Herkheimer, who works at the White House, made a consultation appointment for very early this morning. He and I were, I think, pretty much alone in the building where I lease my office space, except, perhaps, for the cleaning staff. It doesn’t really faze me when clients make appointments for odd hours, though. I figure it comes with being a consultant. If somebody wants to have a meeting with me at the crack of dawn, or even before, I’m there and I’m on time. Nevertheless, the first thing Herkheimer did was apologize.
“Tom,” he began as he took the chair immediately in front of my desk, “I’m really sorry to drag you out of bed at this hour for advice you could give me just as well at nine o’clock, but this is the only time I could arrange to sneak away from POTUS. Laura never allows George to get up earlier than six thirty these days – she says he’s beginning to behave strangely if she lets him out of bed before then.”
“No problem,” I replied. “How can I help you?”
“Well, Tom,” he confided cautiously, “it’s about POTUS, actually. What with this, that, the other and so forth that’s been going on lately, we’re worried that he might, ah, you know…”
“Start drinking again?”
“Yeah,” Herkheimer nodded, “or start asking Dick to get him some, uh…”
“Blow, blunts and bimbos, like in the old days?”
“Right,” Herkheimer admitted. “He’s been dropping hints and stuff a lot lately.”
“What’s the matter with him?”
“It’s his poll numbers,” Herkheimer said, nearly whispering. “George has never been able to deal with rejection all that well, and now, here he is, with a 28 percent approval rating and a 69 percent disapproval rating in the Gallup Poll. It’s eating him up inside.”
“No doubt about it,” I agreed, “George W. Bush has a real popularity problem. At the moment, he’s more unpopular than Jimmy Carter was at the end of the Iranian hostage crisis.”
“And bleeding Jesus Christ, doesn’t George know it?” Herkheimer asked with a rhetorical flourish. “He’s more unpopular than Johnson was at the height of the Vietnam conflict, when he announced he wouldn’t run for a second term.”
“And less popular,” I reminded him, “than Nixon was at the apex of the Watergate scandal.”
“True,” Herkheimer sadly concurred. “And he’s taken to behaving like Nixon did, too, wandering around the White House at night, talking to the portraits of former Presidents.”
“Really?” I must confess, at hearing that, I became somewhat concerned – despite being unable to pronounce “nuclear” correctly, George W. Bush does, nevertheless, currently have his finger on the nuclear button. “What does he say?”
Herkheimer paused. I could tell he was thinking about how to answer, and after about half a minute, he came to some kind of internal conclusion, shrugged indifferently, and spoke. “He says that Johnson does nothing but question his manhood, make lecherous remarks about Laura, Jenna and Barbara, and call him nasty names – ‘A sackless, [expletive] sucking chicken [expletive] excuse for a Texan’ was the most recent. He also says that every time he tries to talk to Eisenhower, all he gets is stern lectures about what a disgusting hypocrite he is, how it makes Eisenhower sick just to look at him; that, because of him, Eisenhower is ashamed to have been a Republican; and, that George is a total disgrace to his Party, his country and the American people.”
“Eisenhower wasn’t noted for mincing his words,” I observed.
“No, he wasn’t,” Herkheimer echoed, wincing a bit at the thought. “And then he told me that Lincoln won’t even speak to him. Whenever George tries, Lincoln rolls his eyes and looks the other way, like George is a pile of something Barney puked up on the rug. And Kennedy! You know, Tom, I had no idea what a piece of work JFK really was. He just keeps telling George stuff like ‘You there, staring at my portrait – would you please stop fantasizing about being me and kindly go away? I’m busy right now, engaging in unimaginably exquisite sex with the ghost of Marilyn Monroe, after which – and this is not name dropping, by the way, but simply a statement of circumstances far beyond your miserable and limited comprehension – I have an appointment with God Almighty, Who desperately requires my counsel concerning extremely important matters; absolutely essential advice, in fact, that I alone can provide Him.’”
“I see. Did Ronald Reagan have any useful advice for a fellow Republican, then?”
