THE VISITATION BY REPUBLICANISM PAST
A Nightmare Brought on by Junk Food at Bedtime
Or,
"Richard Nixon Advises George Bush"
WARNING: CONTAINS POLITICALLY INCORRECT
ASTERISKS!
The American President ate another hotdog. He washed it down with a second bottle of Dr. Pepper, sitting alone
at the table where he could see, if the help left the door open to the little hall from where all the food somehow appeared,
a portrait of Richard Milhouse Nixon, 37th president of the United States. "He was probably a Republican," thought
President Bush.
His portrait was consigned, not to prominence, but to the hall of the pantry because the Democrats hounded
him out of office for something they said he did. And someone said he had an awful vocabulary, using all kinds of swear words
and obscenities regularly whenever nobody was supposed to be listening. A President shouldn’t talk like that, even if
he was a Republican.
The President could have two hotdogs just before bed because he knew Laura was back in Crawford. And she didn’t
know anything about him drinking another Dr. Pepper.
He turned in promptly at nine o’clock, as was his habit. He was, as always, ready to dream again of
fossils placed in the earth by Satan and his minions or demons if they are different from minions to fool the secular Democrats
into believing in evolution, that was disproved by the Bible. He heard a sort of coughing. It sounded like it was in the same
room, and he cautiously searched with his eyes, wondering for the first time ever if he could summon the Secret Service suits
without moving. Sitting in a wingback chair beyond where Laura usually lay, he saw the man, and a thrill of both aggression
and fear surged through his limbs, distributing adrenalin and opening his veins to rushing blood.
The character wore a suit, was moderately thin and balding with black hair that grew in a sort of "McDonald’s
M" as it circumscribed his forehead. He had a long nose and President Bush at first was quieted in thinking it must be one
of the Secret Service men, for whatever reason, watching over him as he slept. He stared. The man stared back. Finally, he
asked, "has there been an alert? Are we in lockdown?"
"F***," said the man with the prominent nose. "The day I can’t get around these f***ing Secret Service
measures, I’ll come back to life. Turn on the light. Oh, sorry, I mean, turn on the f***ing light, Mr. President."
He obeyed, although such a thing wasn’t his habit any more except in the presence of Dick Cheney, and
stared again. God in heaven above, if it didn’t look just like Richard M. Nixon! "You’re a Secret Service guard
and you look like the late president, ‘cause I can see his picture when I eat and you must have been one of his doubles,
or I thought we never used doubles, but he had that recording equipment that got him in a potful of trouble . . . " the babbling
died out as he ran out of breath and somehow felt unwilling to take another.
"A whole s***potful of trouble, as a matter of fact, and we haven’t a lot of time because Laura is going
to call you and tell you the bad news about your daughters. Don’t worry, it’s just more of the same. So. Let’s
get on with this.
"Will you do me the favor of standing up? Good. Now come over here, please." He stood also, in front of the
chair. "Now, stand just there, OK?" WHAP!!!! He slapped George Bush and sent him falling back, mercifully onto the bed, where
his younger instincts at first took him over and he began to prepare to spring, ready for a fight even if he was never ready
for combat. "That’s right, stand up again, and get another!" said the apparition of Richard Nixon. "You’ll get
what you deserve this night, for what you and your mechanical-men have done to my Republican Party!"
As the President leaned up, he was slapped again, WHAP!!! this time on the other cheek. Back he went onto
the bed, but then he rose, off his feet and off the bed, like a child being lifted from the bedsheets to be bathed. He stood,
unable to move his feet and greatly regretting not calling in the suits, while the Nixon-like stranger paced back and forth.
"My party used to be the party of fiscal conservatism!" WHAP!!! He slapped Bush again, bringing tears to his
eyes. "We used to be the party of honesty and self-reliance!" WHAP!!! More tears. "We used to say, ‘don’t spend
it unless you have it,’" WHAP!!! "Sure, we supported the military/industrial complex, like the hippies and f***ing Democrats
used to say, but we had some sense of proportion." WHAP!!! "We didn’t ruin the country ... we wanted to leave something
for those who came behind." WHAP!!!
"We left you a tradition of respect for the American people!" WHAP!!! "We traded on the fact that they could
be made to believe we were all in the same club!" WHAP!!! "What do you do instead? You decide you can
do without the Democrats and you, that Kraut Karl Rove, Cheney the Svengali and that moron Tom DeLay decide you can run the
country without them? You four? It’s a load of s***!" WHAP!!!
"Do you remember which party it was that opened up Red China to trade and possible normalization of relations?"
WHAP!!! "Who opened up those markets so our business community AND NOT JUST THE F***ING OIL INDUSTRY! could make a buck selling
to a whole collection of Chinese who don’t have a pot to piss in? Do you know who?"
"Un, no," said the most important and powerful man in the world. WHAP!!! said the open hand of the Ghost
of Presidencies Past. "And you can’t even go 95 miles to open up trade with that f***head Castro, who is going to die
before your next term ends, if you get one, and who makes the best damn’ cigars in the world?" WHAP!!!
"Then you win (well, OK, you got it, I gotta give it to you) in 2000 and you get the greatest
reason in the world to take some power and move forward with the Republican agenda when 9/11 happens, and what do you do with
it? You squander it! You ignore al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden and go after that ignorant piece of s***, Hussein, whose regime
was so corrupt the only way that water got pumped in Baghdad was by F***ing donkeys! You wasted your power!" WHAP,
WHAP, WHAP!!!
Finally, the violent apparition relented and President Bush was allowed to sit on the edge of the bed. He
was in great pain and thinking about the suits outside. "Never mind them, they’re not really skilled in timewarps, so
they don’t hear anything. God, if you had somebody like Kissinger, who may not have been able to resist the occasional
skirt, like, every night, but knew what the history of this country meant, you would not be in this fix." Bush ducked, but
the Presidential Ghost never moved.
"Oh, Spirit, is this what my life is to be like, slapped every time I do something stupid?" he asked, plaintively.
Desperation had caused an odd mental process he was unused to, which most of us call "introspection".
The former president, though, stared, growing visibly older, and retorted, his voice growing alarmingly raspy
as he faded from the room, "I have no help for you. The Ghost of Presidencies Future doesn’t exist because you are going
to cancel the 2008 elections if you make it through this one. As if you hadn’t cancelled the ones in 2000. Hah! Is Rove
really that smart? Anyway. The country you intend to leave to your children and my grandchildren won’t be recognizable,
but your legacy will: You've taken on the entire Muslim world and you will never, ever be able to finish what you started.
You will be remembered as the first breath of that foul wind that blows the United States of America from its position as
the greatest country ever to a second-rate economy, and a third-rate power, which will eventually break up in corruption and
lies as did the Soviet Union. Be proud."
