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decided it was the former—surely he had their rapt attention. They loved him. He was in, he thought—he was going to be the next president of the United States of America.

    Later, at a posh restaurant in the heart of Des Moines, Colin was having a late dinner with some of his campaign staff. Three tables were booked, so large was his entourage. Larry, Katrina, and Olivia sat at his table.
    “How are we doing, Larry?” Colin asked.
    “Pretty good so far. Ganon and Rogers have made some impact. But the ads are still to run.”
    “What kind of ads will they be running?” Katrina asked.
    “Don’t know,” responded Larry, “but neither has much funding still, I heard somewhere just under fifteen million each. We have fifty million now, and it’s growing. Our ads about Middle America are almost ready to go. After that, all the good money will bet on Spain.”
    It’s the part of the game I still have to learn , thought Olivia, the ads, the message discipline…but I know how to fix things, shouldn’t that matter more?
    Olivia’s cell phone interrupted her internal monologue. She would have ignored the call, but it was home calling. She took it, excused herself, and went outside.
    “When are you coming home, Mom?” Georgia asked.
    “Soon, honey, soon.”
    “When?”
    “In about ten days.”
    “That’s too long.”
    “Make it seven then,” Olivia conceded.
    “Promise?”
    “Promise.”
    “Make it four, no three.”
    “I can’t be back any earlier than that, Georgia. But seven days is a promise.”
    Olivia finished several minutes later, after saying goodnight to Georgia, then Natasha, and then Gary. Somehow, she had to explain to Colin that she had to be out of Iowa as soon as the caucuses finished and the results were known. She was not going to break a promise made to her daughter.

    When she got back to the hotel, it was past midnight but she wasn’t tired. She decided to give the TV and room service a try.
    As Olivia was surfing the channels, the room service delivered ice cream with fresh strawberries. It had been the one constant in her life since she was a child; she had never had a different opinion about her favorite dessert. Frank Stein was on CBS. She stopped for a moment. He seemed too didactic to be running for office.
    “Imagine a boardroom,” he said. “Imagine that the company president waxes eloquently and stirs up strong emotions. Suppose he never answers questions asked of him by the directors and just keeps going like a sports coach giving a last-minute pep talk before his team heads out onto the field.
    “Of course it will not be tolerated…not by the board, not by the employees, and not by the shareholders. Nor should it be. Well, you are the customers and the employees, ladies and gentlemen, and the politicians are your hired chiefs. Their eloquence is meant to be detrimental to your understanding of their real business, which is the business of getting re-elected at any cost. You must denounce their oratory.
    “So say it…say it to your elected representatives, to your senators, to the journalists who ought to be like the board of directors, say it loud and clear. No more pep talks. No more hiding the truth behind empty slogans.”
    The TV kept running. Olivia didn’t even know when she fell asleep. She missed the footage of a small but growing crowd chanting, “Fran-ken-stein, Fran-ken-stein.” Somewhere deep inside the hearts of some people, Frank Stein had struck a chord, and for them at least, the resonance was deafening. The television ran all night. Yet Olivia slept soundly and awoke refreshed.
    She turned it off in the morning. The newspaper had been delivered under her door. She glanced at it. Frank Stein had made the cover page with his pronouncements. The reporter had dug into his background. Olivia was saddened to find out that Frank Stein had been orphaned at fifteen, but that didn’t excuse the rest of the story.
    But then she knew only too well how