Abelard nodded. He made a noise that was barely audible, which began as a groan and ended as a sigh.

We never had to hold the meeting with our lawyers. That night, James Abelard dropped out of the presidential race, citing a desire to spend more time with his family.

14

14

Ed Weiss must have known I would be upset. He called me the night Senator Abelard quit to cheer me up. “Abelard had no business being in the race,” the executive editor said. “This wasn’t a personal thing, like cheating on his wife. The guy had been in the nuthouse. Without his pills, he was a basket case. We did him and the country a favor. Don’t lose any sleep over it. You saved everybody from a big mess.” And that was it. On issues like mental health and gender politics, Weiss had traditional views, to put it charitably. The force of his personality had allowed him to hold on to most of the assumptions and prejudices of his youth. In his mind, James Abelard was unstable. He wasn’t fit to be commander in chief. We had exposed these facts. End of story. For Weiss, it was basically that simple.

For me, it was more complicated. I knew that by the conventional standards of my profession I had done a good job, but that seemed beside the point. I felt like a silent assassin, holding a bloody knife in my hand even as my colleagues gathered around to offer congratulations.

When I got home, I made a drink and turned on the television. The late feed of the MacNeil/Lehrer show was on the public television station. They were talking about Senator Abelard’s departure from the presidential race. I heard the voice first, before I saw the face.

“My only suggestion,” Annie Baron was saying, “is that you should disregard the official statement put out by the Abelard campaign. It can’t possibly be true. No man decides to run for the presidency and then withdraws to spend more time with his family. Men are not constructed that way. Senator Abelard is leaving for some other reason, which he chooses not to disclose.” There was a controlled intensity in her eyes. She had one of those cool personalities that seem to glow red-hot on television.

“What do you think the other reason might be?” Jim Lehrer was asking, in his genial country-prosecutor way.

“I think there are secrets in his personal life which he wants to protect, perhaps involving his medical history. Things that he fears will be disclosed by the press if he stays in the race.” She blinked her eyes and gave that smile of the junior high daredevil. “But that’s just a guess, Jim.”