Supreme Courtship

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by Christopher Buckley


  Dexter considered. “What about if it turned out that Swan was working secretly for the Russians? Yes. And they didn’t want that to get out, so that’s why they killed him.”

  Buddy sighed. Actors. He yearned for the day when they were computer generated. “Why,” he said patiently, “would your National Security Director have been working for the Russians?”

  “I don’t know,” Dexter said with annoyance. “Can’t the writers figure that out? Isn’t that why you pay them so much?”

  “It’s an intriguing idea. Let me discuss it with them. Meantime, let’s stay with the program, okay? Speaking of which, did you see that write-up in People?”

  “No,” Dexter lied. “I didn’t. Was it good?”

  “Good? ‘Monday nights this season, vote Dexter Mitchell for President. He’ll give you goose bumps every time he says, “Send in the Nimitz!”’ ”

  “Nice,” Dexter said aloofly. “Yes.”

  “Nice? By the end of season two, they’ll be screaming to have you in the real White House. Now, go get some lunch, would you please, Mr. President? You don’t want to send in the Nimitz on an empty stomach.”

  CHAPTER 20

  President Vanderdamp sat at his desk in the Oval Office, warming up his instrument. He had been in the glee club in high school and found that it helped before a speech.

  “Do do do doooo do do doooooooo. Da da da daaaaa da da daaaaaaaa… Dee dee dee deeeeeee dee dee deeeeeeeeeeeeeeee…”

  He knew that he must look somewhat ridiculous to the dozen people in the room: the ever-fretful Hayden Cork, the TV techs, his press secretary, the gloomy-looking Secret Service agents. He glanced at the TV camera suspiciously. His predecessor had been caught on tape picking his nose before a speech. It got twelve million hits on YouTube.

  “Is that thing on?” he asked.

  “Yes, Mr. President, but no signal is going out.”

  “Hope not. Wouldn’t want to see myself doing this on the Internet. Would I?”

  “No, sir,” the technician said.

  “Two minutes, Mr. President.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Dum dum dum dum dum dum dummmmmmmmmm…”

  A makeup woman leapt forward like a gazelle to powder puff the presidential forehead.

  “Am I sweating?”

  “Oh, no, sir. Just a teensy… sheen. These lights, they’re so gol-darned hot.”

  “They certainly are. And what’s your name?”

  “Maureen, sir.”

  “Well, thank you for taking such good care of me, Maureen.”

  “No sweat, sir.”

  “That’s very funny.”

  “I beg your pardon, sir?”

  “You said, ‘No sweat.’ And we were talking about sweat.”

  “Oh. Yes, sir. I guess it was funny.”

  Donald Vanderdamp considered. He probably should be sweating. Odd-darned odd-to find himself in this position. All he’d wanted to do was get the job done and go home. The address he had planned to give, from this very desk, was a paraphrase of what his hero, Calvin Coolidge-that least appreciated of American presidents-had said: “I do not choose to run for President in 1928.” And now here he was. Doing… this.

  “One minute, Mr. President.”

  “I’ve. Got. A. Lovely. Bunch. Of. Co-co-nutsssss.”

  “Sorry, sir?” the technician said.

  “Vocal exercise.”

  “Yes, sir. Stand by.”

  “Good evening,” the President began. “This is the-let’s see-third time that I have spoken to you from the Oval Office? I’ve tried not to do this too often. I used to hate it when I was growing up and the President would come on and preempt The Jack Benny Show or Bonanza or some other favorite television program. Of course these days we have a jillion channels, so you can always just switch. And anyway most of the networks won’t preempt for a presidential announcement unless it’s nuclear war. Well, it’s all about ratings, these days. Ratings and polls and endless numbers.

  “Speaking of that, my approval ratings-if you could call them that-are pretty darn dismal. Most of you think I’m doing an awful job. Well, I’m sorry about that. But I’ve always said, and you’ve heard me say it-you can look it up-that the presidency ought not to be a popularity contest. Certainly doesn’t seem to have been one in my case. But let’s get down to it.

