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THE ZERO GAME ( Warner Books )
by
Brad Meltzer
The Zero Game: It’s fun and, probably, harmless. Congressional aides Matthew Mercer
and Harris Sandler play it to liven up their bureaucratic Capitol Hill jobs. Matthew
and Harris know that if anyone outside ever discovered it, the scandal would rock
Washington, D.C. to its core. But what they don’t know is that the game is deadly serious
and that the “fun” is about to end.
“Meltzer has mastered the art of baiting and hooking readers into a fast-moving plot.”
—USA Today
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Excerpt from Select Editions’ The Zero Game
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The game itself started years ago as a practical joke. As the story goes, a junior Senate staffer was bitching about picking up a Senator’s dry cleaning, so to make him feel better, his buddy on staff snuck the words dry cleaning into a draft of the Senator’s next speech: “Although sometimes regarded as dry, cleaning our environment should clearly be a top priority.” It was always meant to be a cheap gag to be taken out before the speech was given. Then one of the staffers dared the other to keep it in.
“I’ll do it,” the staffer threatened.
“No, you won’t,” his friend shot back.
“Wanna bet?”
Right there, the game was born. And that afternoon, the Senator told the entire nation about the importance of “dry, cleaning.”
The rules are simple: The bills we bet on are ones where the outcome’s clearly decided. A few months back, the Clean Diamond Act passed by a vote of 408 to 6; last week, the Hurricane Shelters Act passed by 401 to 10; and today the Baseball for America Act was expected to pass by approximately 300 to 100. A clear landslide. And the perfect bill to play on.
We don’t change the laws or pass bad legislation. We play at the margins; that’s where it’s safe—and where it’s fun. It’s like sitting in a meeting and betting how many times the annoying guy in your office uses the word I. You can goad him and make your best attempts to alter it, but in the end, the results are pretty much the same. On Capitol Hill, even though we’re split between Democrats and Republicans, most legislation is passed by overwhelming majorities. The result is a job that can easily lapse into a monotonous grind—unless you find a way to make it interesting.
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