Carl Spader

Carl Spader, known to Kelly Kelleher as Mr. Spader, is her former employer and an old political associate of The Senator. His career links the hopeful liberal politics of the 1960s to the battered present of Citizens' Inquiry, where Kelly works as a writer. For Kelly, Spader is at once a source of political conviction and a figure whose decline she observes with embarrassment and compassion; her discretion about him marks a personal ethic that survives the disappointments of their shared political world.

Identity and Political Background

Spader belongs to a generation formed by the campaigns and public causes of the 1960s. He had been an eloquent young white associate of Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy, and he had worked for several years at The New Republic after college. His political past is associated with the Kennedy era’s sense of purpose, authority, and hope, even as Kelly’s account recognizes the worsening crises of the period, including Vietnam and events at home.

Kelly was not yet four when Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June 1968, and she remembers nothing of the tragedy. Her connection to that political history is therefore mediated through people such as Spader, whose career and memories belong to the earlier generation. He gives her the maxim, “You're in politics, you're an optimist.” The accompanying distinction—that once optimism is gone, a person is no longer in politics—makes hope less a private temperament than a condition of political participation.

Work at Citizens' Inquiry

After graduating from college, Kelly worked for Spader, an old acquaintance of The Senator and a former political associate. She was not employed by The Senator, his staff, or his campaign organizers; the professional connection instead ran through Spader. By the time of the novel’s events, Kelly contributes to Citizens' Inquiry, whose circulation fluctuates between 35,000 and 40,000. At its peak in 1969, the magazine had circulated between 95,000 and 100,000 copies, rivaling The New Republic. The gap between that former reach and the smaller, unstable circulation of the later publication gives concrete measure to the changed fortunes of the political press around Spader.

Spader’s office is a dismal storefront on Brimmer Street, an image that contrasts with his earlier prominence as a media personality. Kelly recalls him after his third divorce as unshaven and potbellied, his fiery hair receding and his once-dimpled smile dented and sodden. The physical decline is not merely a portrait of aging: it sits beside the history of a political project that, in his view, has been dismantled. He mourns the triumph of conservatism, the loss of the Kennedy-Johnson vision, and what he calls the loss of America’s soul. His anger over the magazine’s decline and the country’s direction is bound up with a broader sense of political defeat.

Kelly's Loyalty and Discretion

When The Senator asks about his old friend, Kelly answers carefully. She does not gossip about Spader or exploit his misfortune for conversational effect, adhering to her principle that a person should not say anything about someone else that they would not say in that person’s presence. Her restraint distinguishes her from the political conversation around her: she can see Spader’s embarrassment and deterioration without turning either into a story for someone else’s advantage.

The Senator says that he has not seen Spader in years, and his voice carries both regret and mild censure. He nevertheless says that his Washington office subscribes to Citizens' Inquiry. When he asks what Kelly does for the magazine, she mentions her recent article, “The Shame of Capital Punishment in America.” The Senator says he believes he has read it and was impressed. Spader’s magazine thus forms a quiet professional bridge between Kelly and The Senator, while Kelly’s discretion keeps the absent former employer from becoming merely a subject of their exchange.

Political Ideals and Private Power

Spader’s maxim about optimism resonates beyond his own career. Kelly brings political commitments into her work, but she also recognizes the strain between idealism and the compromises of political life. The narrative places his once-eloquent public identity against the storefront office, the diminished circulation, and his anger at conservative ascendancy. The contrast makes his personal decline part of a larger account of a liberal political vision losing influence.

That political disappointment is also set beside the novel’s recurring association between politics and power. Kelly’s professional connection to Spader does not make her an employee of The Senator, yet their shared political world brings her into his orbit. The Senator’s attention to her article offers recognition, but the novel also frames political and erotic relations as negotiations of power. Spader’s history therefore matters not only as background: it helps establish the idealistic commitments Kelly carries into encounters where public principles, private desire, and unequal authority meet.