"Bah humbug! If they are grown up, what does that make us?!" That would make us old, was the answer.
"Wait until the press finds out they registered as Democrats, just like their mother.", she teased.
My eyes popped open at that! "No! They didn't! Traitors!" Marilyn laughed even harder. I wasn't sure if this was true; it would be just like her to lie about this in order to tease me. It would end up a running family joke!
Saturday, November 29, Marilyn and I watched Saturday Night Live to see what our daughters would get into. I should have gone to bed. Ari Fleischer was going to kill all of us on Monday morning, if he didn't die of laughter before then. The opening sketch involved a variant of the 'bring your dog to work day' they had pulled on me, only 'Stormy' got loose, rampaged through the Oval Office, peed on the Chinese ambassador, and pushed the big red button on my desk, launching the nuclear missiles – "LIVE FROM NEW YORK, IT'S SATURDAY NIGHT!" The twins did an opening monologue about living in the White House, and then later were in a sketch where they were going out on a double date, and were being shadowed by their Secret Service details, only their bodyguards were literally so close they were rubbing shoulders, and stayed between the girls and their dates the entire time, even when dancing.
We called them after the show, and spoke to them briefly. They were very excited, and heading out to a party with some of the cast members. Their mother and I just rolled our eyes, and prayed they didn't end up on the front page of the New York Post. It's not like I was going to win New York in any case, but I didn't need the grief.
A week after the girls went on SNL, I was back in the news. Saturday, December 6, was the Army Navy Game. Marilyn begged off, but Charlie and I took Marine One up to Philly for the game. I had a standing invite to the game, and had attended in 2002. This year it wasn't an option; I had named the bet and I had to go! Charlie and I were escorted to the center of the field and flipped the coin at the start of the game. To reflect my 'non-partisan' position as Commander in Chief, I spent the first half on the Navy side, and then moved to the Army side at halftime. Charlie stayed on the Navy side the entire time, the rat! Worst of all, Navy handed Army their ass, winning 34-6! Oh, the shame of it!
Two weeks later I made good on the bet. Friday night, the Buckman family hosted the Navy team, players, coaches, and all, at the White House. We served coq au vin, which had been added to the White House repertoire of official recipes. I had Charlie wear his miniature Silver Star ribbon on his suit coat. He no longer looked like a hard core Marine, since he had grown a Fu Manchu mustache and his hair was now long and curly. Those boys were Charlie's age, but they saw that Silver Star, and tended to stand a little straighter around him. The girls liked it too, since pretty young girls liked being around a bunch of big hunky guys in uniforms.
The next day I took Marine One up to West Point, where the staff had set up a mess tent in Michie Stadium. It wasn't 'Fort Frostbite', but it was cold enough. I ordered that all honors be dispensed with, so the football team had no idea I was coming. The boys took it with a lot of humor when I showed up in a BDU and jump boots, complete to the black-on-camo rank badge of a captain, an 82nd Airborne patch, and the appropriate qualification and award patches. They might have been dining on MREs, but the Commander in Chief was dining with them, and we had secretly set up a very nice dessert (cherries jubilee, complete with flaming Kirschwasser over ice cream) in Washington Hall. I sat with the cadets and they showed me how to eat an MRE. I told them, truthfully, that no matter how bad they were, they were still a whole lot better than the Lurps I had dined on in my time in the Army.
I had one interesting conversation with a few of the cadets over dessert. Cadet Lieutenant Miller asked me, "What is the insignia for a Commander in Chief, sir?", after looking at my captain's railroad tracks.
I smiled. "No idea, Mister Miller. Five stars makes you a General of the Army, but I think Bradley was the last one of those. I don't think we ever had more than that."
Another cadet piped up and said, "Technically there is a higher rank, a General of the Armies, which has been granted to Pershing, Washington, and MacArthur, which is theoretically six stars, though nobody ever issued the rank badges."
"Huh! Well, I suppose the Commander in Chief outranks them, so what does that make me? Seven stars? Eight? Sounds silly to me."
Miller asked me, "You were a captain, right?"
I nodded. "Yep. Let me tell you fellows something. I've had people tell me that my money has bought me a lot of things. I bought my seat in Congress, the VP slot, the presidency," I grinned and added, " ... a good looking wife ... you name it." I reached up and tapped the rank badge. "Say what you want. I earned this. One of the proudest days of my life was when I pinned on these bars. My money had nothing to do with them." I then tapped my qualification badges. "Same with these. Bullets can't tell how much money you have. No matter how much money I will ever have, or how much crap I have to take from people, I can stand in front of a mirror and honestly say, 'I earned this.' That's something I will always be able to say." Then I grinned and added, "The good looking wife I also earned, but that's a whole different subject!" That got a lot of laughs, but I could tell the boys were thinking about what I said. Then I told them about the time a New York financier tried to take over the Buckman Group back in the early days, and when we politely rebuffed him, he made a threat to bankrupt us. I had dryly told him that I used to jump out of airplanes in the middle of the night and kill people, so it was going to take a whole lot more than a jackass in wingtips to make me nervous.
Over the winter school break, we made the official announcement I was running for reelection. We all flew out together, Marilyn and me, the twins, Charlie, and even Stormy, and flew into Oklahoma City. Frank Keating was out of office now, and I met with the Democratic Governor, Brad Henry. After that, however, he was sent packing, since there was no way he was going to want to travel with me to Springboro. I was doing my official announcement at the place that had put me on the national political map, so we took the motorcade to Springboro, and did the announcement in the school gym, which is where I was speaking when the tornado alarm went off that day.
That had been three years ago, and Springboro took me to their heart. It didn't hurt that Marilyn and the girls were looking pretty, or that Charlie was a certified hero, or that Stormy was the big idiotic mutt from Springboro. I gave a nicely rousing speech about the can-do spirit of 'Oklahoma Strong!' and how I was going to take that spirit with me as I toured the country and spoke to great Americans just like them. Big on emotion, soft on details. Politics 101. The Torquist family was there, front row center, and we greeted them and I introduced them to Charlie. Tom Torquist had been a Marine, too, so he pretty much got the local American Legion to swear out oaths of loyalty to me. Afterwards we drove over to their new house and looked around. Maggie the dog had another litter of puppies; this time I refused!
Afterwards I went to Shawnee and did another campaign stop at the hospital and spoke about the wonderful things they were doing, and then we went to Oklahoma City, did a fundraiser and speech, and stayed the night. Once we were back on the plane flying home to Washington, Charlie immediately begged off the campaign trail. "How do you put up with it?", he asked.
"It helps if you drink a lot.", I told him, at which point Marilyn punched my arm. Then I added some fuel to the fire, by saying, "It helps even more if you can fly around with a cute White House intern." My daughters started to squawk at that, and Charlie just laughed.