Damn you Daddy, the Texan thought to himself. I shouldn’t be here.
Yet there he was, sitting at the head of the table at the Presidential Daily Briefing Room, deep in the bowels of the West Wing. “Bowels” was quite an apt word for the Texan to describe the place, as he felt as though he was knee deep in the excrement that was this unwanted administration of his. Countless advisors, cabinet members and the Vice President himself listened intently as Secretary Rumsfeld rattled off the most recent gloomy news from the Mesopotamian desert.
“—Sadr is yet again threatening to call off the truce we negotiated with--,” Rumsfeld blabbered.
Everyone listened intently. Everyone except the Texan, of course.
The Texan closed his eyes, trying to get away from it all. Someplace warm, he thought. Take me to someplace warm. He thought about sitting in the owner’s field box at Arlington Stadium, during one of those famous sweltering Texas nights. Cicadas fluttered above him, dancing in the humid air, the sound of baseball players chattering and food vendors hawking their products the only other sounds to be taken in. The twins—infinitely more manageable back in those days—would race up and down the aisles of the ballpark, half-eaten hot dogs in hand, the other half jammed into the sides of their mouth. Why did you pull me away from all of this, Daddy?, the Texan thought. It had been so long that he had been here, in the White House, at least it thought. Ages. And for what? Something about a half-cooked scheme from a third-rate dictator with no standing army trying to knock off his father in Kuwait in ‘93. That was why the Texan was here, instead of playing the hot stove league and landing the best free-agents to play for the Texas Rangers.
“—looking to redeploy approximately 2,000 troops to Anbar to counteract—,” Rumsfeld continued, to the Texan’s ignorance.
The Texan opened his eyes, albeit briefly. The Vice President was sitting there, looking stoically at the Secretary of Defense giving his PowerPoint presentation, the glow of the monitor reflecting in his spectacles. How the hell do you do it, Dick?, the Texan thought, Must be nice when politics steals your soul like that. Indeed, politics had stolen his father’s soul, his brother’s soul, and even his mother’s soul. Yet the Texan was left with an utter awareness of his surroundings and the banality of it all.
The Texan closed his eyes again.
“—technology behind the improvised explosive devices continues to—,” the Texan heard Rumsfeld say.
Sure, it was easy for the Texan to blame his father, the obvious target. But had he had the gumption, his mother would be the real target. (She who during the Texan’s father’s four years in the White House most of America was fooled to believe as a kindly grandmother type, a welcome respite from the gaudy glitterati of Nancy Reagan.) She who insisted as to the Texan’s value long after his father had given up and sought his sights on Jeb. Don’t you tell me he’s worthless, George, the Texan’s mother would scream at his father, Don’t you fucking tell me that he’s worthless! The Texan’s father would cling his everlasting hope to Jeb, down to that dastardly November evening in 1994 when Jeb lost the Florida governor’s race to some slack-jawed yokel named Lawton Chiles—he lost to a man named Lawton, for crissakes!—who in his own words described himself as a “he-coon”, whatever the hell that was. Thus, the die was cast. The prodigal son would take the throne, much to the Texan’s father’s chagrin.
“—feasibility of up-armoring the Humvees remains questionable—,” Rumsfeld continued, unbeknownst that his hours of preparation was being only faintly received by the Texan.
The injustice of it all devastated the Texan. Here he sat on this cold, damp winter evening surrounded by people he hated (and no doubt, the Texan’s father hated them all too, but he also trusted them to a flaw) while that little shit Jeb got to be governor of Florida. Florida, of all places-- the Texan hated to admit. Thus, while all of America got to come down on the Texan and brand him an imbecile, Jeb got to play pretty in the Sunshine State. I wonder what useless crap Jeb is up to today in Florida, the Texan thought. (In fact, on this very day Jeb’s agenda consisted entirely of dedicating the Ocean Palms Golf Course in Ponte Vedra Beach, where he lauded the “free enterprise ingenuity” of the new country club, state subsidized of course.) And instead, here the Texan sat in this frigid godforsaken shithole of a city that was Washington, DC, listening to the oldest Secretary of Defense ever talk about upgrading Hummers, or whatever the Texan thought he was talking about.
“—Iraqi parliamentary procedures, if you can even call them that, are sluggish to--,” Rumsfeld said.