“All Reagan ever does,” Herkheimer complained, “is say stuff like ‘Oh, you’re George’s boy, little Georgie Walker, aren’t you? My, my – how you’ve grown,’ and ‘Did you know I starred in a movie where I played the leading role as President of the United States? Mommy said it was an MGM production, and boy, did it take a long, long time to shoot. But it didn’t matter, because I got to read all my lines off of index cards. The director told me actors never bother memorizing their lines anymore, because the post production people these days have ways to take the index cards right out of the shot, like they weren’t even there or anything. But I couldn’t call cuts, though; and every time I did an ad-lib, everybody just had a fit – like that time I ad-libbed a joke about destroying the Soviet Union into a live microphone, or the time I said pollution comes from trees.’ I don’t know, Tom, but I suspect maybe there was something wrong with Reagan…” Herkheimer ventured as he tapped his temple meaningfully, “… upstairs. Some kind of sand in the gears.”
“Bubbles in the think tank?”
“Bats in the belfry.”
“Well, you do know that Reagan’s doctor diagnosed him with Alzheimer’s when Reagan was governor of California, don’t you?”
“No,” Herkheimer responded, obviously shocked. “If that was so, how did he get into the White House?”
“Well,” I explained, “it seems that, since Reagan had Alzheimer’s, he forgot that his doctor told him he had it, and didn’t tell anyone else until he finally remembered it at a White House Christmas holiday dinner in December of 1989, when he mentioned it to Nancy. The story I heard was that after he told her, he asked if Alzheimer’s might be serious and present some kind of handicap, and Nancy said, ‘In your case, dear, it’s been a real advantage.’ So how about Nixon, then?”
“Oh, Nixon’s got plenty to say,” Herkheimer assured me. “George says Nixon rants and raves for hours, calling him a ‘gutless moron,’ a ‘spoiled, simpering poor little rich boy,’ the ‘winner of the National Alfred E. Newman Look-Alike Contest,’ ‘curiously stupid George, the monkey-faced purple [expletive] baboon,’ and stuff like that.”
“Nixon always did have a mean streak, you know,” I responded, attempting to reassure Herkheimer if at all possible. “George shouldn’t take it personally. I’m sure Nixon spews insults at anyone who gets near enough to his portrait for him to see – sort of like those carnival geeks who sit in a cage suspended over a tank of water on the midway, yelling insults at anyone who passes by.”
“Too bad,” Herkheimer sighed, “that George can’t pay three bucks for some tickets to throw baseballs at a lever release that dumps Nixon in the water tank. I think George needs to do something like that, just to get his aggression and frustrations out. Hoo, boy,” he continued, releasing a big rush of breath, “then there’s FDR. Every time George walks up to the portrait, FDR laughs at him – it’s a haughty, condescending, patrician laugh that really gets George’s goat, too – then says something like ‘When they build your monument, you atavistic cretin, it will be a garbage dumpster at the fish market on Maine Avenue.’”
“How about the other Roosevelt? You know – Teddy.”
“Constantly – and I do mean constantly, ragging poor George about his military service record; calling him a ‘yellow stripe panty-waist,’ ‘Little Lord Fauntleroy,’ and things like that, for hanging around Stateside in the National Guard when he could have been fighting the good fight on the front lines, eye to eye with the VC. ‘I wouldn’t have let you lead a mule behind the latrine wagons in Cuba,’ he told George, ‘much less follow me up San Juan Hill.’ Don’t spread this around or anything, but George cried when he told me Teddy had said that to him.”
“He’s still got – what is it,” I mused, trying to recall exactly, “six percentage points on Truman, doesn’t he? I mean, in the approval rating, anyway. I think Truman holds the trophy for the lowest approval rating, which he got for dragging us into the Korean War, something like twenty-two percent; even if George just set the new record for disapproval percentage, he’s still better than Truman on that, isn’t he?”
