To Yvonne, for all the guidance and encouragement over these many years.

Saturday, April 21

LANCE RANDOLPH HAD NEVER been in the White House, never been offered so much as VIP tickets for the public tour — though not for any lack of desire. It was, though, for lack of partisanship. Ever since he was elected governor of Massachusetts, the president had always been of the opposite party.

Still was, which was what was so surprising about this night, about this visit.

He sat in the passenger seat of a rented Oldsmobile driven by his chief of staff and longtime aide, Benjamin Bank, who had apparently never been there either, because at the maze of checkpoints manned by uniformed Secret Service officers, Bank kept turning to him with uncharacteristic deference and asking, “Now what?”

“How should I know? Keep driving. We drive in the wrong place, we get shot.”

“Exactly.”

Randolph barely paid attention. They were on the blocked off stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue staring at the gleaming, glistening building, lit up on a fragrant spring night that might well change his life. Randolph’s heroes, men like Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, lived and worked and made history in its warren of rooms and offices and hideaways, and now Randolph himself was being beckoned inside by none other than the president of the United States.

Randolph, still gazing out his side window, said, “You really think he’s going to jump parties?”

Bank squinted out the windshield and replied, “Not jump parties, but abandon his party. I think he’s worried that he can’t win a Republican primary and he sure as hell knows he can’t win a Democratic one. I think he wants to run for reelection as an Independent, and he’s going to start sounding you out for your support.”