Chapter 126: Selection

Marty Adrianopolis was leaving me.

It wasn’t as tragic as it sounded. He was a great Chief of Staff, and I trusted him implicitly, but he had a fatal flaw. Marty was a firm believer in married bliss. He had proved this twice before. Now he was seeing a good-looking blonde about ten years younger who worked in Steny Hoyer’s office (it was our own little version of James Carville and Mary Matalin, only reversed.) Marty needed to make more money than he could make on a government paycheck.

“So, what are you thinking?” I asked him.

“Well, I’ve been talking to the guys over at ARI, and I figure I can slip over there and become an executive director, something at that level. That way I can still work with you on your projects, but I can make some money without jumping through so many hoops,” he replied, smiling.

It was certainly something I would have proposed, so I simply nodded. Since I was the major funding source of the American Renaissance Initiative, I had a lot of say in the matter. “I’ve got no problems with that. The only question is going to be timing. I want you to stick with me through the election. After that, during the lame duck session, we find a replacement, and then you head over to K Street. Have you negotiated your new salary yet?” I asked with a smile.

He grinned back. “It won’t be cheap! Jenny has expensive tastes!”

“Maybe we need to head to Vegas first and get the over-under on how long this one lasts.”

Marty flipped me the finger at that. “Third time’s the charm! Hey, what do we do if you get selected as the nominee for Vice President? What happens then?”

“You mean, right after the heavens open and Christ comes down for the Second Coming?”

“Exactly!”

“I am guessing that things get complicated. I can still run for Congress at the same time. If Bush wins, they’ll have a special election, probably in January. We’ll run a candidate in the Maryland Ninth. If we win, you’ll need to stick around to help them settle in. Figure a few months to find a new Chief of Staff. It shouldn’t delay things more than a few months,” I told him.

“Any ideas on who you’d run? You’re going to have a lot of influence on this,” he commented.

“Think Cheryl would go for it? She knows the district and the players.” Cheryl Dedrick headed up my Westminster staff.

“She’d be a good choice, and it wouldn’t hurt with the women’s vote. Wait until you get selected, then talk to her about it.” I nodded agreement with this. A lot of Congressmen got started by working on somebody’s staff.

I left it with Marty starting to consider his replacement at the end of the year. Two weeks after my confrontation with the two doofuses who vetted me, I got a call from Joe Allbaugh. Would I be willing to meet with Governor Bush in a few days? I stared at the phone in my hand for a second before responding affirmatively. Even if I wasn’t going to be selected, you don’t piss off a guy who might well become the next President. You take the meeting! I was to meet the Governor in a suite at the Hay-Adams.

Unsurprisingly, when I got to the meeting, Dick Cheney was present as well, and he didn’t look overly happy to be there. As far as he was concerned, he didn’t want anybody getting in his way of selecting the next Cabinet, and certainly not either George Bush or the prospective Cabinet members. He was only here because the campaign was reacting to the pressure from the media. Al Gore, on the other hand, was trumpeting the transparency of his selections. This was total hogwash, as well. Al was selecting a Vice Presidential pick for the same reasons of expediency as anyone else did, and his Cabinet choices would be mostly recycled Clintonistas.

Still, our meeting was cordial. While Cheney was unhappy, it didn’t seem directed at me. Rather, he was pissed that his elaborate scheme had been exposed for what it was, but he didn’t know by whom. He did ask me at one point. “Carl, you know you aren’t the only person being considered for Vice Presidential nominee. Any thoughts on where George Will’s wild accusations came from?”

I kept a neutral face on and simply held my hands palm up, in an unknowing position. “Dick, there’s about a dozen of us on the short list, and with all the documentation you required, each of us had about half a dozen lawyers and staffers pulling things together. And that’s just on our end! What about the other end, your end, whoever was pulling together the information and reviewing things and vetting us? I would daresay that the better part of a hundred people knew about the process and could have leaked it.”

“Maybe so, but that certainly wasn’t the process we were using! The Governor and I are looking at everything together, and I am certainly not making the choice myself!” he declared. George Bush didn’t say anything through this.

“I’m sure of that, but that doesn’t make as good a story on the news, does it?” There, throw George Will under the bus on this one. “All it takes is a selective bit of disinformation and you can start trouble. Maybe one of the candidates is trying to torpedo somebody else?” I shrugged in confusion.

After that we got to some more substantive issues. Cheney would raise a few questionable points about my past and Bush would ask me to explain what had happened. My wealth was an amusing topic, and it was pointed out that I was richer than all the other Congressmen and Senators combined. I smiled and agreed with that. There was some discussion of my military record, which was considerably more exemplary than either of theirs. Cheney had been a major league draft dodger, getting about a half dozen deferments; Bush had served in the Texas Air National Guard, and his service there was suspect at best. Both wanted to learn about the Bronze Star, and that surprised me. I would have thought they could have gotten somebody at the Pentagon to unearth it (Cheney had been Secretary of Defense and Bush’s father had once run the CIA) but it must have been buried deep. I pleaded national security, but then smiled and said, “Of course, as President Bush, you will be able to look it up. I would be happy to explain it to you then, sir.” That got a large laugh from George Bush, not such a big laugh from Dick Cheney.

