The Coup A Novel Hardback - 2007

Excerpt

1

Godwin pope checked his watch. Seven minutes left. He won’t be late for this, Godwin thought. There’s a legion of handlers and the mighty magnet of free air time on five broadcast channels and five cable networks to keep him on time for his first State of the Union address. His first real one, anyway. Jack Mahone had delivered one a year ago, but at that point, he’d been in office less than three weeks and was still keen on making a good impression. Since then, Mahone had on various occasions proved capable of keeping his wife, his children, his staff, the joint congressional leadership, the other seven of the G8 leaders, the Dalai Lama, eighteen gold medal–winning Special Olympians, and the Chicago Bears waiting while he flossed, did a crossword puzzle, played with his dog, finished his calisthenics, and talked to George Clooney about nuclear proliferation, but it seemed much too much to believe that he would dare shamble in late on a vast national audience equipped with remote–control channel changers and a hundred choices.

Or maybe he would.

Parked high in the vice president’s usual spot behind and above the podium, Godwin surveyed the House of Representatives Chamber in the Capitol Building. The panorama wasn’t his uniquely, of course; on Godwin’s left, Herman Vanick, the fleshy, cunning former gym teacher who had elbowed his way into the Speakership of the House four years ago, had nearly the same perspective from his seat, though Godwin doubted the ass–patting towel–snapper saw what he did. Vanick looked at the room and saw pretty much what Jack Mahone saw—a dung hill populated by ants who loved, hated, feared, or owed him, but who were basically merchants, here to buy and sell favors, markers, pork. Godwin looked at the room and saw history—John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay and Sam Rayburn, a beardless Lincoln and a callow Kennedy, measuring themselves within the room’s quiet magnificence. Well yes, okay, those men, along with an army of ambitious sharpies who had managed to maneuver their hands in the people's business—and their pockets.

But hey, Godwin thought, there’s no point being glum about it. That’s civilization, right? The strong and smart and clever have always tried to get something out of the credulous and besotted—and not only get something out of them but make them think giving it up is the right thing to do. The divine right of kings, Godwin snickered to himself. Now there was a sell job.

Of course, a big part of anybody being able to pull off a theory like that—that any single ordinary–looking goofball, whether you call him president, king, kaiser, sultan, or whatever, should control the fate of thousands or millions or hundreds of millions—was being able to perform well in meetings like this. Because ever since Homo sapiens slouched out of the caves, people have had meetings like this. Not always in a great high–ceilinged hall scrutinized by fourteen television cameras and the eyeballs of a global audience. Sometimes it has been by the big rock or the big sequoia or the carcass of the mastodon. But always we’ve gathered, ready to listen to the Top Man try to map out the road ahead. And as always, Godwin noted, the customary members of the tribe attend:

On the right, the guardians, our military chiefs, the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Not our most valiant warriors, mind you, or our bravest, or our most bloody–minded, or our most efficiently lethal, but six professionally accomplished, ribbon–bedecked commanders who have learned, through decades of bureaucratic maneuvers, that the answer to every military question, whether it’s about money, time, firepower, or troops, is “We need more.”

Next to them are our great justices, the members of the Supreme Court, resplendent in their robes. Nine judicial pashas, with nary a shred of practical experience among them, mystical high priests trying like a fat woman with a pair of bicycle shorts to stretch an eighteenth–century document around twenty–first–century issues, while at the same time wriggling to cloak partisan positions under the guise of nonpartisan precedent. Godwin remembered the pretty young attorney who had been parked across from him at a dinner party—at Freston’s house, that’s right, Freston of Frest–Tel Construction. Yes, in fact it was Freston’s stepdaughter by his third marriage, Rochelle, the Frest–Tel heiress. She’d just finished a stint clerking for the elderly, musty Associate Justice Pinturabo—look at him down there, his fat belly bulging even under his robe! She had disclosed the most amazing fact: seven of the nine ultimate arbiters of the laws of the world's richest, most innovative nation had never Googled a thing—not even themselves.

To their left sit the cabinet, a group of men and women of medium accomplishment and a superabundance of caution. The president’s friends. His fund–raisers. His donors. His bootlicks. Forgettable, interchangeable people whose proudest accomplishment, now and for all their lives, will be to say “I headed a government agency.” Headed. Like Pelé.

