My last appointment today was a young fellow who wouldn’t give his name. Well, he told Gretchen he was “Jefferson Smith,” but nobody is really named Jefferson Smith, are they? He also insisted on paying cash. Not that any of this was a problem for me – I get plenty of clients like “Mr. Smith” who go to Washington for one reason or another. His reason became readily evident once he made himself comfortable on the couch by the window.
“I’ve been told, Mr. Collins,” he opened, “that a lot of folks consider you the smartest person inside the Beltway.”
“Which is a lot,” I dryly responded, “like being the tallest building in Baltimore.”
“Baltimore?” Mr. Smith gave me a puzzled look. “Isn’t that where Francis Scott Key wrote The Star Spangled Banner?”
“Indeed it is,” I affirmed. “He wrote it during the British naval bombardment of Fort McHenry, which they mounted shortly after their army burned Washington, DC.”
“The British burned down Washington?” Young Mr. Smith clearly suspected that I was pulling his leg.
“Yes,” I insisted, “they certainly did, including setting fire to what was then called the Presidential Mansion. After the War of 1812, the mansion was rebuilt, and it was painted white to hide all the scorch marks from Her Majesty’s minions’ act of arson. That’s why, today,” I said with a smile as I pointed out the window at that very building, “it’s called ‘The White House.’ All thanks to the redcoats. Now, what,” I inquired, “can I do for you today, Mister… ‘Smith?’”
Leaning closer to my desk, my guest spoke in a hushed, whispery tone. “I’m here,” he explained, “on the behalf of South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford.”
“The conservative Republican,” I asked, “who disappeared last June?”
“Yes,” Mr. Smith nodded.
“The guy whose aides,” I noted, ever so slightly arching my eyebrows at my guest, “told the world he was ‘hiking the Appalachian trail,’ when he was actually canoodling with a hot Latin babe in Buenos Aires?”
“What did we know?” Mr. Smith sighed with a helpless shrug. “He called us and said he was up in the Blue Ridge mountains, communing with nature! It certainly seemed plausible – he’s done a lot of hiking there in the past, you know.”
“So,” I concluded, “he lied to you?”
“Lied to us?” Mr. Smith hissed, clearly exasperated. “Jesus H. Christ, Mr. Collins, Governor Sanford lied to everybody!”
“In that case,” I told him, “I would sure like to know why you and your colleagues are still working for him.”
Mr. Smith blushed a bright shade of crimson. “I… I can’t speak for the others… but frankly, times are pretty tough in South Carolina these days and… well, to tell the truth, I haven’t had much luck finding another job.”
“But that’s the way you conservatives like things,” I japed, “isn’t it? Lots and lots of freedom! Freedom to sleep under bridges, freedom to die of curable diseases, freedom to starve – and a staunch bastion of such freedoms the grand state of South Carolina has always been, has it not?”
“Okay,” Mr. Smith conceded, “I admit Governor Sanford is a conservative Republican and I know a lot of people think they’re responsible for the mess we’re in these days…”
“And,” I interjected, “a lot of people also think that Governor Sanford is a disgusting hypocrite for espousing the standard conservative Republican litany of Puritan morals and then cheating on his puritanical wife with a string of sexpot bimbos.”
“We are aware,” Mr. Smith exhaled with an air of resignation as he sat up and threw his left arm on the back of the couch, turning to gaze wistfully out the window at the White House, “that Mark’s uh, higher ambitions are ah… on hold for the moment. What concerns us now, however, is the recent, immediate threat to his political viability.”
“Are you referring,” I surmised, “to the fact that Republican members of the South Carolina General Assembly are planning to meet this weekend in Myrtle Beach to work out a strategy to impeach him?”
“No,” Mr. Smith protested, “they’re going to Myrtle Beach to meet and decide whether to impeach him!”
“Oh,” I smiled, “of course. My apologies.”
“Yeah, sure,” Mr. Smith fretted, “we know Mark has this thing… you know, some kind of problem with… well, with sex…”
“His wife,” I pointed out, “says it’s gotten to the point of an addiction – ‘like alcohol or pornography’ I believe was how she put it.”
“She’s not,” Mr. Smith pouted, “handling the situation the way one would expect a genuinely professional political spouse to handle it. No, not at all. Instead of standing by her man, like she’s supposed to, she moved out of the governor’s mansion and took the kids with her, too. Then she went and gave that interview to Vogue magazine! Of all things,” Smith snorted indignantly, “an interview in Vogue!”
“Probably,” I speculated, “all the National Review staff were busy digging up dirt on how Barack Obama is plotting to use socialized medicine as leverage to repeal the Second Amendment.”
“And the stuff she said,” Smith fumed, “just makes my blood boil, you know? About how Mark was sneaking around behind her back with little Miss Chiquita Banana, and she just happened to find one of their love letters. And then, she tells how she Googled the woman’s name, and then how she found out they’d been doing the horizontal tango for nearly a year! Then she says, ‘The person I married was centered on a core of morals. The person who did this isn’t centered on a core of morals,’ as if somebody kidnapped her real husband and replaced him with a Frankenstein or something cloned from the scrotal skin scrapings of Bill Clinton!”
