There were times when he came close to buckling under the burdens of being the Leader Of The Free World.
This morning was one of those. It had struck him that it ought to be 'Leader Of The Whole World', and he couldn't shake the notion. His mind worried at it like Barney with a bone, right through his shaving hour, a bad time to be hit by a Thought Attack.
Shaving was one of the few things he still had to do solo. His Secret Service had come up empty in its hunt for a barber who could be trusted with a razor in the same room as the Presidential throat. One rash impulse, and kaboom --- it's Armageddon, way ahead of schedule.
So there he was, personally going scrape, scrape, with narrowed gaze and intense concentration. Not a good moment to suddenly find himself pondering his place in history. He'd finish up with patches of stubble, a couple of oozing nicks, shortly welcoming the scheduled visitors from the Church Of Christ The Fetus looking like a hungover Bowery bum in a ripped-off suit.
Not that he knew what a 'Bowery bum' was, to be honest. Not at first hand. He had no more personal acquaintance with 'Bowery bums' than he did with 'alfalfa farmers' or 'Pittsburgh steelworkers' or 'Latino barrio mural painters' or 'Mom-n-Pop dry-goods store owners' or 'divorce lawyers' or any other of the thousands of people-types who reportedly made up 'the rich and vibrant patchwork of American life'.
That was from one of his speeches, from one of his speechwriters. He'd delivered it in one of those Midwestern cities which all looked the same to him, after they'd put him on his plane and flown him there. He'd stood at one of those podiums (all of which looked the same), confronting a sea of faces (all of which looked the same), and he'd said the words, forthright and resonant, peppered with the hecks and gosh-darn-its and by gollies which these people were known to appreciate, with some folk wisdom thrown in, little homilies and aphorisms which he'd been told were regularly being collected and published, like the sayings of that dead Chinese guy whose name escaped him.
After the speech, he'd worked the crowd, pumping the hands which they thrust at him. He didn't need to know what people-types the hands were attached to, whether it was a 'Chevy dealer' or 'interstate trucker' or 'working Mom' or 'serial killer' or 'Methodist preacher' or 'gay hairdresser'. If it was a hand, it got shook. If it was a hand with a placard with a rude message about him or his Administration or his war, it got handcuffed.
Sometimes he'd get off the plane, and it would be Manila or Goteborg or Shanghai or Aqaba or San Salvador or New Delhi, and that sense of 'What in tarnation am I doing here?' would be even stronger. It would sometimes be a place whose existence he had not previously suspected, not until stepping out on the exit ramp and seeing a banner that said, for example, 'Welcome to Bucuresti, Mr President!'. At least most American places had names which he'd heard on the TV one time or another, like Decatur or Fayetteville or Springfield.
Usually there'd be many more differences, adding to that queasy feeling, making him wish he was back in Crawford, working off the bourbon on the bike trails. Like very weird architecture, which he sometimes squinted at through the bullet-proof smoked glass while speeding towards some state wing-ding, down a street which his people had cleared of every possible threat or impediment. On a good day, he'd also spot some regular office blocks and gas stations and McDonalds and Wal-Marts, looking like they'd been plucked from Springfield and planted there, comforting reminders that by golly, he headed the world's greatest nation, and was consequently Leader Of The Whole World.
And then there'd be that foreign-language babble of voices, ever-present in the background at press conferences and state dinners, more incomprehensible than a Hispanic or African-American crowd.
And of course the food, which could be pretty darned strange, about as unlike B-B-Q ribs as anything could possibly get and still stay this side of inedible.
Well, what the hell, it came with the territory if you wanted to be the LOTWW. At least he'd got through the shaving, and was now feeling the glow of another crisis successfully negotiated, slapping on that Christian Dior cologne which Chirac had given him, probably by way of amends for being such a world-class turd. He wondered what sort of Christian this Dior fella had been.
