Chapter 9: The Next Generation

Fall 2015

The pressure continued piling up on Hillary through the fall. The seamiest item that came up was when a price list emerged of Presidential favors that could be sold in exchange for campaign contributions. For one amount you could spend a night in the Lincoln Bedroom. For another figure you could dine with the President for breakfast or lunch, and larger figures got you dinner, cocktail parties, and state dinners. There was a separate price list for Camp David. It was like renting a vacation through a travel agency, in that you could combine several items for a discount. It was the ultimate in tackiness, and the tackiest part was that there actually existed a printed price list that wound its way into the wrong hands and ended up on the front page of the Washington Post.

I don’t want to sound hypocritical about this. Every President has had friends and family stay with them, and the Lincoln Bedroom is certainly the most famous and popular bedroom in the place. George Bush had blasted the Clintons during the campaign in 2000 for renting out the Lincoln Bedroom and promised to never do so himself. I never really believed he wouldn’t, but he hadn’t been President long enough to get into too much trouble with that. I had put a stop to the nonsense during my time in office. I’m not saying I didn’t have family stay there, and a few friends as well, but I never charged, and I never had a waiting list and reservations like the Clintons did. When asked, I simply said that it was the White House and not a rental unit at a vacation condo. John had cut way down on things too, maybe because of my example and maybe because he didn’t like the idea either.

Hillary tried to deny this all, but the 2000 election was brought up as a reminder, and White House logs, openly available public documents, gave lists of people who had stayed there, and the vast majority of them were Democratic donors. Their official pronouncement was that the price list was a Republican forgery, but nobody was buying it. Somebody stuck a microphone under my nose one day and I gave them the soundbite of the week - “I don’t know whether to be embarrassed or ashamed.” Jay Carney did a lot of tap dancing around this one.

The absolute strangest thing that occurred, though, happened in December of 2015. Brewster McRiley asked to meet me in my office in Washington, and we set up an appointment. That afternoon, when he was announced, I came out of my office to find him and my son Charlie talking. “Hi, Charlie. What’s up? I have a meeting with Brewster now, but if you want to wait, I’ll see you next.”

He gave me a wry look and said, “That’s why I’m here.”

“We’re both here to see you, Carl,” added Brewster.

I looked askance at them. “Really? Why does that not give me the warm and fuzzies? Come on in.” I led the way into my office and sat down in an armchair. “Okay, spill. What do you two want me to do now?”

Charlie looked over at Brewster, who simply shrugged and said, “If you can’t tell him, we shouldn’t be here in the first place.”

“Tell me what?” I asked.

“We’re here ... I’m here to tell you that I am thinking about running for office next year. I’m thinking about running for the Senate,” Charlie told me.

I stopped and stared for a minute. “Have you lost your fucking mind?” I asked. “What’s the matter, piano player in a cathouse already taken?” Brewster started laughing at that, so I turned on him. “Is this some sort of elaborate Christmas joke on me?”

“No, it isn’t Carl. This is as real as death and taxes,” he replied.

“Well, when Barb Mikulski learns about this, she is going to get all our taxes raised! Whose idea was this idiotic brainstorm, anyway?”

“Ours, both of ours,” answered my son. “I’ve been talking to Brewster ever since I did those interviews while you were in Kurdistan. He told me that he thought I had the necessary appeal to be a viable candidate. That got us to talking politics.”

“He’s a natural, Carl.”

I gave Brewster a dirty look and then just buried my face in my hands. “Have you lost your fucking mind? You want to become a politician? Why not just become a used car salesman? They have more moral fiber!”

“Got that out of your system now, Carl?” asked Brewster. I flipped him off, and he said, “This is not a crazy idea, not at all. Barb Mikulski is vulnerable, very vulnerable, and Charlie is a very viable candidate. This is not out of the question, not by a long shot!”

I looked over at Charlie, who looked nervous, but wasn’t running from the room. “I thought you were a Democrat, like your mother.”