“That certainly would explain a lot,” I mused, “now wouldn’t it? I think her best quote was when she said, ‘Politicians become disconnected from the way everyone else lives in the world. I saw that from the very beginning. They’ll say they need something, and ten people want to give it to them. It’s an ego boost, and it’s easy to drink your own Kool-Aid.’ She’s obviously a very smart, perceptive woman.”
“Maybe,” Mr. Smith grumbled, “but conservative Republican wives aren’t supposed to talk like cynical, worldly liberal feminists!”
“’Hell hath no fury,’” I intoned, “like a woman scorned.’”
“Yeah,” Mr. Smith agreed, “that William Shakespeare sure knew his stuff, alright.”
“Actually,” I corrected, “that’s William Congreve.”
“And then,” Mr. Smith groused, “those two friends of hers…”
“Oh, yeah,” I recalled, “Marge and Ginny. They were on, let me see now, CBS, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Mr. Smith muttered ruefully. “Both of them saying what a holy saint their dear friend Jenny is, so pure and strong and protective and la-dee-da this and that… like she [expletive] Häagen-Dazs French Vanilla ice cream or something. But we figure Mark can hang in there, no matter what she says. It’s this thing with the airplanes…”
“Oh, that,” I acknowledged, “now, that, I can see why you would be worried. From what I’ve heard about it, your boss alledgedly failed to report thirty-five private airplane trips on South Carolina ethics forms or campaign reports. And that, I also hear, is highly illegal – allegedly, of course.”
“We issued a statement that Mark was actually trying to save the taxpayers of South Carolina money by accepting transportation from friends of his who just happened to own, you know, private jets and such.”
“Gee whiz,” I opined, “it must be nice to have so many friends who have their own airplanes.”
“You bet it is,” Mr. Smith concurred. “And there’s nothing wrong with having a lot of friends with airplanes – and absolutely nothing illegal about it, either. Mark’s been governor since 2003. He’s done a damn good job leading South Carolina, and we figure he’s got a right to finish out the remainder of his term doing it. So,” Mr. Smith beseeched as he hunched over, his elbows on his knees, peering at me intently, “how do we get the South Carolina Ethics Commission off Mark’s back about those free airplane rides, nip that ridiculous investigation the State Attorney General’s launched in the bud, and derail this stupid impeachment thing?”
“Tell me,” I inquired, “does Governor Sanford still talk in that rambling, incoherent way he did when he was trying to explain himself at that press conference after he vanished for five days and got caught trying to sneak back into the United States?”
“Yeah,” Mr. Smith confirmed, rolling his eyes briefly toward the ceiling, “he does. Actually, truth be told, he’s gotten s little bit… well, he’s gotten a little bit worse, actually.”
“Good,” I declared.
“Good?” Mr. Smith echoed with a mystified expression.
“Have you put him through a CAT scanner yet?”
“No,” Mr. Smith shook his head, now obviously even more puzzled.
“How about an NMR?” I pressed.
“Again, no, we haven’t,” Mr. Smith shot back. “Exactly what are you… getting at here?”
“Has it ever occurred to you,” I suggested, “that Governor Sanford might have… a benign brain tumor?”
“A benign brain tumor?” Shocked, Mr. Smith stood up suddenly, throwing his arms out in a gesture of complete bafflement. “What the ding-busted patootie are you trying to say here, anyway?”
“I’m trying to say,” I clarified, “that if it were discovered that Governor Sanford has a benign brain tumor that is pressing on his orbifrontal cortex, which is known to be tied to judgment, impulse control and social behavior management, then, after six or eight dramatic hours of public-sympathy-generating neurosurgery, he would be miraculously cured of his uncontrollable philandering, reunited with his loving wife, and, most importantly, completely excused for all of his previous vile, licentious transgressions and all the unethical deceits and thievery associated with them, too.”
Mr. Smith’s eyes lit up like Roman candles on the Fourth of July. “Complete political rehabilitation! Everything blamed on an insidious, hidden medical condition!”
“One that,” I emphasized, “after your boss is treated for it, will disappear completely, leaving him not the least bit compromised in his ability to lead and govern.”
“That’s brilliant,” Mr. Smith excitedly exclaimed. “But… wait a minute here,” he suddenly murmured. “What if Mark doesn’t really have anything like that wrong with him?”
“No problem,” I assured him. “All you need to do is pay off some crooked sawbones to fake the radiology and the operation.”
“Fake the radiology and the operation?” Mr. Smith’s face grew quite ashen with concern and doubt. “Where will we ever find doctors corrupt enough to do that?”
“Why” I told him, matter-of-factly, “in Argentina, of course.”
I love my job, I really do.