******
While his valets got him dressed, he suddenly recalled the name of the dead Chinese guy. It was 'Confusion'. He had no idea why they'd named him that. But then he had no idea about anything when it came to folks of the gook persuasion, of any nationality whatsoever. He didn't have to. He had people who got paid to figure them out, and boil it down to a paragraph for his daily briefing, which no one really expected him to read, though he occasionally did.
He'd skimmed some of this morning's briefing paper, the backgrounder on the Church Of Christ The Fetus, a no-brainer which he could have worked out for himself while shaving. Jesus had once been a fetus. Christ reborn would also temporarily have to be a fetus. We're gonna make darned sure the Second Coming doesn't get flushed down a toilet, or end up in a stem-cell research facility. Not on my watch.
He felt good as he strode out to meet these wackos in his Oval Office. He'd give them some God talk, some prayer, some promises, some wholesome Reader's Digest jokes, maybe even some repentance and weeping, a little humble halo-polishing. That would go down well. These were the easy ones. He could do this without briefings and crib-sheets.
The tough gigs were the ones where people felt entitled to interrogate him, standing up and asking him substantive questions, and expecting him to answer them. They had some goddamned nerve. Like that spectacled jerk in Germany, 'liberal intellectual asshole' written all over him, waving his Press Pass and demanding particulars about Iran and ultimatums and deadlines, who did he think he was talking to? He'd fielded that one by bringing up the pig and raising a laugh. That question should properly have been directed in writing to Condi's staff, whose job it was to know something about it, not in public to the Leader Of The Whole World. Mr Four-Eyed Smart-Ass could have got himself a proper answer that way, not necessarily satisfying or even true, but certainly more to the point than 'pig'.
His own job was to rise above such details. To shape human destiny in bold broad strokes. To forge grand international alliances, like for example by giving the German Chancellor a quickie shoulder-rub, that was his style, hands-on, bet your ass she liked it, though she had to make like she didn't, talk about 'broad strokes', now that's funny, what a hoot.
And to project the human face of American power, by coming across all gracious and humble, saying 'Looking forward to that pig, thank you for having me', as if she had any choice in the matter.
And, most importantly, to call the big plays, to line out sweeping strategies like 'Get Hezbollah to stop this shit', and leave the nuts-and-bolts to the foreign policy geeks who got paid for it.
Rising above the details. Getting the big picture. That was his core competency, one of the several useful phrases he'd picked up at Harvard. Taking the long view, like overflying Louisiana in Air Force One, gazing at vast sheets of water with bits of real estate poking through. From that height, he could grasp the situation in macro terms which did not have to include actual black individuals drowning or homes getting washed away or kids gone missing. He had people who got paid to deal with it at that messy level, like Brownie.
His personal Big Picture was really very simple. All he wanted was to go ahead and make it happen, just do it without needing to make speeches and answer questions and oh, explain and justify and negotiate and reach consensus and get authorization and pass enabling legislation, all that stuff which gave him headaches and got in the way of getting any real work done.
Yeah, sure, it was all enshrined in the Constitution. He knew that, how could he not? They kept whacking him with that goddamned scrap of parchment, elegantly penned in a bygone era by a bunch of gentleman-farmers and plantation aristocrats playing at being enlightened philosopher-kings, little dreaming that one day every word of it would be held sacrosanct by millions upon millions descended from the losers, refugees, malcontents, criminals, rebels, outcasts and riff-raff of four continents.
Count Otto von Bismarck would have sympathized.
He'd studied up Bismarck a little, back then at Yale. Otto was his secret role model. Otto brought together all these small bickering duchies and kingdoms and principalities and wham, just pounded them, welded them into one super-duper Prussian state, which became Germany, which went on to do magnificent things in two world wars. When Otto wanted to take Schleswig and Holstein, he dispatched his cavalry and cannons and took 'em, just like that. Just one of his '10 things to do after breakfast' that day. No waiting on Congressional authorization, or making like he was bringing them the gift of freedom and democracy.
