The campaign for real campaigns

Andrew was rather down when he called me Wednesday evening. Even though he isn't up for re-election this year, the whole campaign business was clearly getting to him.

"I don't think I've ever been as unexcited by a campaign as I have by this one," he said. "It's all too calculated, to manipulative and . . . and there's something else that I can't quite put my finger on."

This was going to be a long one, so I pulled the stopper from the bottle of Armagnac, poured a good measure, sat down and put my feet up. If I smoked, this would be a good time for a cigar, too. Cigars help measure the amount of time that passes on these occasions.

"Both candidates have good plans. Neither is what anyone could call a loser, but - hell, it's dull!"

"I thought this was a real cliff-hanger," I said.

"Oh, the result is going to be close, but it's hardly going make much of a difference who gets in," Andrew said. "Remember when Goldwater wanted to bomb the hell out of the North Vietnamese and was labeled a reactionary. A year later, what did Johnson do?"

"I remember."

Boy did I remember. Andrew did too. Conversations about Vietnam dominated our high school and college years, as well as the several years we spent in the military after that.

The line went quiet for a while. Sometimes Andrew would just think on the Washington-Paris phone line. Well, he was paying for this one.

"Andrew," I began, "I've thought of a way that you can differentiate your presidential campaign once you get to it. It's nearly fail-safe and will put a real gulf between you and whomever you run against."

"Not now," he said plaintively.

"Yes, now, Andrew," I said. Sometimes he, like all politicians, just needed to be told.

There was a whimper of acquiescence.

"I think what might be at the root of your uneasiness about this campaign is that no one is selling dreams," I began.

"What?" he asked, rallying.

"No one is selling dreams," I repeated. "All they're selling is fear and security. No one is selling a wonderful, bright, affluent future with better health, education, prosperity or any of that stuff."

"But no one believes that stuff any more," he protested, engaging with the idea.

"That doesn't matter. Who were the most inspiring presidents since World War II?" I challenged.

Andrew didn't think long.

"Kennedy and Reagan."

"Why?"

"They both looked as they enjoyed being president. They looked born to the job. They inspired confidence. They had impossible dreams."

"Yeah, like a man on the moon and the fall of the Soviet Union," he said, his voice coming alive.

"And what are we being offered now?"

"Greater surveillance, less mobility, more inconvenience, higher prices to pay for it all," he said.

"That's the way it looks from this side of the Atlantic," I said. "No one's got anything positive to get behind. There's not a single idea that's inspiring or exciting."

"Keep talking," he said, finally sounding like his normal self.

"The man on the moon was the perfect project. He knew that even with full backing, it wouldn't happen in his presidency, even if he went the full eight years. The dream would live on, even if a later administration cancelled it. It was good for jobs, too. If it worked, it was Kennedy's baby; if it was cancelled, it was Kennedy's visionary 'what might have been.'"

"You've got it, on both counts," Andrew said enthusiastically. "We're being offered nothing this time around. Just like you said, just fear and inconvenience."

"There's another thread here, too, Andrew," I interrupted. "Politicians are great at coming up with new ideas. The trouble is that most of them are "solutions" for things that aren't problems. Just talk fodder giving them something to say. What a real campaign needs are solutions to things that are actually problems."

"That and a dream," Andrew said.

"You've got it."

The quality of life

In mid-October, there can be days when the sun feels like early summer, and the evening stay warm. The tables outside the cafés are full until after eleven and the streets radiate the day's warmth.

Morris Quint, the poet, had been over to sort out his lastest volume of poetry, and he, Fabienne Defarge, Sarah and I had gone for a simple supper, then moved to a café further along Saint Germain than American tourists could usually be bothered to walk.

Morris had always had a thing about Fabienne, and had unashamedly written a number of poems about her. Though primarily a poet of New England in the tradition of Robert Frost and Robert Francis, whenever Quint was in France, he wrote about it.

It was an easy evening with good conversation, laughter, argument and lots of wine and coffee. Sarah and I were back at the rue de Bac shortly before midnight and fell onto the bed and were asleep within seconds.

