TRICKY: Cool, confident and decisive. Cool, confident confident and decisive. Cool, confident and decisive. Cool, confident and decisive.
LEGAL COACH: Feel better now? Crisis over?
TRICKY: I think so, yes.
LEGAL COACH: You see, you mustn’t be frightened of Boy Scouts, Mr. President. Of course they’re going to bleed a little and there may even be this hue and cry about it on TV, but when the country sees this sign that one of them was carrying before the bleeding began (extracts from his briefcase a sign reading DIXON FAVOR SEFFING — The Reverend gasps), I think our worries are going to be over. Let the newspapers run all the photos of Boy Scout corpses they want — we’ll just run a photo of this sign, and of the five thousand replicas that I have asked the Government Printing Office to run off by morning. We’ll see who gets the support of the nation then.
TRICKY: Look! I’ve stopped sweating!
LEGAL COACH: See? You’ve weathered another crisis, Mr. President.
TRICKY: Wow! That makes six hundred and one! (Congratulations all around, from everyone except the Highbrow Coach, who speaks now for the first time.)
HIGHBROW COACH: Gentlemen, I wonder if I may take a somewhat different approach to the problem that we have been assembled here to solve. All the while I have been listening to your suggestions, I have simultaneously been bringing to bear upon the problem all my brainpower, wisdom, academic credentials, cunning, opportunism, love of power and so on, and the result is this list that I am holding in my hand, of the names of five individuals and/or organizations upon whom I think we can safely — if I may use the vernacular for a moment — pin the rap.
LEGAL COACH (his interest suddenly aroused, after initial suspiciousness of “the Professor”): The rap?
HIGHBROW COACH: “The rap.”
LEGAL COACH: Which rap?
HIGHBROW COACH: You name it. Inciting to riot. Tampering with the morals of minors. If you prefer, corrupting the youth of the nation.
POLITICAL COACH: “Corrupting the youth.” Hey, that’s got a real campaign ring to it!
HIGHBROW COACH: And a certain historical resonance, I would think.
SPIRITUAL COACH: At the risk of sounding “square,” may I put in a good word for “tampering with the morals of minors”? I’ve always found it to have tremendous appeal. It seems there is something in the word “tampering” that particularly infuriates people.
LEGAL COACH: That may be, Reverend, but in my book you still can’t beat “inciting to riot” for scaring the hell out of the public.
TRICKY: And you, General? You look distressed again.
MILITARY COACH: I am distressed again! I am distressed every time the Professor opens his mouth! What is this business of bringing charges? Oh, mind you, they’re good charges and I don’t have anything against them personally, but the last thing I remember we were talking about shooting the bastards.
HIGHBROW COACH: General, despite your low opinion of intellectuals, I happen to have the highest regard for Army officers such as yourself, particularly in their devotion to their men and to their country. I wonder if once you have heard me read my list, you won’t agree that to charge any of these five self-avowed enemies of America with the crime, to fix the responsibility for the uprising of the Boy Scouts on any one of them, will simultaneously absolve the Boy Scouts themselves of any real guilt, while totally discrediting the charges they have made against the President. The Scouts will retreat in panic…
MILITARY COACH: But without our firing a shot!
HIGHBROW COACH: The country isn’t going away, General.
TRICKY: Sounds interesting, Professor. But why only one of the five? That strikes me as highly unusual.
HIGHBROW COACH: Well, perhaps, but I was just wondering if we haven’t gone the route with the conspiracy business.
TRICKY: Oh, but it’s so much fun when you get to choose two or three. Each person picks his favorites — and then all the wheeling and dealing, until we come up with the conspiracy that suits everybody.
LEGAL COACH: And, of course, Mr. President, to put in a word here in behalf of the cause of justice, the more choice you’re allowed, the greater the chance of catching the right culprit. My feeling is that just to stay on the safe side, each of us should choose a minimum of three.
SPIRITUAL COACH: I know I’m outside my baili wick again, but if it is going to improve the chances for justice being done, why can’t we choose all five?
MILITARY COACH: Mr. President, I am growing more and more exasperated by the moment. Here we sit, in the comfort and spendor of this fully equipped underground locker room, in full football regalia, deliberating over the niceties of justice, while, with every passing moment, those Boy Scouts are readying themselves for battle against my men. I think it is high time we reminded the Professor that he is no longer up there in his ivory tower, where you can talk yourself blue in the face about this one’s rights and that one’s rights and how many rights fit on the head of a pin. There is an angry mob of Boy Scouts out there, Eagle Scouts among them, and they are growing angrier and more threatening by the moment. I say shoot ‘em and shoot ‘em now!
TRICKY: General, you are a brave soldier and a loyal American. But, I must say, I sense in your remarks a certain disregard for fundamental constitutional liberties such as I have pledged myself to uphold in my oath of office.
MILITARY COACH: Mr. President, I have the highest regard for the Constitution. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have devoted my life to fighting to defend it. But the fact of the matter is, we are playing with a time bomb. Right now it is still only the Boy Scouts. By morning, and I can guarantee you this, their ranks are going to be infiltrated by dissolute Brownies and Cub Scouts looking for adventure. Now it’s one thing to ask my men to mow down Eagle Scouts; it is another for them to have to deal with little boys and girls half that size. Those kids can run like the dickens, and they’re small. As a result, what right now would still be a routine street massacre, will be converted into dangerous house-to-house fighting, in which we are bound to sustain heavy losses by way of our soldiers shooting mistakenly at each other.
TRICKY: I think you know, General, that nobody wants to save the lives of our boys — by that I mean, of course, our men — any more than I do. But I repeat: I will not do so by trampling upon the Constitution. I campaigned for this office as a strict constructionist where the Constitution of this country is concerned, and if I were now to take the course that you suggest and acted to prevent this group from voting in open and honest elections on the Professor’s list, then the American people would have every right to throw me out of office tomorrow.
And let me make one thing perfectly clear: nobody is ever going to do that again. They have thrown me out of office enough in my lifetime! I will not be cast in the role of a loser — of a war, or of anything. And if that means bringing the full firepower of our Armed Forces to bear upon every, last Brownie and Cub Scout in America, then that is what we are going to do. Because the President of the United States and Leader of the Free World can ill afford to be humiliated by anyone, let alone by third- and fourth-graders who have nothing better to do than engage the United States Army in treacherous house-to-house combat. I don’t care if we have to go, into the nursery schools. I don’t care if our men have to fight their way through barricades constructed of lanyards and hula hoops and bubble gum, under a steady barrage of toys being grossly misused as weapons — I, as Commander-in-Chief, will not run from the battle. Not when my prestige is at stake! If I have to call in air strikes over the playgrounds, I will do it! Let’s see them try to bring down B-52’s with their bats and their balls! Let’s see them try to flee from my helicopters on those little tricycles of theirs! No, this mighty giant of a nation of which I am, by extension, the mighty giant of a President, will not have its nose tweaked by a bunch of little brats who should be at home with their homework in the first place!