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"FacebookPinterest\n\n \"Congressman! They make you sit in the back of the plane?\" A sturdy forearm came to rest atop the aisle seat in front of me; a well-loved pectoral muscle, wrapped in gray cotton, pulled up alongside. A man, a large one, ducked his head under the overhead bin. \"So I figured out what you should do next,\" he said to the backlit assemblage of smudgy lenses and swept hair next to the window. \"Run for mayor of New York!\"\n\n\"Not a chance,\" said Congressman Window Seat.\n\n\"And did you have a nice time?\" Aisle Man asked of Mrs. Middle Seat. \"I took your husband out for some nice free food.\"\n\n\"Just seeing how the other half lives,\" said the congressman to his mate.\n\nIndeed. JetBlue Flight 60 was but an hour into its post-convention haul from Tampa to JFK and I'd mostly been sitting with my hands idle on the tray table, trying to wipe from my mind the week's posturing and back-scratching and influence-touting. But it was not to be: a last wavelet of vileness had found me in 25D. Gross, I thought. And then, listening again, I thought Wait\u2014what?\n\n\"I was talking to Shelly Adelson,\" Aisle Man was saying, name-dropping the casino gazillionaire and Israel-booster who personally funded Newt Gingrich before embracing Romney and accompanying him to the Holy Land. Everybody at the conventions wants you to know how personally close they are with whichever backroom sultan is in fashion this cycle.\n\n\"I saw Shelly in Vegas,\" said the congressman.\n\n\"Well Shelly was talking to Bibi,\" continued Aisle Man, according to the notes I started typing, \"and he said it has nothing to do with the polls; Bibi is going to do it when he's ready.\" Yes, far above the Mid-Atlantic, Republican big shots were discussing the invasion of Iran the way you might discuss NFL preseason. \"Shelly told him, just don't do it three days before the election\u2014because then Obama will get behind you and the people will support him and he'll win. What a joke that would be. Hopefully he'll do it November 10 or something.\"\n\nGetting little more than an affirmative grunt from the Congressman, Aisle Man gave the seatback a valedictory pat and continued on to the bathroom. I looked at my computer screen. Did I have some sort of scoop about Israel invading Iran? Probably not. Did I have some sort of insight into the foul inner workings of the power class? I hoped so.\n\nA flight attendant opened the overhead bin to retrieve more bags of cookies; one fell and richoted off my knee and into the aisle. \"They should let you keep that,\" the congressman said, looking up from his crossword puzzle. I introduced myself. He turned out to be Representative Bob Turner, Republican of Brooklyn and Queens. But my issue was not with Congressman Window Seat. My issue was with Aisle Man. How to get to him, though? The fasten-seatbelts sign was on, and I couldn't see where he'd sat down after returning from the bathroom. (Bad spying on my part; will never happen again.)\n\nBut then, another bag of cookies from the heavens. Fifteen rows ahead of me, past actor Stephen Baldwin and the convention bandleader, G.E. Smith, the blonde head of Vanity Fair's Juli Weiner popped into view in the middle seat, asking to be let out. Rising to let her pass, a familiar grey-shirted form. Jesus.\n\nMinutes later, after exchanging a few collusive words with Weiner while her neighbor was himself in the bathroom, I found myself standing over the crop-haired head of Aisle Man as he buckled back into his seat. \"Can I introduce you to my colleague Reid?\" asked the saintly Weiner. A.M. held out a meaty hand. I asked him who he was and who he was with, and he turned bright red.\n\nAisle Man did not want to give his name. He did not want to speak to the press. But when I told him I was going to write about him, he grudgingly offered some background. A.M. is a bundler, one of those mega-fundraisers who agree to corral a given amount\u2014generally in the hundreds of thousands\u2014from other rich people. He works at a Wall Street bank. He has already met and exceeded his numeric goal. Colleagues in Finance World, he said, are beyond stoked for Romney. \"People are coming out of the woodwork,\" he told me. \"People who gave to Obama last time are coming up to me to ask how they can get involved with Romney.\" And what about the Israel stuff?\n\nA.M. said he had simply been referring to the theory\u2014popular in these circles, apparently\u2014that if the president is running well ahead later in the fall, Netanyahu will launch his much-anticipated attack on Iran before November 6, so as to put Obama in a tough spot and, hopefully, swing the election away from him. The converse, A.M. said, is that if Romney is ahead, Bibi will wait to strike until January, so as not to rock the boat of his favored candidate. Aisle Man explained that Adelson had gone to great lengths to rebut this theory. Bibi, according to Adelson, will do what we he wants, when he wants, polls be damned.\n\nAisle Man didn't want me to say too much about it, though. He didn't want Adelson's people coming after him for characterizing the gaming magnate's views.\n\n\"Look, I don't know Shelly Adelson,\" he said, staring at his seatback. \"I just talked to him in a hallway.\"\n\n Read more on Death Race 2012\n\n17 Things We Ate at the Republican Convention, in Ascending Order from Crappy to Slightly Less Crappy\n\nAn Alternate List of Surprise Republican Convention Speakers\n\nGQ Instapoll: What's Your Favorite Thing About Mitt Romney? And You Can't Say 'Business Experience'\n\nGQ's Insta-vention 2012, Day 5\n\n Follow Reid Cherlin on Twitter for more updates from the campaign trail."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.gq.com/story/high-above-america-power-brokers-moving-about-the-cabin>