The Stochastic Man

“Leydecker,” I said. Leydecker, surely, was Governor Richard Leydecker of California, one of the most powerful men in the New Democratic Party and the early front ru

“Socorro is lieutenant-governor of California,” Lombroso said gently. “Carlos Socorro. It’s a man’s name, Lew.”

“Carlos. Socorro.” I closed my eyes. “Of course.” My cheeks blazed. All my list-making, all my frantic compiling of power centers in the New Democratic Party, all my sweaty doodling of the past year and a half, and yet I had still managed to forget Leydecker’s heir apparent. Not socorro but Socorro, idiot! I said, “What” he hinting at, then? That Leydecker will resign to seek the nomination, making Socorro governor? Okay, that computes. But get to him early? Get to whom?” I faltered. “Socorro? Leydecker? It comes out all muddy Bob. I’m not getting a reading that makes any sense.”

“What’s your reading of Carvajal?”

“A crank,” I said. “A rich crank. A weird little mar with a bad case of politics on the brain.” I put the note in my wallet. My head was throbbing. “Forget it. I humored him because you said I should humor him. I was a very good boy today, wasn’t I, Bob? But I’m not required to take any of this stuff seriously, and I refuse to try. Now let’s go to lunch and smoke some good bone and have some very shiny martinis and talk shop.” Lombroso smiled his most radiant smile and patted my back consolingly and led me out of the office. I banished Carvajal from my mind. But I felt a chill, as though I had entered a new season and the season wasn’t spring, and the chill lingered long after lunch was over.

12

In the next few weeks we got down in earnest to the job of pla

The process of creating Presidents hasn’t changed much since the middle of the nineteenth century, though the techniques are a bit different in these days of data nets, stochastic forecasts, and media-intensive ego saturation. The starting point, of course, is a strong candidate, preferably one with a power base in a densely populated state. Your man has to be plausibly presidential; he must look and sound like a President. If that isn’t his natural style, he’ll have to be trained to create a sense of plausibility around himself. The best candidates have it naturally. McKinley, Lyndon Johnson, FDR, and Wilson all had that dramatic presidential look. So did Harding. No man ever looked more like a President than Harding; it was his only qualification for the job, but it was enough to get him there. Dewey, Al Smith, McGovern, and Humphrey didn’t have it, and they lost. Stevenson and Willkie did, but they were up against men who had more of it. John F. Ke

The man who wants to be President must assemble a team — someone to raise money (Lombroso), someone to charm the media (Missakian), someone to analyze trends and suggest the most profitable policies (me), someone to put together a nationwide alliance of political chieftains (Ephrikian), someone to direct and coordinate, strategy (Mardikian). The team then goes forth with the product, makes the proper co

Early in April ‘99 we held our first formal strategy meeting in Deputy Mayor Mardikian’s office in the west wing of City Hall — Haig Mardikian, Bob Lombroso, George Missakian, Ara Ephrikian, and me. Qui

The table was round, but I felt myself occupying a place at the center of the group. The four of them, already far better versed in the ways of might and influence than I, were looking to me for direction, for the future was a mist and they could only guess at the riddles of days undawned and they believed I saw, I knew. I was not about to explain the difference between seeing and merely being good at guessing. I savored that sense of dominance. Power is addictive, oh, yes, at whatever level we may attain it. There I sat among the millionaires, two lawyers and a stockbroker and a data-net tycoon, three swarthy Armenians and a swarthy Spanish Jew, each of them as hungry as I to feel the resonant triumph of a successful presidential bid, each as greedy as I for a share of vicarious glory, each already carving empires for himself within the government-to-come, and they waited for me to tell them how to go about what was in literal fact the conquest of the United States of America.

Mardikian said, “Let’s begin with a reading, Lew. How do you rate Qui

I made the appropriate seerlike pause, I looked as though I were grasping for the stochastic totems, I gazed into the vasty reaches of space, staring at dancing dust motes for auguries, I cloaked myself in vatic pomposity, I did the whole wicked impressive act, and after a moment I replied solemnly, “For the nomination, maybe one chance in eight. For election, one chance in fifty.”

“Not so good.”

“No.”

“Not good at all,” said Lombroso.

Mardikian, dismayed, tugging at the tip of his fleshy imperial nose, said, “Are you telling us we ought to skip it altogether? Is that your evaluation?”

“For next year, yes. Forget the presidency thing.”

“We just quit?” Ephrikian said. “We just stick here in City Hall and drop the whole deal?”

“Wait,” Mardikian murmured to him. He faced me again. “What about ru

“Better. Much better.”

Ephrikian, a burly black-bearded man with a fashionably shaven scalp, looked impatient and bothered. He scowled and said, “The media is talking big right now about what Qui