It felt good, just like the old days. Now, all we needed to do was wait and see if we had backed a winning horse, or motorcycle in this case. Charlie just wasn't a 'college' kind of guy. If he wasn't trying to break his neck in the Marines, he was going to try to break it somewhere else. In the meantime, Charlie would live at the house in Hereford, so he didn't have to get his own place.
In October I had my first assassination attempt. I suppose that's a landmark of sorts. Most Presidents get them, and almost every President since Hoover. As far as I had heard, only Eisenhower and Johnson hadn't been targeted. Most of them are incredibly amateurish and put together by a whack job, but they often get lucky and hit somebody, though maybe not the President. The Secret Service gets really paranoid about politicians, and politicians aren't easy to protect. We can't be hidden away 24/7, and the basic instinct is to meet and greet and shake hands.
Actually, the absolute first attempt on me occurred shortly after I took office, in January of 2002, when some of the hate mail I got was analyzed and a pattern was found. It's illegal to even make threats against the President. A loony tune in Texas was investigated and taken into custody after a search warrant was obtained and his house was searched. The search found a lot of Semtex plastic explosive, some unregistered machine guns, and a bunch of maps of places in Washington. I guess I wasn't his only target, but he never actually got to where he could hurt somebody.
This time, there was some actual violence. Martin L. Smusky, of Elmira, New York, decided to stop taking his meds, and then bought a gun and took the bus down to Washington. From the bus station he got a cab and took that over to the White House. He had on a baseball cap that was lined with aluminum foil. Rather than wait in line for the regular tour, he decided that the voices in his head wanted me to die right away so he simply walked up to the wrought iron fence around the White House, pulled a .38 snub nose Smith and Wesson through, and fired all five shots at the White House. This was totally nuts, since I wasn't sure that a .38 snub nose could even hit the building from the distance he was firing from!
This all happened in the middle of the morning. He pulled the gun back and began fumbling out the empties, to begin reloading from a pocket full of loose ammunition, when he was captured by the Durands, a family of tourists from Bangor, Maine. Dad made a flying tackle on the guy, and then he and Mom sat on him until the cops and the Secret Service showed up a few seconds later. Meanwhile, their kids, three teenage boys who were completely bored with Washington, were taking photos and movies of everything. Washington suddenly was exciting!
It was over almost as soon as it happened. The Secret Service rushed into my morning meeting in readiness for the hordes breaking down the gates, but it never got quite that far. That's not to make light of them, because all they knew was that somebody was firing on the place. After a few minutes they realized the fun was over and went back to their regular routine. Both Mr. Smusky and the Durand family were brought inside the gates for questioning, but the Durands were quickly released. The Secret Service told me about them, and I had them brought up to the Oval Office, where I thanked them and took some photos with them. They were pleasantly awestruck.
Mr. Smusky was not so quickly released. He was bundled off to St. Elizabeth's, the Washington psycho hospital, pending whatever legal action was going to be taken. I was forecasting a lengthy stay, and not one of his own choosing. The whole thing was on the nightly news that evening, but then died out. The Durands were minor celebrities for a few days, especially after a German tourist was discovered to have made a video of the whole thing and then sold it to a German network. The Durands even made it onto the Today Show!
As we went through the fall and into the winter, Congress moved along at its usual glacial pace. Various legislation crossed my desk, generally of a conservative nature in its fiscal and military implications. I was avoiding the hot button Democratic social issues. I didn't ban stem cell research or screw with abortion, for instance, and I stayed away from 'Don't ask, don't tell.' I thought it was wrong, but I could count noses, and it would be years before Congress would go for me screwing with the policy. I also pushed for Justice and DEA to stop pushing on marijuana. We had better ways to fight this losing war than by chasing pot smokers. That did not earn me any favors from Ashcroft, who pretty much ignored me and didn't change their policy. I didn't feel strong enough to challenge him. Maybe when I replaced him, eventually.
I didn't get exactly what I wanted, since Congress has to fuck with everything. As the saying goes, it's not soup until the cook has a chance to pee in it. With Congress, you have 535 cooks, so there is an awful lot of pee in the soup.
I also got the budget passed, this one the first that could be labeled as a Buckman budget; again, I got mostly what I wanted. I had to throw a screaming tantrum once or twice, but it got through the system and passed in both houses. It was pretty much a standard Buckman budget. Don't screw with tax levels, no new programs, fund the programs we did have. One of the areas I made sure was funded was SEC and Justice Department prosecution of financial crooks. Congress might have been bought off by the securities and finance industries, but I hadn't been. I let it be known, loudly and publicly, that financial crooks would be prosecuted by the Buckman Administration.
Holly and Molly found that fame was not all that wonderful at times. Playboy had a picture of them walking across campus in their 'Girls of the ACC' article. Thankfully, they were fully clothed, and they told Marilyn they hadn't even known they were photographed, or been asked to do anything, not that they would have. Marilyn would have killed them! Meanwhile, Penthouse had a standing offer of $500,000 to each of them if they did a centerfold. The twins asked if I would match the offer not to do it; their mother moved to smack them both, but the girls laughed and scampered away.
That fall Ari Fleischer brought me a new crisis to deal with. Saturday Night Live had invited the twins to guest host in November! Worst of all, the girls knew about the invitation, so we couldn't just sweep it under the rug and forget to tell them. "I don't suppose that they are going to make our lives easier, and decide they don't want to do it?", I asked him.
"I got the overall impression that they wanted to know how soon they could go.", he replied.
"Great! By the time those two are through with New York, we'll end up with another Civil War!"
"Don't be so negative, Mister President. I'm sure we'll be able to limit the damage to your resignation or impeachment."
"You are not making any Brownie points with me, Ari!"
I tried a number of things when we called the girls that night at college. First I suggested that Marilyn travel with them, but that went over like a lead balloon. They were 19 years old and didn't need their mother to hold their hands everywhere! I played the 'you've got classes' card, but they trumped that by replying they would do it when school was out for Thanksgiving. Then we tried to guilt them into not going (Thanksgiving!), but they weren't buying that one, either. We hung up in defeat.
Marilyn looked at me and I just threw my hands up in surrender. "What's the worst that could happen?", she asked.
"I don't know. They could be arrested? I could lose the election? New York could secede from the Union? Either one of them is bad enough, but together they are dangerous!"
Marilyn laughed at me. "Just tell them their Secret Service detail has been authorized to shoot to kill, and that you've promised them all executive pardons. Face it, Carl, your little girls are grown up."