She looked fantastic, though I was several yards away and a waitress relayed that proximity wasn't her friend. Still, I took it as an encouraging bit of serendipity. But when I told Vidal about it, he seemed unimpressed, though pleased to hear that I hadn't accosted her. Regal and erudite, just like the much-ad-libbed character of Sen. Brickley Paiste, D-Penn., from Tim Robbins' satiric 1992 film "Bob Roberts," Vidal, 74, was in the midst of patiently reading passages from his book for Salon's MP3 Lit when I entered his suite.

He seemed not weary so much as just used to it all. A soldier, novelist, screenwriter, playwright, essayist, actor, National Book Award winner, 1960 New York candidate for Congress and 1982 California U.S. Senate candidate, Vidal seems rarely shaken, seldom stirred. His first novel, "Williwaw," was published when he was just 19.

"The Golden Age," his 22nd novel, has a fictional cast of characters that intermingles with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, Wendell Wilkie, Harry Hopkins, and other Washingtonian power brokers -- including Vidal's blind grandfather, Sen. Thomas Gore, D-Okla. (Vidal says he knew most of these figures to one degree or another.)

This day, Vidal is also preparing for the debut of his play, "The Best Man," on Broadway in just two days. At the Virginia Theater opening, he was to meet Karenna Gore Schiff for the first time -- the daughter of his distant cousin, Vice President Al Gore, whom Vidal says he still hasn't met.

(Reports special correspondent Schiff Monday: "We joked that it was a typical dysfunctional family reunion. He said he could see the family resemblance, but that he looked a bit more youthful. After the play, we discussed my favorite line, 'There are no ends. There are only means.' We also talked about how gripping and addictive campaigns are and lamented that conventions are not as dramatic as they were when he wrote the play." Says Schiff: "Anyway, it is an honor for me to at least claim kinship to one of the great writers of the 20th century.")

There is a closing quality to all of these details. Welch feasting downstairs, once a sexy young thing in an adaptation of a Vidal novel, now an aged diva. Distant cousin Al Gore Jr., maybe the next president of the United States. The release of "The Golden Age," the seventh and final chapter in his series of historical novels. In the first performance of "The Best Man" on Broadway 40 years ago, the first to play the protagonist was actor Melvyn Douglas, who appears as a character in "The Golden Age" -- as does Vidal himself, as a young man.

With the closing of all these chapters in his life, Salon sat down and talked with Vidal about the political themes he sees in both his novel and life.

In your new novel, "The Golden Age," the character Peter Sanford, pondering how FDR had hidden so much about Pearl Harbor from the American public in order to get the nation into war for whatever purposes, says: "The few always knew best. The many must always follow the lead. This was the 'democratic' way in the United States."

Well obviously Peter is being ironic, but he's being accurate; the few do know, and the few do govern. There's a great line by David Hume, the 18th century Scots philosopher. He said, "How is it that the few control the many," because the many are many, and they theoretically would have the power to overthrow the few. And he said the few control the many through opinion. And he meant the churches, the schools, the broadsheets, as they called newspapers then.

When you control opinion, as corporate America controls opinion in the United States, by owning the media, you can make the [many] believe almost anything you want, and you can guide them. Roosevelt had fewer means than people have nowadays, but he was a master of those means. He wanted us virtuously to come to England's aid against Hitler; France had just fallen, this was 1940 where I start the story. France has fallen, England is being blown up by the Nazis. Eighty percent of the American people refuse to go to war on England's side, there's nothing Roosevelt can do, he tried everything, exhortation and threats, and nothing worked ... So he began a series of provocations of the Japanese. So that they would strike at us, and give him a cause for war ... What is still moot is, Did Roosevelt know that they were going to hit Pearl Harbor ...?

So the few run the country their own way and generally they are in agreement. The interesting thing about that period, which is why I set "The Golden Age" in it -- I cover 1940 through 1950, which is the beginning of the global empire of the United States -- is that there was a genuine political debate, the last one we've ever had.

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