1. Wednesday, T-minus 6 days to R-day. Sam rustled through the papers that had been neatly stacked on his desk by the Chief of Staff earlier in the day, lined up in strict priority order. Now they looked more like a menagerie from a 3rd grade finger-painting party. He had doodled a depiction of Popeye stealing a hamburger away from his good friend Wimpy on the Daily Security Briefing 1-pager…had old Wimpy responding to give him back the F*@#ing hamburger or he would stuff a can of spinach so far up his a$$#*le that his one good eye would turn green. Sam had turned his broadcast news headline reports into a barnyard of origami animals, a skill he had mastered in his three trips to Japan in between boring, fruitless trade agreement caucuses. There at the bottom of one pile was the slate of potential Presidential pardons. He gazed at the list of various hooligans, dirtbags, and scuzz-wads, but clearly his mind was not engaged in these trivialities. Anyone with half a brain could tell he was stalling. And even though most of his cracker jack staff members were a few logs short of a full cord, he figured even they could see this foot-drag. Halfway down the list, he glanced over at the red phone out of the corner of his eye. It had always been a surprise to him that the phone was actually red. I mean, were there some past presidents who needed this color reminder to distinguish the life-or-death call from a confirmation call for Sunday’s golf tee time? Yeah, possibly Carter or Hoover…maybe Taft. Taft seems like he could have easily been confused, and dialed up Kaiser Wilhelm when he was actually trying to schedule a rectal exam. That would have been the time to have been President, he thought. No concerns about global warming…or global cooling, or whatever climatic misdirection du jour was in vogue. No suicide underwear bombers. No crisis in some obscure African nation that no one in the country cared about, but still warranted a symbolic response. No bothersome TV pundits spouting off their tidbits of sausage gravy. None of this stuff. People expected less of their President in those days, and Presidents delivered. Hell, a bozo like Taft probably could not achieve 3rd Assistant Flunkie status in today’s world, let alone Commander in Chief. Rumor had it that he consulted with the White House butler on many matters of state…although that may have been so that he could persuade Jeeves to slip him an extra brownie off the dessert cart. Those were the days before having a Secretary of National Nutrition, or the Brownie Limitation Act. Those were the days. Sam strolled over to the window, and turned around, glaring at the phone once again. Hell, technically, he could just wait another week, and let Funknutz deal with it. Funknutz. Geez, how in the Milky Way galaxy did he ever lose the election to that sliver-tongued, stammering babblemaster? How could a guy who could barely structure a coherent sentence rise to the highest level of power? How could a shmuck who refused to bathe more than once a week retain a staff of campaign workers? Sam never expected to garner much of the incoherent citizen vote, the blockhead block, the smell-deprived vote, the refuse-to-speak-English segment, or the information-challenged thickburgers…but there were still hordes of normal and semi-normal voters out there. Did they all have a brain freeze? Polls had indicated Sam was leading the race, up until that fateful 3rd debate. It was the debate on foreign affairs, and Sam had prepared more than he had ever done before. He knew that Gene Funknutz was a total empty suit in this subject area, and after clobbering him in the first 2 debates, figured this would be Cake City. He was halfway through his 3rd round response, discussing his views on acceptable torture methods on terrorist prisoners, when it happened. Initially he thought he had quietly snuck one out. When the audience started laughing, he mistakenly assumed it was a delayed reaction from his tongue-in-cheek sterilization suggestion. It was not until the next day, after he discovered the 5-second clip went viral on You Tube, that he realized the extent of the personal damage to his unsoiled reputation. Late night comics and other Funknutz lovers had a video field day, cutting and pasting old serious clips with this new little gem. How do you feel about trying to warm-up relations with Russia? Pffffft. How would you respond to China’s charge that Wal-Mart is trying to create a trade war? Pfffffft. What makes you think you have the stomach for a 2nd term? Pfffffft. With only one week before election day, there was not enough time to mount any kind of counter, even if he had decided to do so. Fact is, he had just figured it was no big deal. After all, it was a totally natural act, an act that each and every one of his predecessors had done 12 thousand times while in office…maybe 38 thousand for old Taft. Perhaps, in hindsight, he should not have chowed-down that triple bean burrito for lunch that day. So what? Did any voter believe he/she was immune from the occasional gastronomic release? Maybe if he had laughed about it, made a joke about it, made some quip about why the organizers installed a microphone back there in the first place…who knows, it might have all just blown over. But, by getting embarrassed, then flustered, then a little snarky about it, he started losing grip. Poll numbers started cratering. News channels started doing what they do best: fueling the fire. Pundits called it the worst debate faux pas since George Bush’s fixation on his wristwatch, or Nixon’s sweat gland gushfest. Good golly. Poof! Gone. Done. Sam was still thinking about it, what-if’ing for the past two months. It was almost over now. Almost.
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