“At every opportunity, Truman reminds George that he still has nine months to set the new record for a low approval rating,” Herkheimer sadly related. “And the mouth on that foul little Missouri haberdasher. It’s amazing! I had no idea a Baptist could talk like that! The things George tells me Truman says to him, they’re utterly and inexcusably obscene. ‘As far as I’m concerned, you drooling, half-witted [expletive] [expletive] [expletive], you and your whole family eat ape [expletive] with a [expletive] shovel.’ Truman’s just chock full of stomach-churning profanity like that.”
“Sounds completely authentic,” I vouched. “According to contemporary accounts, anybody who ticked off Harry Truman could count on an ear full of swearing that would melt the gold fillings in a stevedore’s teeth. At least George can be sure he’s talking to the real Harry Truman there, and not some impostor. But how about Hebert Hoover? He was a true gentleman. I’m sure he’s said some nice things to George, hasn’t he?”
“Well,” Herkheimer harrumphed, “yes, and no. You’re absolutely correct about Hoover’s manners, Tom, no doubt about that. He’s always very cordial, ‘Why, hello, George, how good to of you to visit with me again,’ and such. But George tells me he can’t escape the feeling that Hoover’s mocking him behind his back.”
“How come?”
“It’s the kind of questions Hoover’s always asking – about how the war in Iraq is going, and how things are with the economy – George thinks Hoover’s needling him with that stuff. For example, George says that the night before last, Hoover’s picture asked about his Gallup Poll results for the first time. Really now, if Hoover was such a nice guy, why would he wait until the night before last to ask George how the public opinion polls are rating him?”
“No doubt about it,” I admitted, “that does smack of a certain passive aggressive glee, and it definitely seems to sound a gloating note. But then, Hoover probably always did feel he got a raw deal, what with the stock market collapsing eight months into his first term, the country sliding into the Great Depression and the American landscape dotted from sea to shining sea with shanty towns that everybody called ‘Hoovervilles,’ all filled with unemployed, homeless families, with everyone from grandma to the ankle-biters using his name as a curse word and saying things like ‘Excuse me, I’m going to the out house and take a Hoover,’ and ‘I’ve had so much of this bathtub gin, if I don’t Hoover pretty soon, I’m going to wet my pants.’”
“Hey,” Herkheimer blurted as something apparently occurred to him, “you know what? I betcha Herbert Hoover was even more unpopular than George!”
“Well, people haven’t started talking about taking a huge steaming George W. Bush yet, but, on the other hand, they didn’t have public opinion polls back when Hoover was President, either,” I reminded him, “so we can’t be certain. Maybe after the Smoot-Hawley tariff kicked in and totally screwed up the economy, his forced repatriation of two million Hispanic American citizens to Mexico sparked urban barrio riots, and his sending Douglas MacArthur down to the Mall with orders to shoot the World War I Bonus Marchers resulted in dead bodies strewn at the foot of Capitol Hill, Hoover was less popular than George W. Bush is right now; we just can’t tell. All we actually have is the poll they took in November of 1932 – which is to say, the election – where Hoover got 39.7 percent of the popular vote.”
“Thirty nine point seven percent?” Herkheimer was clearly astonished. “That’s got to be it, then. Hoover’s obviously secretly snickering at George, even when he’s being so nice and polite to him.” Herkheimer paused, dejected, then perked up a bit as something popped into his head. “How about Harding? I know he only served one term and there weren’t any public opinion polls in the 1920’s, but what about that Teapot Dome? And all that other stuff, too – corruption in the federal government, rampant cronyism, it was one scandal after another, wasn’t it? All that must have made him significantly…”
“Harding had the good graces to drop dead,” I interjected. “Public figures usually get a huge sympathy bump when they drop dead, you know. And besides, there were no scandals in the Harding Administration that were any worse than the ones George’s own has come up with.”
“Yeah,” Herkheimer said, sadly shaking his head, “George tells me Harding’s portrait is pretty chummy, always saying stuff like ‘Oh, that’s very interesting, George. How does that make you feel? Really? I see, tell me more.’ I think Harding’s portrait is just grateful for having someone to talk to.”
