SPIRITUAL COACH: No, I can’t. Only I’m afraid that having listened to everything that’s been said, I’m really more confused now than when I began. I mean I’m still very much for Jane Fonda. She is still far and away my first choice. but once I get beyond her — well, I just can’t make up my mind. And it really would be terrible to do the wrong thing, wouldn’t it, given the gravity and seriousness of what we’re about…? (To the General) Excuse me, but who did you vote for again?
MILITARY COACH: Hanoi and Haiphong.
SPIRITUAL COACH (to Political Coach): And you?
POLITICAL COACH: Hanoi, without Haiphong.
SPIRITUAL COACH (to Legal Coach): And you have the five-in-one-and what were the others?
LEGAL COACH: Berrigans, Panthers and Flood.
SPIRITUAL COACH (throwing his hands up): Oh, this is just impossible! Each one sounds better than the one before! Oh — the heck with it! Eeny, meeny, miney, moe… Okay! Jane Fonda and Curt Flood! Done!
TRICKY: (Records the Reverend’s vote) Now that all the ballots have been cast, gentlemen, I am going once again to pass this sheet of paper among you so that you may be certain that your votes have been correctly tabulated. Even the President of the United States, you know, is capable of making a clerical error, and if he has, he certainly hopes that he can be a big enough man to admit it. (He passes the paper among them)
LEGAL COACH: Jimi Hendrix, Mr. President the first name is spelled J-i-m-i, not J-i-m-m-y, as you’ve written it here.
TRICKY: Well, let’s correct it then, because that is just the sort of error, inadvertently made, that tends to be totally misconstrued by the press. Now I never claimed to know how to spell the names of every colored person in this country, but I will tell you this much: where someone’s name is concerned, colored or not, he has a constitutional right to have it spelled correctly on any indictment that is handed down on him, no matter how absurd or outrageous the charges themselves. And so long as I am President, I am going to make every effort to see that this is done. Now, J-i-m what?
LEGAL COACH: I.
TRICKY: J-i-m-i. There. And I’ll initial the change, just to make clear exactly who is responsible for both the error and the correction. There! Now I only wish that the wonderful colored people of this country could have seen the scrupulosity with which I attended to a matter seemingly so picayune as this one. Oh sure, the media would still find something to carp about, you can bank on that. But I am certain, if I know the great majority of good, hard-working colored people in this country, that the time I just took from my pressing duties as President of the United States and Leader of the Free World to correct a single letter in one of their names would not have gone unnoticed and unappreciated. Call me a dreamer; call me a believer in humanity; call me, as the song has it, a’cockeyed optimist; and be sure to call me a big man too, for admitting to my error; but I am sure that they would understand just how difficult a problem this is for us to solve, given the kinds of ways they spell those names of theirs, and I think they would have that wonderful wisdom, such as comes to people who work in menial occupations, to realize that a job of these proportions is not going to be completed overnight, and that consequently we are not about to be bullied into spelling their names correctly by marches or demonstrations or mule trains parked on the White House lawn. We will spell them right but in our own sweet time, and according to our own secret timetable, on earth as it is in Heaven.
SPIRITUAL COACH: Amen.
TRICKY And, my friends, on that sanctimonious note, I am going to call this conference to a close. At ten A.M., we shall meet to settle upon the exact nature of the crime. In the meantime, I will remain here in the locker room, in uniform…
SPIRITUAL COACH: Mr. President, it is nearly dawn. You must get some rest. You must take your helmet off and go to bed.
TRICKY: I couldn’t sleep now, Reverend, if I tried. Not with a smear campaign of this magnitude before me.
SPIRITUAL COACH: But a man has only so much to give…
TRICKY: When it comes to something like this, Reverend, I have to say, immodest as it may sound, I am indefatigable. No, I will remain in uniform, helmet and all, and with the aid of the ballots you have cast here in this free election, I will hammer out, in the lonely vigil of the night, the conspiracy that seems to me most beneficial to my career. I only hope and pray that I am equal to the task. Good night, gentlemen, and thank you.
ALL: Good night, Mr. President. (They rise to leave)
TRICKY: And don’t forget to hand in your uniforms at the door. I won’t mention names, but I understand that last time one of you tried to smuggle his out, under his street clothes, in order to show off at home to his wife and children. Of course, I understand the temptation. How many times have I wanted to address the nation in my shoulder guards! I’ve never told this to a soul, but strictly between us, at the time of the Cambodian incursion, I did go on nationwide TV, unbeknownst to everyone, wearing my regulation National Football League athletic supporter.
I just couldn’t help myself. I’d seen Patton and I’d invaded Cambodia, and I guess the whole thing went to my head. Of course, not a word beyond these four walls: if any of my critics found out, well, you know how they like to jump on Dixon. All I have to do is wear a football player’s jockstrap on TV while making a foreign policy speech and the morning papers would have me pegged as a psychopath. Down here in the secret underground locker room it’s one thing — up there in the real world, banker’s gray!
ALL: You can trust us with your secrets, Mr. President.
TRICKY (moved): I know I can… All right, then. It remains only for each of you, as he passes from the room, to slap me on the behind the way the pros do coming out of the huddle. And don’t forget to say, “Way to go, Tricky D, way to go!”
4. TRICKY ADDRESSES THE NATION
(The Famous “Something Is Rotten in the State of Denmark” Speech)
Good evening, my fellow Americans.
I come before you tonight with a message of national importance. While it is true that I do not intend to offer you false hope by minimizing the nature of the crisis confronting our nation at this hour, I do not believe there is cause for any such alarm as you may have seen or heard in the news media from those critical of the decisions I have reached in the last twenty-four hours.
Now I know there are always those who would prefer that we take a weak, cowardly and dishonorable position in the face of a crisis. They of course are entitled to their opinion. I am certain, however, that the great majority of the American people will agree that the actions I have taken in the confrontation between the United States of America and the sovereign state of Denmark are indispensable to our dignity, our honor, our moral and spiritual idealism, our credibility around the world, the soundness of the economy, our greatness, our dedication to the vision of our forefathers, the human spirit, the divinely inspired dignity of man, our treaty commitments, the principles of the United Nations, and progress and peace for all people.
Now no one is more aware than I am of the political consequences of taking bold and forthright action in behalf of our dignity, idealism and honor, to choose just three. But I would rather be a one term President and take these noble, heroic measures against the state of Denmark, than to be a two-term President by accepting humiliation at the hands of a tenth-rate military power. I want to make that perfectly clear.