At around three, I woke up and realized I was still dressed. As I changed, I went to the kitchen to get a tumbler of water and passing the telephone, was seized with the idea of calling Andrew. It wasn't late enough to wake him up, but it just might be inconvenient.

"Hello?" he said.

"Ah, Andrew! I've had a brilliant idea," I said.

"Tell me tomorrow. I'm on the way to bed," and he sounded about to put the receiver down.

"It could make you go down in history," I said.

"Let me get my notebook," he said and the line went quiet for a while.

"Okay, mon vieux, gived it to me," he said.

I could imagine him slouching in the arm chair next to the phone with receiver tucked on his shoulder and the notebook on his knee.

"It's about quality of life, Andrew. If you can improve the quality of life for people, they will remember it, and you will have made a real difference."

"Sounds expensive," he said.

"Okay, listen to this. Nine-five percent of America has warm springs, summers and falls. Alaska is the five percent that doesn't. Okay, I'm making the numbers up, that's why you have an assistant who can debate the issue with someone else's legislative assistant," I conceded. "But remember, you can still become president even if you lose Alaska."

"I get the picture. Go on."

"How many sidewalk cafés are there in America? How many places where people can eat and drink unhurried, unhassled?" I began.

"Careful," Andrew siad.

"Okay, don't talk about the drink. Stick with eating," I said. "How many? Not a lot. Why?"

"Well, trading on a public footpath is a legal issue; there are ordnances, by-laws, and all that," he said.

"Dump them."

"What?"

"Dump them," I repeated. "Letting a café owner rent a bit of sidewalk will bring in a lot more money than passing by-laws. It could open whole areas of wasted space in city centres."

"Go on," Andrew said tentatively.

"You need trees, too," I said. "After the Dutch elm disease trashed all our cities and towns, how many replanted them? Not many. That was forty-five years ago. There'd be great trees there now. They don't cost much, and they add value to property and quality to the life of the people who live near them."

"How do you figure that?"

"How many trees are there in poor neighborhoods, or cheap developments - even after twenty years?" I challenged.

"Not many, I guess."

"Turn it around. How many affluent neighborhoods are there without trees - I'm not talking Phoenix or Albuquerque, here, but civilized places."

"Can I afford to lose Arizona and New Mexico?" Andrew asked.

"Yeah, and Nevada; but think trees," I enthused. "School children could have tree=growing projects. They could grow acorns, chestnuts, horse chestnuts and maple trees. Hell, they could even grow sumacs - they actually sell them here in nurseries."

"Some perv would grow poison ivy," Andrew said. "And then, sue the school district."

"So what?" I said. "Are you going to let a handful of cretins condemn American cities to being botanical wastelands?"

Silence.

"Andrew, this is brilliant. It's cheap, effective, revenue-generating, profit-making and all the towns that go for it first will have tremendous amounts of free publicity and rising property values."

"It does sound good," he said eventually. "Is this why the quality of life is so good in France?"

"It certainly is," I said. "But two hour lunch breaks and five week annual vacations help."

Saying the unsayable

After a busy morning at the office negotiating with the author of Anthropomorphic Resonance for Beginners, I managed to escape to catch the last races and Longchamps and was pretty tired by the time I got back to rue de Bac.

I was reading about the latest government scandal and about to doze off when the phone rang. I put Le Figaro down and answered.

"Hello, Andrew," I said.

"Good guess, Commander," he replied casually. "I need your help on something. You're a PR guru and wordsmith - "

"I haven't done PR for years, Andrew, and that was for the government when I was travelling in steel."

"Well, this is for the government, too, and battleship style PR is what I need," he replied.

"It was a light cruiser."

"I won't tell, if you don't," he said. "Look, there is a serious problem in the US, and it's something that no one will address."

"The role of the Vice President?" I asked.

"No, the strength of the handicapped lobby," he said, his voice deadly serious. "No politician in his right mind will oppose any proposed program for the disabled. Only the lamest of lame ducks would ever contemplate it."

