates Rudy but he’s sure he can’t make it. “Mitt’s the guy. We’ve got to take the shine off his paint. Scratch him up. You know, the party faithful just don’t know where he stands. They can’t have confidence in him. The Republican Party can’t win without a candidate who’s got the, the confidence of the party faithful.”
“The Republican Party isn’t going to nominate anyone from Massachusetts,” I say. “We leave that to the Democrats.”
There’s another pause, maybe a nano-second and a half, and if it gets any longer I think I’m going to take a dump right then and there, but Newt saves me.
“I like that,” he says. “Yeah, I like it.”