"I should. We can give it to his parents and tell them we've already mailed it. Maybe something about how he is expected to be released in time for classes to start in September." That earned some more laughter.
Mindy grabbed a notepad and jotted that one down. Other phrases that made the cut included, 'A pre-law curriculum is highly recommended, so that in his future endeavors he will be able to assist his attorneys in his defense', as well as 'Buckman is possessed of a spirited and lively sense of humor. A review of property, accident, and general liability insurance requirements should be considered.' Half the office was weighing in on this, and we wrote a very nice recommendation for a young man applying for incarceration at the maximum security prison in Jessup.
The following weekend we had the Tusks over for dinner, and I gave them the phony recommendation first. Tusker snorted his beer out through his nose halfway through the letter, and was laughing as he passed it over to Tessa. She started squawking as she read it, with Marilyn over her shoulder, especially after I told them I had already sent it off. Marilyn simply said, "You didn't!"
"Hmmm? I didn't? Maybe it was this one I sent." I handed over a copy of the real letter.
Tusker handed Bucky the phony letter. "Keep this. It's an example of truth in advertising." The real letter was much nicer, and combined with the Congressional stationery, looked pretty impressive. If he failed to get in, it wouldn't be because of the letter.
Slick Willie fought us tooth and nail through the summer and the fall. In November I managed to get just enough Senators to generate an override of the veto on D2A. We essentially rewrote the bill as a new bill, which technically meant that the President could legitimately veto it again. However, he could count noses, too, and when he saw the numbers I had cobbled together, accepted it with a certain degree of ill grace. There wasn't a nice Rose Garden ceremony, that's for sure!
I was advising some of the other Gang of Eight members, too. A few of them got some funding from ARI to help generate sufficient votes. Slick Willie came up with a tactic that Newt absolutely detested – he surrendered. Specifically, he would veto a bill, but then have a Democrat submit a similar bill, one that generated about 80-90% of what the first bill did, which he would go along with. This new 'Democratic' bill, showing wonderful 'bipartisan leadership' that 'addressed the needs of the nation, and not just the desires of a single interest group' would pass. As far as Newt was concerned, Bill Clinton wasn't being beaten into the dust. As far as I was concerned, we were getting an awful lot of what we were pushing for in the Contract, without getting the specific bills passed. We got a big chunk of the welfare reform bill enacted, along with most of the regulatory reform and social security reform bills passed. Clinton punted the tax reform and budget reform bills, promising to roll them into the next budget bill.
This was not at all the way Gingrich wanted to win the fight. He wanted more than just the substance, he wanted the flash and sizzle of 'winning.' He wanted to beat Clinton, and to have it publicly acknowledged that he had beaten him. He wanted Clinton to stand and fight, get beat up in the process, look ineffective, and then die from poor leadership abilities during the 1996 elections. As I told Newt months before, Slick Willie was more than capable of teaching Newt a thing or two. Clinton knew when and where and how to fight, and what battles to fight and what battles to cede. He was actually making Newt look more than a little childish and intransigent at times.
Bill Clinton, I think, knew how this was pissing Gingrich off. For reasons of his own, namely winning re-election, he couldn't allow a Republican 'victory' on anything. Still, I had to wonder if he knew just how much it was pissing Newt off at a personal level. This became a full blown crisis in the late fall.
Clinton had managed to push John Boehner's budget bill and John Doolittle's tax reform bills into the hodgepodge of the general budget. When the fiscal year ended at the end of September, we still didn't have a budget. The Republicans in the House, most definitely including me and the rest of the Gang of Eight, wanted to cut spending and balance the budget. Just as much, however, Clinton wanted to increase spending on any number of social programs. These were items like Social Security, education, and health care. Yes, we had already hit on a few of these in the Contract, but this was an end run on those. These were all popular programs designed to appeal to the Democratic base, and it wasn't a surprise considering that we were about to enter an election year.
Everybody stood their ground, and no budget bill was forthcoming. Normally, when this happens, and it happens a fair number of times, they pass what's called a 'continuing resolution', which simply means we get to keep going at last year's budget numbers until we could get things sorted out. Gingrich got totally pissed off and decided to throw sand in the gears. He demanded a limit to increasing the national debt. I tried to talk him out of it, in a private meeting with Newt, John Boehner, John Doolittle, Dick Armey, Tom DeLay, and a few others. Newt saw this as simply a tactic to force Clinton to his will.
"Newt, I am warning you, this will have consequences beyond what you can imagine. You are messing with the promise of the United States government to pay its debt. I guarantee that this will not look good on Wall Street!", I warned him.
"Exactly! That's why he'll cave in! He has to! He'll never stand the heat if Wall Street starts complaining.", was the riposte.
I noticed the others were just watching as I argued with Newt. "Why in the world would that matter to him? The Republican bankers and investors on Wall Street don't like it? What a surprise! He's already convinced half the country that we're out to drive a stake through his and Hillary's hearts. What are you going to do? Link the continuing resolution and the debt ceiling together? What will he do?"
"If he wants the resolution, he'll have to take the ceiling." Gingrich was too focused for his own good.
I shook my head. "And what if he doesn't? What if he says that the obligation to pay our debts is greater than the obligation to balance the budget? What then?"
Around me there was a look of confusion on a few faces. The actual effects weren't really very clear to them. I knew what would happen, since I had seen it on the first try. "He'll have to!"
"Nuts! He will shut the damn thing down and point a finger at you. He won't be the bad guy, you will! When Great Aunt Martha doesn't get her Social Security check, he'll point at you. When Uncle Cletus doesn't get his pension check from the VA, he'll point at you. When Little Suzie's hospital cuts off her dialysis treatments because they didn't get paid, he'll point at you. How long do you want to put up with that? You think that's going to play so well back home?"
Gingrich was practically sneering at this. "Carl, it will never come to that. He will break. He's the President. Even if what you say will happen happens, it will be all his fault, and people will know it. He will look weak, and it will kill him next November."
"People in this country love an underdog. Hell, it's how some of us got here, by portraying ourselves as the underdog. He can play that sob story for quite a while. He'll offer to meet and compromise and work with you and be bipartisan, but if you don't meet him at least part way, the blame will be on the people in this room. The voters might not like Clinton for what's happening, but they sure won't like us for it either! Hell, you might even be playing into Slick Willie's hands! He can do the political calculus as well as anybody in this room. You don't think this is going to mess up Dole's bid for office? How many of us will be weaker next year because of this. We don't need this, Newt."