The Texan opened his eyes again, only briefly, to check his watch. (A seemingly innocuous action which may have cost the Texan’s father his second term when he repeatedly checked his watch during a debate in Richmond, Virginia.) Nine-thirty six, it read. Shit, the Texan thought. Normally, he would be getting ready for bed at this time, an event that for the past few years had grown to become the sad highlight of his day. It was the White House residence that was the only place he had grown attached to, where he would retreat to every night and pretend--if only that--he wasn’t the chief executive of the most powerful country on earth. Of course, the one downside was that Laura was insistent on watching David Letterman every evening, the David Letterman who would brutally roast the Texan and perpetuate the image of the man as being functionally illiterate. And every evening, the Texan would let out a soft laugh to his wife at whatever crack Letterman threw out, a laugh that almost seemed genuine to Laura. But inside, the Texan steamed. Goddamn you Laura, the Texan thought, What sort of wife will stand by and listen to some talentless gap-toothed shithead rail on her own husband? It made the Texan nostalgic for the days when a simple half-bottle of Southern Comfort would knock him out cold at night. It eliminated the middle man, that’s for sure, the Texan was left thinking.
“—informed by Centcom that yesterday three Brazilian soldiers were killed near Basra by an IED—,” Rumsfeld told his audience, all of them captive, except the Texan of course.
By this point, the Texan was stewing. His father, his mother, his brother, his wife—all of them were apt to leave him sitting here forced to listen to some dinosaur from the Ford administration talk about shit that he plainly did not care about, nor would he ever care about. Left to his fate, the Texan thought, Dammit, Nixon had the right idea when he—
Something that Rumsfeld said rudely interrupted the Texan’s internal pity party. Something horrible, ghastly even. What was it?, the Texan thought. The only words of that senile old albatross Rumsfeld that resonated in the Texan’s suddenly clear head were “three Brazilian soldiers.”
The Texan opened his eyes, his mind quickly racing. This is it, he thought, This is why I’m here. All the stories about presidents responding to grave crises—and the incorporated talk about all the honor and valor of the office that came with it—it was suddenly becoming real to the Texan. All of a sudden, not Lincoln and Fort Sumter, nor Roosevelt and Pearl Harbor, nor even that horny mic Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis; no one in his position had ever been faced with something like this. This would define the Texan like nothing in his life ever would. It was a tragedy not on a national scale, but a worldwide scale, that would call for healing. Holy shit, I’m that guy, the Texan thought, People will be looking at me and saying how I helped the world through all of this. His muted, underwhelming, even negligent reaction to the attacks on September 11th would from this point be forgotten when all would see how eloquently and effectively the Texan would respond. That fat bastard Moore will eat his words, the Texan smugly thought. There was only one nagging question the Texan had left.
Suddenly, the Texan was obliged to speak.
“I would probably suggest we contact President Lula and offer our condol—,” Rumsfeld said before he was interrupted.
“That’s horrible!” the Texan exclaimed, to the surprised reaction of all in the room. “Truly horrible!”
“Mr. President—,” Rumsfeld begun to say, shocked at the outburst.
“Something needs to be done!” the Texan said, leaning in. “I’m not—we’re not—going to simply sit put and let this go by!”
The Vice President, until then looking intently only at the Secretary of Defense, turned to the Texan. “Mr. President, what exactly are you trying to get at?,” he asked.
“What—you know—you know exactly what I’m getting at!,” the Texan exclaimed, almost agitated yet also truly excited at the prospects of what was developing. “I’m talking about a swift response here, something that will make the whole world stand at attention.”
“George, I don’t think—,” Rumsfeld started to say until he was again interrupted.
“You don’t think anything, Donald!” the Texan snapped. “Now there’s one thing that needs to be clearly explained to the American people.” The Texan leaned in.
The advisors in the room sat stunned, unnerved by this rare outburst of emotion by the Texan. Five long seconds elapsed until the Texan spoke again.
“How much?” the Texan exhorted. Again, stunned silence. “How much is a Brazilian?”
“Mr. President . . .,” Rumsfeld said, failing for words. The secretary of defense laughed nervously.
“God damn it Donald!” the Texan shouted, his voice now quavering. “How much is a Brazilian?”
“Mr. President, I think we are done for the evening.” The secretary of defense begun to gather his belongings.
“I’m asking you now, Donald!” The once-silent room begun to murmur, as a veil of reinforced disappointment in the Texan from his advisors was slowly cast. The Joint Chiefs arose from their seats and started towards the exit, not even wanting to acknowledge the Texan. Others followed.
“How much is it?” the Texan continued. “How much is a Brazilian?”
“Good night, Mr. President,” Rumsfeld said, and then he too walked towards the exit.
The Texan was undeterred. Hearing the clack of the secretary of defense’s shoes hitting the marble floor of the hall leading from the briefing room, the Texan only persisted harder.
“Tell me Donald!” he shouted as the footsteps grew fainter and fainter. “How much is a Brazilian?”
And thus the Texan was alone in the room, the hum of the PowerPoint projector the only other audible thing to be heard. It would be a long walk to the White House residence from here.
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