He grinned. “Nah, I’ve been a Republican forever. I think the girls are Democrats, but I’ve never really asked them. We just said we were to watch you yell and jump around.”

I flipped him off this time. “This is going to take a year, and you won’t be able to broadcast on television at the same time. The FEC will never allow it.” The Federal Election Commission had rules about that sort of thing. “So, you’ll need to quit at ESPN and lose that nice paycheck. Have you talked this over with Megan?”

“Yes, I have. I also talked to my boss at ESPN about taking an unpaid leave of absence,” he answered. “He promised not to say anything until I let him know...”

“That promise is worthless. He has a fiduciary duty to tell his bosses about anything that could materially affect the financial health of the company, and your effect on the ratings would qualify,” I interrupted.

“Dad, I know that. He promised to keep quiet for a week, and I didn’t tell him I was thinking of running for office. He thinks I’m getting a medical procedure done.”

“Yeah, a fucking brain transplant!” I shook my head again. “You’re serious about this?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Oh, Christ!” I thought for a second and said, “I don’t care what this snake oil salesman has been telling you, but it won’t be easy. This is going to take up almost all of next year, and the odds are that you will be handed your ass and sent home crying at the end of it all.” They both looked like they were going to protest, but I held up my hand to stall them. “Let me finish. For another thing, you are nowhere near as rich as I was, and if you expect me to fund this, think again. An average Senate race costs $10 million, and for this one, double that or more. Barbara Mikulski is one of the most powerful and senior Senators around and she has a campaign fund able to bury you. She is well liked in this state and well known. She has won in a landslide every election she has ever run in. You, on the other hand, are the rich man’s kid looking to buy an election just like he did. Rich guys aren’t well liked, rich guy’s kids are liked even less. Now, you tell me what I’ve got wrong there.”

“Let’s look at that a piece at a time,” argued Brewster. “First and foremost, Barb Mikulski is vulnerable with a capital V! She is known to be tight with Hillary, very tight, and that is really working to her disadvantage. Hillary is not polling well against Jeb Bush or Mitt Romney, or even some of the second-tier candidates. For years Barb has been voting in lockstep with her, and the chickens are coming home to roost. She voted in favor of Somalia, for instance, and that is a disaster, and she is on public record not wanting to go into Syria. And here’s an important thing - Barb Mikulski is ooooollllddddd! She is seventy-nine years old now and will be eighty at the time of the election and looks older than that. Charlie is a new face.”

“That’s it?”

“Hear me out. Charlie has a lot of things in his column. He is young and handsome and surprisingly well known. That cute boyish grin is on the air almost every day on television already. He is a popular commentator and anchor on ESPN. People look at him and see a nice guy, somebody they like. His personal history is already well known. He was in the Marines and was decorated and wounded in combat. He knows sports, which gives him a strong spot with the average voter. Between ESPN and being your son, he has unbelievable name recognition! He has moderate positions and does not come off as one of the radical right wingers. He is straight, and we both know Barb Mikulski is not. He can appeal to a lot of different demographic segments. We did a preliminary poll, without names, and he is very viable.”

I glanced over at Charlie for a moment, assessing him, and he returned the look, not flinching. I swung back to Brewster. “How much do you figure he will need to raise? The last elections the average Senator spent $10 mill. This is going to run at least $25, maybe more. I am not coughing up that kind of cash, not by a long shot.”

“I’ve been talking to Reince and a few others. Right this instant I can guarantee $10 mill from the RNC and some lobbying groups, and I haven’t even started looking at soft money yet. I am telling you, Carl, this is winnable!”

“What about a primary? Who else is going to run? You can’t tell me there isn’t some state senator or county commissioner who isn’t champing at the bit to go after her seat,” I asked.

Brewster shrugged. “Not like you would think. Let’s face it, we’ve had some awfully weak candidates lately. A couple were too conservative, and most were complete unknowns. I have not been hearing from anybody about somebody else just dying to rush into this. Charlie might not have a primary fight, and if he does, it might not be that expensive, not if he has the backing of the RNC and you. You do plan to endorse your son, don’t you?”

