Free The Last Enchantments by Charles Finch Page B

point it looked certain that Howard Dean was going to win both the caucuses and the candidacy itself. Inside our campaign there was the disheartening sensation that we stood in opposition to a great popular tide of liberalism—but we believed that Kerry could beat Bush, and that Howard Dean, though many of us secretly preferred his politics, couldn’t.
    Alison was in the press shop, where she wrote the campaign’s press releases for local news outlets, many of them to do with farming, the manufacture of farm equipment, and food processing, which were the three most significant industries in the state. She also occasionally appeared on camera, usually either for insignificant outlets (the Davenport, Iowa, CBS affiliate) or when they needed a young face (she was once on MTV). I was on the senior staff, meanwhile, consulting on the statewide vote strategy and, especially toward the thin end of the campaign, trying to organize endorsements. We had narrowly missed out on Al Gore, who had come out for Dean a week or two before, and we needed someone big. That night my job and Alison’s dovetailed, because we were both trying to get Mike Polsky on the phone.
    Polsky was a writer at the Des Moines Star-Herald, where he ran the editorial page. He was a bratwurst-and-beer guy with a thick mustache and big glasses, very intelligent but in his outlook essentially provincial. For forty-five out of every forty-eight months he wrote about ethanol subsidies, highway bills, that kind of thing. When he wrote about national subjects during those forty-five months nobody but Iowans listened or cared.
    For three months out of every four years, however, around the time of the caucuses, he became more important, to those who really know about these things, than any national media member. His endorsement meant everything in central Iowa. About a week before the caucuses we had turned down Tom Brokaw because our guy, Kerry, only had twenty minutes between campaign stops, and Polsky wanted to talk to him. That was how significant the Star-Herald endorsement could be. Even Polsky’s Christmas party, which for three years before the caucuses was probably more like a polka convention than anything you could find in D.C., turned into a K Street and Capitol Hill reunion.
    That’s the guy we were trying to get on the phone. He always published the morning of the caucuses, and before he filed we wanted to get a last word in—he loved Alison, liked me—or even, if he wanted, get him on the phone with Kerry one last time.
    For hours now he hadn’t picked up his phone.
    “He’s going with Dean,” said Alison.
    “It can’t be Edwards, right?”
    She snorted. “Come on.”
    We were in a closet with two phones and a desk, which because of the scarcity of space in any campaign headquarters was a grand fiefdom. Some junior organizer peeked around the door. “The Davenport turf is—”
    “Get the fuck out of here and bother someone else,” I said, in a tone that I can’t imagine I ever used at Oxford but was second nature to me during the campaign.
    The organizer apologized and left. Alison sighed and tore a chunk of crust off of a piece of cooling pizza. “What the hell are we going to do?”
    Just then someone altogether more respectable, Rix, came in. He was the candidate’s point person in Iowa, erratic but politically a savant. “Polsky?” he asked.
    “Nothing yet.”
    “Jesus Christ, get your thumbs out of your pussies.”
    “We’re on it,” said Alison.
    When Rix was gone, I said, “We’re on it,” in an eager voice.
    She laughed and threw the crust at me. “What are we going to do?”
    Around the campaign office we were a kind of golden couple. The candidate himself knew us by name and joked with us about our relationship. We were certain our first kid’s godfather would be a president. Embarrassing to admit it.
    “Maybe we should just go find him. We know he’s not at the Star-Herald offices, right? I’ve bugged Myers