Otto spent his whole career dealing with monarchs and princes and dukes, just like he himself liked to hang out with Fortune 500 CEOs, and maybe minor heads of state, like Blair, so long as they showed respect. Otto never lost a moment's sleep concerning himself with 'the people'. Otto wouldn't have dreamed of standing before a bunch of 'feed merchants' and 'licensed chiropractors' and 'check-out clerks' and 'primary school teachers' and 'AIDS workers' and 'aerobics instructors' and 'used-car dealers', standing there like some fuckin' petitioner, telling them the lies necessary to get their approval and their permission to do what was right, in matters about which they knew zip, and cared about even less. No sirree, you'd have to be at least a Baron von Something before Otto regarded you as someone worth lying to.
If Bismarck had been alive, he'd have sat him down over a few beers for a heart-to-heart. He'd have said: 'Look, Otto -- may I call you Otto? -- here's how it lays out for me.'
He'd have told Otto about his vision for America and the world. An America in which The Power was concentrated in the hands of the Presidency, the military and the corporations, which would all essentially function as one thing, very clean and efficient and single-minded. An America where the people could go their own way and God bless ya, chase their own dreams, make some bucks, buy stuff, save, invest, splurge, gamble, go fishing, do whatever the hell they did --- so long as they paid their taxes, did their conscripted state-service duty time, and didn't stand in the way of The Power. Where The Power owned the armed forces just like he'd once owned the Texas Rangers. Where The Power disposed of the nation's revenues and conducted foreign policy and trade. Where the judges' only legitimate business was law and order, and sorting out the squabbles of the people, not pronouncing on whether The Power could or could not do this or that thing.
That would be The New American Way Of Life, and the country's mission would be to spread it - hell, impose it, enforce it - all over the world, which would eventually become one vast back-lot for America, with all its resources and markets and cheap daily-wage workers. Untidy local variations would eventually vanish, because 'rich and vibrant patchwork' was all very well in speeches, but was a marketing nightmare if you had serious business in mind. Other languages and religions and cultures and weird architecture and freakin' regional cuisines would be flattened and homogenized and pizzafied. 'Bucuresti' would turn into 'Buckarest' or even 'Buckaroo' and learn to love it, and would look like Fayetteville or Decatur. He and everyone else in The Power would feel splendidly at home in it and everywhere else in the world, not just because they practically owned it, but because they'd remade it in their image. And done it without the say-so of that unmanageable mess called 'the American people', or any other people, for that matter. Because there were no 'people' who could stand up to The Power. With all the goodies that would come with holding still for The New American Way Of Life, who would even want to?
He was having one of his epiphanies. Good thing he'd finished shaving.
Otto would have got it instantly. He'd have comprehended that this must be done, ja, ja, could be done, though not overnight. He'd have grasped the whole patient process of chipping away at the strength and the wealth of 'the people', carefully shaving it off, taking it away from them and handing it to The Power, in a series of subtractions each of which would be made to seem reasonable and necessary, until one fine day they'd lost it all. And he'd have agreed that meanwhile, 'the people' had to be kept in line by serving them whatever fictions they needed to hear. Keep 'em in the dark and feed 'em manure, like mushrooms.
And keep 'em out of his face. Maybe -- he could feel another Thought Attack coming -- maybe move the White House to Honolulu. It was doable. It was still America, who could object? He'd still come to Crawford for his vacations.
As he stepped into his Oval Office, he found himself wishing it was Otto waiting for him, instead of the Fetus freaks. He'd have forged an alliance in two minutes flat, and not with a shoulder-rub either.
In fact, definitely not a shoulder-rub for this particular German Chancellor, unless he cared for a duel at daybreak. As Leader Of The Whole World, there were some person-types he knew too darned well.
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[Re-post of something I first posted on the eve of Lamont's win, and quickly deleted -- with revisions, a different title, and slightly better timing, I hope.]