Thanks to a couple of telltale clues, I guessed quickly that Klein was the culprit. But Joe lied to me and everyone else (except NEWSWEEK’s editor, who got heat for keeping the secret), confessing only after The Washington Post confronted him with his marked-up manuscript. Boy, was I mad at Klein then. But time and an apology have made us friendly again. The only angst caused by his sequel, “The Running Mate” (416 pages. Dell. $26.95), will be over who’s in it, not who wrote it.
The hero is a Bob Kerrey clone named Sen. Charlie Martin–a bemedaled Vietnam vet from the Midwest with centrist politics, a mangled arm, soulful eyes (“like Delft-china”) and enough ironic irreverence to keep him from seeming like just another politician. Kerrey is surrounded by Vietnam-era contemporaries in Clinton’s Washington. U.N. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke appears as Linc Rathburne, a brilliant and gossipy diplomat who spars with Gideon Reese, the “publicly austere” national-security adviser based on Tony Lake. My old nemesis, Dick Morris, appears as the hired gun Morey Richardson, and my doppelganger Henry Burton answers the question at the close of “Primary Colors” by making a cameo as President Stanton’s aide-de-camp.
“The Running Mate” opens in a year that looks a lot like 1994. After losing to Stanton in the primaries and surviving a scandalette of his own, Martin is up for re-election but is bored and disgusted by a political environment that is “becoming more noxious and also more sterile as the century staggered home.” His heart is in Manhattan with swimsuit designer Arabella (Nell) Palmerston. Politics in the “Age of Stanton” reminds her of the Bronze Age, “when metal weapons were introduced and barbarism institutionalized.”
Klein is still a connoisseur of political craft work. His ear is tuned to the shorthand of the Senate cloakroom and Cleveland Park dining rooms, where “there were two possible roles to play: one could be a holder-forth, or a wry questioner.” He delights in detailing how to survive a hostile press conference, stage a campaign debate or navigate a state fair.
At its core, “Primary Colors” was a defense of politics; “The Running Mate” is the prosecutor’s brief. Stanton’s fierce belief that politics “can make people’s lives a little better” redeems him. Martin loses that faith as he loses his race. “It’s just politics” now, he muses, marked by “mistrust and ugliness.” The sour moral of Klein’s tale is that the best can no longer beat the system, so good men shouldn’t bother. But he’s too much of a romantic to believe it. “The Running Mate” closes with Charlie and Nell contemplating a run for governor in the Midwest. The real Bob Kerrey is moving to Manhattan.
