Free We're with Nobody by Alan Huffman Page B

many of his less scrupulous methods. Atwater had his hand in the now-infamous Willie Horton ad that torpedoed the political career of Michael Dukakis by highlighting how, as governor of Massachusetts, Dukakis had granted Horton weekend passes from prison. At least that effort was based on fact. Horton was indeed a convicted murderer who raped a woman while on a weekend furlough during Dukakis’s tenure as governor. Rove, who masterminded the Valerie Plame fiasco and sought to purge U.S. attorneys who didn’t meet his loyalty standards, cares only whether a story will further his agenda. He gives opposition research a bad name, which, considering some of the transgressions committed in its service in the past, is saying something.
    The irony is that widespread disregard for documenting the truth has come about at a time when access to public records is vastly improved. Every state now has an open records law, which means that if you don’t fall for the bluff of the obstinate courthouse clerk you can get your hands on at least a facsimile of the truth, and much of it is easily accessible online. Between access and technology, nothing in politics stays hidden for long anymore. What’s strange to us is that as the public has grown more and more jaded by the process, they’re still as seduced by it as the Romans were centuries ago. Sometimes the attacks are legitimate and sometimes they’re invented, but the stories, true or not, get a life of their own and become a part of history.

Chapter 7
Alan
    I am sitting in the municipal office of a New Jersey township so small and insignificant that it doesn’t warrant a single exit off the nearby freeway. I can hear the cars and trucks, a distant murmur of life passing by, as I sit across the table from a bored policeman in the nondescript anteroom of the township office. It’s early summer, when our campaign season really cranks up, and Michael and I have hit the road for an extended period of time, going our separate ways for now as we undertake several research projects simultaneously. I’m focused on a diminutive race, an example of how some political organizations strive to ensure that even third-tier opponents stay where they are.
    The cop is reading a hunting magazine as I pore through a tall stack of bound township council minutes, the contents of which are both mind-numbing and, for some reason, jealously guarded by the local powers that be. It isn’t as if much happens in the council meetings, but all sorts of bureaucratic alarms went off when I asked to review the minutes, which is why the cop is there, reading about recreational deer urine.
    Assigning a cop to guard me in the Jersey township was a bit of institutional indulgence owing, perhaps, to the fact that the focus of my work is a minor township mystery. The implication is that I might try to steal the treasured minutes, for some unknown reason, or that my interest poses some other threat for the mayor, which it actually does, though it’s not a threat an armed guard could prevent. All they’ve done, really, is make it slightly safer for others to speed through town on a summer day.
    I was doing my best to take a genial approach to the whole situation because the clerk had at least been nice about assigning me a guard. Small public offices don’t generally get a lot of strangers who arrive with what appears to be a very specific yet unrevealed interest. When they do, the staff can choose between being accommodating or officious in their efforts to find out what they’re looking for and why, and, if necessary, to simply gum up the works. Michael and I can likewise choose between being polite and unforthcoming or impervious and unforthcoming. We typically take our cues from them.
    Michael was once similarly placed under guard during a review of education records in Ohio. He reacted by indignantly asking the clerk, “What do you think I’m going to do, stuff