I sidestepped that for a moment. I looked over at Charlie. “Can you afford to run for office? Once you leave the network, that nice paycheck disappears. Running for office is a full-time job. How do you plan to pay the mortgage?”

“What mortgage? I don’t have a mortgage. I paid for the house cash; it’s why we didn’t move out of the 30^th Street place right away.”

“You don’t have a mortgage?”

“Dad, I’m like you. My credit rating is lousy. I didn’t have any credit when I was in the Marines, and then when I got out and began racing, well, who in their right mind is going to lend money to a motorcycle racer? That’s why I was living at home. After that, I got on with ESPN, and that wasn’t all that stable for a few years. Nobody was going to loan me money, so I paid cash or went without. Megan and I only have a couple of credit cards, and we pay them every month. Now, we save a bunch of money.”

“I’ll be damned. What does Megan think about this? She’s going to have to quit at McRiley if you win. A Senator can’t have a wife who is a lobbyist!”

“We’ve talked about that. If I win, she moves from McRiley to one of the think tanks in town, and that puts her at a one-step remove. She is already commuting to Washington, so there won’t be a change with that. It’s close enough for both of us that we won’t have to buy a place in Washington.”

I grunted an acknowledgement for that. There were a select few House and Senate seats that would allow the seat-holder to commute to the Capitol, and this was one of them. It could cut Charlie’s personal costs in half, or more!

“Megan is actually another factor,” commented Brewster. “She is damn attractive and is a young mother with another one on the way...”

“WHAT?”

Charlie cringed at that. “We were going to tell everyone this weekend anyway.”

“You had better mention that to your mother before you mention the rest of this insanity!” I told him.

Brewster continued. “Like I was saying, Megan and the kids play well to the family values people and keeps showing that Charlie is young and virile. I know it’s all bullshit, but you know that works.”

“Hell of a pay cut!” I told Charlie.

“I’ll just have to find a way to not get caught taking bribes.”

“I won’t bail you out, either!” I thought for a second. “You do this, and you lose, which you probably will, there might not be a job waiting for you back at ESPN. They’ll have found some other cute face by then.”

“There’s always that job in the cathouse. Seriously, we’ll figure it out then. Brewster isn’t the only guy I’ve been talking to. I think they’re right. I can do this, and at least give it a better shot than what the party’s done in recent years.”

“I’ll let you tell your mother. She already has problems with me still playing politics. She’s going to be the one to disown you, not me.” That just earned me a laugh.

I stood up and headed to my concealed wet bar. “Alright, gentlemen, the bar is open. Tell me your grand plans and schemes. Charlie, you’d better have a reason to do this other than that you think you can be elected...”

Megan, Ashley, and Charlie came up to Hereford that weekend and gave us the official word. Marilyn wasn’t too amused with me when Charlie let it slip that I had learned the beginning of the week. I just rolled my eyes and kept my mouth shut. Marilyn couldn’t keep a secret to save her life. The kids routinely told me stuff before they told their mother. Marilyn’s views were predictable. She loved the idea of another grandchild; she was less thrilled about our son getting into politics.

Charlie made it official following one of the Bowl Games that ESPN had been broadcasting on New Year’s Day. At the end of the broadcast, in what was obviously a pre-planned move, the camera zoomed in on him as the studio and the other commentators went quiet and he announced he was taking a leave of absence to run for the United States Senate in his home state of Maryland. He praised ESPN and his fellow commentators for their help and support over the years and promised to put the same effort he had put into his Marine, racing, and broadcasting careers into his new career.

Brewster was right about the lack of a field in the Republican ranks. Charlie announced his intention to run and basically shut down the competition. A county commissioner in Garrett County named Ray Joshua announced his intention to run but didn’t get any support from the national or state committees, and dropped out noisily, complaining of lack of funding and ‘pernicious influence’ by parties unnamed. Barb Mikulski also was spared any sort of primary battle. She had a lock on the seat until she retired or lost, and retirement was considered much more likely.

