“You make ‘election result’ sound like an abstraction!”
“I do not.”
“You do, too.”
“All right,” the Chief Justice finally said. “I think we’ve covered the ground.”
“Some of us covered it,” Silvio snorted. “Others stamped their little feet on it.”
“Bullshit!”
“All right,” Declan re-interjected. “Thank you, all.”
A heavy silence fell, like the one that hangs over a battlefield after the firing has stopped.
“Justice Cartwright?” he said. “How say you?”
CHAPTER 33
5-4, SUPREME COURT DENIES MITCHELL’S MOTION, CLEARING WAY FOR VANDERDAMP SECOND TERM
Justice Cartwright, writing for the majority in denying Mitchell v. Vanderdamp, noted, “In finding for the President, we simply give effect to the principle of popular sovereignty that lies at the heart of our real founding document: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident… that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundations on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.’”
She said to Declan, “When the going gets tough, the scared-shitless quote from the Declaration of Independence.”
“It’s not a bad place to take cover,” Declan said. He had voted in favor of Mitchell (albeit holding his nose), thus Pepper was spared a public racking for having taken the side of her “main squeeze,” as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court was now often referred to in the media. Declan added, “I think in some ways, Pep, it’s your own declaration of independence.”
There were demonstrations calling for Pepper’s impeachment outside the Court, and a cascade of death threats. She and Ruthless Richter (who had voted for Mitchell) bonded over this aspect. They started making dollar bets as to whose daily mail would contain more threats and whose security detail was bigger.
Controversial though the ruling was, it was generally conceded that any ruling would have been controversial. There was, too, a sense of relief that the crisis was finally over. Though several senators stood on the floor to denounce the “Imperial Judiciary,” Congress as a body did not take up impeachment.
Less than an hour after the Court issued its ruling, President Vanderdamp appeared on television from the Oval Office. He thanked the Court and resigned the office of the presidency, “effective January nineteenth”-that is, one day before the inauguration. Vice President Schmidtz would become president. The very next day, he would be sworn in again, in front of the whole nation, to serve the term of office that had been granted President Vanderdamp by the Court; becoming, in the process, the first president in history to be sworn in twice on consecutive days.
Within hours of Vanderdamp’s announcement, the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the Majority Leader of the United States Senate-members of different political parties, moreover-appeared together on television to announce that they would introduce legislation calling for a repeal of the Twenty-eighth Amendment. The move was immediately hailed by a majority of the Congress; the bills were expected to pass and go on to the states for ratification. There was a practical reason: the Majority Leader was planning to run for president in four years, and did not relish the idea of going to the trouble only to be barred from having a second term. Democracy has its flaws, but it is (often) self-corrective.
On January 19, Vice President Schmidtz was sworn in, the oath of office administered by Associate Justice Crispus Galavanter, an old friend and golfing buddy. Crispus was a busy man these days. A few weeks later he married Pepper Cartwright and Chief Justice Declan Hardwether in a private ceremony at an “undisclosed location.” The bride was given away by her grandfather.
Terry Mitchell divorced Dexter and married a New York real estate broker specializing in Park Avenue properties. Dexter went to work at a K Street firm lobbying his former colleagues for railroad subsidies.
In the spring, Buddy Bixby debuted his new television prime-time drama, Primera Dama Desesperada, starring Ramona Alvilar. It received mixed reviews but monster ratings.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you, my very dear Justice Jonathan Karp for this, our eighth collaboration. Others who greatly pleased the court: Amanda Urban of ICM; Cary Goldstein of Twelve; Lucy Buckley; John Tierney; Gregory Zorthian; Steve Umin; Harvey-Jane Kowal and Christine Valentine; Professors Thane Rosenbaum and Ben Zipursky of Fordham Law School. A large debt of thanks and a hearty oyez to Dean William Treanor of Fordham Law School, constitutional scholar and gentleman par excellence. And a large Milk-Bone to the Faithful Hound Jake who chased away the squirrels and secured the cone of silence.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Christopher Buckley is the author of thirteen books, including Boomsday, Thank You for Smoking, Little Green Men, Remembrance of Things Past, and The Aeneid of Virgil. He received the Thurber Prize for American Humor and the Washington Irving Prize for Literary Excellence. He lives on the Acela train between Washington, DC, and New York City.
