The following morning, I arose whistling a peppy tune as I shaved, applied my aftershave, and rinsed the little shaving thing in the sink. This next day, Wednesday, November whatever-it-was, would be a great, historic day.
God had made me His instrument on Earth. And I had to come to terms with this burden of greatness. And while I wondered briefly how I would achieve the destiny He held in store for me, I did not concern myself, because I knew He would help. He would surround me with the wisest men in the land to help me make the big decisions. The Lord would send Heavenly helpers in the form of Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld, Scott McClellan, and John Ashcroft. These were the Angels who were shepherded by the Lord to serve in my administration.
White House memo, January 23, 2001
But on the other hand, I found myself in the same boat as Moses. I felt like he did when he asked God, “Why me, Lord? What is it about me that makes you think I should be President?” I was not particularly interested in the job. To my way of thinking, there was no upside to it. There I was, Governor of the great state of Texas. There was plenty of clean, fresh air. Texas was a man’s land. Who wants to live in Washington D.C.? All those memorials and tombs. It is like living in a graveyard. And there are many, many coloreds there.
But despite my conflicted feelings, my faith made me determined to do God proud.
Another thing that finally helped me make peace with my charge as God’s chosen one was by focusing on the perks: The office of President has some of the best. I get to throw out the first baseball. I get my own theme music. Hot dogs any place, any time, as many as you want to eat. I even get my own plane. And almost every night, I get to see myself on the TV.
On January 20, 2001, it was a time in our nation for unity, not division. In my historic address as the newest President-elect in America, I called on the nation to ignore the election results and come together to support the President. Let’s get the great things I have planned done, I urged. In the end, it does not matter who voted for who. The highest court in the land declared me President and we should always respect their decisions as settled law.
I pledged to be a uniter, not a divider. It was time to move past the divisive politics and negativity of saying that our whole electoral system is a corrupt charade that disenfranchises many rightful voters. It was time, instead, to focus on the positive, which was that I was now President.
When I healed the country by taking office, reports continued to come out of Florida that many coloreds had not been able to vote, and that machines had malfunctioned. I urged the people not to create division. I called upon them to heal the wounds of my possibly not getting rightfully elected, and to move beyond the pain that we came very close to having a Democrat in the highest office in the land.
What did we learn from the momentous election of 2000? I for one learned that America is a nation where you vote, the courts decide who gets to be the President, then everyone supports that President. Others learned that you vote, and then you keep complaining that your vote was not counted. However, many of those complaining about the process, I have found, did not actually vote.
If you want to be part of the solution, you must vote. You can complain about chads sticking up wrong, or machines malfunctioning, but until you get your vote counted, you do not have the right to complain. Once the votes have been counted in my favor, the counting must stop.
There has been some controversy to this day, I am told, regarding the Florida election in 2000. Some Americans wanted those votes to be counted “accurately,” which is what the experts call it.
All I know is that there is no doubt who won in Florida in 2000, because he is sitting in the White House to prove it. Also, there is no doubt who came out on top in God’s count. Therefore we must put this election behind us, and honor my firm belief that I won.
Even my opponent, the circuit-corrupted champion of the Machine-men, was eventually redeemed from his darkness and conceded the election. He admitted to the whole nation that I had won, and called for unity. He said we must all come together in support of George W. Bush. I believe those were his words to that effect.
So, if you voted for my opponent, you must honor his words, and do what I tell you.
15
9-11: My Finest Hour
Every President has a defining moment. Mine was the moment we were attacked on September 11, 2001.
There are many ways one can look at the events of 9-11. One can say, as I just did, simply “9-11.” One can also take a completely different approach and say as I did previously: “September 11th, 2001.” One can even spell it out, “September the eleventh, two-thousand and one.” There are a myriad of other variations: “September the eleventh,” or “Sept. 11,” if you are an abbreviator. You can also add “the events of” at the beginning, or “the day our country changed forever” to the end.
It is a multifaceted issue.
When the great Scholars of Events look back on the attacks of 9-11, as I am doing now in this definitive record, it will reflect that the morning of September 11—there is yet another variation—dawned calmly. Just like any other day of my administration. America was running smoothly doing whatever it was doing on that day, events now lost to the history books.
Itinerary with notes, issued 7:30 a.m., September 11, 2001
The day started early for me, because I was scheduled to speak at an elementary school to chide the children for the sad state of our public school system, which I intended to fix with both bold legislation and more pop quizzes.
I was greeted like a visiting dignitary at the school, with milk and cookies bestowed on me ceremoniously. The cookies were delicious, vanilla wafers with cream filling. However, the milk was somewhat warm. I briefly considered registering an official complaint with the school principal about the lukewarm milk. Perhaps it had been sitting out too long, I reasoned.
Whatever the case, it took away from my enjoyment of the cookies, and further highlighted the degradation of our nation’s decaying public-school system.
