Truth - Al Franken [4]
The phone rang again. Felt. Mark Felt. He told me that Bush had done better than expected in the I-4 corridor. “Oh, is that important?” I asked caustically. “Next time, call me with something I don’t know.” So he did. Ohio was looking grim. I wish I could say I crushed the phone with my hand in disgust. But I didn’t. I sensed that Felt still had a role to play. A sense that proved incorrect.
Pull it together, Al. You’ve got a job to do. Your Sundance Channel TV show starts in less than ten seconds. That’s what Billy said to me. Ben, in turn, told me to take off the fluffy magenta scarf that a diehard fan had graciously knitted for me, and that I had felt an obligation to wear even during several television interviews earlier that evening. I’m not gay, but I sure looked gay with that scarf on. Off it went. Thanks, Ben. Camera time.
Putting on a brave, straight face, I looked in the camera and told America that I still believed we could pull it out. Was I lying? Only to myself. I did still believe we had a fighting chance in Ohio. Remember, the Red Sox had won the World Series. There was no reason Kerry couldn’t rally in the Buckeye state as returns came in from the most populous, most Democratic counties. Despite the handicap of having gut-wrenchingly bad news to report, my broadcast was a smashing success, bringing laughter and courage to a blue America in dire need of succor.
Then things went downhill. I had tried to shield my staff and television audience from the bad news in Ohio, but now it was there on the big screen for all to see. About 12:45 A.M., a certain news channel whose name I am legally prohibited from mentioning—Fox—called Ohio for its preferred candidate, George W. Bush.
It’s only Fox, I thought. Then NBC followed suit. It’s only NBC, I thought. Only NBC. Hoo boy. The Kerry people, desperately looking for a network that would call Ohio for Kerry, had to settle for CNN calling Ohio a purple state. Wolf Blitzer and the CNN brass were taking the easy, intellectually honest, way out. Because Kerry could theoretically make up the gap once all the provisional votes had been counted, CNN refused to give Ohio to either side. The beleaguered crowd at Copley Square cheered. Could this be another 2000? At this point, that was our best hope. And as if on cue, John Edwards walked onstage and told us that the campaign would keep fighting until every ballot had been counted.
As the wet, cold, emotionally traumatized throng thronged out of the Square, my team began discussing the logistics of a potential Ohio stakeout. Four years previously, the lack of an Al Franken Show broadcasting live from the Florida recount had cost the world’s only remaining superpower its rightful leader.
“This is why we’re on the air,” I told my exhausted staff. “Get as much rest as you can over the next two hours. Then we’ll swing down to New York, knock off a show, and then look at the county-by-county returns in Ohio to get a sense of the state of play. I don’t know where this is taking us. Could be Columbus, could be Dayton. Who knows, it could be Kalamazoo.2 All I know is that our country needs us.”
I had paced myself that fall in order to produce the maximum possible political impact all the way through the election. In addition to my radio and TV shows, I had been traveling to swing states every weekend and speaking at fund-raisers on weeknights. I plotted it out so that I would stagger across the finish line and collapse dramatically in exhaustion on the night of November 2.
The exhaustion part of the plan worked fine. But I had forgotten one small detail: I had to do another show on November 3. The morning after what many had called the most important election in our lifetime, we piled into our inappropriately