Marilyn snorted at that. “You’re such a helpful guy.”
“I am, I am indeed!”
Chapter 118: Armed Services
Winter 1994–1995
Now that we were the majority, everybody got to play musical chairs with the various committee assignments. Science, Space, and Technology was interesting, and I thought I did well there with the Internet bill. Likewise, Veterans Affairs gave me the place to do the Gulf War Veterans Bill, and that was both timely and useful. Still, both were backwaters as far as anything useful was concerned. Science would do all sorts of wonderful things, like hold hearings on the NASA budget or the Superconducting Super Collider, but these budgets would be the first place raided when ‘important’ stuff needed doing. For the price of a few fairly useless B-2 stealth bombers, the world’s top heavy particle collider could have been built in Dallas, and not in Europe. Veterans Affairs was equally a dead end; why the Veterans Administration needed to be upgraded to a cabinet department was way beyond me.
Floyd Spence was the ranking Republican on the committee and would become chairman when we reconvened. I managed a quick meeting with him and got myself assigned to the Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces. This was one of the bigger subcommittees, bigger in the sense of importance. We oversaw the Army and Air Force, the National Guard, the Reserves, and several logistic and modernization areas. There were other subcommittees related to the Navy and Marines, Intelligence, Oversight, and such. I probably knew as much about the Army as any of the other members, for good or for bad. Floyd made a call and got me a meeting with the Chief of Staff for the committee, which was also quite helpful, since those guys actually do most of the work.
As I had told Newt and the others, Bill Clinton wasn’t going to roll over and let the Republican Party have their way with things. He was already scrambling to recover, like a quarterback moving as his pocket collapsed around him. He was promising to work with the Congress to pass this, that, and the other thing, and simultaneously trying to rally the Democrats into a coherent response. We were still planning on keeping up the pressure, with a plan to spend the first two weeks of the new Congress introducing our Contract with America bills and giving speeches on them.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough for Newt. He wanted to destroy Bill Clinton. I simply think he just didn’t like the man. We spoke about this mid-January when he came over to the house on 30th for a working dinner. There were just a few of us, not the entire Gang, John Boehner, Jim Nussle, Newt, and myself. I had promised them my signature coq au vin meal.
John was the first to arrive, and I let him into the house and brought him back to the kitchen. He sat down on a tall bar stool on the side of the kitchen island facing the stove. “So, you actually know how to cook? Every other time I’ve eaten over here it’s been catered or you’ve had a chef in doing something.”
“Yes I know how to cook! I’ve been cooking for myself ever since I left home as a kid.”
“You mean when your parents threw you out?” he asked.
I nodded. “It was a little more complicated than that, but essentially yes. Wine?” I held up a bottle of Riesling I had pulled out of the wine cooler, and John nodded. I began to open the bottle and continued talking. “For most of the last two years of high school I was on my own, so it was either learn to cook or eat at McDonald’s three times a day. That stuff will kill you. Besides, my girlfriend liked that I could cook.”
He grinned at that. “What did her parents think about you having your own place?”
“Funny, but somehow that never came up in our conversations.” That earned a barking laugh from him. I finished opening the bottle and poured some in glasses I pulled from an overhead rack. We sipped some, and John and I talked for a few more minutes about my bachelor days. I began pulling out the pots and pans and setting things up.
The doorbell rang and I glanced at my friend. “I’ll get that. You keep cooking.” He hopped up and came back a minute later leading both Newt and Jim.
“Gentlemen, welcome again. Toss your coats somewhere and have a seat. John can pour the wine.” I was cutting some boned chicken breasts in half and placing them to the side; next to be cut up was a large and thick slice of boned ham and some fresh button mushrooms.
Both Jim and Newt made the same comment: “So you really can cook! It’s not something you made up?”
“Some friends you guys are! Yes, I can cook! It’s an excellent method of separating young ladies from their virtue! If you pull it off you look suave and sophisticated, but if you fail, you look helpless and she gets to be maternal and helpful. Keep that in mind for when you are shopping for a mistress.” They all laughed at that.
“What does Marilyn think about that idea?” asked Newt.
“What, the cooking or the mistress?” I riposted.
We continued joking about cooking while I finished preparing the ingredients, and then I pulled out my electric skillet and set it on the island in front of us all. If I cooked at the stove, my back would be to everybody. I set the skillet to 300 and tossed in a stick of butter, and then began dredging the chicken breasts through flour. As the butter melted, the chicken went in, to begin sautéing. I grabbed a set of measuring spoons and began measuring out my spices.
I noticed my glass was empty and the others were getting low. “How was the wine? I need to open another bottle. The same or something different?”
Newt answered, “It was very nice.” The others nodded as well, so I pulled out a second bottle and passed it and the corkscrew over to John. Newt looked at the label on the empty. “Where is this from, the Finger Lakes?”
“Yes. Marilyn and I did a nice tour of some of the wineries up there the last time we visited her folks. We like wine, so we picked up several cases. It’s really quite reasonable.”
Jim asked, “What is reasonable to your budget and what is reasonable to mine might be different.”
I simply shook my head. “Just because I have enough money to get silly doesn’t mean I do get silly. This runs about ten or twelve bucks a bottle and is very nice. Just because I can afford something ten or twenty times that, it doesn’t mean I can taste the difference.” I flipped the breasts and let them cook on the other side, while measuring out the wine and brandy. “We actually live fairly simply. You should come out and visit us sometime. You’ll have to share a bathroom with the kids, but that’s not my problem, that’s yours!” That got a few laughs.
We continued talking about our homes. When the chicken breasts were lightly browned, I dropped the temperature on the skillet down to about 200 or so and dumped in the other ingredients. They would basically stew and steam in the wine, cooking the chicken and swapping flavors. “All I need to do now with the chicken is to keep an eye on things and add water to keep it from drying out.”
“Has that ever happened?” asked John.
I nodded and ruefully admitted, “Yes, once back in Fayetteville, Marilyn and I… well, when I went back into the kitchen, it was burned black in the bottom of the pan. I had to throw the pan away, it was so bad!” That earned me a fair number of snickers!
I got the Minute Rice ready to cook. That would only take about ten minutes total, so we had plenty of time to chat, maybe another half hour or so, before I had to worry and do more than just watch and stir. Inevitably the conversation turned to business, our business — politics. The big discussion was with people tossing out names for who would run against Clinton in 1996. Bob Dole was named, and I knew he would win the nomination (at least he did my first time) but whether he would win this time around I wasn’t sure. Had I changed things this time? Several other names got tossed around as well, some of whom were definite and some of whom were maybes. The selection was from all over the map — politicians like Dick Lugar and Phil Gramm, businessmen like Steve Forbes and Ross Perot were wild cards, and even newspaper columnist and pundit Pat Buchanan was interested.