Simply Business
From the beginning of the electoral run, he was a surprise. The press laughed at him when he announced he wanted to run for president. The Buffoon, they called him. All he had to back him was indecent amounts of money, most of it inherited, and basically his businesses ran themselves nowadays, so it was almost impossible for him to sink them. In the trade it was said he was such an incompetent moron that the boards of directors of his different companies simply let him talk and talk and talk (usually about himself) and then they just bypassed him. He never noticed.
Yet he persevered. If nothing else, he was stubborn as hell.
The surprise gave way to astonishment when, one after another, the other candidates started disappearing. Oh, a couple were there just for the laughs: one simpleton really thought he could run coming up from his hometown, no backing, no money; all she had was her ideals and a lot of hope. She was the first one to retire. Another guy had won the lottery and couldn’t think of a better way to spend his money.
The press smelled blood when one of the main candidates, a respected middle-aged ex-judge, was found dead in his hotel room during the campaign. The autopsy conclusion was a heart attack in his sleep, but the two young boys in the room, passed out from drink and drugs, were impossible to conceal.
Another candidate simply dropped off the run citing ‘personal issues’. There were rumours of threats, of phone calls in the middle of the night, of persistent messages to her personal phone, of incriminating images. Nothing could be proved.
Meanwhile, the Buffoon thrived. His speeches were incendiary, making enemies to left and right every time he opened his mouth. Yet people, some people, seemed to love him. He spoke directly to them. He made them the silly promises they wanted to hear, while the rest of candidates asked how he was going to keep them if he reached power. Worse yet, they warned he wouldn’t keep them.
People didn’t mind.
A newspaper tried to find evidence of tampering with his campaign funds, citing an inside source who had evidence of embezzlement. But he simply denied the allegations and presented his money as proof. Why would he need anything but his personal fortune to fund his campaign?
Few people noticed the third-tier campaign collaborator who commited suicide at home two weeks later. Not when the sex scandal was aflame. Incomprehensibly, the Buffoon came on top of it, riding the waves with accusations of calumny and defamation, no matter the audio recordings. In the age of the internet, the voters needed images.
When the primaries vote came it was him against two other candidates. The margins were small, he lost in several places. But again to the surprise of the press, he came on top. There were accusations of tampering with the result, but no investigation was held. On the Buffon went to the main event: the presidential Election.
And he excelled at it. It was a case of love him or hate him. And oh how people either loved him or hated him. Two campaign directors resigned, burned for their line of work forever more, so terrible was he. His first ex-wife declared that there was no other, what people was seeing was the real him: that was the way he was. That was the President they were going to have if he was elected. The way he hammered his opponent, focusing on appearance, beliefs, and behaviour, instead of politics, was absurd.
Yet it worked.
He won.
The look in the eyes of the foreign correspondent the morning after the election was one of pure incredulity. How could such a blatant idiot have won? His first speech was an example of tactless lunacy. He advocated an idea now and the opposite next; he hated everything done by previous presidents and promised to work to have it all undone; he pampered his voters with harsh words against perceived enemies of the state; he spread terror.
Six months later, the country was a total chaos.
And you know what? People don’t know it was me all along.
The man is really a silly, stupid buffoon. He really has no idea. He believes it was himself, his charisma, his willpower, what pushed him through.
It was me.
I played all the dirty hands. Carefully, methodically. Eliminating threats, erasing evidences, culling the candidates. I used a number of operatives that cannot be traced back to me. Compartmentalized information. Hackers. Name it, I got them, I used them.
They say that behind each great man, you know the rest. But behind this fool, there’s me. And I won’t be denied.
Wait until I come to the light.
I’m sorry, but you’re the last link in the chain. With you gone, nothing, absolutely nothing, connects me with this affair.
So, you know. It’s not personal. It’s business.
Bye.
~~~~
This is my entry for this week’s Chuck Wendig’s Flash Fiction Challenge: The Danger of Undeserved Power. The challenge this week, after the holidays, was to write 1000 words responding to the topic The Danger of Undeserved Power.
All I could think of was the abuse of power by politicians, so in the end I just followed that idea, but I like to think I managed to add a slightly sinister twist at the end.
Of course, any similarity with reality is coincidence.
