Marilyn came into my office about ten minutes later, looking exhausted, and flopped down on my couch. "This is all your fault!", I was informed.
I laughed and replied, "How is this my fault?"
"You're a man. It has to be your fault."
I laughed again. "Hey, remember the rules. I deal with boy stuff, you deal with girl stuff. I told you even before they were born that they were going to be impossible once they got to this age. I think I'm going to start staying in Washington."
"And leave me with the kids!? Forget it! I'm going with you! They can starve!" We shook our heads at that surprisingly pleasant thought. "So, earlier, you spoke to Charlie and Missy?"
I told her the gist of my conversation with the two teens. She nodded. "You walked in on them?", she asked, amused.
"I had a pretty good idea what was going on."
"He's your son!"
I waggled my eyebrows at my wife. "Later on, after the kids are asleep, why don't you put on a swimsuit and we can go outside and I can give you a more detailed description."
Marilyn coughed at that. "In your dreams, mister!"
"You know, that little red number I bought for you."
Marilyn's eyes widened at that. I was referring to a very risqué suit I had bought her on Paradise Island. It was extremely small, with the emphasis on the word extremely, with a thong bottom and side ties, and a minimal bra top. It was very sheer and red, and had the added virtue that when wet it became almost transparent. "No way!", she protested.
"I am almost positive I saw it here after our last trip. You put it on and we can go swimming, and I can show you exactly what I caught them up to."
"Forget it!" She was smiling at me.
"I think I am going to ply you with booze tonight, to see if I can convince you otherwise." I stood and led her back to the kitchen, to make drinks. It was relatively quiet at that point. Either the girls were all screamed out, or they were in their room plotting something nefarious for the other one, or me, or Bobby Snyderman. I kept my wife's gin and tonic filled, and strong, through dinner and afterwards.
By the second drink, Marilyn suspiciously commented, "I think you are making my drinks stronger than normal."
I gave her my most innocent look. "Who, me?"
"You are up to something!"
Holly chimed in at that point, "What's Dad up to?" Molly piped in a second later asking the same thing.
Their mother looked at them and said, "Never you mind! Your father knows what I am talking about."
"Dad?!", asked the twins, together.
I just laughed. "I have no idea what your mother is talking about." Then I looked at Marilyn and clinked the ice cubes in my glass. "Refill?"
Marilyn's eyes twinkled. "Yes, please."
I smiled. I had a funny feeling I was going swimming later that night!
One thing I worked on in my spare time was another book. I couldn't really work on it last year, since I was tied up in a lot of speechifying and running for re-election. Now I had some time, and I wanted to touch on a topic that was going to radically affect the Republican Party. I had seen some of this during the latest campaign, and it needed to be addressed. Maybe with the name of a Congressman on it, it might get more attention paid to it.
Why do Congressmen write books? The answer is that very few of them actually do. Most don't have the time or the intellectual capacity. Most books by politicians are written as either memoirs or biographies by a ghost writer, or as a manifesto for their future agenda in a higher office. They might be involved in the final editing, but they just spout their ideas to the ghost writer, who tries to make it coherent.
At that point things get very amusing! Most books by politicians don't get read. Most politicians are boring people with the ethics of used car salesmen. (I should know, since I had become one.) Who wants to read about how Congressman Crankypants worked his way up through the Boise political machine and climbed to the peak of Idaho political power? And after learning those fascinating details, who wants to learn his plans once he is elected to Supreme Pontifex and Grand Imperator? The answer is - NOBODY!
So, what to do? Since all politicians are chronically short of money, the Congressman can sell his book, and since book royalties are exempt from the limits on outside income, he pockets all the royalties. However, since normal humans don't actually want to read the book, sales will probably be limited (i.e. nonexistent!) Maybe the campaign can help, by buying a few books and then giving them away to campaign volunteers and donors, so they can learn more about the wonders of Congressman Crankypants. Down this slippery slope more than a few politicians have fallen. Raise the price a little too much, raise the royalty rate a little too high, have the campaign buy a few too many copies, and all of the sudden you have the perfect recipe for laundering campaign funds into the Congressman's pockets. Excuse us, Congressman, but the Justice Department has a few questions for you!
None of this actually applied to me. Leaving aside the fact that my royalties were donated to charity, I allowed Simon and Schuster to set the pricing and made sure my co-authors were prominently listed, and for my name I used Carl Buckman, PhD, not Carl Buckman, Congressman. Furthermore, I wasn't writing a memoir or a biography, and all my books had been fact based - infrastructure, political economics, and now, demographics.
The demographics of the country were changing, and it wasn't to the benefit of the Republican Party. Minorities were increasing in size, and where people lived was changing as well. Back in the Fifties, the magical and mystical days that Reagan pointed to during his Presidency, white Protestants had the numbers, the money, and the political power. That was no longer the case. Blacks were numbering about ten percent of the electorate, and they could vote now, and their incomes were rising as well. Ironically, after the blacks fought the fight for voting and civil rights, the Latinos were now an even larger population group. Other major groups were single women and the young and the gays, and none of these groups were being addressed by the Republicans in any meaningful way. Where they lived was changing, too. Urbanization was increasing, and by 2010 the majority of Americans lived in metropolitan regions, and not out in the country.
Putting it bluntly, the Nineties and Oughts were the last hurrah of the white man. By 2010 or so, we were simply the largest minority in a nation chock full of minorities. By 2020 the Republican Party was jokingly referred to as the party of angry white men, irrelevant when it came to the Presidency and the Senate, but more than capable of generating enough angry white male votes to totally fuck up the House.
The only way to combat this was by bringing these groups within the confines of the Republican Party. There was no earthly reason to let the Democrats brand themselves as the party of inclusion. Make the Republican Party the big tent party, bring the Latinos and Asians in, court the blacks with middle- and upper-class incomes, and stop branding cities as evil, compared to the 'heartland.' There's a reason nobody wants to work on the farm – it's incredibly hard, pays peanuts, and is dangerous (farming and ranching has some of the highest rates of accident and death of all occupations.)