Bucky returned with his parents, and he spent a fair bit of time talking to Charlie. After dinner, they both came up to us and announced that Charlie was going to try racing again, with Bucky handling the details and acting as a crew, sort of. They were going to become an actual racing team, like in the big leagues. Tusker and I looked at each other. “Why does this sound familiar?” he asked me.
“Remember what I always used to tell you?”
“Yeah, and you still do, too.” He looked at the boys and said, “We aren’t saying yes and we aren’t saying no, but we want to see a business plan. I didn’t pay for you to go to Wharton and not be able to write a business plan. You want our blessing and support? We want to see a business plan!”
They looked over at me, and I just pointed back at Tusker. “What he said.”
Charlie looked at Bucky, who simply said, “Okay.”
“And you keep working while you figure it out!” ordered Tusker. “It does not mean you come out here and hang out at the pool all day!” Tessa and Marilyn giggled at this.
I smiled at my old buddy. “Wow, where have I heard those words before?”
“I would throw a beer bottle at you, but the Secret Service would probably shoot me if I did.”
“An empty bottle, I would hope,” I replied.
“I’m sure not throwing a full one!”
“You’re smarter than you look.”
By the time Charlie was out of the Marines, the two of them had cobbled together a plan that looked like it might succeed. They were giving themselves two years to make it happen. The plan was to get back into racing in smaller regional races and get back into the swing of things, begin winning again, and find a major sponsor. From that point, they could leverage up into the big leagues, so to speak, racing in the AMA Pro Championship series. If Charlie wasn’t in the top tier in two years, he probably wouldn’t ever be. The only way Charlie could actually make a living at this was to get a top tier sponsor who would pay him, and then land some endorsements. The initial sponsor was going to be Tusk Cycle, like when Charlie was still a teen. Bucky, the Wharton MBA graduate with a lifetime of experience in the motorcycle business, was working even longer hours at Tusk Cycle, as he opened a third sales center in Laurel and ran advertising and marketing for the entire company. What did Tusk Cycle get out of the deal? Lots of cheap ads with local hero Charlie Buckman!
They worked up cost projections for the two years, as well as a budget, and figured out an investment structure. Tusker and I reviewed it, sent it back to the drawing board a couple of times, ran it through our lawyers, and then pulled out our checkbooks. He and I split the investment 50–50. (Technically it was done through my blind trust. I had nothing to say about it. By the way, I have this bridge in Brooklyn, if you’re interested.)
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.