It was not the prettiest Senatorial race, and if politics ain’t beanbag, then these beanbags were being fired by cannon! Both the Republicans and Democrats were viewing this as a war against Hillary Clinton, and money began flowing almost immediately. With any campaign, you have two sets of messages and two sets of funding. The candidates are raising money directly and spending it directly. Their ads tend to be either positive about themselves or negative about the other side. The indirect money, also known as ‘soft’ money, can be from any number of outside sources, often through various political action committees, and is invariably negative. Various election laws require that these ads be only used for ‘educational’ purposes, and can’t be in favor of a specific candidate, so the education they provide is that the opposing candidate beats his wife, evicts widows and orphans into the snow, and sends jobs to China.

You can tell whether an ad is ‘hard’ or ‘soft’ by the wording at the end of the ad. If the candidate comes on and says in a voiceover, ‘I approved this ad,’ then it’s a campaign ad and not a third-party ad. The candidates’ ‘hard’ money, which was funneled through the campaign coffers and could be spent on anything they wanted, bought a mix of heartwarming and personal ads showing the wonderful things they did. The comparison between Charlie’s and Barb’s ads was interesting. As a longtime incumbent, it could be expected that Barb Mikulski would have plenty of campaign ads showing her helping senior citizens and children and everything in between, all because of some public program she had sponsored or created or funded. That is one of the benefits of incumbency, and I had used it myself frequently. As Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, she was very powerful when it came to bringing goodies back to Maryland.

Charlie didn’t have any legislation he could point to, so he had to make do with pointing to other Republican legislation and programs and try to wrap himself up in those flags. On the personal stuff he did much better. He was filmed with a rather pregnant Megan pushing Ashley around in a stroller, on a picnic, and at a baseball game. A string of family history photos went into a string of other ads, and these prominently showed Marilyn or me in them. In this Brewster was counting on my popularity versus Hillary’s, so we had pictures of us at some of my campaign activities when he had been a kid, such as when I threw him in a dunking tank at a fair or at a campaign rally with the family. The theory was that Charlie had absorbed my beliefs through osmosis, simply by hanging around me. Other family photos included shots of him getting his Silver Star, him in racing leathers, and so forth. This was an area where Charlie could really whip on Barb since she didn’t have a family. She was unmarried and had never had children and was a closeted lesbian because she was afraid coming out would lose her blue-collar votes. He also played up a big item, her age, but subtly, with a campaign slogan of ‘A Senator For The 21^st Century!’ In this they were helped by Barb’s photos from holding committee hearings in the Senate. When she wanted to go off on somebody and give them an earful, she was not a pretty sight, so any side-by-side ads with Charlie had him looking youthful and handsome, and her looking irate, wrinkled, and red-faced.

Mikulski hit back, of course. Her biggest charge was that Charlie was too young and inexperienced. She didn’t say that directly, of course, but would compare her years of experience to Charlie’s lack of experience. She spoke of him disdainfully, as riding my coattails and milking my pockets, a little boy trying to look good for his father. Some of her soft money ads were downright nasty. Megan’s acting career was dragged up again, and photos with areas blurred out were a sign she was an unfit mother, and that Marylanders shouldn’t vote for a candidate who married a stripper. Likewise, Charlie’s lack of a college education was taken as a sign that he was an intellectual lightweight. This was yanked after a bit, since there was some feedback that this was backfiring with some of the voters who didn’t have college degrees. The Dems had an elitist reputation, and this type of ad simply pissed off blue collar voters.

One amusing moment was when a reporter tried to get some family fireworks going. He asked me, “Your son has been quoted as saying you are a cast iron son of a bitch. Your comment?”

I smiled and replied, “Poetic little bastard, isn’t he?” which made the reporter stop and blink. “Seriously, though, you need to remember the context he made that quote in. He was talking about my commitment to duty and principle, and he was right. In those qualities, I am a cast iron SOB, and just as importantly, so is Charlie Buckman. I think that will serve him well in the Senate, don’t you?” Charlie told me later that he laughed until he cried when he heard me call him a ‘poetic little bastard.’