A big chunk of the meeting was about my family. My current family was everything a good Republican could ask for. We just had to keep quiet about them being Catholic. My parents and brother, though, were the very definition of a clusterfuck. We could count on that coming up, and both men were surprised it hadn’t derailed me as a Congressman already.

“Governor, believe me, people have tried. My first campaign that was a major theme. It was simply huge! After that, though, I was able to develop a track record, and was able to run on that. Still, I can’t hide it. My parents and my brother will be ripe pickings for reporters.”

“So, they’ll talk to the press?” pushed Cheney.

I arched an eyebrow at that. “I think it will take a small miracle to get my brother to make a comment, I mean, considering I shot him in my kitchen.” Then I shrugged. “My father won’t be saying much, either. He’s in a home with Alzheimer’s. My sister and her family live in Minnesota and they’ll be fine. We are in touch with them, and my sister and I are close. My mother will be more than happy to go on national television and damn me as the Anti-Christ, but she’s been under psychiatric care off and on for twenty years.”

“I really think that kills off any chance of going further. Wouldn’t you agree, Governor?” prompted Cheney.

“Congressman, I haven’t made any decisions yet, but I suspect you may be more use to a Bush Administration as the Majority Whip, and perhaps, someday, Majority Leader or Speaker of the House,” said Bush.

“Of course, sir. Believe me, I understand. Please let me know if there is anything more I can do for you or the campaign.” We all shook hands, and I took my leave.

So much for any hopes for higher office. I smiled to myself as I left and shook my head in amusement. I still wasn’t sure how I ended up on the short list, other than by being the top Congressional leader who might be interested. Hastert would have almost as much power as the Speaker, and DeLay was hoping to succeed Hastert. It would take another ten years for me to get to that point, or at some point try to run for Governor or Senator, both of which seemed far-fetched, to get that level of power.

Maybe I should push for Ambassador to the Bahamas? Wait until the kids are off in college in a couple of years and then Marilyn and I could work on our tans year-round. I would have to ask her about that! We could work on the rum consumption problem facing America, as well as the beach sand deficit. I really needed to give this idea some strategic thought!

For the next ten days or so, there was a steady stream of the high and the mighty traipsing through the Hay-Adams, all of whom were noted by Fox News as being considered for various positions, and this was all indicative of how the Governor was taking a hands-on approach to these critical selections. How dare anybody dispute this? In some ways, this wasn’t helping Governor Bush. After anybody was reported meeting with Cheney and Bush, Rush Limbaugh’s next show would discuss why they weren’t appropriate. I was highlighted as an ‘extreme liberal, a closet Democrat, who has bought his elections and shares the left-wing Democratic agenda with his New York Democrat wife!’

Marilyn found this extremely funny, though she seemed less amused when he commented that she had obviously used my billions on extensive plastic surgery and a boob job! It was my turn to look at her curiously and ask to see the ‘evidence.’ The twins also wanted to know if their mother had implants, and wanted to know if they could have them, too. I snorted and bit my tongue and let their mother chew on them for a bit. Our daughters did not suffer from the curse of flat-chestedness. They were D-cups like their mother, without the enjoyment of three pregnancies to help the process along.

I was not the only choice to be singled out as inappropriate. Colin Powell, one of the most respected men in the country, was also labeled as a Democrat, Fred Thompson of Tennessee was a ‘Johnny-come-lately’ to the political party, George Pataki was from a Democratic state (New York), and so on. There was nobody who was conservative enough for Rush Limbaugh! The man was more of a raving lunatic than usual on the subject.

On the Fourth of July I attended the obligatory parades back in Hereford and Westminster and spent the rest of the day drinking around the pool with my ‘enhanced’ wife. Our daughters were elsewhere (they wanted to be anywhere other than where their hopelessly ancient and clueless forebears were) and Charlie was out at sea, so I managed to talk Marilyn into wearing a very extreme swimsuit and then chased her around the pool. I caught her and examined her enhancements up close and personal. My wife’s comment was that perhaps I needed to spend my billions for some enhancements of my own, which earned her a good smack on the rear when we got out of the pool. Then I chased her into the house, and we spent some more time examining our original equipment.

On July 5, the world got exceedingly strange. George Bush called me direct and asked me to meet him at his suite at the Hay-Adams the next day, and I wasn’t to speak to anybody about this, not my wife, not my staff, nobody. This was weird. Up until now I had always heard from Cheney’s staff. It seemed like he wouldn’t be involved in this discussion. Could this be some final private vetting? That didn’t make sense. There were already some unofficial reports saying that I was no longer under consideration, though nothing so crass was coming out officially from the campaign.