I rolled my eyes. “Nothing is wrong if you are camping with the Boy Scouts. This isn’t camping. This is the White House, the official residence of the President of the United States of America, and you are about to be on national television in the Rose Garden. Do you really want your parents to see you on the evening news in an outfit that looks like you’re homeless and hanging around a trash fire in the Bowery?”
“DADDY!” squawked Holly.
I looked at my eldest daughter. “Daddy nothing! This isn’t the lab at Princeton. This is the real world, where you have to dress up every once in a while. And speaking of dressing up, it’s too late to do anything about it now, but a haircut and a beard trimmer would go a long, long way towards making your boyfriend look a whole lot more presentable.”
“Excuse me?” Jerry asked incredulously.
“Carl, don’t you think you’re going a little overboard?” asked Marilyn, smiling.
“No, I don’t! I don’t care if this guy is the next Einstein. Einstein wore suits. One of these days he’s going to graduate and have to get a job. People hire people who wear suits and have haircuts and trim beards. That’s the way the real world works.”
“DADDY!”
“We’ll go into this later, but Jerry, if you want to be with Holly in this, you need to change out of that coat and hat. If you stand in the back, nobody will see the jeans and sneakers. A scarf will cover up that thing you call a beard.” I left so that everybody could stew and run me down. Marilyn would calm them down. Twenty minutes later, Jerry — now in the clean coat, scarf, and cap — and Holly and Marilyn came down to the Oval Office, where I was hanging out with the others. Jerry and Holly looked mulish, and Marilyn looked amused. I nodded and smiled, and reminded everybody “Remember, big smiles!”
Holly grumbled, but Marilyn pushed me towards the door.
We ended up standing out in the Rose Garden in the cold, the whole mob of us dressed in overcoats and scarves and gloves, with two gigantic white turkeys standing there on a table. I had just given the turkeys their pardon, wishing them a long life. (That rarely lasts more than a few weeks or months longer; these birds are so big they have major health problems.) Normally this gets maybe 30 seconds on television. There are usually a few softball questions from the press. Then I was asked, “Mister President, what are you thankful for this year?”
I couldn’t help myself. I simply couldn’t stop. It was just too easy! “Well, I’m just like any other American father. I’m thankful my son has gotten out of the hospital, my daughters have gotten out of the house, and my wife has gotten out of jail!” As I could have expected, Charlie, Megan, and Bucky broke down in laughter, Jerry looked confused, and Holly, Molly, and Marilyn all slugged me.
We made the news that night, and got more than just 30 seconds! Will was hard pressed to spin that one, because he was laughing too hard to be taken seriously.
Marilyn calmed down Holly and Jerry. She promised to take the pair of them to a decent men’s store to get some new clothes. To be fair, he didn’t have a lot of money, being just an average grad student, which is sort of like indentured servitude to the college, only without the more enjoyable aspects of slavery. She told them it would be our Christmas present.
Charlie’s cost of care irked me. I was rich and could take care of any deductibles or maximums, but so many people couldn’t. For the average American, treatment like he was getting would bankrupt them. I contemplated starting a legislative battle to do something about the abysmal state of health insurance in the country, but shitcanned the idea immediately. There were so many problems with the whole idea! First off, the only program that actually made any sense was a nationwide extension of Mitt Romney’s plan from Massachusetts. If I did that, I was directly supporting John McCain’s biggest Republican rival. I was also pushing a Democratic proposal; I remembered how this had chewed Hillary Clinton up in the 1990s (and Barack Obama in the 2010s, though nobody but me knew that.) If this was going to ever get done and make it through Congress, a Republican President would need to do it! I sat John down one afternoon and tossed this out. My suggestion? Win the primary (quite probable) and win the general election (quite possible) and then do it. He would have a third term Republican Presidential mandate and a Republican House. He could name Mitt Romney as his Secretary of Health and Human Services, and develop something that just might work.
“You want me to name him to the Cabinet? After what he’s been saying about me?” protested John.
“Hey, you win and it will be your Cabinet. What you do is your business. I’m just saying it would pay some benefits, and in more ways than one. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, that sort of thing.”
He cocked his head to the side and smiled, to ask, “Like you did with me?”
I shrugged. “I never classified you as an enemy. More like a potential problem.”
He shrugged back. “Maybe.”
“Yeah, maybe. Let’s face it; I was never going to go through the primaries like you guys did. Or you’ve been doing. George didn’t even want me, other than as a bone to the moderates. When I landed in this job, I had two main rivals and I needed to handle them, and fast. There was you, who was George’s only real opponent in the primaries, and Cheney, who was smarter than George and could control him, and didn’t like that he couldn’t control me! Dick I had to destroy. You, on the other hand, I had no real reason or ability to destroy, but I did have a chance to make you an ally. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.”
“True enough. I wasn’t quite sure whether you were making that cold a calculation or not, but I could see it happening.”
“It was more like I simply needed to handle things, or I would be the one being handled. You certainly had a much better reputation than I did back then, and you could have been a real pain in the ass to deal with in the Senate if you had wanted to be. Cheney was simply toxic waste and needed to be dealt with, and dealt with permanently! He would have been nothing but trouble, and would have poisoned the well for all of us in 2004,” I answered.
“And your thinking on Romney?”
“He’s the only Republican with the seniority and respect to challenge you. Forget Huckabee. When the primaries are over, he goes off to become a television preacher. No, Romney will still be around, and he can make a nuisance of himself. He won’t win, since the base trusts him even less than they trust you or me. Do what I did. Convert the potential challenger to an asset. Put him in the Cabinet and work his ass off. It shows the moderates you haven’t forgotten them, and shows the public how you’re bigger than such petty primary nonsense.”
John laughed at that. “You going to pick my Vice President, too?”
“Oh, Lord! That one I am leaving to you! You really have to work with them, and you can’t fire them, like you can a Cabinet Secretary. In addition, you really want somebody who can take over if need be. I know we don’t always see eye to eye, John, but I feel a whole lot better knowing you are around then, say, Cheney or Romney, if Marilyn finally gets tired of me and kills me in my sleep!”
John laughed at that. “I am going to tell her you said that!”
“Please, it’s a family joke by now!” I scratched my head for a moment. “You want a few ideas? How about Jeb Bush? Governor of Florida, brother to slain martyr George, son of a great President? He’s out of a job but has a good name in the party. Here’s another idea. What happens if Hillary ends up as the candidate? You can trump them with Condi Rice. She’s a woman and she’s black. Two minorities for the price of one!”