Taft 2012

by Jason Heller

  “Oh, sure. My mistake.” He twirled Taft’s chair around to face the mirror that took up almost the entire length and width of one wall. He had to admit that the Manhattan television studio in which Pauline Craig was headquartered had a well-equipped green room. As Susan had explained, Craig often invited high-ranking politicos, military brass, and the occasional screen or singing celebrity, all of whom were accustomed to being primped and preened prior to placement in front of a camera.

  Taft balked at the thought. His armpits had already dampened at the thought of having his voice and moving image broadcast live across the nation—no, the world, Susan had said—and he’d even begun to smell. Stage fright was something he’d overcome long ago; in fact, as Susan had explained the week before, Taft had become infamous as being one of the most long-winded speechmakers in the presidential pantheon. Secretly, Taft prided himself on that fact. After all, an address thoroughly thought out and exhaustively delivered left less room for vagueness or misinterpretation. Susan had insisted, however, that he not use the Craig interview to deliver a soliloquy. The attention span of the average American, she said in that odd lingo of hers, wasn’t what it used to be. He must speak in what she called “sound bites.” The very word made his stomach rumble.

  “If you won’t let me amputate that beast of a mustache, then will you at least let me trim it some more?” The makeup artist had found a small pair of shears, which he brandished menacingly in the mirror.

  “Oh, all right. But if I measure a loss of anything more than ten percent of its total volume, I’ll take it out of you in blood.”

  The makeup artist rolled his eyes and set about snipping.

  “Susan,” said Taft once the shears had been stashed and the makeup artist had left. “I won’t argue with you about the need for this”—he waved his hands around his face—“this peacockery. But there’s something unnatural about it. Do all politicians in this day and age subject themselves to such ostentatious falseness? Do masks now make the man? Are we all thespians?”

  “Oh, really, Mr. Taft.” Susan sipped her tea and shook her head. “When has politics not been theater? In any case, the makeup doesn’t show on camera. It just makes you look … normal. More like yourself.”

  Taft snorted. “This century’s infatuation with irony knows no bounds, does it?”

  “Scoff all you want, but the outcome of at least one presidential election—between Nixon and Kennedy in 1960—was influenced by makeup. Or the lack thereof.” She got up from her chair and looked more closely at Taft’s freshly varnished face. “Anyway, I think it looks good on you.”

  “You do?”

  “Absolutely. It really brings out your feminine side.”

  Taft let the comment slide. In truth, he was glad for the chance to banter. The previous week’s worth of preparation had left his head stuffed with facts, figures, strategies, counterstrategies, and even a scorched-earth endgame should Craig blindside him with some kind of cheap stunt, as she’d done before. Her response when Susan had accepted the invitation on his behalf was cordial and professional, and even Susan had to admit she’d never been able to figure out exactly where Craig was coming from. Unlike other hosts of popular political-discussion programs, Craig tended to attract the rabidly independent, those viewers so exactly in the middle—or so far to either extreme—of the political spectrum that party affiliation had little meaning. Accordingly, her ideology was slippery. Susan admitted that she admired Craig on a strictly technical level, mostly for her almost magical ability to couch complex issues in blunt catchphrases that nonetheless managed to be vague enough to resonate with a relatively wide variety of audiences. She was envied and feared … and reviled by more mainstream journalists, who felt her methods and mode of delivery sounded the death knell of journalism.

  Taft, for his part, felt the same about Craig as he did any journalist. She stank. Granted, he’d been cozy enough with the press during his tenures as Teddy’s governor of the Philippines and secretary of war. Then again, during the latter appointment there had been no actual war. It wasn’t until the first few months of Taft’s presidency that he began to see journalists for what they really were: vipers, Visigoths, vandals hell-bent on poisoning a man’s confidence before destroying him altogether. As a public servant sworn to uphold the Constitution, he fully realized the importance—indeed, the vital necessity—of a free press to the function of democracy. That said, in his heart of hearts, he’d have had every last one of them rounded up and pilloried if he’d been able.

