(This story was written just after the Austin Democratic presidential debate in 2008, and is truish.)
“Hot damn,” shouted Wilson. “I feel like, like an animal. I’m ready to do something wild.”
Wilson is a prime time politico, feeling the stirrings of excitement brought on by the rush of national politics. Nothing could stop the beasts that had put on their Sunday best in case they ended up on CNN after some event where a presidential candidate rallied the masses with a visitation and a little of the old laying on of hands. We were all touched by something special in our state – relevance, and import. We were at the downtown hotel with all the other Democrats, holding down the epicenter of what felt like a political nuclear reactor.
The process of the presidential campaign coming to town, lasting all of three weeks, had been a slow realization that came on like rust. Suddenly the decades-long night had turned to day and the Democrats in Texas no longer felt like the Tex-Mex equivalent of the New Whigs. The preachers and proselytizers were suddenly proven right, and all the money and sweat put into maintaining the machine and forcing it to build on itself proved out to be the correct choice in a game with unknowable stakes.
Now the hotten-tots were full-on amok and the state GOP was starting to get the cold sweat of a deep internal illness that had thus far been masked by booze and air conditioning. Now they knew they had been sick and weak for a while, and the mirror was more and more unforgiving.
The idea of stomping on the terra is new for the old guard, and the kids who have started to climb the masts and run the boats have the look of new cops at a riot. They are hungry for violence and feel the rhythm of a yet-begun protracted battle thrumming in their veins.
This brings us back to Wilson, who is a hybrid machine, a mixture of old and new and all ablaze with gin.
“Wilson, you fool. There’s serious business here – we’re trying to elect a president,” I said, trying very hard to resist the urge to finish my drink and throw my glass at him like a crude grenade. Instead I ordered another round.
“Never mind all that. The winner will be the winner and we will bury whoever doesn’t get on the train, along with everyone else who can’t learn the new rules.” Wilson backed away from the bar and turned around to the milling crowd, shouting, “If you slow down now you’ll die like rats. Welcome to prime time.”
Wilson was starting to make me paranoid, and I didn’t need his noise. I had an important phone call to make, so I downed both drinks and slipped around behind him and out into the night. My expense account had been cancelled at 3 that afternoon after I had refused to come out of my room for two days, so Wilson would be paying the tab. The hotel staff gets nervous when all you will do is shout through the door unless they are bringing you bottles of Jack Daniels or fresh, loose tea.
I checked my phone and it was full of hate from people who hadn’t been invited to the party. But to hell all with that – I hadn’t been invited to the party either, but I am a serious journalist and would not have been denied entry short of arrest or deportation.
I called my friend Frank who was trying to run mediation between the two campaigns for the national crew, and he sounded beaten.
“This isn’t working, and I’m starting to be ground down. I can’t help but feel that we’ve made a terrible mistake.”
“What do you mean? That’s impossible,” I yelled into the phone. “This election will save the party and probably the world. This is the breaking point we’ve been waiting for since Ed Muskey wept and Nixon laid his dark magic on us for generations. We’re saving the world, and you’re on the front lines. What kind of mistake can we possibly make?”
“Not the campaign, and not the election, you fool. You and I, we’ve made a mistake. We are small cogs in a giant and wicked machine. Trying to change the system from the inside is a fool’s errand. You were lucky enough to get out, but I am damned by a lack of ambition and cruelty.”
I knew he was right. The chronicling is important but the road is long and the knives are sharp. If a generation feels doomed it will sometimes try to trade itself for an imagined victory, or an imagined place in history.
“I understand now,” I said, and hung up.
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