There was a lot of squawking about the whole thing. The Republicans simply did not like the idea of a lot of illegal wetbacks being rewarded for successfully sneaking into the country, especially when the economy was in a bind, but it wasn't just the conservative Republicans. There were a few Democrats who wanted a payoff for making it happen as well, or wanted more than I was offering. I spent a lot of time wining and dining Congressmen and waving the flag and invoking George's dream. I also spent half the fucking budget on earmarks for assholes who wanted something in order to go along with this. If the leadership in the House and Senate hadn't been on my side, it never would have made it out of committee, let alone made it to the floor. Even then, some cantankerous individuals wouldn't go along with it for any money. It eventually passed by only a single vote, but it passed. Meanwhile, I used up an awful lot of the good will I had accumulated.
In the meantime, however, we were preparing the way for the 2004 election. Over on the Democratic side, a slew of potential candidates were running around, visiting Iowa and New Hampshire, giving speeches and shaking hands, and most importantly of all, lining up local political bosses and moneymen. In effect it was what I had done for ten years in Baltimore and Carroll Counties, only nationwide. I had to do the same, though I had some advantages and disadvantages with doing this. The biggest advantage was incumbency. I was already the President and nobody else was running against me that we could see. I had co-opted my biggest rival, McCain, and destroyed the only other big rival, Cheney. There was nobody else for the locals and donors to choose.
The biggest disadvantage I had was that I had a full time day job already, running the country. You still need to shake hands and schmooze, and not do it in a way that discredits the office. If I had a trip to take or a speech to give, we needed to schedule meetings with important people along the way. The other disadvantage that I had was a more fundamental one. I was simply more moderate than the Republican Party was becoming. When I bought my position as Vice President, Bush let it be known to the conservatives that I was a sop to the moderate wing of the party, and that I wasn't really one of them and he wouldn't pay any attention to me. Well, guess what, here I was, in all my glory as the President of the United States, and they were stuck with me. While I had dismantled some of the neocons, the financial interests were not amused with me. They wanted the lower taxes and lesser regulation that Bush and Cheney and Rove had promised them and that they had paid for! When it was pointed out that the Democrats were even less likely to listen to them, they were not impressed. Some donors were cutting back their contributions, and some simply pocketed their wallets. A few of them had been donating to both sides in any case, and the Democratic National Committee was getting some surprising donations. I wasn't sure how this was going to play out.
In between the girls going to college and the final run of the 2002 campaign, we had the anniversary of 9-11. Leaving aside the inevitable speeches and tributes, what really preoccupied us was the worry that the nutjobs would try something. Across the country police departments were on high alert, and even though we had never instituted that silly color scheme for danger levels, everybody knew there was a lot of potential for Al Qaeda or their buddies to do something either in support of the original bombings or in revenge for our response. I was in constant contact with Winston Creedmore and the new FBI Director, Robert Mueller. If anything happened, it would end everything I was trying to build. Nothing happened, but I was nervous for 24 hours.
The 2002 elections didn't change much in the Congress. The Republicans lost a couple of seats, but we still had a handy majority. The Senate was more interesting. We picked up a seat, breaking the tie, and giving us a thin but real majority. Trent Lott was back to being the Majority Leader and Tom Daschle was out and now the Minority Leader. Harry Reid went back to being the Minority Whip. Curiously, Don Nickles was not reelected as the Republican Whip, but they voted in Mitch McConnell. That was after the election, though. Election night I was busy with lists of names to call, on both sides of the aisle, congratulating them on victories. It had come full circle. A dozen years ago, George H. W. Bush had been the one congratulating me.
In December Charlie shipped out again. He had decided this would be his last deployment, that at the end of his hitch he was getting out. There would be too many restrictions on him as an active duty Marine as the son of the President. This pleased his mother, and me, truth be told, but what didn't please us was his plan to go back to motocross. Get killed by the bad guys or get killed in a motorcycle accident. What a choice! In the meantime, he could float around on the Fort McHenry and do whatever it was that Marines did when they floated around. We would see him again in June or July when they came home again.
In February the Space Shuttle Columbia fell apart during reentry over Texas. I knew it would happen, but not when, and there wasn't much I could do to stop it. The Space Shuttle program was simply a lousy, over-complicated, and fragile way to get people to and from low Earth orbit. One of these days we would come up with a better way to do it. I knew that after the final investigation was concluded that I would be cancelling the program, just like George Bush did on my first go.
The girls managed to make it through their freshman year at college without a scandal. I'm sure they tried, but the Secret Service is nothing if not secret. They wouldn't even tell me what my daughters were up to! I was informed of the theory that if they started telling somebody what their principal was up to, then the principal would be tempted to try to sneak around on their detail, and increase the risk. I grumped at that and told my wife. She sort of shrugged and asked me if I really wanted to know what they were doing, or who. It was better to keep my illusions. On a number of occasions the girls brought their roommates or other coeds over to spend a weekend at the White House. They didn't bring any boys with them, so I didn't really know just what they were up to on that score. I didn't even know if they were still virgins! Some things I simply didn't want to learn.
Marilyn and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary that summer. Our daughters were packed off to Utica for the week. I would like to report that Marilyn and I went down to our Caribbean hideaway and played hide the salami for a week, al fresco. Didn't happen. We took a week and went home to Hereford, where we received any number of visitors from D.C. It rained. I was able to cook us a few nice meals, but there ain't much romance in the White House. Forget about taking your wife out to dinner and a movie. Reporters and photographers would be standing six deep around your table, and a dark movie theater is much too dangerous.
By Wednesday we went back to Washington. Friday was the 4th of July, so I had to participate in any number of patriotic events, all with heavy security. It was chilling to hear from the CIA and the FBI about who they were stopping and catching. If they caught somebody inside the country, it was pretty straightforward; they would be arrested and tried in Federal court, and get put in a Federal jail. Overseas, things got trickier. One thing for sure, I was not allowing anybody to be held in an American prison overseas. No more Gitmo! Squeeze them for info, and then dispose of them. In some cases this meant handing them over to the authorities in their home countries. Some of them would be perfectly content to stick them in their own jails. Otherwise, maybe give them to a country who didn't like them anyway. If that wasn't possible, I would happily turn my head and not notice if some terrorist was taken out into a desert somewhere and didn't come back. What I didn't know wouldn't hurt me, or if it did, it wouldn't hurt me too much. I was not giving American civil rights to enemies in other countries.