“Yeah, like Millard Fillmore, I suppose.”
“Who?”
“Millard Fillmore. He was the thirteenth President of the United States, from 1850 to 1853. Last Whig to hold the office.”
“Wig?” Herkheimer was clearly perplexed. “You mean he was the last President to wear a wig?”
“No,” I explained, “the Whigs were an American political party.”
“Damn strange name for a political party, don’t you think? Whigs,” Herkheimer snorted.
“Things were different back then.”
“Gee,” Herkheimer reflected, “if I didn’t even know who that Millard Fillmore guy was, I bet you it’s dollars to donuts that he must have been less popular than George is at the moment.”
“Not necessarily,” I cautioned. “Just because most Americans today never heard of him doesn’t mean that Fillmore wasn’t popular when he was in office. He was very popular, as matter of fact. Oh, I know – how about Woodrow Wilson?”
“George tells me Wilson is so boring, he could hardly stand it the couple of times he tried talking to him.”
“That’s a pity,” I told him frankly, “because Woodrow Wilson would know a thing or two about being unpopular. In addition to being a paternalistic racist who told ‘darky’ jokes to his Cabinet and foreign ambassadors, and who thought ‘Birth of a Nation’ was the historically accurate account of an heroic Ku Klux Klan, Woodrow Wilson was also responsible for the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918, for eight invasions of Mexico, as well as invasions of Cuba and Haiti, for sending 12,000 US troops to fight in the Russian civil war against the Bolsheviks in 1917 and for dispatching thousands more to prop up a dictatorship in Nicaragua backed by the United Fruit Company. That’s where ‘banana republic’ came from, you know.”
“No kidding? How about that?” Herkheimer replied. “You know, I just love their clothes. They’re much more stylish than The Gap. But I had no idea they went back that far. I always thought they started out in the seventies.”
“Ah, yeah,” I continued, “so it’s a shame George doesn’t have the patience to deal with Wilson’s academic manner, because I’m sure old Woodrow has a number of useful insights on extreme unpopularity that he could share with him.”
“George just says ‘That Wilson uses too many [expletive] five dollar words. You need a un-bridged dictionary and one of them there dino-saurus thingies just to understand what he’s talkin’ about. And when I write down what he says and give to somebody so’s they can explain it to me, when they do, I find out Wilson was just telling me to go [expletive] my self in some kinda flowery way, all professor-like and stuff.’”
“Okay,” I relented, “is George cool with Coolidge, at least?”
“I wouldn’t say George has any problems understanding what Cal says,” Herkheimer averred, “but he tells me every time he visits Coolidge’s portrait, no matter what the subject, Cal just spouts his famous quotations over and over. You know, like ‘The business of America is business,’ ‘Don’t expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong,’ ‘Duty is not collective; it is personal,’ and ‘Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence;’ seems Cal’s just chock full of corny [expletive] like that. George says talking to Calvin Coolidge is like sitting at the White House dinner table and all they’re serving is big plates of fortune cookies. And then there’s that [expletive] joke.”
“Joke?”
“Yeah, George says Cal tells it every time, like he forgot that he told it to George dozens of times already. It’s the one about where Cal and his wife were visiting a farm and they split up, looking at different things. So Mrs. Coolidge is looking at the chickens and she asks the farmer how many times a day the rooster mates, and the farmer says ‘Oh, about twenty times a day,’ and Mrs. Coolidge says ‘When he comes by to look at the chickens, be sure to tell that to Mr. Coolidge.’ So the farmer does, and Cal says ‘Is it with the same hen every time?’ And the farmer says ‘No, Mr. President, it’s with a different hen every time.’ So Cal points at his wife, who’s over looking at the cows, and says ‘Go tell that to Mrs. Coolidge.’”
“And to tell the truth,” I opined, “it’s a bit of a surprise to learn that old Cal had it in him. How about Carter?”