  As if sensing the tide of bitterness welling in his breast, Susan laid a hand on his shoulder. “Remember the first rule: don’t let your emotions get the best of you. When you’re out there, smile. Be polite. Take every question, no matter how negative, as a fair and welcome one. Stick to your talking points; this is about Rachel more than anything else. Steer the conversation toward her whenever possible. Oh, and I almost forgot to pass along this little method: if you start to get nervous, look over at Pauline Craig and imagine her naked.”

  Taft felt his heart kick like the horses in his old White House stables.

  “Excuse me?”

  Susan’s face was pregnant with some unreadable emotion as she opened her mouth to answer. But before she could say anything, a woman knocked on the door and cracked it open without waiting for a reply. “Mr. Taft,” she said, sticking her smiling face and a beckoning finger into the room. “It’s time. You’re on. Let me get this mic on you. Then, please, follow me.”

  TAFT HAD NEVER BEEN ONE to rely on the conceit of the metaphor, but as he stepped, or rather was thrust, onto the stage of Raw Talk with Pauline Craig, he couldn’t help but compare himself, not without chagrin, to a baby bird. His nest behind him, he felt lighter than air as he floated—as much as a man well past 300 pounds was able to float—across the carpet of Craig’s set. It was far smaller than he’d imagined, and electric lights exploded in his eyes like a dozen suns. He could hear Susan’s voice behind him, a harsh whisper, something about staying on course to Craig’s guest chair alongside her desk. His ears roared as if a tornado tore past them, but it may have only been applause. Vertigo nearly overtook him, but just as his stomach felt ready to fly along ahead of him, his hand came to rest on the arm of the chair.

  Then, silence.

  A drop of sweat trickled along his temple, hung there, and then ran down his cheek and into his mustache. It felt, he estimated, as if the sweat drop’s journey took several hours to complete.

  Then a voice came booming midsentence into his brain.

  “—you all right, President Taft?” He felt like a diver popping up to the surface amid someone else’s conversation. He realized that he was President Taft. And the voice he heard was that of Pauline Craig.

  “Yes, yes, I’m quite all right.” He maneuvered his bulk into the chair, which seemed to have been purposefully designed to be too narrow, to make him look like a buffoon as he wedged his posterior into its tight frame. Knowing Craig even to the slim extent he did, that might well have been the case. “Just having a bit of a problem navigating all these noises and bright lights of yours.”

  “Not to mention the chair,” came Craig’s voice.

  Taft sensed a faraway hum of what might have been laughter. He tried peering through the eye-piercing veil of light in front of him. The audience. Of course, he knew there would be spectators. But he could barely make them out through all this infernal dazzle. What kind of connection would he be able to make with them? He’d regularly and gladly faced down crowds ten times this size during his campaigns and administration. But he could always see their faces: face to face, like decent, civilized humans. He realized that these people were just the tip of the iceberg; millions more were watching him at home on their television sets. What was this unholy, lopsided manner of addressing people that had evolved since his day? No wonder Americans had devolved into such a vicious, petty, sarcastic lot. They no longer had to look each other in the eye.

  And the
n there was Craig. Her face was most definitely present. High forehead, blond hair, sharp cheeks, a sagging chin that a hen might envy. She looked at him from behind her desk with a mixture of amusement and malice.

  “The chair? Now that you mention it, it is a bit on the small side. Perhaps when your program sees some measure of success, you’ll be able to afford proper furnishings.”

  The crowd—stocked, as Taft supposed it was, with Craig’s sycophantic fanatics—laughed despite itself, then quickly hushed after a sharp look from the host. “Thank you,” she said, “for that generous observation. If my ratings ever recover from your withering attack, I’ll put a new chair on the top of my shopping list.”

  Damnation. He was already breaking Susan’s first rule: don’t take cheap shots. Keep it friendly, no matter what.

  Taft collected himself. He grinned, the biggest, toothiest Teddy Roosevelt grin he could muster. “All in good fun, Pauline!” he said in his best approximation of joviality. Susan, as well as the show’s production assistant, had told Taft to address her by her given name. “Pardon an old relic for his nervous jesting. I assure you, I’m quite grateful to be here on your program.”