  “Every president’s hope is to bring the country and the people together. I seem to have accomplished that. I’ve managed to unite most of you in disapproval of me. And now both houses of the U.S. Congress have set aside their partisan differences and passed an amendment that, if ratified by the states, would limit presidents to one single four-year term. I have a few things to say about that.

  “First, I congratulate Congress on-finally-passing a bill that wouldn’t require billions of dollars, plunging the nation into even worse debt.

  “But now let’s be honest. This amendment isn’t about future presidents. This is about me.

  “Let me remind the Congress that we already have mechanisms for denying presidents a second term. They’re called elections. And-what do you know-we have one coming up just sixteen months from now. If the Congress can’t wait that long, they could just impeach me, but since my crime consists of trying to force the Congress to be fiscally responsible, I’m not sure that dog would hunt. So they’ve gone about it this other way. And here we are.

  “Now, the plain truth of the matter is I wasn’t planning to run for reelection. It’s been an honor and a privilege to serve as your president, but I wasn’t going to ask for seconds.

  “But this amendment, this absurd, ridiculous, petty amendment, changes that.

  “This is politics at its worst, if that isn’t redundant. So now I am going to run, if only to make a point. I will not be dictated to-nor will I allow future presidents to be dictated to-by what I consider to be, quite possibly, the worst Congress in United States history.

  “Let me go further. I don’t think there’s been such concentration of rascality and unscrupulousness under one dome since the worst days of the Roman Empire.

  “Frankly, it feels darn good to get that off my chest.

  “Now, since we’re speaking candidly, I’ll tell you something else. I hope I don’t win in November. I’m not the sort to hang around where I’m not wanted. But there’s a point to be made and, by gosh, I’m going to make it.

  “I’ve got a swell family back home in Ohio. And some really swell grandkids I haven’t seen nearly enough of. I’ve got a dandy front porch with a swing chair on it. To be honest, my fellow Americans, I wouldn’t trade all that for four more years of the White House if you made me emperor for life and threw in the Hope diamond and a Las Vegas chorus line.

  “I’m sorry it’s come to this, but here we are and here we go.

  “And I’m sorry if I butted into your favorite TV show. Good night, my fellow Americans. God bless us, and God save the United States of America.”

  There was a hush in the Oval Office after the President finished speaking. No one moved. Then one of the TV technicians began to clap and suddenly the whole room was applauding, even the Secret Service agents, who never, ever register emotion, much less applaud.

  President Vanderdamp, frowning at this unexpected display, thought, Oh, shit.

  CHAPTER 21

  Amor, I have been a fool. But now I am yours. Totally yours-if you will have me. Take me, Meetchell. Take me. Send in the Neemitz. Now!”

  “All right, Connie, but no more Mr. Nice Guy.”

  “Cut.”

  “Problem?” Dexter said grouchily, dropping the panting Ramona Alvilar onto the satiny sheets of the presidential bed on Air Force One.

  “Five minutes, everyone,” Jerry the director called out. He and Buddy approached. “Everything okay, Dex?” Jerry said.

  “Yes. Yes,” Dexter said a touch petulantly. “Everything’s fine. Why? Is it not fine for you?”

  “No, no,” Buddy said heartily. “It’s fine. Great. I thin
k it’s going totally great.”

  “Really great,” Jerry echoed. “But I’m-maybe it’s just me-I’m not sensing a lot of heat. Buddy, does that sound fair?”

  “Yeah,” Buddy said. “I think it sounds fair.”

  “This is a hot, hot, hot scene here,” Jerry went on. “Ramona’s-Jesus-she’s on fire. We’re going to have to pack her in ice between takes. But when you hit the ‘No more Mr. Nice Guy’ line, it’s coming through like a-I don’t know-BlackBerry text message or something.” Jerry turned to Buddy. “Does that sound valid to you?”

  “I think so,” Buddy said as if considering an amendment to Newtonian physics. “She was giving me an erection, and I’m ten yards away.”

  Dexter sighed. “Fair enough. I’m sorry, guys. I’ve… I guess I’ve got a lot on my mind right now.”

  “Is everything all right?” Buddy said solicitously. “Anything I can do?”