I sat before the attentive children and began to join in the class reading of the book “The Pet Goat.” I glanced at the first page of the book and got the gist of it from the first couple of words. It was the story of a funny goat who ate and ate and then, believe it or not, ate some more. He ate so much that the parents of the girl who owned the goat began to despise him, and wanted to get rid of him.
I flipped through the book to see if there were any amusing drawings of this outrageous animal, and just as I was getting to the resolution of an important plot point, an aide leaned in to me and said, “Sir, America is under attack,” sadly interrupting my reading. I reprimanded that aide, and refused to speak to him or anyone for several minutes, preferring to sit there and stew. What happened to the goat at the end? We may never know.
Once I regained my composure, I took my time responding to the crisis at hand, because I did not want to upset the children by making any sudden movements. If America was indeed under attack, my top priority as Commander in Chief was to project an air of calm for these children. A distant second priority was to act immediately and decisively in a time of urgent national crisis.
But the time for that would come later, after the story of the goat had been read through to the end.
In time, I felt it was appropriate to ask for more vanilla-cream cookies, so that I could consider my options in this grave matter while having a little something to munch on.
The milk situation, however, had still not been improved.
At this time I realized that I had made the tragic mistake of not asking someone on my staff to secure a fresh carton from the school cafeteria’s refrigerator earlier, in case I wanted another serving of milk that was properly cooled. But these are the lessons one learns as President.
Eventually, someone on my staff whispered the suggestion that we ground all air traffic within United States airspace. I concurred, and ordered him to call Dick Cheney and have him take care of that
because I was not sure how to do it. All flights were canceled except essential military missions, emergency organ donations, and the Bin-Laden family, who had urgent business in Saudi Arabia to attend to.
Soon thereafter, I was asked to make a statement, which I did. And in that statement I made it clear that I was in charge of the dangerous situation. I was in command of our nation’s situations and statements-responsing.
We then left the classroom, and I bid farewell to the students and teachers, leaving the matter of the unsatisfactory milk temperature unaddressed. I would deal with that and other concerns when I would pass the No Child Left Behind Act in just a few short years, which stipulated that milk once again be appropriately refrigerated in our schools.
On my way to Air Force One, I learned that yet another plane had struck our homeland. It had been directed directly at our armed forces in the Pentagon. One of the eight sides was struck, and it was destroyed, and there was a tragic loss of life. I had asked Jesus to keep the loss of life at a minimum that day, so my heart went out to those who perished, because the Lord had forsaken them.
The headquarters of our armed defenses was under siege. It was the seat of the most advanced military on Earth, yet they were defenseless against this onslaught of terror.
Since that day, as a result of the tragedy, I have called for our Defense Department to spend some of its large budget on a basic “defense” of our country, and that “strategies” be devised to protect our nation from attack. I have ordered that our military-thinking experts write out such plans so that, in the event that we face the enemy again, we might implement them this time.
But such measures were only distant dreams on September the 11th, 2001.
Soon after the tragic events occurred, it was important that I survey the damaged area from 30,000 feet in the air to get a close look at what we were dealing with. I ordered Air Force One to fly first to Texas and Louisiana to witness the devastations first hand from that vantage point. Surprisingly, our country looked peaceful in that region. There were white clouds and a lot of blue sky. It was, in fact, quite lovely.
Understandably, everyone’s first concern in this day of terror was for the President. If something should happen to the President, America would collapse, and the Constitution would be left vulnerable, having lost its sole protector. Therefore it was decided that I should hide.
Once I was secure, a thousand miles away from danger, I believe that I then thought to ask someone to call my wife and the rest of the White House staff and mention that they might want to run for their lives. If I forgot to do this, let me take this opportunity to apologize to everyone who was in the White House on the morning of September 11th, and assure them that it is a good possibility that they were in my thoughts and prayers at that time.
Air Force One remained in the air for several hours after that. We flew around in circles while the military commanders coordinated our next move. It was a day that tried the nerves of all Americans. And as the Commander in Chief I was not immune from the suffering. In fact, this was one of the most difficult times of the day for me. I was forced to sit through the in-flight movie not once but three times that afternoon.
The movie, I recall very clearly, was Summer Catch. I thought it was an excellent movie, combining both romance and baseball, but no one should have to watch it three times in a row. This was yet another in a series of tests of my mettle as President that day.
I would later be taken to a secret military bunker, where I would be advised by the top military minds of my staff.
It was a very expensive and technological bunker, an enormous room filled with screens and monitors. It was like those of the secret-agent movies.
The military experts debriefed me using a very large television-debriefing screen that could switch between maps and pictures and other moving images of terrorists. There may even have been some words on the screen which appeared as though they were being typed out by a computer. Whether they made the impressive “bleeping” sound that letters often make when they appear on a screen in this manner, I do not recall. But it seemed like they should have, so let it reflect in this official record of these events that they did.