  That seemed to mollify her. She smiled smugly. Taft knew her type. A bully to the core. Ten minutes, he told himself. For ten minutes, for Rachel, I can do this.

  “President Taft, it is our honor to have you here. And I’m sure I’m speaking for all of America when I say that.” A light smattering of applause followed. The audience reacted, it seemed, like trained dogs.

  “All of America,” he echoed. “That alone is a staggering thought to me. The America I left in 1913 had a few less states than it does now. Alaska, Hawaii … Why, if our current president had been born in my day, he only barely would have been an American!”

  The crowd roared. He and Susan had cooked that one up during their week’s preparation. Despite the spectrum of political thought, or lack thereof, that Craig’s viewers encompassed, they all had one thing in common: paranoia, especially when it came to the legitimacy of anyone in power. Of course, he knew it was preposterous to doubt the validity of the president’s citizenship, but he could always play his remarks off as a bit of mild ignorance, as if he were unaware of where Craig’s followers stood on the issue. But now they were listening to him, and he’d bought himself some goodwill in case Craig leapt to the offensive.

  And, sure enough, she already looked uncomfortable. “Why, yes, that’s quite a good point you make. Although the topic of the president’s birth is not one to be taken lightly.”

  “Indeed, Pauline, indeed. For instance, I was born in Cincinnati, and I am an Ohioan through and through.” He drummed his chest with his fingers. “And where, my dear, are you from?”

  Craig was clearly blindsided by the sudden reversal. “Me? New Jersey.”

  Taft threw an expansive expression toward the audience. “New Jersey! A splendid state. A shame about that disgraceful television show, though. You’re not from the Jersey shore, are you?”

  A wave of tittering swept the crowd. “Well, yes. Mr. President, let’s talk about you. America wants to know all about you. The real you. Why you’ve come back, and what you plan to do now that you’re here.”

  “The real me?” He patted his girth and grinned again. “As you can see, I’ve nothing to hide.” They didn’t laugh this time, but he could almost feel a glow from the crowd. Self-deprecation, he was relieved to see, was still the great equalizer. “As for what I plan to do, I haven’t quite decided yet. Coming back wasn’t my choice, as I know has been widely reported already. I wish I had more to add, but sadly I do not. I, however, have always been one to look toward the future.”

  “The future? For you, Mr. President, it seems that your descendant, Congresswoman Rachel Taft, may be exactly that. Have you spoken with her about her political plans for 2012?”

  He and Susan had planned for this question. Still, he felt unclean—as he always did while telling even the smallest falsehood—by his prepared and prevaricating answer. “Rachel is her own person, of course. And, as you know, her position as an independent makes things a little trickier for her as she tests the waters.”

  “Not to mention a moderate,” said Pauline with a hint of a sneer.

  “Moderate to the extreme, let me assure you.” This lady was beginning to try his amiable demeanor, but the crowd registered a few scattered hoots of approval. “If there were more people like her in government, we might have far less use as a people for political rooster yards and henhouses.” His look took in the whole of Craig’s stage and audience. The latter loved it, and a howl rose from the seats.

  “Speaking of which, from what I understand, you kept many barnyard animals in the White House. I’m sure that made for a fair amount of dignity in the eyes of the nation.”

  Taft laughed along; he didn’t dare let on that he couldn’t quite get the gist of her joke. What domicile the size of the White House didn’t have horses, cows, pigs, and chickens? And then he remembered: supermarkets, agribusiness, food subsidies, and surpluses. He’d picked up enough about such matters from Rachel and Susan, and it only made sense that the divide between urban and rural life had become more marked since his day. Come to think of it, he didn’t remember picking up any of the pungent, familiar manure smells during his brief time at the White House, after his awakening. For a moment, he felt a quick pang of nostalgia.