Herkheimer threw me a surprised glance. “Jimmy Carter’s White House portrait can’t talk! He isn’t dead yet!’
“How can they tell?”
“I admit that’s not always easy,” Herkheimer shot back, a bit irritated, “but Jimmy Carter’s definitely still alive. We’re certain of it because every once in a while he makes sure to show us he hasn’t kicked the bucket.”
“How?”
“By doing something that gives everybody in the Administration a huge pain in the [expletive]. But anyway, let me get down to what I wanted to ask you. Do you have any suggestions as to who else George ought to consult?”
“Right. Okay, as far as other presidents who were unpopular, he should definitely have a conversation with the White House portrait of John Adams.”
“He was like, some time before Lincoln, right?”
“John Adams was the second President of the United States,” I clarified, “and he was extremely unpopular.”
“Oh yeah? Why?”
“For starters, he fired all the competent, witty, erudite, experienced, objective, clever and sophisticated members of Washington’s cabinet, then replaced them with a cabal of incompetent, bungling, egotistical narcissistic cronies nobody particularly liked.”
“Oh, I get it,” Herkheimer shouted, “that’s the same thing George did! This John Adams guy was way ahead of his time!”
“That’s certainly one possible perspective on his presidency,” I conceded. “Anyway, Adams then proceeded to get the French good and mad at us over trade issues and convinced Congress to pass the Alien and Sedition Acts, which made it a crime, among other things, to criticize President John Adams.”
“Damn!” Herkheimer slapped his forehead, mortified. “Why the hell didn’t we think of that?”
“Can’t say,” I told him, moving right along. “John Adams also convinced Congress to pass the Naturalization Act and the Alien Enemies Act, which made things tough for new immigrants, particularly French ones. But when push came to shove, Adams chickened out and refused to cooperate with Congress in going to war with France. So Adams managed to make both the people who disliked the French and the people loved the French hopping mad at him.”
“Sounds like he was pretty unpopular, all right,” Herkheimer agreed, taking notes on his lap top computer. “Okay, then – George to speak with the White House portrait of John Adams, second President. Who else?”
“Well,” I went on, “there’s John Quincy Adams, John Adams’ son.”
“Great! A father-and-son team, just like George and his dad. I just know George will like that! What about John Quincy Adams?”
“He also turned out to be very, very unpopular, just like his father,” I elaborated. “Back then, tariffs were huge political hot potatoes, and John Quincy didn’t really know what to think about them. His vice president was against them, but powerful leaders in Congress like Henry Clay were for them. John Quincy finally signed a protectionist law, officially called the Tariff of 1828, that everybody else called ‘The Tariff of Abomination.’ John Quincy and his Act were so universally reviled, that opposition to him – and it – prompted South Carolina to attempt nullification of federal tariff laws, thus setting the stage for its later catastrophic act of secession from the Union.”
“John Quincy Adams,” Herkheimer muttered under his breath as he typed. “Got it. Who else?”
“Martin van Buren,” I pressed on, “who became very unpopular for his economic policies, which caused the Panic of 1837 and ruined millions of ordinary citizens…”
“Oh, oh, yeah,” Herkheimer broke in, “just like what happened in the sub-prime mortgage meltdown!”
“Okay,” I allowed, “sure; and also for his prosecution of a genocidal war against the Seminoles in Florida.”
“Martin van Buren. Okay. Next?”
“How about James Madison? He got played by the French and ended up demanding that Congress declare the War of 1812 against Britain, in which the English kicked our butts really, really bad, including invading Washington and burning down James Madison’s home, which happened to be the building later known as the White House. The only thing that kept the British from torching the whole city was a monster hurricane, accompanied by a huge freak tornado system that arrived just in the nick of time and effectively wiped both sides of the battle off the map; all while Madison cowered in the hinterlands, hiding like a miscreant on the lam, sweating the hangman’s noose. Now, how unpopular is that?”
“Sounds like it would be extremely so,” Herkheimer agreed, as he typed away furiously on his lap top. “Anyone else?”
