"I have no doubt you will manage it.", I replied, smiling.
At that point Laura pulled Marilyn off to the side, and the political types began a discussion of the speech and the reaction to it. They had all been watching it on a bank of televisions, and listening to the network commentators speaking about it afterwards. Adjectives such as 'Stunning!' and 'Electrifying!' were being tossed around, along with discussions of the bio. After a bit, I went back to the bar for a refill, and afterwards grimaced a touch. "I need to sit down.", I told the Governor. I made my way to a couch and sat down on it.
"Are you all right, Carl?", he asked. Behind him I could see Cheney and Rove hoping it was something incurable; a perfect scenario for them would be to milk my death and use it to put Bush into the White House with them running it for him.
"I'll be fine. It's my ribs. I cracked them, so they aren't broken, but today was really the first day I haven't had the sling in place. I'm pretty sore, right now.", I admitted.
"Where's your cane?", asked Rove. "I didn't see you with it."
I shook my head. "I left it back in the room. I didn't want to draw attention to it on national television, and I figured if I did limp a bit, people would chalk it up to the accident."
I stayed seated for a bit, resting and letting my ribs protest, and discussing the plans for the last day of the convention and my follow-up trip to Springboro at the end of the week. After that, kiss Marilyn good-bye. I was going campaigning!
Chapter 131: Campaigning
Friday we all flew out to Shawnee, including Stormy, where we were met by Frank Keating, who traveled with us to Springboro. It was a mutual love fest, with Frank thanking me for saving his citizens and me thanking Frank for his inspired leadership and help during the crisis. We started at the school, now being rebuilt, and toured the town, and then met with the Torquists. Along the way I said wonderful things about Springboro and Oklahoma, and whatever it was they did there. I gathered it was either farming or ranching, neither of which I knew crap about. I made a few jokes about chocolate milk coming from brown cows, and everybody seemed to think that was amusing. I also had Marilyn write out several donations to the fire department, the ambulance squad, the school, and so forth. Doctor Shooster showed up, so we wrote out a check to the hospital as well. Leaving aside the wear and tear on me, being in a catastrophe was expensive!
The most amusing part was when we got to sit down with the Torquists for a bit. They were staying with her sister, Anna Simpson, while their house was demolished and then rebuilt. Mrs. Torquist seemed to be in good spirits, though she was wearing enough bandages to cover the state and wasn't walking yet. Her husband, a truck driver for J.B. Hunt, was effusive in his praise, and kept shaking my hand. Little Molly didn't really remember me, but Billy asked all sorts of questions and then told me that after I went to the hospital, in the ensuing publicity, he was able to find homes for all three of the other puppies!
I looked over at Frank and said, "Either he's going to end up taking our jobs, or he's going to be a used car salesman!"
"Some days there's not much difference!", he replied. I nodded agreement.
I asked Sylvie Torquist about Stormy's parentage. This critter was growing by leaps and bounds, and I was wondering where it would stop! Marilyn and I listened in horrified fascination. Mama, who I had hoisted out of the basement, was mostly Golden Retriever, but an Irish Wolfhound had snuck in somewhere down the line. Papa was the St. Bernard next door, who had managed to jump the fence and find true love. I looked at my wife and remarked, "This thing is going to grow up bigger than you and me! Combined!"
"She's going to end up in the bed and we're going to be in the dog house!", Marilyn replied. Our daughters thought this was a great idea!
After our trip to the heartland, Marilyn and the girls flew home with Stormy, and I headed to Florida in a leased 737, which we had to travel to Oklahoma City to catch. The plane was packed, with a staff that seemed to grow by the day, and with many more reporters than before the tornado. The staff now included Frank Stouffer and Matt Scully, assigned to me as speechwriter and 'liaison' to George Bush; the reporters were all hoping to see me get killed doing something newsworthy.
They were also hoping for me to mouth off about something. Ever since the tornado, for about the last two weeks, the Gore campaign had been laying off me. It's real hard to campaign against a guy fighting for his life in the hospital after rescuing puppies. They had been laying low, reduced to de rigueur prayers for my recovery and praise for the rescue. Now that I was well enough to campaign again, I was fair game!
Before the plane had even lifted off, I was being slammed for my hard line debt reduction push. I was a heartless billionaire who was throwing widows and orphans off of welfare and shutting down Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. I had also managed to do all these horrible deeds while raising taxes on hard working middle class Americans. Why I was running as George Bush's Vice Presidential choice was a mystery, unless it was symbolic of the fact that George Bush himself deserved to be burned on the same bonfire that I had so richly earned.
None of this was unexpected. It was pretty much standard operating procedure for a modern political campaign. We managed to return the favor. Even comments like the ones I had made about chocolate milk and cows were 'milked', to show how out of touch I was to the voters in the heartland. They would compare me to Al Gore, who grew up on a farm in Tennessee. The truth was that Al Gore was the son of an extremely wealthy father, Al Gore, Sr., a Tennessee Congressman and Senator. He had been born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in the Fairfax Hotel on Embassy Row. He knew even less about farming than I did!
The convention gave a serious boost to George Bush's poll numbers. I had made the cover of both Time and Newsweek after I was announced as his running mate, with major bio pieces on the inside. They also ran small pictures of me along with the Springboro devastation, and pictures of both George and I on the cover during the convention. I knew it wouldn't last, though. As soon as Al Gore made his selection, they would be all over the news.
Meanwhile, I was living proof of the old adage 'protect me from my friends; I could take care of my enemies.' Rush Limbaugh was slamming me with complaints that I wasn't conservative enough. I was much too liberal; I was pro-abortion, pro-gay, anti-gun rights, anti-church. In short, I wasn't a real Republican. I wondered where he was getting some of this stuff. My pro choice stance was well known, and I had never hidden it. The anti-gun rights was a convoluted take on my passage of the Defending the Second Amendment Act, where I had agreed to restrictions on magazine sizes, even though I had managed to increase concealed carry privileges across the country. I wasn't sure about the anti-church claim; no, I didn't go to a Protestant church, but my wife and children were active members of the Catholic church, and I occasionally went with them to Mass. Being Catholic was not a big seller in the heartland, but it was a long time since Kennedy had to address it, and Marilyn wasn't running for office.
The pro-gay bit wasn't a real surprise to me. That had been dogging me for a few years now, since I had voted against the Defense of Marriage Act back in 1996. The homophobes had decided we needed to do something about the wave of gay marriages inundating the God fearing Christians of our great nation, so they passed a law stating that only straights could marry. It would ultimately be found unconstitutional. I had been the only straight Republican in the entire Congress to vote against it, which had not endeared me to Newt. My argument was on a purely constitutional basis. States have the power to regulate marriage, not the Feds. Some states would end up allowing it, and some would ban it. I simply reiterated my position that marriage is up to the states, not the Federal government.