  “No. No. It’s fine.”

  It wasn’t, actually. The day before, Dexter had had another argument with Terry over the Park Avenue coop she wanted to buy-or as he now referred to it in conversations with her, “the fucking coop.” She’d found one she liked, on Park Avenue and Seventy-fourth Street, the most expensive latitude and longitude on the planet. It was the bottom floor of a vintage apartment building, something called a maisonette. Dexter assumed the word was French for “hideously expensive.”

  “Four million? Four million dollars? Terry. Hail Mary, full of grace.”

  “It’s New York, Dexter.”

  “Thank you for clarifying that. I’d assumed you were talking about a diamond mine in South Africa.”

  OKAY,” Dexter said to Buddy and Jerry. “Let’s do it again. I’ll rip her clothes off with my teeth.”

  “Whoa, Tiger,” Buddy said, giving Dexter a manly shoulder punch. “That’s an original Carolina Herrera. But I love the energy. Throw her onto that bed, send in the ol’ Nimitz, and we’re out of here. Good to go, Mr. Prez?”

  “Yes, yes,” Dexter said, sounding profoundly bored at the prospect of ravishing a woman voted by People magazine the third sexiest woman on planet Earth.

  There was something in addition to the four-million-dollar maisonette that was taking up a lot of gigs on Dexter Mitchell’s hard drive: a poll that morning in USA Today. If the election were held today, who would you vote for? Answer: President Mitchell Lovestorm-by thirty points over the next most popular choice.

  Dexter had shown the poll to his wife, palms moist with excitement. Terry had glanced at it in a bemused way, as if it were a postcard from Aunt Hattie in Bora-Bora. “That’s wonderful, darling. And isn’t it wonderful you aren’t running?”

  “But Terry. Look at these numbers. Thirty points!”

  “Dexter,” she said, “Mitchell Lovestorm is a television character.”

  “So?” Dexter said. “We’re all television characters these days.”

  “I’m not. Look, sweetheart, it’s a lovely compliment to what you’ve been able to do. And for a nonprofessional actor, too. We’re all so proud of you. But the poll is”-she laughed-“meaningless. Anyway,” she said brightly, like a mother trying to convince a recalcitrant six-year-old that he didn’t really want to go to the zoo today after all, “you’re already president.”

  Dexter sighed. “It’s hardly the same thing, Terry. Have you ever heard of the term ‘synchronicity’?”

  “Yes,” Terry said. “It’s when you suddenly have a lot of money and just the right apartment comes on the market.”

  As soon as Dexter had wrapped the steamy reconciliation scene on Air Force One he went off to his dressing room and placed a call to Buster “Bussie” Scrump, the Washington pollster and political operative. It had been unkindly but accurately said of Bussie Scrump that his ethics were of a piece with Groucho Marx’s manifesto, “I’ve got principles. And if you don’t like them, I’ve got other principles.”

  “Mis-ter President!” Bussie said jovially. They’d known each other for years. “How’s the Nimitz? I swear I get goose bumps every time I hear you say that.”

  “Fuck the Nimitz,” Dexter said. “Now listen, Buss, this is between you, me, and the Holy Ghost.”

  CHAPTER 22

  The investigation into the Swayle leak, now in its fourth week, had so far failed to produce any result other than a deepening of the already sour mood within the marble palace.

  A defiant and continuingly minty-breathed Chief Justice Hardwether had, true to his threat, called in the FBI, causing almost unanimous ill will. (For once the justices agreed on something.) Clerks asked to submit to polygraph examinations appealed to their various justices, who in turn registered Olympian proxy umbrage and fired off furious, copiously footnoted letters to the Attorney General, with ostentatious cc’s to their own Chief Justice. One such letter had been reprinted in full on the front page of the Washington Post.

  The skies over Capitol Hill darkened with writs and subpoenas, but the Supreme Court being supreme, there wasn’t a whole hell of a lot the Justice Department could do other than to stamp its feet and put out grumbly leaks on the theme of “supreme arrogance.” Juvenal’s quis custodiet was quoted so often on TV that three-year-olds became conversant in Latin. Court observers shook their heads in dismay. Not since Bush v. Gore [23] had the Supreme Court been held in such contempt by the country. Had Chief Justice Hardwether lost his grip? This never would have happened under Rehnquist. And these rumors that he was drinking. It was all so very sad.

