The biggest question in my mind was why Jeana had never told me. Okay, she was in Queens, and I had left Baltimore for a number of years, but it wouldn't have been difficult to track me down, either at Rensselaer or in the Army. My lawyers informed me she had a claim against me for child support at least until Michael was 18, and maybe beyond, depending on circumstances. Maybe she thought I didn't have any money, but by the mid-80s I was becoming well enough known as a businessman that she must have learned about me. Still, I had never heard from her. Shame? Pride? Now I would never know.
By Sunday morning, there was more than enough smoke floating around to start hearing the word fire. Will Brucis, who was appearing on Meet the Press, was asked point blank about the mounting evidence that I had an illegitimate child. "What evidence? All we've heard so far is that President Buckman had a relationship with a woman when he was a teenager who may or may not have been this man's mother. He hasn't contacted the President and he hasn't asked for any DNA or paternity test. All we know for sure is that he sold a story to a tabloid that can't even be called a newspaper." The Washington Post gave the whole thing the nickname 'Babygate'. How cute!
Will's comments actually managed to move the ball, but not necessarily in a helpful direction. Michael Petrelli called a lawyer, one of those sharks who give ambulance chasers a bad name. I was informed that Angelo DeSantos had a series of billboards with his likeness on them near local police stations and jails, and also near any dangerous intersection he could find. Michael might be an idiot, but Angelo knew a gold mine when he fell into one. Michael had already sold his story to the Enquirer, cheap, for living expenses. Angelo was going to raise the bar considerably higher, and come after me. According to the about to be released Forbes 400, I was the 10th wealthiest American, with an estimated fortune of just under $14.1 billion. By the end of that week Angelo DeSantos had filed a law suit for half of my assets, just over $7 billion, along with thirty years of appropriate child support and fines and other payments, for another $1 billion. What's the Italian word for chutzpah?
It got better after that. Petrelli had promised the Enquirer that he would let them print Jeana's diaries. DeSantos read one of them and shitcanned that whole deal. He was going to have them published as a memoir, 'Secrets of a President's Lover', or some such crap. Jeana must have been very impressed, which isn't all that hard to do with a teenage girl. Her diaries were extremely explicit, much more than could be printed in a newspaper, although redacted snippets were tossed out as teasers. There was just enough let out to make me think this might be legit.
Brewster McRiley and Ed Gillespie were beside themselves over this. Our carefully crafted message that we were the bunch that knew what we were doing was coming down around our ears. Everybody in the senior campaign ranks was wondering if this was the most incredibly perfect October Surprise ever invented, but nobody was going to kill a middle aged woman in Queens in June to screw up my reelection. No, Michael Petrelli, the greedy bastard, had managed to do that all on his own. John Kerry kept his mouth shut and looked Presidential, with that somber and mournful look he possessed. Instead he let his designated asshole, John Edwards, make all the jokes he could get away with, at least until I called Kerry and reminded him of the favor I had done him with the Swift Boaters. He shut down Edwards after that.
On Tuesday the 28th, we had our debate in Houston, the same city where George Bush had announced to the country that I was his V.P. pick. It was a solidly Republican city, and I got a warm welcome. Still, Babygate hung over everything. There were no questions about it during the debate, and John Kerry never said a word about it. John Edwards, the philandering ass, had a team of joke writers that Mel Brooks would have been proud of, and made a few more jokes at my expense whenever he could get away with it. The best that we could say in response was that it wasn't the behavior to be expected of a Vice President, unless Edwards was running for Vice President of a drunken fraternity. John McCain promised to chew him up as needed.
My debate performance was uninspired, at least to my way of thinking. We spent half the time on domestic issues and half on foreign policy. Neither one of us truly beat the other. Regardless, since this was the first debate I had ever been in, and expectations for me were extremely low, the fact that I walked out on stage without my pants falling down around my knees benefited me. The pundits ruled the debate a draw, and congratulated me on my performance in the face of personal adversity. Good grief!
The idiocy mounted through October. Angelo DeSantos was going full bore New York crazy on me. He filed an injunction against the Secret Service to prevent their harassment of his client, which was insane, since the Secret Service had never even talked to his client. He filed a paternity suit against me, claims against Marilyn and the kids so that I couldn't hide my assets with them, liens on my home in Hereford and my jet, filed suit against Suzie and her family for some damn reason, and half a dozen different law suits against me for harassment and civil rights violations. I was going to be spending my fortune fighting the court cases.
I took a day off and met with my attorneys and the White House Counsel, John Weisenholtz. The Counsel's office wouldn't fight my battles for me, but they would protect the office of the Presidency. Their joint verdict, on everything, was that this was all smoke and mirrors. None of this would ever go to trial, and would all get thrown out in any pretrial stage. I could tie this up in court until we all died of old age. The claim for half of my assets was based on the nonsensical legal theory that Jeana Colosimo and Michael Petrelli formed a 'second family', and therefore deserved half of my assets, just like Marilyn, Charlie, Holly, and Molly who would split up the other half. There was no possible way that I owed thirty years of child support that had never been sought by his mother.
On the other hand, this was America. Anybody can sue anybody else for anything whatsoever. I could stand on my good name and spend the rest of my life fighting this asshole, or I could buy him off. I might have the law on my side, but Petrelli had a certain vestige of public sentiment, and he had some extremely racy diaries that I didn't need to see the light of day,
We waited until about a week before the election and then flew DeSantos down to witness a cheek swab being taken for a DNA test. This was placed in the hands of a pair of Secret Service agents, who then escorted DeSantos off the premises and flew him back to New York. DeSantos protested that he wasn't allowed to speak to the press in the Press Room, or from the South Lawn! Back in New York, they went with DeSantos and Petrelli to a lab, where a cheek swab was made of Petrelli, and they turned over my sample. Results were promised on Wednesday, November 4.
This all played fairly well in the press. My 'openness' in taking a paternity test was reassuring. Hogwash! I just wanted this over with. One thing I was sure of was that if this turned out to be an elaborate hoax, or the DNA test turned out to be negative, I was going to destroy DeSantos! He would be lucky to practice law in Cuba by the time I was done with him!
What would I do if it was positive? I just didn't know.
The election was on Tuesday, November 3rd, and for the first time I wasn't sweating out the results at the Best Western in Westminster. No, this time we set up in the Hyatt Regency in Washington, which was just a few blocks from the Capitol. Marilyn, the girls, and I flew home to Hereford to vote in the afternoon after the girls got out of class, picking up Charlie at the house, and then took the motorcade to our regular polling place at the high school. We voted, and then drove back to the house. Charlie joined us as we flew back to the White House. He had stayed out of the campaign as much as possible. His opinion? "How you put up with this is beyond me, Dad!" Good question!