In short, I was overwhelmed by the impressive array of stimuli and the flow of complex and secret information. But as I sat and listened to the debriefers, and attempted to concentrate on their presentation, my mind began to wander.
As I beheld these impressive surveillance tools and intelligence-gathering doodads, I remember thinking just one thought: Why couldn’t all of these gadgets have been brought to my attention earlier, so that I could have seen how awesome they were as soon as I got to be President?
Since that day, I have not forgotten it, and I have gone back to that secret war room and watched five different baseball games at once on the big screen, with my feet up on the long console with all the fancy buttons, enjoying hot dogs, ice cream, and other delicacies from a fallout shelter storage facility that is rumored to have supplies enough for a thousand years of sporting contests.
I guess that is one small good thing that has come from the horrible happenings of September 11.
After a day of confusion and uncertainty, I addressed the nation from behind the enormous Oval Office desk, and made a mental note to myself that for future Oval Office televisings, I would have this unwieldy desk replaced with one that was several times smaller. This way I would appear much larger, which, in my view, would intimidate and frighten the terrorists, perhaps warding them off, for fear they may face justice at the hands of a President who is over 13 feet tall.
After the speeching, there was no time to rest. Decisions had to be made. Most importantly, who would we blame and subsequently bomb for these horrendous attacks?
No one could have predicted that terrorists would fly planes into the World Trade Center. The only intelligence we had at the time was that terrorists might fly certain cylindrical objects into tall structures of an unknown shape. Only the mystic prognosticators could have put it all together.
I know only one thing: The outlaw who carried out these barbarous acts would be hunted down and smoked out of his hole in the crime-fighting style I employed in Texas. A “Wanted: Dead or Alive” poster would be made to my specifications, and posted throughout Texas and the world. It would be Old West–style justice for the perpetrators of this act. Or failing that, Old West–style justice for those who kind of looked like the perpetrators of this act.
We would keep a keen eye out for such terrorist-looking peoples. The death of Americans would be avenged when the similarly dressed and similarly complected people of Iraq paid dearly for this horrendous act of barbarism. The people of Afghanistan would also pay dearly, as one of the terrorist masterminds had once visited there. They would feel the wrath of the United States for daring to host him in their country. They would be called to account for renting him a room in one of their hotels, or for giving him those small-sized canisters of soap and shampoo in the little basket. They would answer for offering him a towel, and for feeding him a complimentary continental breakfast before he checked out.
In the days that followed, which I believe began on September 12, I felt it was important for me to visit the tiny island nation of Manhattan, to demonstrate how much we, as a nation, cared for its native people. The United States would not stand for this attack against our neighbor. The American people were shaken by this attack on our ally to the North. But though we shared a border with New York, we did not share a common language, and there was no way to express the grief we shared.
While there, I resolved to climb to the top of the pile of rubble left in the wake of the attacks.
It would not be an easy task.
As my feet slipped on the loose stones of the rubble pile, I nearly turned back. But I sensed the people wanted to hear a voice of hope, so I braved onward, not knowing if I would tumble and fall. When I felt the hands of my security detail reach out to aid my ascent, I felt a lump form in my throat. Americans
were coming together to help their President in this moment of grave importance to maintain order in his day’s schedule.
As I took the bullhorn in hand, I knew that I would have to call on all of my cheerleading experience to rally the nation through these desperate times. I drew on all the skills I developed cheering the mighty Bulldogs to bring the same game-winning spirit to the tiring rescuers.
I urged the people of the New York race to continue their efforts, which entailed moving the giant pile of rubble elsewhere. We as a nation pledged that day to move that pile to a hole or scrap pile somewhere in New Jersey, I believe.
At the end of the day of September the 11th, as I prepared for bed, I knelt by my bedside and prayed. I counted my blessings. Every such tragic event has a silver lining, and this day was no different. America had a powerful new enemy. An enemy who we could all agree was evil for years to come.
Also, I had faced a trial no President had ever faced, and by the grace of God no President will ever have to face again: I had watched Summer Catch three times in one day.
I was consumed with a powerful resolve to exact justice on the offenders of the unspeakable acts which had hit our shores. I would be summoned by the powers of destiny to fulfill the promise I showed as a young child, when I spit grape juice out of my mouth to spray the terrorist beans off of the plate of a nation, and obliterated them by offering them to the dog.
I pledged this to the Almighty that night.
And finally I gave thanks to the Lord that this tragic event would unite the nations of the world behind the trusted foreign-policy leadership of the United States. It would also bring the nations of the United States and New York closer together, allowing Americans of any stripe to enjoy that proud culture’s colorful entertainments and seasoned flatbreads.
Destined for Destiny Page 9