The Last Debate Read Online Free Page A

we get in exchange for this from CNS?”
    “Their balls.”
    “What?”
    “All I have to do is simply squeeze a hint that I might tell somebody about our little transaction and we get what we want. The ultimate insurance, is the way I see it. I’m not sure anybody has had a network in that position before. When it could really come in handy is after we’re in the White House.”
    “Praise you, Jack Turpin. Praise you,” said David Donald Meredith. “You really are the very best.”
    It was the perfect setup for Jack Turpin. He had saved the best for last.
    “I certainly can’t take any credit for it, sir,” he said, “but it is all finally coming into focus, into place.”
    He handed Meredith a copy of the summary of the coming NBS–
Wall
Street Journal
poll. “Nelson acquired this from a friendly source within the
Journal
,” Turpin said.
    Meredith read the news that he had pulled ahead of Paul L. Greene. Then he stood and bowed his head. Turpin and the others stood and bowed their heads.
    “Dear Savior,” said Meredith in a near whisper. “You said, Follow Me and I will show you the way to glory. We did and You have. Thank You, Lord. Thank You for me, for us, and for the people of the United States of America. Ahhh-men.”
    Turpin and the others repeated the ahhh-men.
    David Donald Meredith had learned how to pray for the good of the campaign. Turpin and the others had learned how to say ahhh-men.

    Nancy Dewey and Chuck Hammond had stayed in their conference room after the others left. They immediately placed a call to the bipartisan commission’s two co-chairmen, former Republican national chairman Paul Clancy and former Democratic national chairman Frank Durkette. They found Clancy at his law office in Minneapolis. Durkette was at his home in Bethesda, Maryland, a Washington suburb. They were all quickly hooked together on a conference line and a speakerphone.
    “So what exactly have we ended up with?” Durkette asked after Hammond reported the names of the four panelists and how they were decided.
    “Yeah,” said Clancy. “Is it going to work?”
    Chuck Hammond said he could not guarantee anything. He said he had no problems with Mike Howley and Joan Naylor, but the other two were truly blind flying in the night. Not because they were minorities, of course, he said, but because they were so young and inexperienced.
    Of course, said Clancy.
    “Being on a presidential-debate panel should be a kind of reward for supreme and long service as a journalist,” Durkette said.
    They asked Nancy Dewey, the person who was going to actually put the debate on the air from Williamsburg, what she thought.
    She told them she was worried. “There was something about the wayTurpin came in here with his black book and took over that was not right,” she said. “Lilly was not prepared. Neither were we, really.”
    Chuck Hammond disagreed. “We have limits, Nancy. We do not have the authority to push anything down their throats. It’s a stupid system.”
    “We have been through that too many times already,” Clancy said. “We almost didn’t even have a debate this time.”
    “It’s got to be required by law,” Durkette said. “Tie it to federal funding. If you take federal matching funds, you have to agree to at least three debates.…”
    “Frank, for crissakes, save it for another time,” Clancy said. “The question, the
only
question before our house right now, is What we do about this?”
    “That’s not a question. We have no choice.”
    “Yes, we do. We could decide to scrub the debate. We could take the position that the selection process for the panelists did not meet our standards or criteria or something and we are pulling out.”
    “Get serious, please. We’d look like fools.”
    “I am not suggesting we do it. I am merely making the point that there are options.”
    Chuck Hammond, after a second or two of silence, said: “We proceed? We contact the four selectees and get on with