(1969) The Seven Minutes by Irving Wallace

and Leone Baxter whom Blair worshiped. Whitaker and Baxter had been retained to defeat Upton Sinclair when he ran for governor of California. They had sought to divert attention from Sinclair’s attractive program and instead focus attention on what were made to seem apparent threats in his earlier writings. They had hired a cartoonist to draw thirty cartoons showing the more desirable aspects of California life; then they had him smear a blob of black paint over part of each sweet American scene, and within each blob had been implanted a truncated quotation from Upton Sinclair that made him appear a monster and an anarchist. Upton Sinclair had been defeated. Imitating Whitaker and Baxter, Irwin Blair had demolished his actor client’s opponent. The actor had become a congressman by a total vote of three to one. Thereafter Blair had promoted himself from his job as publicity man for entertainment personalities to public-relations consultant for politicians. Soon enough he had joined up with Harvey Underwood.
    Three months ago, at an astronomical fee, Luther Yerkes had retained the services of Underwood and Blair on behalf of the candidacy of Elmo Duncan.
    Watching them now, Duncan was once more uneasy, as he had been since the day Yerkes had hired them. He hated manipulation, of other people, of himself. These men were in the business of sampling the feelings and desires of the public and playing on those feelings and desires, and in this conspiracy Duncan felt himself merely an instrument. It wasn’t dishonest, but it felt dishonest. He
    hated it, but he went along because even his wife said that he was being too square as usual, and because he wanted to be more than a mere county district attorney.
    Underwood was rattling his yellow pages, a prelude to reading off the results of the tabulated findings of his trained interviewers throughout the state who had questioned a thousand persons - a stratified random sampling, scientifically based on the sex, age, religion, race, occupation of each person questioned. Out of these pollings the four of them had tried to find issues with which the public was concerned and to which Duncan might devote himself both in his present office and in his increasing public-speaking engagements. When they had agreed on an issue, they tried to decide how Duncan could make use of it. After that it was Blair’s task to make the public aware that Duncan’s interests coincided with their own, and that he was ready to champion them and solve their problems.
    The first goal, Yerkes had pointed out three months ago, was to make Elmo Duncan’s name known to the entire voting population of the state. He must become as well known as was his opponent, Senator Nickels. Once this had been accomplished, work would proceed on making his image more attractive and the incumbent’s image less attractive. But the wider exposure of Duncan’s name was still the primary problem. Duncan was fairly prominent in Southern California, largely because of that last murder case he had prosecuted so brilliantly. But he still remained a local figure, ‘a provincial hero,’ as Yerkes put it. He must become a statewide hero, as well known and worshiped in Fresno, San Francisco, Sacramento, in Salinas, Sonora, Eureka, as he was in Los Angeles.
    ‘Elmo needs one big, big court case, one headliner,’ he now heard Yerkes say to Underwood, repeating what Yerkes had been saying for weeks. ‘You’ve got to ccSme up with something, Harvey, something that is real and that can work.’
    Duncan found himself nodding in agreement.
    A big case involving a vital issue. That was the crux of it.
    Underwood rattled his yellow sheets once more. ‘I can’t alter facts, Mr Yerkes. I have here our latest sampling. We are not questioning the public on international issues yet. We are still confining ourselves to what the registered voters in this state are concerned about domestically. And I must report again that by far the biggest