And filling the room, stretching from side to side, are the mighty solons of Congress, the 535 wise men and women of the Senate and House, the Jacks and Jills and Shaniquas and Billy Bobs, the ex–fraternity house presidents and prom committee chairgirls, the former school board members and state assemblymen who learned their trade debating liquor laws and zoning regulations, 535 egotists superglued to corporate interests, who now get to kick around the great questions of war and peace, poverty and abundance, enrichment and enslavement. Living dinosaurs, Godwin thought, creatures whose tiny minds stand in inverse proportion to their wide, spreading butts.

All waiting for…

The back doors of the chamber opened, and the sergeant at arms of the House, Woody Lynn Grant, a thin, tiny, pinched–faced man wearing huge aviator glasses and a glen plaid suit with ginormous lapels, called out to the assembled throng.

“Mr. Speaker! Mr. Speaker! The President of the United States!”

Will wonders never cease? Godwin thought. On time!

His annual speaking part in the great national dramedy come and gone, Grant, who had been making that announcement for twenty–eight years, and who three years ago was rumored to have thrown a letter opener at an underling who had, without a sufficient tone of mournfulness in his voice, noted that Woody was now four years past retirement age, stepped aside. Into the vacuum strode John Bartholomew Mahone, wearing a navy Hart Schaffner & Marx suit and a professionally triumphant grin. He moved down the aisle, slowly and yet somehow at the same time vigorously, pumping the outstretched hands of those members of his party who had managed to finagle aisle seats in an effort to get a split second of face time on national TV while backslapping the passing prez.

Look at him, thought Godwin. Good old Jack Mahone. Smilin’ Jack. Happy Jack. Crafty Jack. President Jack. Big Jack Off. We rise and salute his entrance, his presence, his very perambulation. It’s an act a great many one–year–olds have mastered, Godwin thought, but let’s applaud him nonetheless.

Herman Vanick leaned close to Godwin. “How long do you think this windbag is going to gas on tonight?”

“I understand they did run–throughs at the residence yesterday and the fastest time was seventy–two minutes.”

“Ke–rist on a crutch!” moaned Vanick. “I was hopin’ to get home in time for the second half of the USC game.”

“If he left out all the pork barrel programs they put in just to get in on your good side, Herm, he could cut it by a quarter.”

“Yeah, right. Say, is your buddy Ralston going to sign any free agents? Everybody knows the Redskins need a fullback. People in fucking Mongolia know the Redskins need a fullback.”

“Don’t spread it around, but I hear they’re going to go after Marco McChesney.”

“Ah, shit, McChesney’ll be as big a bust as this asshole Mahone.”

Godwin had no opinion on the relative merits of Marco McChesney, but he wasn’t going to exhaust himself defending this asshole Mahone. The president was a Louisiana man, Baton Rouge, fifty–nine years old, ex–governor, ex–senator, passably handsome, garrulous, louche, a man who possessed a common touch, a man of the people. He came out of the convention nine points back and won thirty–six states on Election Day, almost a landslide, mostly by correctly and successfully painting his opponent as dismally out of touch. Thirteen short, fast months later, he's managed to plunge to the lowest favorability rating that any president ever had at the end of his freshman year.

The poor stupid bastard never had a honeymoon, Godwin thought. He let his good old buddy loyalists from Baton Rouge manage the transition, and they rewarded him with a slow, slovenly, amateurish, leak-filled process that left most of the key cabinet appointments in limbo until they had to get bum-rushed through the vetting process as Inauguration Day loomed. Corners were cut, disastrously, as it turned out. Mahone’s first attorney general nominee, a pompous federal judge from Minnesota, was revealed to have been employing a teenage Guatemalan houseboy for six years. The jurist was thrilled to be able to plead guilty to various tax violations and ship young Estaban back to Quetzaltenango before the hard–ass lifers in the Justice Department got the chance to ask too many questions. The furor over that blunder hadn’t quite died down before Mahone’s replacement nominee, an esteemed law professor and mother of four from Baltimore, famous for her many television appearances, was paraded before the media. The president’s friends in the press gushed at this model of modern womanhood and wondered how she managed to do it all; virtually at the same time, his enemies wondered why she possessed seventy–two separate Prozac prescriptions from physicians in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, Washington, D.C., Ontario, and Grenada. She very quickly decided she needed to spend more time with her family, and Mahone elevated a bland deputy from the previous administration, just to stop the hemorrhaging.

