Chapter 123: The Soapbox Rebellion

To say my announcement was a shocker was a gross understatement. I think I would have gotten less of a reaction by lighting a large bomb in the basement of the Capitol! After I finished reading my statement, there was a roar from the reporters as each one of them began yelling out questions. I declined and began moving away. Meanwhile, around the fringes of the group, and out of camera range, several Republican Congressmen and senior staffers were standing there in stunned silence. Rather than watching me announce my impending retirement from Congress (to be responded to by pious thanks for my long years of service) they had just watched me declare war on Newt Gingrich. To a man, they turned and hustled away, staffers running interference, as reporters hounded after them demanding to know how they would vote.

For me, it was oddly liberating. For over a year now, I had been dancing around with Gingrich, starting when I argued with him about the government shutdown. Now the dance was over. It was war.

That night, after dinner, Marilyn found me in my home office, simply sitting in an armchair, staring out a window and thinking. She came in and sat down on my lap. “Care for some company?” she asked.

I smiled at her. “Sure.” I wrapped my arms around her.

Marilyn made herself comfortable, and then said, “I just want you to know, I’m very proud of you. I know this has been hard for you, but you are right, and Newt Gingrich is wrong, and I am proud of what you said today.”

I hugged her, and then said, “Thank you. I wonder if this is how Caesar felt when he crossed the Rubicon.”

“Huh?”

I smiled at her. “You’ve heard of Caesar crossing the Rubicon, right?”

Marilyn smiled and shrugged. “Yes, but I never really knew what it meant.”

I nodded in understanding. “Ahhh ... well, this was all a few years ago, of course, but when Julius Caesar decided to take over Rome, the rule was that no Roman general could march an army into Italy. The line was a little river in northern Italy, the Rubicon. Actually, it’s more a stream than a river. So, anyway, old Julius got summoned to Rome to answer for his crimes, and had to leave the army behind, on the far side of the river. If he went without them, he would get thrown in jail. If he took them with him, though, he was declaring civil war.”

“And he took them with him?”

“That’s what the saying refers to. He took them with him. It means you’ve made a decision you can’t back away from. You’ve placed your bets and rolled the dice, for good or bad.”

Marilyn smiled. “Well, Caesar won. So will you.”

I snorted and gave my wife a wry smile. “I’m not sure that’s a great example. Caesar was opposed by Pompey the Great, another famous general, and after a few battles, Caesar ended up chasing Pompey to Egypt, where Pompey’s head ended up in a basket.”

“Yuck!”

“Yeah! On the other hand, that’s where Julius Caesar met Cleopatra. Maybe I need to keep an eye out for beautiful foreign queens.”

That earned me an elbow to the ribs. “Forget it!” she told me.

I chuckled. “Well, it didn’t end so good for Caesar, either. Eventually he ended up back in Rome, where his friends killed him on the floor of the Senate. Let’s just hope I don’t get invited over to the Senate any time soon!”

Marilyn climbed up off my lap and headed towards the kitchen. “So much for politics!”

As she left, I called out, “Hey, got anything in the way of a Cleopatra costume?”

“Forget it!”

I laughed at that.

The next couple of days I began calling and talking to pretty much any Republican Representative I could. There weren’t many. The vast majority refused to talk to me, although none said as much. They simply weren’t available, or were on another call, or had another appointment. I did speak to Wayne Gilchrest, who agreed with me and promised to vote with me against the impeachment. I also spoke to John Boehner, who also said he agreed with me, but refused to make a commitment either way.

By strict party line vote, which was what Newt was counting on, the Republicans would have 228 votes to impeach versus the Democrats’ 207 votes not to impeach. To beat the impeachment, I needed to switch 11 votes, to come to a 217-218 score. Well, 10 votes anyway since I was one of the 11.

It was more complicated than that. Since the actual articles of impeachment had six specific charges, it was possible that some of my counterparts could try to have it both ways, by voting against some of the charges, but for the others. The two big charges were the perjury and obstruction of justice charges. The other four were the contempt of Congress and obstruction charges relating to that. I could easily see a number of Congressmen ignoring those four, but still voting for the first two. Worse, there were a few conservative Democrats who were as disgusted by Clinton as anybody else, who might cross the line in the opposite direction! Realistically, I needed more than ten votes.

My political career was swirling the bowl. On the plus side, I was still filthy rich, so I wouldn’t have to go to work as a lobbyist. I had that thought for the briefest of moments, and then snorted in laughter, and called ARI. The American Renaissance Initiative began pushing Republican Congressmen to vote against the impeachment. Nothing like spending a little money to help.

The one thing I had never figured on, though, started Thursday morning. The House vote as a grand jury would be on Tuesday September 15. Two Thursdays before that, the morning of the 3^rd, I was in the Westminster Field Office, meeting with Cheryl and the rest of the staff. Mid-morning, who walked in but Fletcher Donaldson. Fletcher was still with the Baltimore Sun, and was now their senior political correspondent, with both bylined articles and an opinion column that was on the verge of being syndicated. He ignored the protesting intern who tried to bar my open door and stuck his head around the corner. “Carl, you want to call off your attack dog here?”

I snorted and waved him in. “Fletcher, you are rude, crude, and socially unacceptable!”