"A lame duck might need some disability concessions," I said.

"Very good. Ha-ha. But the problem is very real," he said.

"You've been talking to a constiutent again, haven't you? I warned you about that," I said.

Andrew Trumbull's family had been talking to constituents for more than 160 years. His family had been ambassadors, representatives, senators and governors from western Massachusetts since Van Buren was president.

"I had a school principal drop in to see me," he began. "He's not a constiutent, but from New York. He was a friend of Matt's from his Bowling Green days."

Matthew Ryan, PhD., was a classmate of Andrew and me. He was now headmaster of Adams Hall, and had an on-again, off-again marriage with Andrew's cousin, Emily Trumbull, but that's another story.

"This principal told me that in his primary school of 700 pupils, he has 22 autistic children. Each one has his own assistant, and every two has a teacher with an MA in special education."

"That's thirty three staff," I said.

"Yes, and there are several special needs administrators, coordinators and extra medical personnel," Andrew said.

"Why are are there so many autistic children? Are they near a nuclear power station?"

"I'll get to that," Andrew said. "No one disputes that all childeren need care, help and teaching, but his complaint was that his most qualified staff were spending all their time with those children least able to make a contribution to the community.

"He's a very caring man. High values, and comes from a dedicated Christian tradition, but he simply asked me, 'Shouldn't the able children have the same resources allocated to them for their eductation?'"

"That's what equality of opportunity means, isn't it?" I asked.

"You'd think so," Andrew sighed. "I don't want to jeopardize opportunities for the disabled, but this pusilanimous acquiescence at the expense of mainstream education needs attention, and everyone is too afraid to do it."

"And that's why you called me?"

"Yes. No. I mean, I don't want you to do anything about it, but is there a way into this problem?" he asked.

I thought a moment.

"I think only one thing will work," I said.

"What's that?" he asked, not daring to be enthusiastic.

"The issue has to be raised by one or more representatives, senators or governors who are themselves suffering from some disability," I said. "If anyone else does it, they're dead meat."

"There are a few I'd like to handicap myself," Andrew said.

"I know what you mean," I said, tossing my Longchamps betting slips into the wastebasket. "Oh, you were going to tell me why your principal friend thought there were so many autistic children at his school."

"The state of New York requires every child to have 22 injections before he can enter public school."

Medical matters

Andrew called me Thursday night, well, morning, actually, as he never paid attention to the fact that there was five hours' difference between Washington and Paris.

"Don't go to the doctor's!" he exclaimed, not saying hello, sorry I woke you up, or how did dinner with the ambassador go.

"I wasn't planning to," I said, trying to find the switch on the table lamp but knocking the stopper out of the decanter instead. As long as it was open, I poured a drink and settled into a chair.

"I've just come from a discussion where someone said that the third largest cause of death in America is medical malpractice! It's right up there after heart disease and cancer," he said excitedly.

"Not enough red wine and olive oil," I said. "The French don't suffer from heart disease the way we do."

"Medical malpractice kills more people than murderers, car accidents, breast cancer, Alzheimer's and diabetes combined!" he continued excitedly.

"Physician, heal thyself!" I said, toasting with a rather subtle Beaujolais.

"Everyone hates lawyers, but it seems the doctors are the real villains," Andrew said.

"I can't see doctor jokes coming into vogue," I said. "Doctors might be inept, but by and large they're likeable. Unless they drive BMWs."

"Yeah, well, that's true of all BMW drivers," he agreed, finally calming down. "But this is a great opportunity."

"Opportunity? For whom? Undertakers?" I asked.

"No, to put in my presidential platform," he said. "'Trumbull attacks third major cause of death in the US,'" he said, testing the ring of the headline. "That's not bad, is it?"

"It's better than 'Trumbull crucifies doctors,'" I said.

The line was silent for a moment and I contemplated refilling my glass.

"This could come under the heading of things the public are better off not knowing," he said eventually.

"I'm sure it comes under 'national security,'" I said.

"You think so? Good."

"Good night, Andrew."