Fletch and the Man Who by Gregory McDonald

Lane, gestured to the band for quiet, and did his Man-Who speech, peppered with many references to his own efforts to gain control of the city budget.
    Fletch watched Barry Hines and Flash Grasselli escort the short congressperson in entirely the wrong direction, right into the middle of the crowd, where she got bogged down shaking hands and listening to her constituents’ griefs.
    Fletch introduced himself to the local press. He handed out position papers on the crop subsidy programs. He and the local press and only some of the national press stood in a roped-off area to the right of the platform.
    Some members of the national press, Roy Filby, Stella Kirchner, Betsy Ginsberg, Bill Dieckmann—who seemed completely recovered —had spotted a bar-café half a block up and decided to go there for drinks during The Speech. “Tell us if he gets shot, or hands out money to the crowd or something, Fletch.”
    Three television cameras were atop vans and station wagons. News photographers stood near the platform.
    Hanging from the second-floor windows of the First National Bank of Winslow at the comer of Corn and Wicklow was a huge American flag. It had forty-eight stars.
    Now The Man Who was saying, “The world has changed, my friends. You know it and I know it, but the present incumbent in the White House doesn’t seem to know it. His brilliant advisors don’t seem to know it. None of the other candidates, Republican or Democrat, who want to see themselves in the White House the next four years seem to know it….”
    “This isn’t his usual speech,” Freddie said. “This isn’t The Speech.”
    “… It used to be that what happened in New York and Washington was important in Paramaribo, in Durban, in Kampuchea. Nothing was more important. Well, things have changed. Now we know that what happens in Santiago, in Tehran, in Peking is terribly important in New York and Washington. Nothing is more important.”
    Fletch said: “Wow.”
    “… The Third World, as it’s called, is no longer something outthere—separate from us, inconsequential to us. Whether we like it or not, the world is becoming more sensitive. The world is becoming covered with a network of fine nerves—an electronic nervous system not unlike that which integrates our own bodies. Our finger hurts, our toe hurts and we feel it as much as if our head aches or our heart aches. Instantly now do we feel the pain in Montevideo, in Juddah, in Bandung. And yes, my friends in Winslow, we feel the pains from our own, internal third world—from Harlem, from Watts, from our reservations of Native Americans …”
    Fletch said: “Wow.”
    Freddie was giving him sideways looks.
    “… There is no First World, or Second World, or Third World. This planet earth is becoming integrated before our very eyes!”
    “He’s not going to …”
    “He’s not going to what?” she asked.
    “… You and I know there is no theology, no ideology causing this new, sudden, total integration of the world. Christianity has had two thousand years to tie this world together … and it has not done so. Islam has had six hundred years to tie this world together … and it has not done so. American democracy has had two hundred years to tie this world together … and it has not done so. Communism has had nearly one hundred years to tie this world together… and it has not done so.”
    “He’s doing it.”
    “He’s doing something all right,” she said.
    Fletch’s eyes studied the faces in the crowd. He was seeing faces blue with cold, noses red. He was seeing eyes fixated on The Man Who might become the most powerful person on earth, have some control over their taxes and their spending, their health care, their education, how they spent their days and their nights, their youths, working years, and old age, their lives and their deaths. For the most part, in the cold, their ears were covered with scarves and mufflers.
    The congressperson was working with as much speed as