When Freshman Orientation came around, I talked it over with my staff and we decided to stay where we were. We might have been able to move a floor down or something like that, but it just wasn’t worth the hassle. That might change in a few years. While I didn’t want to be too glib in my predictions, I did know that there was going to be a huge upset in Congress in the 1994 elections. Assuming I survived the election, I was going to find myself in the middle of the pack of a House full of new Republicans. I might just want a new office then.
After the election I did my duty day thanking people, and then Marilyn and I turned the offspring over to her parents for the rest of the week and flew down to Hougomont. The election had been on November 3rd, so I turned 37 on Thursday. We had a very private birthday party, with Marilyn wearing high heeled sandals and not much else, and she had to light my candle all day long. Otherwise we just goofed off until we flew home on Sunday.
Chapter 113: An Old Friend
Thursday, December 17, 1992
There are some things that only the House of Representatives can do and some things only the Senate can do. The House is much more involved in the budget process than the Senate. On the other hand, only the Senate gets to weigh in on a President’s appointments to high office. The Senate is supposed to be the more senior of the two bodies, and is supposed to be the older and wiser grownups. It goes to most Senator’s heads, and makes a lot of them into pompous asses, but that’s probably a different topic.
The one thing I didn’t have to pay any attention to was cabinet appointments or nominations to the Supreme Court. No matter what I thought of the person, I had no legal right to get involved. If somebody were to ask, I could toss my two cents in, but even then, it mostly doesn’t matter. As far as the Cabinet is concerned, there are four biggies — State, Defense, Justice, and Treasury — and everything else is who-gives-a-shit territory. For instance, nobody cared about Transportation until a bunch of planes crashed on 9-11, otherwise, who gives a shit?!
What most people don’t realize is that most of these positions have deputies who are also political appointees, and need Senate approval. These jobs never end up on the evening news, never get any kind of argument, and are basically rubber-stamped. The only time things get mucked up is when a Senator gets his panties in a wad and puts a hold on things to try and make a point. For instance, when George W. Bush came into office in 2001, Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina put holds on a bunch of his appointees to force the President to change a law.
As a plain and simple and relatively junior Congressman, I was beneath the gaze of my more powerful brothers in the Senate. Everybody already knew by December who Bill Clinton was nominating for various positions. The various deputies were simply listed on a paper that got sent to everybody as part of a routine data dump. Huge amounts of this stuff get sent around, almost none of which is ever read. In general, if you even notice it, you glance over it, and send it back to be filed or tossed.
I received a courtesy list of nominations for Cabinet Deputy Secretaries and Under Secretaries towards the end of December. There are huge numbers of these bureaucrats, and the titles are intentionally confusing. Who ranks higher, a Deputy Secretary, an Under Secretary, or an Assistant Secretary? Who’s more important, a Deputy Assistant or an Assistant Deputy? Does anybody actually care? Well, actually, it’s important to know if you are trying to get anything done. A Deputy is a shitload higher up in the pecking order than an Assistant, so if you need something to get done, you have to know who on the ladder can help.
At this point, though, I just scanned over the list, to see if I remembered any of the names from my first time through. In fact, one of them did. I called Mindy into my office and handed her the list, with one of the names circled on it. “Do me a favor, Mindy, and find out who this guy is?”
She looked at the list, a bit confused. “Who is he?”
“That’s what I want you to find out. He must have a bio somewhere in the system. All I have right now is the name. I just want to see if it’s the same fellow I think it is, or somebody totally different.”
She shrugged and nodded. “An old friend?”
I smiled back. “Maybe. Let’s find out.”
Mindy took off and I put it out of my mind, and went to the next piece of paper in the In Box, a list of some legislation about to be introduced as soon as Bill Clinton took office. Bill was feeling pretty cocky, with a happy Democratic Congress ready to do his bidding. Well, good for him, but in a couple of years he was going to get a very rude wakeup call.
Mindy came in the next morning with a manila envelope. “Here’s the information you asked for.” She opened the envelope and handed me what looked like a fairly stock bio and a picture of a handsome and smiling man. “Is this who you thought it was?”
I stared at the picture as my stomach churned. “Yes, yes it is. Thank you.” I looked up at her and saw the curiosity in her face. “Now, I want you to call Gingrich’s office and get me a meeting with him as soon as possible. Don’t take no for an answer. It won’t be a long meeting, but I need to meet him soon, and I’ll stay as late as I need to.”
“What’s wrong, Congressman Buckman?”
I shook my head. “Don’t worry, just get me that meeting. Thanks.”
Mindy nodded and left, still mystified. I looked back down at the bio and photo, pondering how in the world this man had wandered back into my life like this. It was a good photo, too, showing a handsome man, tall, and slim, with a full head of ‘executive hair’ and bright white teeth.
It was my old friend, Brigadier General Anthony Hawkins!
I never used his full name in 1981, when I met the man, although I knew it. I was a Captain and he was a Brigadier General. His first name was ‘General’, and I needed to toss a lot of ‘Sir’s in as well. When last I saw him he was ordering my sorry ass onto a C-47, and then a few days later I heard him demanding I march my dead and injured men back to Honduras. I never saw him after the dustoff picked us up at that ‘abandoned’ airstrip; he kept his hands relatively clean and had the Provost Marshal and his people kick the shit out of me in that basement jail cell.
Colonel Featherstone had told me that Hawkins was being promoted to Major General at about the time I was ending my career. I looked down the bio and shook my head in amazement. He did two years in Brussels with NATO, and then transferred back to the states, where he managed to pick up a third star, and then moved on to Hawaii as the Army commander reporting to CINCPAC, the Navy four star who ran the Pacific. That was it for him in the Army. He retired a Lieutenant General six years ago. After that he spent some time on the board of a defense contractor, and when that was bought by Grumman and he was out of a job, he went on to join the Center for Military Progress, a Washington think tank.
What really surprised me was that Hawkins was a Democrat. Military people are by and large a conservative bunch, and they tend towards the Republican Party. One of the benefits of conscription, drafting people, is that you get much more of a mix of society than you do with an all volunteer force, which tends to be self-replicating. No, I’m not advocating the return of the draft, but it wasn’t all bad, either.
I hadn’t really thought much about the dumb bastard since I got out of the service. My knee was fucked up, but that could have happened another time or place, a different jump, or even just falling down the stairs. I had left the Army almost eleven years ago, and it wasn’t a part of my life anymore. I never regretted my service, and would have loved to have stayed in, but it just didn’t work out that way. I certainly couldn’t complain about my life since then!