“My mother would agree with you. Let’s talk.”

I rolled my eyes at that, and said, “I’m sure I have an appointment. Let me call in and make one!” I brandished my cell phone and mimed making a phone call.

Fletcher ignored this as well and sat down across from me. He leaned back in his chair and threw his feet up on my desk. “So, Carl, you want to tell me about your pissing match with Newt, and how you expect to win?”

I leaned back and threw my own feet up on the desk. To the extent that any politician can have friends in the media, Fletcher was a friend. Certainly, we were on a first name basis. “Fletcher, I have no idea what you are talking about! Newt Gingrich is a personal friend and a mentor and has earned my respect and the respect of all of his colleagues, both Republican and Democrat.”

“Carl, I’ll bet you’ve been practicing that line for a week now. I’ll also bet you practiced the line to your kids about those quarters under their pillows coming from the Tooth Fairy.”

We batted it back and forth for about ten minutes, with Fletcher trying to get something from me about me going up against Newt, and my protesting my innocence. Then Carrie, the young intern who had tried to keep Fletcher out of my office, appeared in my doorway, a worried look on her face. “Uh, Congressman, uh, you should see this.”

I raised an eyebrow. “I’ll be out in a few minutes, Carrie.”

“Uh, sir? You really should take a look at this.”

I glanced over at Fletcher and shrugged. I stood up and got to the door before he did. “Carrie, keep him here and don’t let him out.”

The poor girl dutifully tried to stay between Fletcher and the doorway, so he feinted right and slipped around her to the left. Carrie scampered behind us, looking more than a little flustered. I found most of the staff staring at the mail bin, a plastic box the Post Office brought around every day with the office’s mail. “Well?” I asked.

Cheryl pointed at a large and misshapen envelope, and then at two others that were similar. One was already open. “Look,” she said, pointing at the desk it was laying on. Sitting there on the desk was a small bar of soap, of the size and type typically found in hotel bathrooms, still in the wrapper. “It was in the envelope, along with this note.” She passed it onto me.

I turned it over in my hands. It was a simple enough note, written on plain white paper. “Wash your hands well and vote no on the impeachment. “ It was signed “Ellie Hines.” There was a return address on the envelope, for “E. Hines” in Arcadia.

While I read this strange missive, Cheryl opened the second envelope, and shook out a second bar of soap, with a similar message. I took it and set down the first note, which was grabbed by Fletcher before I could stop him. The third bulky envelope contained a full-size bar of soap, partially mashed in the envelope, and a message saying to vote no on the impeachment.

We all stared at the mail, with Fletcher reading them as well, and the silence was broken by my cell phone ringing. I flipped it open and lifted it to my ear. “Hello?”

“Carl, it’s Wayne Gilchrest here. You’ll never guess what I got in the mail today!”

“A bar of soap!”

“How’d you know?”

“Same here! I got three. Was there a note?” I asked.

I heard a paper rustle. “It basically told me to vote no on the impeachment. Did you have something to do with this?”

“I had no idea.”

Wayne said, “I’m making some calls. You should do the same.”

I grunted agreement and looked around the room. Fletcher Donaldson asked, “Congressman, could I get a statement?”

I didn’t know what to say, but Cheryl saved me. “This is the voters saying they want the impeachment voted down, and they want Congress to censure the President instead.”

“Yes, exactly,” I said in agreement.

“Right.” Fletcher pulled his car keys out. “It’s always interesting talking to you, Carl. I’ll see you around!” He was gone before I could say good-bye.

I had Cheryl call the office down in D.C. to see if any soap had shown up there, but the answer was no. That changed the next day. Friday, I flew down to Washington and read the Sun. Fletcher had a piece on the Opinion page about the soap I received, along with most of the Congressional delegation from Maryland. He had spent part of yesterday afternoon calling around to the various Field Offices to see what was going on. In Washington, when the mail came around, I received four bars of soap, and I called back to Westminster and was told another three had come in. I also got a bunch of phone calls from my fellow Congressmen, asking me, “What the hell is going on, Carl?”

That Thursday and Friday it was just a trickle of soap. By the following Tuesday, the 8^th, the day after Labor Day, it was a torrent! Hundreds of bars of soap were pouring into the Capitol, all with an admonition to wash our hands and forget about the impeachment, or get to work solving problems, or stop the bickering. The point they were making was obvious. The impeachment was nowhere near as popular as Newt thought it was. By the end of the week, one bright young Democratic staffer down on the first floor had placed a garbage can out in the hallway with a sign on it saying, “Soap Only”, and the name of a Washington D.C. homeless shelter on it. All those bars of soap would be donated to charity! I don’t know how many homeless people there were, but they must have been the cleanest in the nation! We got sent a lot of soap!

Jerry Ferguson managed to book me to speak on This Week with David Brinkley on Sunday. It was the last chance I would have to publicly speak against the impeachment before the vote the following Tuesday. The topic of the day would be the ‘Soapbox Rebellion’, so named by Fletcher Donaldson in an opinion piece that went national. Brinkley didn’t bother pitting me against a Democrat; his second guest was Majority Leader Dick Armey, one of my putative bosses that I was ‘rebelling’ against.