“James Buchanan – he couldn’t cut the mustard over the slavery and secession issues, so everybody in the North and everybody in the South despised him.”
“Got it,” Herkheimer chirped, nodding his head vigorously, “Buchanan, James, couldn’t please anyone. Next?”
“Andrew Johnson – he’s the guy who followed Lincoln, and I bet his portrait wouldn’t be nearly so snooty to George as Abe’s is. Johnson got impeached by the House and narrowly escaped conviction in the Senate by a single vote.”
“Okay, that’s Andrew Johnson, impeached and almost convicted, good. Others?”
“John Tyler – terrible leader; tried to implement bipartisan government and only ended up making everyone angry at him. Got thrown out of his own political party.”
“Which one?”
“The Whigs.”
“Oh, them again.”
“Uh-huh. Then there was James K. Polk, who got caught between both sides on the slavery issue, just like Tyler and Buchanan had. Same result, too. Both sides hated his guts. Also got us involved in the annexation of Texas and the subsequent war with Mexico, both of which were highly unpopular with everybody but Texans and quasi-criminal adventurers like Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie.”
“James K. Polk, okay, unpopular war with Mexico. Got any more?”
“Franklin Pierce. Considered by many historians to be the worst President in US history.”
“Oh, boy,” Herkheimer enthused, “talking to him is bound to make George feel better.”
“Probably,” I continued, “Pierce was an alcoholic, too.”
“Really? That’s great! Looks like he and George have a lot in common!”
“No doubt. Besides that, he forced repeal of the Missouri Compromise, signed the Kansas-Nebraska Act and supported the Fugitive Slave Law, all of which made the North boiling mad. Then he took action to protect immigrants, which made the nativists even madder. Then he cracked down on immigration and riled up the immigrants and their sympathizers to a fever pitch. Next, he botched a secret plot to annex Cuba to the United States, which rendered the South livid with rage. In the end, Pierce was so universally reviled, he couldn’t even get on the convention ballot so he could be nominated to run for a second term, and, to this day, Franklin Pierce remains the only elected President who failed to be renominated by his party for a second term.”
“Outstanding,” Herkheimer chortled, “Franklin Pierce, the President who couldn’t do anything right. George is going to love talking to him, I just know it. Okay; and who else?”
“I think that should just about do it,” I assured him. “Are you aware of whether George has had any chats with portraits of the early presidents?”
“Well,” Herkheimer knit his brow, concentrating, “seems to me he tried to talk to Thomas Jefferson’s portrait once, but from what George described, it appears that a ‘conversation’ with Thomas Jefferson consists of listening to Thomas Jefferson talk about what concerns Thomas Jefferson, which, it turns out, is primary Thomas Jefferson.”
“I’d heard he was like that,” I affirmed. “How about George’s famous namesake?”
“Oh,” Herkheimer smiled, realizing whom I meant. “Sure. Old George Washington himself – the one, the only, the original article. Yeah, as a matter of fact, George W. Bush told me he has visited the White House portrait of the Father of Our Country numerous times, even before all this Gallup Poll business started. Long before, actually.”
“No kidding?” I asked, now genuinely interested to know. “So what did George Washington’s portrait tell George W. Bush?”
Herkheimer reached into his briefcase, withdrawing a small notebook. “Got that right here. George wrote it down and gave it to me, asking for an explanation. Seems that Washington kept repeating it, over and over, for some reason or another, every time George went to see him. That made it possible for George to copy it down, you know, one word at a time, even if he didn’t really understand what all the words meant when they are put together.”
Herkheimer ripped out the page and handed it to me. There, scribbled in uneven lines, with copious cross-outs, insertions and corrections, and scrawled in what, if I did not know better, I would have sworn was the writing of a mildly retarded ten year old child, was George W. Bush’s transcription of George Washington’s message:
You, sir, are the best argument so far in support of the Crown’s contention that the Colonies shall ultimately fail to effectively govern themselves.