The breakfast meeting for that day was set an hour earlier, to give everyone a chance to eat before whatever might come. There had been no word from the White House after the election had been called for Norcross the night before; not even when Manckiewicz had walked up to the White House gates at three A.M. and asked if a concession speech was forthcoming.
The phone from the White House rang. Cameron looked at the clock. “Five minutes early. This won’t be good.” He signaled the transcriptionist standing by to get on the other headset, and picked it up. “Yes, Mr. President.”
“What kind of a stunt do you call that?”
Cameron kept his voice even. “I beg your pardon?”
“More than half those radio links to state Secretary of State offices were military,” Shaunsen said. “And a bunch of the ones that weren’t military were Republican. And nobody reported on any congressional or Senate races, just on the presidential race. And more than that, they’ve been telling me for days that they can’t get a message anywhere faster than a man can go on foot, yet somehow they all had counts within hours of when the polls closed. This is the biggest voter fraud and stolen election there’s ever been. This makes W Chimpface Shrub look like an amateur. And I don’t know any way they could do this without your being in on it. And who the fucking cunting hell’s idea was it to route everything direct to the news media?”
“If you mean the Advertiser-Gazette, sir, and KP-1, the election results were broadcast in clear—per your instructions—and they just listened in like anyone else could do and put the numbers together.”
“Eat shit.”
“Sir, have you been drinking?”
“That’s none of your business!” The phone slammed down.
Cameron looked over at Weisbrod. “Did you get that?”
“I could hear him through your head,” Weisbrod said. “The question is, does he realize we’ve got him beaten, or does he drag it out even further? ”
“He wouldn’t be able to drag it out if we could just take some Twenty-fifth Amendment action. What’s the situation with the Secretary of State?”
Weisbrod shook his head. “I have all but three Cabinet votes lined up your way, but Randolph is not one of them, and without him, there’s no Twenty-fifth Amendment case. He won’t budge. He doesn’t want to make history, he doesn’t want to be part of a coup. He doesn’t want to do anything, actually, other than try to get home to Mississippi. He’s worried about his family.”
It had stymied them for more than a day. The problem was that the Twenty-fifth Amendment requires both the Vice President and a majority of the Cabinet to certify that the President is unfit. Their little cabal of responsible people at St. Elizabeth’s was already on shaky ground, for there was no actual Vice President and Congress had never provided for the position of Acting Vice President; the Secretary of State was the next eligible person in the line of succession, which might or might not count as the same thing as “the Vice President,” depending on what Chief Justice Lopez thought.
“Maybe if the Secretary of State resigns,” Weisbrod said. “And if—”
The presidential line rang again, and Nguyen-Peters gestured to the transcriptionist, who slipped on his phones and bent to his work.
The gist of the tirade was that Cameron Nguyen-Peters had been fired, both as Chief of Staff for the Department of Homeland Security and as NCCC. As Shaunsen ran down, Cameron said, very quietly, “Sir, that is not a lawful order.”
“I’m the damn president!”
“Acting President, sir. You can order my boss to fire me, though he won’t. You can fire him and try to make his successors fire me; they won’t. You can’t call me up and dismiss me directly.
“Furthermore, as NCCC, it is my job to ensure that the acting presidency is in competent and legally qualified hands, and I don’t feel I can say that with you in office; to leave now would be to desert my post during a crisis, and the President can’t lawfully order a Federal official to neglect or act contrary to his duty. So I’m not fired, sir. Thank you.” And he hung up. He turned to Weisbrod. “Graham, if you have one good idea right now, you are my hero.”
“Don’t let your toast get cold, and let’s talk through this thing one more time.”
“That’s two good ideas. Got any more?”
“Well, President Pendano… when I talked to him on the phone on Sunday, because I was worried they’d move him with the rioting going on—he sounded much better than he did when I visited on Friday and on Saturday. I think he’s off the barbiturates and through the withdrawal, but I couldn’t chance asking when there might be some National Unity Goon listening in. So suppose he’s better. What if he were to transmit a letter to Congress certifying that he’s ready to resume his duties?”
“Could he do that? I mean—I know, Amendment Twenty-five, Section Three, he can always send the letter, but could he be president?”
“That’s not what I have in mind, Cameron. No, I don’t think Roger Pendano could be president again. I don’t think he’s even going to live very long, or if he does, it will be as a wreck in a nursing home. If he were going to rise to the need, he’d’ve done it the first night. But he might be able, for a very short time, to be a figurehead. And I think he’ll do that if we ask him. If we got Kowalski on it for the House and whoever it’s going to be for the Senate, and Roger Pendano were to appoint a Vice President and then resign—”
“I see what you’re saying, it scares me, and I don’t like it.”
Weisbrod pressed on. “Twenty-fifth Amendment, Section 3, he resumes his duties if he sends a letter that says he’s fit and a majority of the Cabinet agrees. No agreement from the VP required. If we all vote that he’s fit, and the Senate and House confirm as soon as Shaunsen protests, then Roger is the President again. Between DRET and the Cabinet, we could take care of everything, just have him read announcements and maybe wave from stands. It’ll be easier to hide than Roosevelt’s wheelchair or Wilson’s stroke were. And if he appoints a successor right away, and the House and Senate confirm immediately, we won’t have to keep the act going for much time at all.”
Cameron nodded. “Who did you have in mind for the successor?”
Weisbrod smiled. “Frankly, I was thinking you.”
“God no. I have zero charisma and I’m unknown outside policy circles and it would look like a coup. Same reason we can’t use any generals. But I do have a thought, which I’m swiping from all the stuff I’ve been reviewing about irregular successions and possible irregular successions in the past.”
“There’s a precedent for this?”
“There’s definitely a precedent, even if it’s 108 years old. Back in 1916, just before he was re-elected, Woodrow Wilson thought the country might reject him, and elect Charles Evans Hughes. The main issue of the campaign was Wilson’s policies about the war going on in Europe. If Wilson lost, especially back in those days when a new president was sworn in on March 4th, it would have been five months till the new policies came in, at a time when there were decisions to make every day. Wilson thought that was way too long for the country to stay with a foreign policy it had rejected, so he planned that if Hughes won, Wilson would appoint him Secretary of State, the Senate would confirm, and then Wilson and Vice President Marshall would resign, making Hughes the President under the 1886 Succession Act, the rules at the time.
“So I suggest that Roger Pendano pick Senator Will Norcross as his Vice President. The country voted for Norcross, so he has immediate legitimacy. And we don’t have to go through a whole additional succession on January 20; we can put Norcross in, in a perfectly Constitutional, regular way.”