Primary Colors by Joe Klein Read Free Book Online

New Hampshire, a state that seemed to have a magnetic attraction for chilly, pale, pinched skeptics. Not his crowd, you'd figure. But we moved from living room to living room, coffee to coffee. The governor tilled and mulched slowly, carefully, lovingly; he allowed them their skepticism, encouraged it, joked about it: "I don't want y'all to make up your minds too soon, now," he'd say. "Take a look at the field, think about it. You still have a hundred and twenty-three days"--or whatever it was (he always knew)--"before you determine the fate of the republic."
    He enjoyed this, and them. And more: He loved what it was about. He loved governance--especially executive governance. (Legislators were a different, somewhat less interesting species.) In two months I'd learned more from him about the public sector--the people's business--than I had in five years with Larkin. We always hit the statehouse, wherever we went--and he never had to ask for directions. He always knew where the governor's office was--sometimes other officials as well. He was ecumenical. He liked them all. It didn't matter if they were Democrats or Republicans. He could tell you what every last governor had done, what their strengths and weaknesses were. The amount of information was staggering--but even more impressive was the energy, and interest, he put into it. A bureaucrat somewhere--in Lansing, in Austin--might tell him a new way to work
    Clean Air money, and he'd put the big ears on, and he'd stay and stay, we'd fall hours behind, it didn't matter. He wouldn't leave there until he'd drained the guy.
    It would pay off, too. He was a human clearinghouse; he cross-pollinated. One time we were in Montgomery, wandering through the state capitol--a building that had deep, fearful resonances for me, the cradle of the Confederacy, George Wallace's joint--and he said, "Henry, you're freaked, I can feel it. I'm gonna make you feel all shiny and good."
    He dragged me down a hallway, to the attorney general's office. "Now, Jim Bob Simmons, he's the boss here--and not a bad fella," he explained, "but I'm gonna show you the real brains of the operation. Hey, Betty," he said to the receptionist, a drab white woman with great butterfly eyeglasses, for whom the blush of youth had faded much too soon. "Your momma back on her feet again?"
    "You bet, Governor," she said, matter-of-fact, as if governors were always stopping by to ask about her mother. "But the chemotherapy was a bitch."
    Stanton stopped, squatted down next to the woman, took her hand. "But she's clear now?"
    "So they say."
    "Ain't that the truth," he said, snagging a couple of Fig Newtons from her half-opened top drawer. "You never know. She a churchgoin' woman?"
    "Every Sunday."
    "You go with her?"
    Betty hesitated. Stanton took her hand. "Look, honey, you might think about that--goin' with her. Specially now You can ask your husband to take the kids-- Ray, right?"
    She nodded, and now began to tear up. "He's got so much, Governor--long-haulin'. He comes in Saturday night, he's just dead." "Yeah, I guess," Stanton said, pulling her closer and giving a gentle peck on the side of her forehead. "But you think about it. Mean a lot to your momma. Maybe you take the kids, put them in Sunday school, or with a friend, or somethin'. . . . So where's my man? He's gotta be here, right? He ain't off dove-huntin' or anything?"
    "I just buzzed him," Betty said, and a tall, thin black man came through the door. Stanton stood up, brightened, and threw his arms around him.
    "You coulda called," the black man said.
    "Coulda, shoulda, woulda--just passin' through, Billy," he said. "This is Henry Burton, my new drone. Henry, this is William J. Johnson, deputy attorney general of the state of Alabama, a great American but a semiretard when it came to Torts."
    "Pleased to meet you," Johnson said, his enormous hand swallowing mine. "What the governor neglected to tell you was that my notes got him through Contracts the year he