Free Taft 2012 by Jason Heller Page B

in seeing him bluster.
    “Sorry. I suppose I should have warned you about this,” she told him. “We were so wrapped up in preparing that the makeup part of being on TV completely slipped my mind.”
    Taft highly doubted that, but he let it lie. He had other things to worry about, for instance, the fact that this so-called makeupartist was dangerously close to sticking a brush in his eye.
    “Steady now, man! I’m too pretty for an eye patch.”
    The makeup artist refused to laugh. Instead, he stepped back and inspected Taft’s face from a fresh angle. “Let me just throw this out there, okay? You wouldn’t be interested in shaving off that horrid thing, would you?”
    “My mustache?”
    “If that’s what you’re calling that thing, then yes. Your mustache.”
    “This mustache, I’ll have you know, is the last living presidential mustache in United States history. And, furthermore, it’s a symbol of both affluence and virility—and a dashing one at that, I might add.” It was bad enough he’d already had to trim it.
    “Oh,
sure
. My mistake.” He twirled Taft’s chair around to face the mirror that took up almost the entire length and width of one wall. He had to admit that the Manhattan television studio in which Pauline Craig was headquartered had a well-equipped green room. As Susan had explained, Craig often invited high-ranking politicos, military brass, and the occasional screen or singing celebrity, all of whom were accustomed to being primped and preened prior to placement in front of a camera.
    Taft balked at the thought. His armpits had already dampened at the thought of having his voice and moving image broadcast live across the nation—no, the world, Susan had said—and he’d even begun to smell. Stage fright was something he’d overcome long ago; in fact, as Susan had explained the week before, Taft had become infamous as being one of the most long-winded speechmakers in the presidential pantheon. Secretly, Taft prided himself on that fact. After all, an address thoroughly thought out and exhaustively delivered left less room for vagueness or misinterpretation. Susan had insisted, however, that he not use the Craig interview to deliver asoliloquy. The attention span of the average American, she said in that odd lingo of hers, wasn’t what it used to be. He must speak in what she called “sound bites.” The very word made his stomach rumble.
    “If you won’t let me amputate that beast of a mustache, then will you at least let me trim it some more?” The makeup artist had found a small pair of shears, which he brandished menacingly in the mirror.
    “Oh, all right. But if I measure a loss of anything more than ten percent of its total volume, I’ll take it out of you in blood.”
    The makeup artist rolled his eyes and set about snipping.
    “Susan,” said Taft once the shears had been stashed and the makeup artist had left. “I won’t argue with you about the need for this”—he waved his hands around his face—“this peacockery. But there’s something unnatural about it. Do all politicians in this day and age subject themselves to such ostentatious falseness? Do masks now make the man? Are we all thespians?”
    “Oh, really, Mr. Taft.” Susan sipped her tea and shook her head. “When has politics
not
been theater? In any case, the makeup doesn’t show on camera. It just makes you look … normal. More like yourself.”
    Taft snorted. “This century’s infatuation with irony knows no bounds, does it?”
    “Scoff all you want, but the outcome of at least one presidential election—between Nixon and Kennedy in 1960—was influenced by makeup. Or the lack thereof.” She got up from her chair and looked more closely at Taft’s freshly varnished face. “Anyway, I think it looks good on you.”
    “You do?”
    “Absolutely. It really brings out your feminine side.”
    Taft let the comment slide. In truth, he was glad for the chance to banter. The previous week’s worth