Balance of Power

    "I know guns are symbolic. I still remember campaigning with a Southern congressman, counting the bullet holes in stop signs. A lot of them were his own, from when he was a kid." Abruptly, Kilcannon stood, hands braced against the back of his chair. "I can also read a map. The Republicans own gun territory, we own gun control territory. Because politics has turned into a culture war.

    "Forty years later we're still fighting over the 1960s. If you believe that civil rights, the women's movement and protecting the environment were basically good things, then you're likely to be a Democrat. But if you think the sixties were the time when minorities got out of hand, women abandoned their duties, promiscuity ran rampant, movies became violent and rock lyrics obscene, and the only acceptable form of discrimination became shafting white males—in short, if you still feel threatened by the changes in our society, there's precious little chance you'll hear what I have to say. Even though I tend to agree about popular entertainment.

    "That divide is strengthened by religion. I attend Mass every Sunday. But in the last election regular churchgoers voted against me three to two. The same proportion who voted for me if they didn't go to church.

    "So where do guns fit in?" Kilcannon asked rhetorically. "For people who feel threatened they're emblematic—'you've taken everything else away from me, but you can't take my gun.' Not my natural constituency."

    "Nor," Hampton added, "representative of all white males."

    "Precisely. But Fasano and his pals have conditioned a lot of them to vote for buzzwords—'prayer in school'; 'family values'—instead of programs. It's like all these white guys trapped in some right-wing lab experiment.

    "What am I going to tell them in order to compete—that the Second Amendment embodies their most sacred right? I can't." Pausing, Kilcannon softened his voice. "The trick isn't to compete. The trick is to remind them that we

protect their unions, their medical care and their retirement. And that the Frank Fasanos of the world will screw them in favor of their country club friends who bleat if they can't get a tax cut and a bigger second home.

    "I can speak that language. But we can't obsess on white guys. Do their votes count more than the votes of women, or blacks, or Hispan ics, or people who live in cities? Not unless we deny those voters a reason to come out for us. And that's what happens when Democrats are as gutless and whiny as we've become.

    "We need to start chipping away women and Republican moderates who think their party has been hijacked by gun nuts, antiabortion extremists, and televangelists who believe that women's suffrage was our second bite of Eve's all-too-wormy apple. So for every Democratic senator worried about losing, there's a Republican like Chad Palmer who worries about where their party's going. If we create enough pressure, Fasano won't be able to hold them." Kilcannon's eyes bore into Hampton's. "Lara and I are going to make Fasano pay the price for kowtowing to the SSA. And it will be huge—if not next year, then soon enough.

    "If I have to preside over a divided country, I'm going to divide it my way. And by the time I leave this office, you'll be in the majority."

    For minutes, Hampton had watched and listened to Kerry Kilcannon with something like amazement. "Lara," he echoed now.

    "Yes."

    Hampton exhaled. "Mr. President," he said quietly, "I'm not sure you're the right messenger."

    Kilcannon sat again, fixing Hampton with the same unblinking gaze. "Oh, I know. I made the mistake of having a brother who got shot, then getting shot myself, and then had the sheer bad taste to let my wife-of-one-day's mother, sister, and six-year-old niece get obliterated by someone who should never have had a gun. And never would have but for the avarice and cowardice of a gun company, and the callousness of a gun lobby that's bullied and bribed most Republicans in Congress— and not a few of our party colleagues.

    "So once again I've lost my 'objectivity.' I'm disqualified from saving lives because too many people too close to me have already lost theirs." Pausing, the President spoke more softly. "Guns made me a senator, and then a President. I suppose I should be more grateful. But too much of my life has been determined by guns and now it's happened to Lara. I'll be damned if I'll sit by and watch it happen to others, day after day. And I'll be damned if I'll let you sit by, either."

    Watching Kilcannon, Hampton no longer concealed his astonishment.

    "There's one more thing," the President finished quietly. "You think I hold a grudge because you supported Dick Mason. I don't. Our only problem is how badly you've misjudged me.