By Super Tuesday, the Republicans had selected a candidate to go against Hillary. Jeb Bush, former Vice President under John McCain, had beaten Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney and a bunch of others. Rick was the darling of the religious right, and this was Mitt’s last chance. The others were too many to care about and they never made it past Iowa and New Hampshire. Jeb pretty much ran the board on Super Tuesday. He was now the recipient of whatever afterglow John could provide from four years ago. By 2016, hindsight was showing to a lot of people that Hillary hadn’t been such a wonderful change after all.

Hillary struggled all through the spring and summer. In addition to whatever personal issues she was having with her husband, there was enough other stuff going on to make a hash of things. Rocket to the Top, her signature education bill, was the gift that kept on giving - if you were a Republican. Part of the bill was a mandate that the Department of Education begin grading colleges on the value they offered, with various factors such as graduation rates, costs, college loans, hiring rates for degrees received, starting salaries for graduates, and the like to be tossed into the mix. A timetable for this had originally been set for 2015, after the mid-term elections, but the department had delayed this because they were arguing about what to count and how. The release of the draft report was to be delayed for a year, which put it into 2016, smack in the middle of the election year. Hillary was forced to publicly delay this until 2017, which did not play well in the press. Charlie, along with many others, railed against this ‘illegal’ delay. This also hurt Barb, since she also served on the Senate Committee for Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

Also hurting her was Somalia, where we hit the thousand mark on deaths that summer. Mikulski was on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and the intelligence community had not covered itself in glory in Somalia. To what extent we could blame the CIA was questionable. From what I gathered behind the scenes, they hadn’t phonied the intel like had been done before 9-11. Rather, Hillary and her crew thought they were smarter and went in anyway. By now we had almost 100,000 soldiers, Marines, and airmen in the country along with an airbase and a carrier group or two off the coast, chasing guerillas and terrorists around the desert, all the while getting blown up by roadside bombs and getting shot at randomly with Kalashnikovs and rocket propelled grenades. It was like chasing ghosts, and Hillary had gone through three commanding generals in three years, and we didn’t seem any closer to a resolution than when we started.

One of the ugliest moments in the campaign occurred when Charlie’s medical records were leaked from when he was in the Marines. For this to occur, somebody must have cracked the vaults in the Pentagon and Bethesda, which could have only occurred with some pull from the White House. The fact that Charlie had suffered ‘a mental breakdown’ following Monrovia and required ‘psychiatric treatment’ showed that he was mentally unstable. This played straight into one of the problems with Somalia, in that there were now a lot of troops coming home who weren’t adjusting well. When Hillary decided to shrink the military but then used the same military to invade a country on the far side of Africa, she overburdened the system. Some of the brigades were on their third rotation through the country, and the troops were showing a lot of mental health issues. Post-traumatic stress disorder was way up, and military suicides were beginning to rival combat deaths for loss of life. In addition, homelessness and unemployment among veterans were rapidly rising. For the first time since the Vietnam War, television shows were beginning to show crazy veterans as the villains.

Neither John nor I had had these issues as President since our military actions were vastly shorter. I was incensed that they would tag Charlie as the crazy soldier by pawing through his personal health records like this. He and I had talked about this once before, when I had been running for re-election in 2004, but nobody in the media learned about it then. Now that was being talked about in some circles as proof that I had buried it somehow.

I have to admit that Charlie handled it better than I did. (I wanted to rip some heads off and shit down their necks!) He called a press conference and addressed it head on. Yes, he had suffered from depression following his combat in Monrovia; no, he had not been prescribed any medication; yes, he had received counseling at that time. He compared himself to any combat veteran who needed some help afterwards, and then pivoted and used this as an example of the Clinton Administration’s failure to adequately plan for combat actions and the resulting trauma. It was as neat a political pivot as I had ever seen, and I was sure he must have practiced this ahead of time.