  At the epicenter of this fury and unpleasantness stood Justice Pepper Cartwright, the aggrieved party insofar as the leak went, yet increasingly perceived in the public eye to be the epicentric cause of all the problems. Editorials had begun to appear calling for her impeachment. Every now and then, as the saying goes, Washington needs to burn a witch.

  Meanwhile, the President who had elevated her to the high court was mounting the most quixotic reelection campaign in history. He had announced his firm intention not to spend one dime on television advertising, nor a single day campaigning in Iowa or New Hampshire or any of the early primary states. His campaign slogan was almost defiantly prosaic: “Vanderdamp: More of the Same.”

  “As a rallying cry,” one pundit put it, “it’s not quite up there with ‘Once more into the breach.’ ”

  The Presidential Term Limit Amendment, meanwhile, was busily ratifying its way through various state legislatures. State senators were furious with Vanderdamp for years of having denied them pork. The people, on the other hand, seemed to find the President’s breathtaking honesty refreshing, if not downright unique. According to the polls, many were rethinking their quondam odium. He was up by twelve points-or as they put it in Washington, “double digits.”

  In the midst of this howling gale, Pepper blew her nose, dried her tears, and tried to go about the business of interpreting the U.S. Constitution as best she could. But it wasn’t much fun and she missed the view of Central Park. She missed lying in bed and looking out over it and eating hot bagels. Buddy had been wrong about there being no good restaurants in Washington, but she had yet to find New York-quality carbohydrates. Given other developments, this was a minor disappointment.

  ONE LUNCH HOUR in the Court cafeteria, she found herself standing in line behind Crispus Galavanter.

  “Why is it,” he said in his plummy cello voice, “that you and I are always taking up the rear of the procession? When will we take our rightful places in the pageant of greatness? The world wonders.”

  Crispus bantered in these mock-heroic tones. His nickname among the clerks was “the Licorice Caesar.” He quite liked it, even occasionally signed his memos “LC.”

  Pepper smiled, gathered up her Jell-O with embedded fruit, cottage cheese, and iced tea. Crispus’s tray held a trencherman’s portion of meat loaf, mashed potatoes, lima beans, onion rings, and two Dr Peppers.

  “May I… join?” Crispus said. It was a mild breach of protocol, as Pepper had papers tucked under her arm, a signal she’d intended
a reading lunch. But you couldn’t say no to Crispus.

  “How you making out,” he said, “in the midst of all this Sturm und Drang?”

  “Okay. No one’s asked me to take a polygraph, anyway,” Pepper said, forking up some cottage cheese.

  “Disgraceful business. You shouldn’t have been put through it. Makes us all look bad. I don’t blame the CJ for being furious. But neither do I think that unleashing the FBI has enhanced the spirit of communality.”

  “I begged him not to do it on my account,” Pepper said. “But he’s running hot about it. Went on and on about what a disgrace, etc, etc. I think he’s… he’s not in a good way.”

  Crispus chewed his food pensively. “I am concerned for him. Either he is facing a periodontal crisis-he’s awful minty of late-or he is partaking of John Barleycorn in a voluminous manner. Well,” he said, “the man has been through a crucible. I like Declan. I don’t agree with him nine out of ten times. I didn’t agree with him on gay marriage. But that cat is well out of the bag and it ain’t going back in. No, it can’t have been easy. And now this Swayle business. Unfortunate. Say, how is that Jell-O? Would you like some of this meat loaf? It is… I have no words to describe its Platonic ideality. Do you know whose recipe it is? Mrs. Frankfurter’s. It lives on after her. Now, there’s a legacy. I would be well pleased to have such a one myself. Perhaps my nachos con everything in el pantry? Nachos Galavanter. Nachos Crispus. I will have the recipe entered into the record. And to think that you were present at the creation. Do you sense the historicity of the moment?”

 

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