He was. Most of the others had arrived by 6:30, when a call came in from the Westminster airport that the Gulfstream was on final approach. I had a driver waiting for him, so we should expect him a few minutes before 7:00. Otherwise, Macy Adams was the only one late, and she showed up right after the call. “What’s going on, Carl?” she asked, like every other guest.
I gave the same answer the others had gotten. “I’ll explain when we’re all here. In the meantime, grab some food.”
At 6:50 Brewster arrived. I shook his hand and invited him inside. He asked, “Okay, Carl, what’s up? What was so important that you sent a plane to pick me up in Chicago? I was damn near expecting the chopper on the pad to fly me to the door! What happened? Bush pick you or something?”
I nodded and simply answered, “Yes.”
Brewster stopped in his tracks and said quietly, “You’re not kidding me, are you? Bush picked you?” Around us the room was suddenly quiet.
I nodded to him. “We came to an agreement on my commitment to the campaign. Now we need to have a talk, all of us.”
Suddenly the room exploded in questions. I smiled at the uproar and loaded some seconds on my plate. I sat down at the head of the table, and then I held my hands up in a quieting gesture. “Okay, here’s the long and the short of it. I met with the Governor yesterday morning. We talked and he promised to call me with the news today. He called me this morning, and I told him I would need a couple of days to make arrangements. The official announcement is on Monday. We have this weekend to make some plans.”
Molly was the first one to speak. “Dad, you’re going to be the Vice President?”
I smiled at my youngest. “Well, we have to win an election first, but that’s the general idea, anyway.”
Molly looked at her older sister, and they were silently talking to each other. You could almost see the brain waves traveling back and forth between them.
“One election or two?” asked Millie Destrier.
“Now, isn’t that an interesting question.” I replied. “That’s the real reason I invited everybody here tonight.”
“I don’t understand,” commented Holly.
I nodded to the girls. “Okay, let me explain how this works. I’m up for re-election this fall. You already know that I’m running against Rob Hollister. Now I have to run two elections at the same time.”
“You mean you’re still going to run for re-election at the same time you’re running for Vice President? Can you do that?”
It was Millie Destrier who answered that. “Yes, it’s legal, just unusual. It only gets complicated if your father wins both elections. I mean, if he only wins one and loses the other, he only has the one job to worry about, and if he loses both, he’s out of a job anyway.”
“So what happens if he wins both? Can you be a Congressman and a Vice President at the same time?”
Everybody smiled and shook their head. “Nope, it doesn’t work that way,” said Macy.
“No, your dad becomes the Vice President, and then we have a special election to elect a new Congressman,” said Jack.
“So, who becomes the new candidate for Congressman?” asked my wife.
“That would be one of the topics for tonight. The people in this room are basically going to be the ones who decide that. Not you and the girls, so much, but you know what I mean.”
“Maybe I should change to become a Republican? Do I get a vote then?”
I grinned and waved off the idea. “No! Forget it! Do you know how many votes it’s worth with you as a Democrat?! It’s a great human interest item!”
Brewster smiled and agreed with me. Around the table the other political types nodded as well.
Cheryl Dedrick cleared her throat, and I turned to face her. She looked over at her husband, Jim, who I recalled was a paving contractor in Reisterstown. Then she said, “I don’t know how you pick the candidates, but can I put my name in the hat?”
I glanced over at Marty, who I had discussed this with already, who shrugged and nodded. Then I looked over at the others before answering. “The only person I’ve talked to about this is Marty, but you were the name we talked about. I wanted you here tonight, you and Jim, to raise the question. You’d be interested?”
She looked over at Jim again, and then nodded. “We actually talked about it when you were being mentioned for the Vice Presidential slot. Then, when you said they told you no, we kind of wrote it off. But, yes, I think I could do it.”
I looked around the table to the other professionals. “Any thoughts on this? Have any of you been thinking on this?”
Macy commented, “Don’t take this the wrong way, Carl, but I figured you never had a chance for the VP slot. I couldn’t even figure out how you got on the short list. No offense meant.”
“None taken. I was as surprised as you were.”
Millie asked, “Carl, are you planning on running for both offices? It’s too late to run somebody else. They would have had to register months ago.”
“I don’t have a choice, not if we want a chance to keep the Maryland Ninth in the Party. I have to run as hard here as we had already planned, as well as spend my every waking moment campaigning for Bush. What else can I do? I am going to have to rely on you guys to help me win an absentee campaign.”
“And that’s why you needed me here,” added McRiley.
“And that’s why I needed you,” I agreed. “I don’t know what you would be able to do with the Bush campaign, but I am going to need the help here. I have to win this election here. If I win as VP and lose in the Maryland Ninth, I become a national joke. We are going to have to do this full bore.”
“And afterwards?”
“I work just as hard for my hand-picked successor, whoever that ends up as. Likewise, we’ll be able to crank up all the resources we can from the RNC. So the question really arises, who am I hand-picking as my successor? Marty and I vote for Cheryl. Any other candidates you guys have been thinking of?”
Nobody else had any names, but nobody had any issues with Cheryl. This wasn’t going to be decided tonight, but we’d come up with a name by the convention. Marty and I explained how he would be leaving after the inauguration, though he agreed to hang around long enough to help the next Republican victor find a replacement. It was late when we finally broke up and everybody went home. We gave Brewster and Marty guest rooms for the night. Marty took Charlie’s room. Charlie was at sea in the Indian Ocean and had just deployed; he wouldn’t be back until around Christmas. He would get to miss the circus this was about to become. I almost envied him. Then I called my sister in Rochester, swore her to secrecy, and let her know what was happening.
By Saturday lunchtime somebody talked. I began getting phone calls on the unlisted number from reporters asking for comments. I just referred everybody to the Bush-Cheney team. I did accept the call from Joe Allbaugh with the itinerary for the announcement. We were to fly to Houston on Sunday afternoon. There would be a suite for us at the Four Seasons. The announcement would be made right after lunch from the deck of the USS Texas, docked as a museum ship in Houston. Would we be able to make the travel arrangements? I assured him it wouldn’t be a problem, and then called and made sure the G-IV was ready. We began packing our bags. By Saturday afternoon reporters and camera crews began camping out by the driveway and parking on the side of Mount Carmel Road. I called the head of our security detail in and gave him the good word. He would need reinforcements!
Sunday morning, the political talk shows were all over the rumor. My bet was that somebody from the Cheney-Rove camp had leaked it, for good or for bad, perhaps in a desire to get me to say something stupid and premature, and thus derail the whole thing. The most amusing segment came on ABC’s This Week, with Sam Donaldson interviewing my old buddy Fletcher Donaldson (no relation.) Fletcher had discovered that, almost by default, he was now the go-to guy on all matters Buckman. He had been covering me for the Sun for ten years now, and was probably the only reporter who had ever been inside the house. I had talked to him the other day, but only to tell him to call the Bush campaign, and that he knew me well enough to know I wasn’t going to say anything else to him.