Or, to be more precise, to stop the hemorrhaging from that particular wound. Jack bled elsewhere. There was the gay ambassador being married in Barbados confirmation thing, and the First Lady’s clumsily phrased expression of sympathy around the crippled kids thing, and the ex–daughter–in–law’s nude Web site thing, and the eighteen marine peacekeepers being killed in Malaysia while Jack was skiing in Sun Valley thing, and the Hurricane Fatima recovery debacle thing, and the NASDAQ collapse and the economy teetering on the verge of recession thing—zing, zing, zing, all in a row. The president of Fox News busted his overtime budget for the year in just over six months because he had to put on so many extra people in order to maintain the network’s flow of fair and balanced outrage. But it wasn’t just Fox that didn’t think Jack was up to the job, and it wasn’t just Godwin. The tone of the editorials in the New York Times and the Boston Globe and even the home state New Orleans Times–Picayune, which had begun at apologetic, had evolved into dismayed, and had lately turned south into exasperated. There were thumb–sucker pieces in the opinion mags about the decline of executive power and features in the conservative mags about Herman Vanick and the rise of congressional authority, and there were murmurs among Washington's permanent plutocracy that Jack was simply unlucky. The unspoken question behind such comments, of course, was how long could an unlucky man be left in charge before his unluckiness sickened them all.

Godwin kept applauding as he watched Jack effervescently run the gauntlet of cabinet cheerleaders, reach the podium, and bound up the steps. Godwin extended his hand, but Jack reached past his vice president and grabbed the Speaker's outstretched arm. Vanick’s name recognition was lower than Mahone’s, of course, but his favorability ratings were higher, and Jack wanted the cameras to have a good long look at the president having a warm, smiling, bipartisan clutch with the Speaker, the better to make it look like Herm's fault when the president’s legislative program hit the shit can on Capitol Hill.

“Hey there, Herm, how they hangin’?” Jack fairly bellowed, loud enough that Godwin was afraid the whole room would hear. “Think you’ll stand up and applaud for anything I say tonight?”

“My guess is you’ll say something I agree with, Mr. President,” replied Herm, his professional bonhomie in perfect form.

“One thing I’ll bet you’ll agree with is that I probably shouldn’t have had those chiles rellenos before a big event like this. Man, I got gas something awful!” At that, Jack snapped off a fart. “You fellows will have to forgive me if I have to let a few go up here. Better out than in.”

“No problem, Mr. President, I’ve been there myself,” Vanick replied, but Jack was already reaching for Godwin’s hand.

“Hey there, Godwin.”

“Good evening, Mr. President.” Godwin loathed the man, but he knew the rules: polite at all times, deferential in public.

“Chet went over everything with you, right? When to applaud, when to lead a standing ovation—”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“And how to look. You have to look confident.”

“I will.”

“And proud.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very proud and very confident.”

“Yes, Chet and I went over this.”

“And interested! For fuck’s sake, look interested. No yawning in the background.”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“Oh, and one more thing—” Mahone motioned Godwin closer, and Godwin leaned way over so that their heads nearly touched. On TV, commentators were remarking on this as a sign of the close collaboration that the two men enjoyed. “Godwin,” Jack was asking, “are you coming back to the residence after?”

“After the speech?” The question stunned Godwin. Mahone tended to reserve such invitations for his closest cronies, a small category of humanity to which Godwin neither belonged nor aspired.

“Well, I hadn’t planned on it, sir. I don’t think I was actually invited.”

“I guess I’m going to have to make a point of speaking to somebody about that. In fact, I’ll kick Chet’s ass. Because it would mean a lot to me if you came.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really.” A wide, warm smile lit Jack’s face. “Isn’t this the Mahone–Pope administration?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, let’s act like it.”

“Yes, sir. And thank you, sir. I’ll be there.” How weird, Godwin thought.

“All righty. Now, could you do me a favor?”

“Certainly, sir.”

“A friend of mine came in from out of town unexpectedly—you see her? Up in the gallery? About four or five rows behind the First Lady? And over—to the right?”

The two men looked into the gallery. The plump, extravagantly coiffed First Lady smiled sweetly and waved, and the men waved back. And indeed, over and to the right, Godwin could see a heavy–lidded blonde whom he took to be the president’s out–of–town pal. She had two large Tupperware bowl–shaped mounds of flesh prominently emerging from the surprisingly low–for–the–occasion neckline of what seemed to be a rather clingy dress, and she was using the long red fingernail on her left pinkie to daub at her mascara.

Media reviews

Advance Praise for The Coup


“Jamie Malanowski has written a biting and hilarious satire of the Journalistic-Political Scandal Complex. A hapless president and a hooker. An evil, conniving vice president, and a journalist horny for her next big scoop. They fall in and out of power while they fall in and out of bed. Where does Malanowski come up with this stuff?”

—Paul Begala, contributor to CNN’s The Situation Room and author of Is Our Children Learning?: The Case Against George W. Bush