The Speechwriter by Barton Swaim

self-confident—not an easy trick. But when our argument was in any way lacking, there was just a hint of uncertainty in his answers, a brittleness. His voice would go up an octave, and his phrasing became uncharacteristically bland and formulaic.
    He was adept with reporters, with whom he communicated mainly by phone. He knew each one as a salesman knows his clients, and he always returned their calls. There were some he would treat tenderly, as if worried they might turn against him at some slight provocation; others he would hound into submission or shout at the way a baseball manager shouts at an umpire, not in order to change his mindbut to register a grievance in the hope of better treatment next time.
    There were two or three reporters with whom he would contend as with an ornery sibling. Chief among these was Donald Hatfield of the AP. When Donald called, the two would almost immediately descend into an appalling verbal brawl over factual claims. A few reporters he thought mendacious or stupid. Some of these he would humor, owing to the prestige of their employers. His phone would ring, and, seeing the caller’s number, he’d shout insults—“Oh, Cecil Sanderson, I don’t want to talk to you, you bastard”—just before picking up the phone and saying, in a sunny, welcoming voice, “Governor’s Office, this is Aaron. Oh hey, what’s happening, Cecil?”
    The reporter calling this morning was Barry Clarke of the Post and Courier . “He’s the victim of his last conversation,” Aaron would say about him; he meant that Clarke took as fact whatever he’d been told by the person he’d spoken to before you. In this instance Clarke had spoken first to someone from an advocacy group who had said categorically that the governor had broken the law. By that morning our legal office could make a cogent argument that transferring the funds to a nonprofit was not illegal, yet Aaron could not shake Barry’s confidence in the soundness of the storyline. The anguish in his voice was difficult to listen to.
    â€œThis is the end,” Nat said to me quietly. “This is it. We’re done.”
    Nat, I sensed, liked the feeling of impending collapse. But he was young, so an overmastering sense of irony kept him from earnestness of any kind.
    â€œThis is it, man,” he said. “Improper use of funds. We’re done. Start sending out résumés.”
    Mack turned from his computer screen. “You really think so?” It was the first thing Mack had said in a couple of days.
    â€œThis won’t last past today,” I said. “You get impeached for taking money for yourself, not for ‘redirecting’ it into some stupid nonprofit.”
    â€œExcept that ‘some stupid nonprofit’ and the governor are the same thing,” Nat growled.
    â€œJakie’s a sleazebag,” Mack said, turning back to his computer screen. “It doesn’t matter what he says.” That was almost true. Jakie was a nefarious bigot and everybody knew it. You felt even he knew it. But he was also a state senator. Somebody turned on the television to watch the senate. One of the members was explaining that his bill would offer tax credits to anyone who refurbishes an abandoned rice mill. “There are so many of these ol’ abandoned rice mills in my district,” the member was saying. “Wouldn’t it be great to encourage businesses to use them, to make them look purdier [prettier]?” It was an open secret among lawmakers and State House staffers that the brother-in-law of the member introducing the bill was then wanting to start a business in an abandoned rice mill. Somebody had suggested the governor veto the bill and include the word “dizzy” in the veto letter. Dizzy was the brother-in-law’s name.
    The senator finished his plea after a windy explanation, the vote was taken, and the bill passed on second