Saturday, May 17, 2008
He was determined to be strong, to go to D.C. with an agenda, and that agenda was to have simultaneous affairs with three or four women in their 40s.
Feb 20, 2004 | Not that there was anything inherently untoward about this kind of fundraising. Giacomo had never offered or promised any kind of favors in exchange for any of the checks he accepted, and even his system for deciding at which events Rebecca would appear was above reproach. Giacomo would simply identify a group or industry with whom Rebecca generally agreed, and then offer her appearance -- they could read into it as they wished. There weren't any positions Rebecca took that were at odds in any important ways with the mortuary industry, so why not let them think they're getting something for their money?
On this day, Giacomo swung between cheerfully calling himself Romaine's "bagman" to worrying that the nickname like that was a bad idea, that people wouldn't get the joke. To work in politics was to know that as much as people appreciated a good self-deprecating joke, that same ha-ha, in the hands of the ill-humored, could be suicide. The ill-humored, those who lived to take harmless jests out of context and then express shock and outrage about said contextless jests, sucked the spirit out of absolutely everything.
Giacomo had promised himself he wouldn't leave the convention with less than $12,000. In the last hour he'd collected almost half his goal, which put him pretty well on pace. But just when he was getting excited, about to shake his own hand firmly, congratulatorily, he realized how pathetic he was, all of this was. The most humiliating thing about a campaign like this, one whose candidate was no millionaire, one that hadn't attracted any major donors, was scrounging for these sorts of sickly, middling checks. Giacomo knew, though, that he needed to raise money not only for phones and flyers, he needed to show the party leaders, in Springfield and Chicago and D.C. and even L.A., that the campaign had steam. He had to show everyone that Romaine was a viable candidate, and because none of the candidates at this point had any name recognition at all, the only way that seemed to convince anyone was the raising of funds.
But it was all so meager! He had to act thrilled to get a check for $1,000. He had to have dinner with some lonely psoriasis-suffering slob to collect $2,800. For $10,000, Rebecca had to come along and grin like Doug Henning. And there would be the dinners, luncheons and bowling nights for larger donors, and personal phone calls and letters to the Gold Circle or Leadership Council or whatever the fuck he'll decide to call it this time. It confused him to no end that CEOs were regularly collecting $130 million pensions while for $500, senators and representatives would scurry around like kids around a broken piñata. He loathed the role of money in campaigns, in large part because it was all so demeaning and paltry -- because everyone sold themselves for so little. You couldn't bribe the manager of a Rite-Aid for $2,000 but an Illinois candidate would bend over and get his fudge packed. (Did he just say that? No, not out loud.)
But he had to do it, had to love doing it, because there was no doubt that somewhere in the state, there was some multi-millionaire fuckwad at that very moment deciding that what he wanted to do with the expendable portion of his fortune was buy himself a seat in the Senate.
As a matter of fact: About one hundred miles away, in Versailles, a small town on the Western bulge of the state, Lincoln Wiltepauer Douglas, reclining on his porch in a rocking chair made of wicker and painted white, faced a perfect sunset and decided it was time that people started calling him Senator. He made some calls and figured out he could afford it. He had $45 million in the bank and assumed he'd have to spend about half. This he could do if it meant that he'd be called Senator, and not just while in office, but forever after. That was what he liked best about the position: that you got to keep the title after you left. Lincoln figured he'd do at least one term, see how he liked it, and then either run one more time or cut out. But he'd be Senator Douglas for life.
Satisfied with another difficult decision made with breathtaking finality, Lincoln Douglas watched his two grown children, their spouses and their five children, run about on the back lawn. He owned thirty-two acres of rolling countryside and he liked nothing better than to see them here, his progeny and their own, and since the death of his wife Dee Dee, he did whatever he could to cajole them all into coming here, into staying as long as they could.
His grandson Kyle ran to him and buried his head in his lap. Lincoln laughed and lifted the boy to his face.
"What do you think of your Granddad being a senator?" he asked.
"It's stupid," said Kyle, and punched his grandfather on the temple. Douglas laughed more.
During dinner he told his children his plan, and they seemed to think it a fine idea. After a smoke on the porch with his daughter-in-law Ellen, who really, he thought, had a superb set of cans, he called Seamus Pulaski, an old Chicago friend of his who'd spent some time in Washington, as a lobbyist for ethanol. He was delighted about Lincoln's run.
"You know the kind of tail a senator could get, don't you Linc?"
"Oh well, I don't know about that."
"Linc, this is your last hurrah. Dee Dee died three years ago, and you're still spry. You're what, seventy-two?"
"Sixty nine."
"The girls will love you! D.C. is the wealthy divorcee capital of the world!"
"Well?"
"You go get yourself some tail, Linc. You deserve it."
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