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can hear it now. ‘I wouldn’t be the first camel humper to enter the White House.’”
    “Do you think the President is going to endorse one of these guys?”
    Sean Murphy scratched his head. “They’d love him to. He’s a lame duck, and he’s made a lot of mistakes the last year or so, but he’s still enormously popular. His endorsement this early would swing a lot of weight.”
    “The new President would owe him a lot,” somebody speculated. “Not that he’d especially need it, what with the pension and the lecture possibilities and the books and the rest of the automatic elder-statesman business.”
    “Oh, he’d like to do it, all right,” Murphy said. “But I don’t see how he can. Since the Teddy Roosevelt-Taft thing worked out so badly, Presidents have avoided trying to hand-pick their successors. Our incumbent is superconscious of what history thinks. Besides, he can’t really pick either of them without looking like an ingrate. Abweg’s worked like a dog to get his programs through Congress, and Babington’s his oldest friend in politics, the one who talked him into running for office back when he was starting out.”
    “So the President sits it out.”
    “Right. Then after the convention, he goes all out for the nominee.”
    “Well, he’d do that anyway.”
    “All right, if the President’s going to stay out of it, whose endorsement is the big trophy?”
    “Van Horn.”
    “Hank Van Horn?” somebody said, and laughed.
    “What’s so funny?”
    “No, no, you’re right. He’s got a stranglehold on a state with a lot of votes, he’s senior enough to have a lot of juice in the Senate, he’s the acknowledged leader of the liberal wing of the Party, and a lot of Americans still see the family halo around him, burnt-up girlfriend and all.”
    “Campaign associate.”
    “Yeah. Right.”
    “Those are all reasons his endorsement could make the difference.”
    “I’m not saying it won’t.”
    “You laughed.”
    “I laughed because I cover the Senate. I’ve seen that guy make endorsements in every election since ’76. It’s hurt him worse than a man with hemorrhoids shitting peach pits. He looks at the White House the way Moses looked at the Promised Land.”
    “A lot of people think he’s lucky not to have gone to jail,” Regina said.
    “I know what a lot of people think. I was telling you what Hank Van Horn thinks.”
    “So,” Sean Murphy said, “we’ll have people with all the candidates, but as they thin out, we’ll quietly redeploy to Abweg or Babington.”
    “What about the other party?”
    “It looks like Milton, for them, but it could be anybody.”
    “Doesn’t matter. Whoever it is is meat.”
    “That doesn’t matter, either,” Murphy said. “We’ll cover them exactly as though they had a chance to win. Strange things can happen in politics.”
    “Jimmy Carter,” someone suggested.
    Someone else asked, “Who is Worldwatch going to be for?”
    “Worldwatch has never endorsed candidates,” Regina said.
    “I know that. I asked who we were going to be for .”
    “We,” Regina said, “are going to be impartial.”
    Silence fell. “My God,” someone whispered at last. “An idealist.”
    “Okay, okay,” Sean Murphy said. “Back to business.” They talked about travel arrangements and expense accounts, and egos of star reporters, who did not wish to grace with their celebrity candidates of insufficient stature. It went on for a long time. Regina was glad when it was finally over.
    She headed back to her office. Sean Murphy caught up with her.
    “You did fine,” he told her. “Your mother will be proud.”
    “I knew you were reporting to her.”
    “I’m not spying on you or anything—”
    “Of course not. I wouldn’t want Mother to lose all touch with the company.”
    Murphy grinned at her. “You’re going to be fine. Anything you want to talk over?”
    “No. Thanks, Sean, but it’s—” She looked at her watch. “My God, past eight