  Then, lost in thought and almost absently, he said, “Yes, of course, we kept animals at the White House during my administration. What’s the word you use for it now? Sustainability? But that was just the way life was a hundred years ago. Unlike today, we were on a first-name basis with our food. Why, I had a prized cow pastured at my White House named Pauline! And a fine, broad-collared, milk-heavy cow she was. Pauline, I miss your rich cream and soothing company!”

  Suddenly, all that could be heard throughout the studio was the buzzing hum of the lights.

  Then the crowd erupted. The laughter died down quickly enough—Taft wondered if they were being prompted somehow; was there a sign he couldn’t see?—and he realized what he’d just said. Of course, he was no stranger to such faux pas; Teddy had called it a gift, right up there with his long-windedness and lack of discretion. Granted, Taft sometimes loved to play dumb in pretentious company, just so he could levy such barbs, puncture an ego or two, and retreat behind his whiskers and innocence.

  In this case, however, he hadn’t meant to deflate Pauline Craig. Or equate her with a cow. But it was too late. Her face reddened and her eyes shot daggers. She called for a sponsor break.

  An assistant ran out to touch up their makeup, thankfully if momentarily breaking the tension. After patching up their faces with the speed of a Buster Keaton film, a stagehand began to count down the remaining five seconds of the break. Craig, again composed and in total control, hissed out of the side her mouth, “I hope you like surprises, Taft.”

  “And we’re back with President William Taft!” The countdown had run out, and in a split second Craig shifted from the sinister whisper to a full-throated broadcast voice. Even her posture and expression changed like an electric light being switched on. What made this woman tick? What was her game? He couldn’t help but wonder, even as a knot of dread gathered in his belly.

  “I want to speak more seriously about you, Mr. President.” Order seemed to have been restored in the audience, and Taft swore there were even a few empty seats that hadn’t been there before, as if certain less-obedient members had been surreptitiously ushered out during the break.

  “I’m afraid I’m not quite as compelling a character as you might imagine, Pauline.”

  “I’d say a president by his very nature is compelling, wouldn’t you?”

  “Ah, that’s where you may be misinformed. Compelling people is not leading them. At least not in a great democracy like ours.”

  “Tell me about your leadership style, Mr. Taft. Of course you’re a Republican, but would you describe yourself these da
ys as conservative or liberal?”

  “If there’s one thing time has taught me, Pauline, it’s that those distinctions are shifting and devious. If, for instance, you’re right-handed, do you denounce your left and leave it to wither, even if the task before you requires both?”

  Pauline ignored the murmur that ran through the crowd. “That’s a clever way of putting it, Mr. President, but the fact remains: left and right do indeed have hard-and-fast meanings, ideologically speaking, and those meanings do have tangible influences on policy and the fortunes of this nation.”

  “Yes, but this nation has its own direction, and far too many politicians claim to drive the American people forward when all they do is ride shotgun.”

  “An interesting choice of words for a former secretary of war.”

  He grinned. “At least during Teddy Roosevelt’s time, we didn’t lie by calling it something else. Funny enough, there was no war during my tenure as secretary.”

  “And that, Mr. President, is exactly my point.” She glanced down at her desk, then picked up a small piece of paper and hesitated a moment. This was it, Taft thought. Then she took a breath and continued. “I’m sure you’ve had ample opportunity to observe the state of this nation since you rejoined us. The contrasts must be striking. There is more disenfranchisement among voters than ever before, and our economy is close to a shambles.” What was this speech she was giving? Why the grandstanding? “Even the term ‘progressive’ has become muddled and mostly meaningless. But you were a true Progressive, with a capital P, weren’t you?”

  “I still am,” he said proudly. “A Republican and a Progressive. That may seem like a contradiction today, and I certainly have no plans to affiliate myself with any party now or in the future. They don’t speak for me, and I certainly don’t speak for them.” Now how did Craig lead him so easily off the track of talking about Rachel? He must steer back in that direction. “As my great-granddaughter the congresswoman has so bravely done, I must stake my claim as an independent. The Tafts, after all, have always been their own people and gone their own way. Even if we must do so alone.”